Sitting of 7 February 1990

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

    Eastern Europe
    Mr. Anthony Coombs: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further steps are being planned by the Government to assist east European countries.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. William Waldegrave): We have announced the Government's plan to extend our existing know-how fund for Poland and Hungary to the other countries of eastern Europe. This will make available substantial sums of money to finance projects aimed to help the transition to democracy and a market economy. We are also helping through the EC and other multilateral organizations.
    Mr. Coombs: Given the current instability in eastern Europe, does my right hon. Friend agree that our strategic policy should be one of caution, and that in terms of individual development towards democracy and a free enterprise system, there is a great deal to be done? In that context does he recognise the power of American and German institutions, such as the National Foundation for Democracy, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and others, to influence policy in eastern Europe? What will the Government do to bring on such institutions in Britain?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I agree with my hon. Friend's overall assessment. Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have suggested that we might consider proposals of the type that he put forward. This is new and quite difficult territory, because the fund will be channelling support to political organisations, which is quite different from normal aid. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) has made suggestions on this issue, which we are considering.
    Mr. Alton: Has the Minister had a chance to study reports from Bucharest that suggest that up to 28 per cent. of children in the hospitals there are infected by HIV, and are AIDS victims? Has the Minister had the chance to consider the request that packs for detection of the disease, sterile needles and scientific and medical help be provided by the Government? Will he tell the House how he intends to respond to that?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The whole House will have been moved by the terrible stories that have emerged in the past few days. I am delighted to say that, as a first response, the
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    Government have decided today to send 1 million disposable syringes, and we shall respond to further requests
    Sir Peter Blaker: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the unanimous welcome that has been given by the countries concerned to the British know-how funds, and how welcome it is that those funds will be extended to other countries in eastern Europe? Is he further aware that, with the aid of the funds, BBC external services are planning this year to train 40 Polish broadcasters how to operate a free broadcasting system? Will he join me in paying tribute to the BBC external services for the fact that over these momentous months they have been broadcasting the truth to the countries of eastern Europe?
    Mr. Waldegrave: I am delighted to join in that tribute and to confirm the accuracy of what my right hon. Friend said about the new role that the BBC is taking in training proper journalists in the East. Later on today I am going to a party given by the Romanian services of the BBC, and I pay particular tribute to them, but all the external services have played a crucial role in telling the truth and facilitating the changes that we have seen
    Mr. Anderson: The Minister will know that we join wholeheartedly in the broad thrust of Government policy on the know-how funds, which allow us to play to our strengths, be it in management or in our experience of parliamentary democracy. On the more general theme of relations with eastern and central Europe, does he agree that, at this time of fundamental change, it is important and in our national interest not to be left isolated and irelevant in the eyes of our American and European allies? Will he therefore persist in his efforts to synchronise the Prime Minister with history?
    Mr. Waldegrave:My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made an important speech in Germany yesterday, which I think was widely welcomed. Of all the countries in Europe that are central to the processes now taking place, only Britain and France are members of all the crucial organisationsߞthe four powers, the European Community, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and so forth. Our position is and will remain central.

    Helsinki Final Act
    Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the implications of the proposed Soviet Emigration Bill for fulfilment of the obligations imposed by the Helsinki Final Act.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The draft Soviet emigration law is an improvement on present law and practice, but still places unjustified restrictions on travel abroad by Soviet citizens. We shall continue to press the Soviet authorities to bring their law into conformity with their international obligations, and to resolve the refusenik problem once and for all.
    Mr. Amess: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the Soviet emigration law still places restrictions on the free movement of Jewish people on the grounds that they might have held sensitive state jobs or

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    come from what could loosely be described as broken homes? Will he please undertake to raise those concerns with his opposite number in the Soviet Union?
    Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend puts his finger on two of the exact points that are unsatisfactory in the present draft. I raised those very points with vice-Minister Adamishin when I was in Moscow recently and we shall continue to urge for much greater clarity and a proper law to get rid of those problems once and for all.
    Sir Russell Johnston: Will the Minister simultaneously make representations to the United States about the obstacles that it is now placing in the way of refugees from the Soviet Union settling there?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The United States, like all other countries, undertakes its proper obligations to refugees. The right of countries to refuse access is not the same basic human right as the right to leave one's own country. That has been long established.
    Mr. Budgen: Did the Russian Minister express any disagreement or annoyance about my right hon. Friend's impertinence in telling the Russians how to run their emigration laws?
    Mr. Waldegrave: No, he did not, because, like all other Russian Ministers, particularly in the present climate, he rejoices in the fact that Mr. Brezhnev, surprisingly, signed the final Helsinki document. That gave us the perfect legal right to inquire into such matters.

    South Africa
    Mr. Nellist: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations Her Majesty's Government have made to the Government of South Africa; and if he will make a statement.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd): We make frequent representations to the South African Government on a wide range of issues.
    Mr. Nellist: Is the Secretary of State aware that following President de Klerk's weekend announcement about the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release, after 27 years in prison, of Mr. Nelson Mandela, heads of western Governments sought to claim responsibility and ignored the white Government's retreat in the face of mounting defiance of the black workers and youth of South Africa? That is a bit like a chicken and a pig discussing an egg and bacon breakfast: for the chicken, it is a small contribution, but for the pig it is a total commitment. Are not the only negotiations that the black majority would seek, and consider worth while to enter into, ones that were about the transfer of power, a genuinely freely elected constituent assembly, the ending of segregation, laws of emergency and the Labour Act and the reinstatement of the right of black workers to bear arms for their own defence?
    Mr. Hurd: I should have thought that even the hon. Gentleman could bring himself to welcome warmly the decision announced by President de Klerk. Those changes, and the way that they were announced and are to be brought about, vindicate our policy of contact rather than
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    isolation. The South African Government have taken major steps, opening the way to negotiations, and I hope that even the hon. Gentleman will expect the ANC and others to respond positively to them. We certainly do.
    Mr. Gardiner: As President de Klerk has taken such significant steps to set the stage for constructive negotiations and discussions with all sections of the community, culminating in the expected release of Nelson Mandella, will my right hon. Friend do all that he can to impress upon the leaders of the ANC that they must put the concept of the armed struggle behind them and join the representatives of other blacks in constructive negotiations?
    Mr. Hurd: Indeed, I agree with my hon. Friend. When Mr. Mandela is released, we hope that the ANC and others will agree to join in negotiations in conditions of peace and that the remaining emergency restrictions will be lifted.
    Mr. Winnick: The changes announced last week by the South African President are certainly welcome. It is a step in the right direction, but does not the Foreign Secretary agree that much more must be done? Will the British Government make it quite clear to the South African authorities that if the people of eastern Europe have a right to freedom and democracy, the people of South Africa ߞblack, white and colouredߞhave no less a right? Does not the Foreign Secretary recognise that the policy of sanctions and disinvestment followed by the United States played an important role in forcing the South African authorities to recognise the realities of life?
    Mr. Hurd: I agree with the hon. Gentleman to this extent: there is a long road still to travel. However, I am sure that he will agree that President de Klerk has shown courage and wisdom in moving further at this time than anyone had expected. If the British Government had yielded to pressure from hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and many others outside the House, and had supported the imposition of comprehensive sanctions against South Africa, the result would have been an impoverished black majority in South Africa and the virtual impossibility of the South African Government being able to take the measures that they have announced.
    Mr. John Carlisle: As the Prime Minister has sensibly and bravely lifted the cultural and scientific boycotts against South Africa after President de Klerk's excellent initiatives, will my right hon. Friend consider pursuing the same policy for sporting contacts, in particular for sports which, under the Gleneagles agreement, have proved that selection is not based on race, colour or ethnic origin? May we have some carrots please, instead of all the sticks of the past?
    Mr. Hurd: As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, we believe that that is rather further down the road. We remain committed to the Gleneagles agreement.
    Mr. Kaufman: The Foreign Secretary has just referred to the dangers of an impoverished black population in South Africa. When he visits South Africa next month, will he ask to be taken to Alexandra or Soweto by the sea, or to any of the other black townships where he will see the unbelievable grinding poverty that has been imposed on the black people of South Africa by the white supremacists

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    in South Africa? As to what the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle) has just said, will the right hon. Gentleman explain why it is that when he and the Prime Minister say that we must not lower our guard against the Communist regimes that are toppling day by day in eastern Europe, they nevertheless want to get rid of such puny sanctions as we impose on South Africa at a time when the whole structure of apartheid remains intact? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, apartheid remains totally intact; it has not been touched in any way. Can it be that this Government's hostility to Communism, which is becoming defunct, is greater than their hostility to apartheid, which still flourishes?
    Mr. Hurd: Of course, there is black poverty in South Africa, though less than in many other African states. However, that poverty would have been made much worse and the ability of blacks slowly to rise to positions of responsibility in their society would have been made impossible had we yielded to the right hon. Gentleman's policy on sanctions. He cannot say that every aspect of apartheid remains intact. He is justified in saying that there is a long way to go, and I have already said that. If, however, he talked to holidaymakers in Durban and said that apartheid remains intact, he would get a very negative response. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to make it clear whether the Opposition are wholly committed to comprehensive sanctions or whether they, too, acknowledge that the sort of steps that President de Klerk has taken deserve encouragement and a response from them.
    Mr. Nelson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is about the exchanges on that question.
    Mr. Speaker: No, unless it is a definite matter of order that requires my immediate attention.
    Mr. Nelson: I submit that it is. The prospect of reaching another question on South Africaߞ
    Mr. Speaker: No. There is another question relating to South Africa on the Order Paper. The hon. Gentleman may be fortunate then.

    Papua New Guinea
    Mr. Key: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about the United Kingdom's relations with Papua New Guinea.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Francis Maude): Our relations with Papua New Guinea are good.
    Mr. Key: I am delighted to hear that. Does my hon. Friend agree that the fighting that led to the closure of the Bougainville copper mine is both a human and an economic tragedy, since 20 per cent. of the foreign exchange earnings of that country are now lost? Will Her Majesty's Government support the Government of Papua New Guinea in their application for assistance from the International Monetary Fund?
    Mr. Maude: I am aware of the economic difficulties that the closure to which my hon. Friend referred has caused Papua New Guinea. We have a good record of supporting
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    the IMF's activities, when appropriate. In this case we shall look at any applications that are made to determine whether it was a proper decision.
    Mr. Dalyell: Are the Government aware that the Port Moresby Government have done their very best to introduce sustainable rain forest legislation? Do the British Government support the enlightened and sensitive speech by the Prince of Wales on rain forest matters that some of us heard at Kew last night? Will they apply the Prince's idea for an international convention on the rain forest to countries such as Papua New Guinea, where it really would be of benefit?
    Mr. Maude: I have not read the Prince of Wales' speech in detail, but I am aware of its general thrust. I know of the support that he expressed for the sort of measures that we are taking and supporting in respect of Latin America. I am aware that there is anxiety about the rain forest in Papua New Guinea. I do not have a detailed analysis of the environmental impact of the logging that is going on there, but the inroads being made into the rain forest are a matter of concern to us all, and we shall look into that carefully.

    South Africa
    Mr. Robert Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans Her Majesty's Government have to ensure that South Africa implements the measures agreed by the United Nations in the declaration on South Africa at the United Nations 16th special session of the general assembly.
    Mr. Hurd: The measures that President de Klerk announced on 2 February come very close to implementing the steps called for by the Commonwealth eminent persons group, with which the declaration is consistent. More is needed, but a warm welcome for the steps already taken is surely deserved.
    Mr. Hughes: Will the Foreign Secretary join me today in paying tribute to the many South Africans of all races whose decades of struggle and suffering have brought President de Klerk to the position that he is in today? Will he listen to their voices, which are saying almost unanimously that the potential, the promise and the hope that President de Klerk's statement brings may well remain unfulfilled if the external arm of the struggle is abandoned or lessened? Will he say clearly that sanctions and external pressure can be dismantled only when apartheid itself is dismantled?
    Mr. Hurd: I certainly join in paying tribute to all whose work has made possible the present progress; they come from all parts of South African society.
    The House has argued about sanctions time and again. I believe that the statement of 2 February and the prospects now opening up for South Africa are justification for the policy of combined encouragement and persuasive pressure for which the Government have always stood. I believe that if we had followed the hon. Gentleman's sincerely given advice, South Africa would not have advanced to its present prospects.
    Mr. Rathbone: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the developments in South Africa seem to have been hastened by the British Government's stand on continued commitment to fundamental change in that country, but

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    ߞit is an important provisoߞthat some substantial changes are still required, particularly with regard to the most sinister aspects of apartheid, before we can relax our pressure on that Government? It might be unwise for the leader of this country to go to that country before those relaxations have taken place.
    Mr. Hurd: My hon. Friend will have noticed how my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister responded to President de Klerk's announcement. I hope that he will agree that that response has been carefully measured. It seems a reasonable and justified first step to ask the President to visit the Prime Minister at Chequers and to say that Mr. Mandela, when free, would also be welcome here.
    Ms. Abbott: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that, welcome as Mr. de Klerk's speech was, there were some grave omissions? In particular, there was no reference to the Group Areas Act whereby white people still own 87 per cent. of the land in South Africa and, more significantly still, no reference to one person, one vote. Welcome though the changes in eastern Europe have been, the Government have not seen them as the signal to abandon NATO, so does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be premature, on the basis of one speech, to abandon sanctions?
    Mr. Hurd: As part of the measured response that I described, we have removed the discouragement given to academic, cultural and scientific contacts. In the present new climate in South Africa, when Mr. Mandela is released, we hope that the ANC and others will agree to join in negotiations in conditions of peace and that the remaining emergency restrictions will be lifted. In that climate, it is logical that we should discuss with our partners in the EEC lifting the voluntary ban on new investment in South Africa.
    Mr. Grylls: Although trade matters are for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will my right hon. Friend give his views on the relaxation of trade restrictions that remain in South Africa? Would not it be good for people of all races in both countries if we could encourage trade in both directions?
    Mr. Hurd: As my hon. Friend knows, there are specific trade restrictions. There is the arms embargo imposed by a Security Council resolution and there are various specific restrictions agreed by the EEC. The logical next step is to discuss with our partners lifting the voluntary ban on new investment.
    Sir David Steel: The Foreign Secretary was right to give a warm welcome to the change of heart foreshadowed in President de Klerk's speech, but does he agree that we cannot discuss future democracy in South Africa while the legislative framework of apartheid is still in placeߞnot just the Group Areas Act, but the Population Registration Act? It is inconceivable that the rest of the Community will agree to lifting measures until those measures of apartheid are lifted as well.
    Mr. Hurd: The underlying importance of what President de Klerk announced is that he has done enough in the minds of most reasonable people to open the way to negotiations. I note that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with that. There is more to come and we are a long way from seeing the end of apartheid, which is our aim and his,
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    but the next step is to have a reasoned response and the beginning of a dialogue with the ANC and other Africans, which goes along with the release of Mr. Mandela and the lifting of the remaining emergency restrictions.
    Mr. Nelson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman's point of order is to complain that he has not been called, I cannot hear it.
    Mr. Nelson: My point of order is exactly the same as the previous one. The Opposition have had three calls on eachߞ
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to be fair to everyone. If on raising a point of order of that kind an hon. Member was called immediately, there would be chaos in this place because I would have points of order all the time.
    Mr. Knapman: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
    Mr. Speaker: No, I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's point of order later.

    Hong Kong
    Mrs. Gorman: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on his Department's discussions with Dame Lydia Dunn.
    Mr. Hurd: My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, met Dame Lydia Dunn and Mr. Allen Lee, the two senior members of the Office of the Members of the Legislative Council, on 23 January. They had a useful discussion, in particular about Hong Kong's constitutional development. He assured them, as I had done when I was in Hong Kong last month, that we are taking their views fully into account in making our decisions on this matter. Dame Lydia and Mr. Lee also saw my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
    Mrs. Gorman: Did my right hon. Friend discuss with Dame Lydia the growing move in Hong Kong towards demanding full democratic rights for the people there now ߞsomething that we are applauding all over eastern Europeߞon which basis they could legitimately declare their independence and take their case to the world forum so that they have the right to remain in their own territory? Does he agree that, in the light of what is happening elsewhere in the world and the fact that two thirds of the land of Hong Kong legitimately belongs to Britain in perpetuity, they have a perfect right to do so?
    Mr. Hurd: I note my hon. Friend's views in favour of independence for Hong Kong. When I was in Hong Kong I did not meet anyone who shared that view, although I do not deny that there are such people. The great majority of people in Hong Kong accept, albeit reluctantly, that their future is bound up with mainland China. Therefore, they want us to make a success of the concept of one country, two systems.
    On my hon. Friend's first point, I hope that it is already clear to everyone that substantially more directly elected seats on the Legislative Council will be introduced in 1991 than was originally envisaged.
    Mr. Janner: The Foreign Secretary, like me, has seen the revolting conditions in which Vietnamese boat people live. Did he ensure that their plight was raised with Dame Lydia Dunn? Does he think it right that those people, who come under Hong Kong, and directly ourselves, should sleep in layers of wooden racks surrounded by open sewers? What is to be done about that unworthy, uncivilised and thoroughly disgusting system?
    Mr. Hurd: The people of Hong Kong feel extremely strongly that it is because they offered the right of first asylum, and others in south Asia did not, that they are landed with that problem. They feel that the burden, which they have shouldered with the British Government, should be more widely shared. The deduction that I draw from the hon. and learned Gentleman's point is that the sooner we can find ways of returning to Vietnam those in the camps who are not refugees, the better it will be for them and the people of Hong Kong.
    Mr. Adley: For the avoidance of doubt, will my right hon. Friend make it clear that the Government's commitment to the 1984 joint agreement remains constant, that Her Majesty's Government recognise that it is the only sensible basis for securing the future of Hong Kong and that they have no intention of trying to renegotiate the terms of that agreement?
    Mr. Hurd: The joint declaration and agreement are the right sheet anchor for the future of Hong Kong. My hon. Friend, who follows these matters carefully, will be aware of the anxieties which events last June created in Hong Kong. I and the Government hope that the Chinese will understand that, and take it into account as the drafting of the Basic Law proceeds.
    Mr. Kaufman: The right hon. Gentleman will recall that his predecessor, the present deputy Prime Minister, speaking in the House about democracy in Hong Kong, said:
    "The pace of development should reflect the wishes of the whole community. The unanimous view expressed by OMELCO on 24 May was a significant step towards the establishment of a consensus in Hong Kong."ߞ[Official Report,13 July 1989; Vol. 156, c. 1170.]
    I am sure that Dame Lydia Dunn and Mr. Allan Lee told Government representatives what they told me a few days agoߞthat the consensus of OMELCO was that there should be 20 elected members next year and 30 in 1995. If that is the consensus, is it not time, after eight months of consideration following the Tiananmen square massacre, that the Government accepted it and announced that there will be a development of democracy in Hong Kong?
    Mr. Hurd: The right to say hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in his description of the consensus of OMELCO. We must take that seriously because responsible people such as Dame Lydia Dunn have stressed to him, to me and to the Prime Minister that the best answerߞthe right hon. Gentleman would not disagree with this, as it flows from the answer that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley)ߞis an understanding with the Chinese Government that will allow direct elections to the Legislative Council to begin next year, on a substantially higher base than was proposed two years ago, and to continue through 1995 and 1997 and thereafter. We continue to have confidential discussions about that with the Chinese Government which cannot go on for ever. But we have to accept our responsibility for taking the
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    decisions as regards 1991 and 1995. As I said in Hong Kong, I hope that we shall be able to reach at any rate the first conclusions in the next few weeks.
    Mr. Sims: My right hon. Friend is right to say that in considering this matter we have to try to seek agreement between all the parties involved, but will he confirm that if that is not possible and a decision has to be taken in accordance with either the wishes of the Chinese Government or those of the people of Hong Kong, the latter will prevail?
    Mr. Hurd: It will be our decision as regards, first, 1991 and then 1995. That is a decision that we must take according to our best judgment, of the interests of the people of Hong Kong, for which we are accountable to the House. No other consideration has any particular bearing on the matter.

    Latin America
    Mr. Wray: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on British and European Community policies towards Latin America.
    Mr. Hurd: We wish to build up our traditional friendships in Latin America. With the rest of the European Community, we support the return and consolidation of democracy and respect for human rights.
    We promote economic progress and trade liberalisation and are keen to co-operate with Latin American countries on other issues such as the environment and the fight against drugs.
    Mr.Wray:does the Secretary of State agree that the British Government have neglected Latin America over the past 10 years and have allowed the multinational corporations to exploit its people and remove its resources? Does he agree that it is a scandal that most Latin American countries have a negative gross domestic product of less than 10 per cent? What are the Government going to do about that?
    Mr. Hurd: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The fact that our friendship and co-operation with Latin American countries is not in the headlines every day does not mean that they are being neglected. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's first and second points, we were the second largest investor in many Latin American countries in 1989, after the United States. We have invested more in Colombia than has the rest of the world combined. In Brazil, the United Kingdom continued to invest while others disinvested. I am all in favour of encouraging constructive British interest of all kinds in Latin America. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will help us in that rather than whipping us into trying to stir up people in Latin America against the United States.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: Does my right hon. Friend recall our historic cultural relations with Latin America? Should we not put more effort into the activities of the British Council and the related Cuitura Inglesa? Should not we use Latin Americans' enthusiasm for the English language to foster closer ties with Britain rather than with the United States?
    Mr. Hurd: We teach the English language better than anyone else and my right hon. Friend is therefore right.
    The British Council has additional funds at its disposal this year. Spurred on by my hon. Friend, I shall look carefully at the extent to which Latin American activities can be included in its activities.
    Mr. Tony Banks: The Secretary of State said that it was the policy of Her Majesty's Government to promote economic development. What economic development have Her Majesty's Government promoted in Nicaragua? What are Her Majesty's Government doing to promote democratic processes in Nicaragua? Who has Her Majesty's Government sent from this country to observe the elections there on 25 February?
    Mr. Hurd: We have a keen interest in the success of the elections in Nicaragua. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will use what influence he has to make sure that, contrary to some suggestions, those elections take place in conditions of fairness and with proper facilities for the opposition. The hon. Gentleman knows that we pay our whack— our share— of EC aid to Nicaragua. We contribute 20 per cent., and in 1988 our share of that aid was £3·3 million
    Sir Richard Body: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the action planned to protect the rain forests in Latin America, to which this country is contributing a large sum, will protect them and will not cause a net loss of rain forest?
    Mr. Hurd: I am not convinced that the efforts being made, which owe a great deal to our initiative, are yielding all the results that they should. I have a meeting in my diary before long with the agencies concerned; that will enable me to discuss the prospects and their activities with them.

    E1 Salvador
    Mr. Winnick: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on the visit by members of the Metropolitan police to El Salvador regarding the recent murder of six priests.
    Mr. Maude: A team of three detectives from the Metropolitan police arrived in San Salvador on 6 January and returned on 27 January. During that time they assisted the Salvadorean authorities in the task of bringing to justice those responsible for the murders.
    Mr. Winnick: Is it not essential that those who ordered, not necessarily those who carried out, the murders of the six priests, their cook and her young daughter, should be brought to justice? Is the Minister aware that following the ghastly murder of the six priests, Hector Oqueli, the deputy leader in El Salvador of the party affiliated to Socialist International, was also murdered? Is there not a total absence of the rule of law in that country?
    Mr. Maude: I am aware of the latter part of what the hon. Gentleman said. He will recollect that we debated the matter briefly last Friday, and that that murder took place in neighbouring Guatemala. It will be for the Guatemalan authorities in the first instance to bring to justice those who were responsible for it.
    Mr Speaker: Order. It is my mistake. I was distracted and I called the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr
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    Arnold) on Question No. 7 because I thought that we were dealing with his question. I got it out of order. I suppose I shall have to call him again

    Colombia
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: To ask the Secretary fo State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Britain's relations with Colombia
    Mr. Maude: We have excellent relations with Colombia. President Barco will be a welcome visitor when he addresses the world ministerial drugs summit here in April
    Mr. Arnold: Does my hon. Friend recall the carnage in Bogota last December in which a narco-terrorist bomb aimed at the security police went off killing 70 people , wounding 1,000 and causing immense devastation within a radius of 2 km? Has he noticed recently the disarming of a similar bomb of 500 kg in a car park beneath a building in Bogota? Is he aware that it was disarmed by British "wheelbarrow" remote control bomb disposal equipment? Is that not a practical way in which Britain can help President Barco in his fight against the narco-terrorists? Should not we be doing more?
    Mr. Maude: I vividly remember the devastation and carnage to which my hon. Friend referred. He is right to note that the practical help that we have given to the Colombian authorities has been very much appreciated by them and has already had direct and measureable benefits for the people of Colombia, by helping the authorities to win their war against the narcotics dealers and traders. I shall certainly see whether we can do more. I think my hon. Friend will recognise that we were very quick to provide immediate practical assistance
    Mr. Corbyn: Does the Minister agree that in addition to the appalling terror perpetrated on the people of Colombia by the drug barons, there is also a serious problem of human rights abuses by the police and armed forces against human rights workers, peasant leaders and trade unionists? When he next meets the Government of Colombia will he press upon them the real concern of many people round the world about the fate of trade union leaders, peasant leaders and others who seek to bring genuine peace, freedom and democracy to Colombia?
    Mr. Maude: There is concern about human rights abuses in Colombia. There is no reason to suppose that the Colombian Government are involved in those abuses. None the less we express concern to the Colombians whenever it is suitable
    Mr. Heffer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. When did Question 9 come before Question 8? We were discussing No. 8. If you have made a mistake—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman was not listening. What I said was that, due to a distraction at the Chair, I called the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) on the previous question. I had not intended to do so. We were on Question 9. I now call Question 10
    Mr. Heifer: Then you called Question 9
    Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman looks at the Order Paper, he will see that Questions 8 and 9 are very similar and that 9 comes after 8

    Lukanov Inquiry, Bulgaria
    Mr. Stern: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has yet received any request to contribute any information to the Lukanov inquiry in Bulgaria
    Mr. Waldegrave: We have been asked by the Bulgarian Government to help, and will naturally do what we can
    Mr. Stern: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware of the persistent rumour in Bulgaria that much of the money secreted by the Zhivkov regime was laundered through London? Will he ensure that before complying with any possible request from the new Bulgarian regime he seeks out the destination of that money?
    Mr. Waldegrave: As I said, we will respond positively to any sensible request that we receive from the Lukanov commission
    Mr. Faulds: Will the Minister suggest to the Bulgarian Government that their inquiry should also look into the implications of the death of Hugh Gaitskell?
    Mr. Waldegrave: That had not occurred to me.

    Drug Misuse
    Mr. Butler: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what contribution he or his Department expects to make to the forthcoming special session of the United Nations assembly concerned with drug misuse
    Mr. Hurd: I shall be going to the special session. The United Kingdom will work for a commitment to improving the effectiveness of the United Nations effort against drugs, and for agreement on a practical programme of international action, including ratification of the relevant United Nations conventions, measures to strengthen the monitoring of the movement of precursor chemicals, and undertakings to develop a network of agreements to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of drug trafficking
    Mr. Butler: Will my right hon. Friend press for the appointment of a United Nations drugs czar to co-ordinate the present efforts?
    Mr. Hurd: I am not sure about a drugs czar. If my hon. Friend means that there is a certain diffusion or scattering of United Nations effort through the different agencies in Vienna, he is on to something. That is what I meant when I referred, in Foreign Office language, to the
    "effectiveness of the United Nations effort".
    We need to ensure that our contributions to that effort go where they are needed in the prevention of drug trafficking
    Mr. Vaz: Does the Foreign Secretary share my concern that the draft programme that he has put in the Library for the United Nations conference in London has no special session covering young people and the reduction of drug demand? Does he agree that at a conference of that kind, which will attract people from all over the world, it is very important to have people with direct, relevant experience of drug-taking? With respect, long speeches by the Prime
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    Minister and others who have not had direct, relevant experience of drug-taking will not help us solve the problems.
    Mr. Hurd: I note the hon. Gentleman's suggestion. He is perfectly right: the next big date on the calendar for drug misuse is our summit meeting here in Britain from 9 to 11 April. The agenda will have two points: the reduction of demand and the specific threat from cocaine and crack. It is important that those who discuss reduction of demand should have a vivid representation before them of what they are talking about. The hon. Member will have noticed that President Bush has steered the latest version of the United States anti-drug programme to demand reduction, and he will have noticed our own major new programme recently announced in that connection.
    Mr. Wells: Does my right hon. Friend agree that reduction in the supply of drugs is extremely important in dealing with drug misuse? Will he therefore make certain that at this United Nations special conference there is discussion of alternative crops in the countries where drugs are produced? In particular, will he turn his mind to the consideration of banana production, which is an alternative to drug production in Colombia and much of Latin America, and to the prevention of the deleterious effect of the enormous increase proposed in Santo Domingo's supply of bananas to the European Community?
    Mr. Hurd: My hon. Friend is subtly leading me from one subject to another—from drugs to bananas. He is perfectly right to say that where it can be shown that crop substitution is enforceable, it is right to support it—as we do, for example, in Pakistan. Enforceability is important as a great deal of money could be wasted otherwise.
    Mr. Sheerman: Will the special assembly take Britain's contribution seriously if it realises that Britain is not taking on those banks which we know are heavily involved in laundering drug money and are operating freely in the City of London? Is it not time that the right hon. Gentleman talked to his colleagues to ensure that something is done about that scandal?
    Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman's rhetoric is about four years out of date. This Government have been the pioneers in putting the necessary legislation through Parliament, in bringing that legislation into effect, and in negotiating agreements —of which there are now 13—with countries that have followed the same route. It is not just a United Kingdom effort, but an international effort. The hon. Gentleman knows that it is continuing and is beginning to produce useful results.

    Hong Kong
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on representations he has received from the people of Hong Kong on proposed direct elections in the colony.
    Mr. Maude: We have received many representations from a broad cross-section of the community in Hong Kong. We shall take full account of the views of the Hong Kong people in taking our decisions about the development of the territory's political system.
    Mr. MacKay: Is my hon. Friend aware that many of us think that the OMELCO proposals have much to recommend them as a move towards direct elections in the colony? However, we are disappointed with the Chinese Government's response and hope that under no circumstances will their belligerent response influence my right hon. and hon. Friends' final decision.
    Mr. Maude: As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, our decision—and it is our decision—for 1991 will be taken on what is, in our judgment, in the best interests of Hong Kong. The process of arriving at that judgment will be heavily influenced by the views of Hong Kong, which have been channelled through and articulated by OMELCO.
    Mr. Shore: When does the Minister expect the Chinese Government to publish their final version of the Basic Law? If he is expecting that publication in the near future, it would make sense for the British Government to announce their views and decisions on the extent of direct elections before the Chinese Government publish their view in the Basic Law, so that we are not seen to be—as many expect anyway—simply following the Chinese.
    Mr. Maude: The process of evolving the Basic Law has been continuing for a little time. The right hon. Gentleman will know that special groups on particular aspects of it have been meeting in recent weeks. The plenary session of the Basic Law drafting committee meets during next week, but that is not the end of the road. There is a further stage. As my right hon. Friend said, we have been engaging in confidential discussions with the Peking Government to ensure that, as far as possible, Hong Kong opinions are taken fully into account in the formulation of the Basic Law provisions.
    Mr. Ian Taylor: Does my hon. Friend agree that progress in democracy in Hong Kong is only one of three parts of the British policy of maintaining stability? The others are the essential need to give passports to the 50,000 heads of families, and the necessity to deal properly with the Vietnamese refugees. Will he confirm that the world community—perhaps with the exception of the United States—now accepts that economic refugees must return to Vietnam? What is the Government's policy for helping Vietnam?
    Mr. Maude: The whole international community, including the United States, has accepted the principle of mandatory repatriation of those who are determined by the proper authorities not to be political refugees. Everyone has agreed, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United States, that economic migrants have nowhere to go except back to Vietnam. There is no dissent on that point. The continuing argument is on when that process should be resumed. The Government believe that to give Hong Kong the confidence to face its future, we need to send a clear signal that no one should come from Vietnam because there is no promised land waiting for them.
    As for what we are doing to help Vietnam, we have said in the past that we are prepared to contemplate a resumption of aid to Vietnam as long as Vietnam lives up to its international obligations.

    Namibia
    Mr. Caborn: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on the foreign debt incurred by the South African illegal administration in Namibia
    Mr. Waldegrave: Namibia's national debt totalled just over 716 million rand at 31 December 1989.
    Mr. Caborn: I do not quibble with the figure, although I think that it is a little higher at 820 million rand. I think that the Minister will agree that those loans were illegal, both in terms of international law and in terms of United Nations Security Council resolution 435. In the light of that, will he make sure that the South Africans who loaned that money to the illegal regime in Namibia will face their responsibility? The £220 million-odd debt should not be loaded on to the new Administration in Namibia which will be undertaking total reconstruction and will therefore find it difficult to repay such an amount.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The negotiations on this matter and on other aspects of the financial and commercial relationships between an independent Namibia and South Africa are now going forward. It would be unwise of us outside to lay down on what is about to be an independent Namibia its exact balance of interests. Namibia needs access to South African markets. There have been transfers—illegal transfers, one might say—from South Africa to Namibia in the past. The negotiation is complex and we must leave it to the independent Namibian Government to settle the matter.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does my right hon. Friend agree that while we need to consider now what aid we can give to an independent Namibia, we should not concentrate on the negative aspects of any South African legacy, but should concentrate on the wonderful infrastructure that the South African administration has left in Namibia in the form of roads, reservoirs, welfare, education, health and industry. We should wish that country every success, prosperity, peace and happiness for when it becomes independent on 21 March.
    Mr. Waldegrave: I hope that the whole House will support my hon. Friend's latter sentiment. I hope that the external supporters' club of SWAPO will note how far it is being left behind by the moderation of Mr. Nujoma and his colleagues who are very anxious to keep in Namibia many of the South African technicians and others who they realise are essential for Namibia's prosperous future.

    West Bank
    Mr. Ernie Ross: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will instruct the consul general in east Jerusalem to continue to monitor alleged breaches of the fourth Geneva convention in the occupied West Bank and Gaza
    Mr. Waldegrave: We take a close interest in Israeli human rights practices in the occupied territories, in accordance with our rights as a signatory to the fourth Geneva convention.
    Mr. Ross: At the end of last year the British consul general made a number of direct interventions in connection with allegations of serious violations of

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    international humanitarian law and was criticized for doing so by the Israeli authorities Will the Minister assure the House that Ivan Callan will be given every encouragement to continue these efforts towards fulfilling Britain's obligation to ensure respect for the ensure respect for the fourth Geneva convention, especially with regard to graves breaches?
    Mr. Waldegrave: Mr. Callan, whom I know very well, has done nothing without instructions from the British Government. He has done nothing outside his proper role and we support him in everything that he has done.
    Mr. Temple-Morris: Does my right hon. Friend agree that what is going on in the West Bank and Gaza is a disgrace and, more importantly, a continuing disgrace? Does my right hon. Friend see that as a challenge to European political co-operation about which we hear so much, but the results of which. at the end of the day, are sometimes difficult to see? In the European context, will my right hon. Friend cause an approach to be made to the United States to get a joint effort to tell Israel to stop and to deal?
    Mr. Waldegrave: We are in close touch with the United States and strongly support its efforts to start direct dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. I cannot answer a question on this subject today without drawing to the attention of the House the terrible act of terrorism in which many Israeli and some Egyptian lives were lost. We deplore such actions by the enemies of the peace process.
    Mr. Kaufman: In supporting what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn) and Conservative Members have said about breaches of human rights, may I join the Minister of State in condemning in the strongest possible terms the terrorist
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    outrage against the Israeli tourist bus which led to the deaths of innocent Israelis and Egyptians? Does he agree that perhaps the only hopeful sign to emerge from that atrocity was the immediate condemnation of the outrage by the Palestine Liberation Organisation? Does he agree that that kind of murder and atrocity makes even more important the speeding up of the middle east peace process to avoid the loss of more innocent lives—Israeli, Palestinian or any other?
    Mr. Waldegrave: Not for the first time on this subject, I wholly agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. The fact that a number of the extremist organisations that are locked in battle with the present leadership of the PLO have, whether rightly or wrongly, claimed responsibility for the atrocity only confirms that the central leadership of the PLO is committed to the peace process at the present time.
    Mr. Tredinnick: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, with democracy sweeping through eastern Europe and through repressive regimes, the Israeli Government will be swimming against the tide if they attempt——
    Hon. Members: They are swimming against the tide.
    Mr. Tredinnick: Does my right hon. Friend agree that they will be continuing to swim against the tide if they refuse to grant democratic rights to people on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip?
    Mr. Waldegrave: One of the ironic, perhaps even tragic, contrasts has always been that between, on the one hand, the vibrancy and legitimacy of Israeli's own democracy and its attachment to that democracy and, on the other, its unwillingness to concede similar rights to the Palestinian people.

Points of Order
3.32 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It will be known to you that a Select Committee of this House—the Select Committee on Defence—has decided, as is its right, to look at the affair of Colin Wallace. First, how, if at all, does this affect your decision when you took avizandum—if that is the right expression—on the whole question of Colin Wallace and privilege? Secondly, may I have an assurance that it will in no way inhibit what is said, hopefully to the Attorney-General, in the Adjournment debate on Monday? Thirdly, in relation to what may be Table Office difficulties relating to the rules of advice to Ministers, will we be able to probe the Minister's statement to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) in the Adjournment debate last night that no clearance—the word used was "clearance"—had been given? Is clearance advice to Ministers, or can we probe a good deal further as to what exactly what was meant by the statement that no clearance had been given for Clockwork Orange?
Mr. Speaker: As to the hon. Gentleman's last question, I shall have to see the questions that were asked yesterday before giving him a reply. So that is hypothetical. In reply to the hon. Gentleman's first question, I can say that the investigation by the Defence Select Committee will not affect any decision I may take. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman may certainly proceed with his debate without any concern.
Sir Jim Spicer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It may be that the combination of television coverage and Foreign Office questions is inevitably a good mix, but have you, Sir, noticed that during the course of Foreign Office questions we tended to move from questions to speeches? Would it be possible for you, particularly in relation to Foreign Office questions, to remind all hon. Members that it is Question Time and that we are not taking part in debate?
Mr. Speaker: That point of order is helpful from the point of view of the Chair. I know that we in this House take no account of television, but the truth is that it is very difficult to proceed down the Order Paper if we have long questions and long replies.
Mr. Anthony Nelson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In respect of Question Time, may I put to you a point that I think affects the rights of all Back Benchers? I know that you try to achieve the impossible—being fair to all of us—and that no Member has a right to complain even though he may be disappointed at not having been called. However, a real problem arises when a major issue is being dealt with—and, arguably, South Africa is that issue today.
Sixty per cent.—six out of ten—of questions come from the Opposition. The practice that you, Sir, adopt—for reasons that one understands—is to call Government and Opposition Members alternately. If the next question on the Order Paper happens to arise on the alternate call you will move on. That results occasionally in commentary on a major issue being out of balance, as was the case today when Members on the Government side were called in a quite small proportion to comment on South Africa.
Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman looks carefully at Hansard tomorrow, he will see that that is not true. The Procedure Committee has asked me to speed up Question Time. My predecessor, Dr. Horace King—
Mr. Andrew Faulds: Do not quote him, for God's sake.
Mr. Speaker: I have started, so I shall finish. Mr. Speaker King used to get through 40 questions in an hour, whereas we got through only 14 today. The House may well agree that it would be fairer if we were to get more quickly through questions, but that inevitably means fewer supplementaries.
Mr. John Butterfill: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It was not possible today, because of the way that the questions were selected, to ask any questions on the European Economic Community. On a day when my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary returned from important meetings in Germany, that was unfortunate. Is there any possibility of you making arrangements with my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—to ensure that such an imbalance can be redressed?
Mr. Speaker: That matter has already been studied carefully by the Procedure Committee. There used to be a 15-minute slot in Foreign Office Question Time specifically for European questions. If the hon. Gentleman feels that we should go back to that, he should make his representations there. I judge from the comments that I hear that it might not be particularly popular.
Mr. Dennis Canavan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support you this time, although I have had occasion to complain about the lack of balance and the lack of fairness towards the Opposition during Scottish Question Time. It is worth pointing out to the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) that, if we take into account the contributions from the Treasury Benches, the Tories get the lion's share of any Question Time—about three quarters of it—so they cannot complain about lack of balance. On top of that, the Minister —
Mr. Speaker: Order. The House has given the Chair the responsibility of ensuring a fair balance. I assure the House that I take this duty very seriously.
Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am an assiduous attender at Question Time. There is a great deal of pressure on you to call hon. Members, and I am deeply grateful that you called me this afternoon. I think that you are wonderful.
Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman very much, and I reciprocate.
Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I venture to suggest that this may be of more interest to the majority of hon. Members than the antics of Mr. Colin Wallace, that dubious Walter Mitty who was active mainly during the depressing and dismal interlude represented by the last Labour Government. We gave certain powers to the Select Committee dealing with the experiment of televising the House. Who decides how far and wide those powers go? Is it you, the Select Committee or the House?
Mr. Speaker: The Select Committee, which will bring its recommendations to the House.
Mr. Marlow: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Last week, in answer to a parliamentary question, the Select Committee made suggestions about changes in the experiment, but those suggestions were not brought before the House—they were merely introduced. I am not saying that it is outside the broadcasters' terms of reference, but should they come forward with a suggestion for something outside their terms of reference, who is to judge that situation? Is it you, the House or the Select Committee untrammelled on its own?
Mr. Speaker: This is a matter for the Select Committee. I hope that the House and the hon. Gentleman will accept that we are engaged in an experiment, and without changes we cannot experiment. We need to see whether the changes, which may themselves be varied from time to time, are beneficial, or not.
Mr. Brian Wilson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I raise a matter which I imagine will not attract the attention of many hon. Members. Yesterday, in a written answer in the House of Lords, the centrepiece of legislation which went through both Houses at inordinate length and which has been lying about for four years suddenly disappeared. I refer to the Salmon Act 1986 and, with it, the salmon dealer licensing scheme.
Is it in order, Mr. Speaker, that the central core of a measure which has gone through both Houses of Parliament should be withdrawn by press release and written answer? Many uncertainties were created by that legislation, many people were waiting for its implementation and much advice was offered against the spirit of what was contained in that legislation. Is it right that, as it were, with a snap of the fingers, the whole thing should have disappeared as the result of a written answer?
Mr. Speaker: I thought that the hon. Gentleman proposed to ask me if I had received a request for a statement on the matter. Although he has not asked that question, I will give him the answer to it, which is that I have not. He must take up with the Government Department concerned the matter that he has raised with me.

BILL PRESENTED

  EDUCATION (SCHOOL GOVERNING BODIES)
  Mr. Jack Straw, supported by Mr. Barry Jones, Mr. Derek Fatchett, Ms. Hilary Armstrong, Mr. Andrew Smith, Mr. Win Griffiths, Mr. George Howarth and Mr. Tom Cox, presented a Bill to amend the law relating to appointments by local authorities to school governing bodies: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 9 March and to be printed. [Bill 69.]
  Mr. Speaker: I understand that the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) is not able to move his ten-minute Bill today on one-parent families.

  Social Security
  3.40 pm
  The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton): I beg to move,
  That the draft Social Security (Contributions)(Re-rating) Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  I understand, Mr. Speaker, that it will be convenient also to consider the following motions:
  That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  That the draft Statutory Sick Pay (Rate of Payment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  I imagine that the main interest of the House, and therefore the main focus of the debate, is likely to be on what is in the uprating order, and in at least one respect what is not in it. But first I should outline the purpose and content of the other three instruments.
  I take first the contributions re-rating order, conscious, in the wake of having been mildly rebuked by a distinguished observer of our proceedings for a certain want of jollity during Question Time earlier this week, that the scope for bringing jollity to the discussion of national insurance contributions is limited indeed. The order is concerned with the national insurance contributions which determine people's entitlement to pensions and other important contributory benefits, and which are the source of finance for over half of what is spent in this country each year on social security.
  It is rather odd that the House devotes so much less time to discussing those contributions than to matters of taxation, given that there are many people for whom national insurance contributions are larger than any tax liability they may have and that the total paid in such contributions amounts to about two thirds of the total collected in income tax.
  The most notable feature of the re-rating order is that, for the seventh year in succession, it makes no increase in the main rates, the class 1 rates paid by employed people and their employers. As the House will be aware, however, there are boundaries for contribution liability, known in the jargon of the trade as the lower earnings limit—LEL—and the upper earnings limit—UEL—and those will change as usual. The LEL applies to both the employer's and employee's share of contributions; the UEL to the employee's share only. The order itself does not set those two earnings limits; that is done by a set of regulations to be laid after the benefits uprating order has been approved. But I should remind the House that the LEL, which is linked by law to the nearest pound below the retirement pension rate, will be £46 a week and that the UEL, for which there is somewhat greater flexibility, will be £350 a week.
  The House will recall that in 1985 we reduced the contribution rates paid by lower paid workers and their employers to help those workers and to reduce employment costs. The reduced contribution rates will significantly cut the impact of contributions on people with lower earnings without affecting their benefit entitlement in any way. From 5 October 1989, we built on that process by further restructuring the employee's

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  element of class 1 contributions, again without affecting benefit entitlement. People who earn less than the lower earnings limit will still pay no contributions but will pay an initial entry fee, as it might be called, of 2 per cent., charged on earnings at the lower earnings limit. The standard 9 per cent. is charged on that part of any earnings that exceed the lower but not the upper earnings limit.
  The effect of the 1985 and October 1989 changes taken together was to reduce contributions of every contributor by just over £3 per week, which clearly was of particular help to the lower-paid. I very much welcome that, as I am sure do all right hon. and hon. Members. Although the order makes no further change to the rates, the effect of the increase in the lower earnings limit will be to reduce most employees' contributions by 21p per week, or by 15p per week if they are in contracted-out employment.
  The effect of raising the upper earnings limit is that those having earnings of £350 per week or more will pay an extra £2·04 per week, or £1·60 per week if they are contracted out.
  Employers' contributions, which have a somewhat different structure, were not affected by last October's changes. However, as on previous occasions, the re-rating order provides that the earnings limit below which they pay lower contribution rates will be increased roughly in line with inflation, rounded to the nearest £5. From April, employers' contributions will be at 5 per cent. in respect of employees earning between the lower earnings limit and £79·99 per week; 7 per cent. for those earning between £80 and £124·99; 9 per cent. between £125 and £174·99 per week; and 10·45 per cent. for those earning more than £175 per week.
  Mr. Tony Banks: I am trying to follow the Secretary of State, but he is reading his brief very closely and I should not be surprised if the people at the receiving end of all that information could not understand it. I cannot pretend that I do. I shall put to the right hon. Gentleman a point made to me by those representing welfare rights in Newham, who say that, although a person earning £84 per week in 1989–90 would receive £52 per week statutory sick pay, that same person claiming after April will receive only £39·25, unless he or she receives a pay rise of 49 per cent., taking their income to £125. If that is so, the new arrangement represents a real cut for people at lower income levels.
  Mr. Newton: Having considerable experience of the subject myself, I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's difficulty in understanding the complexities of national insurance contributions. However, they have relatively little to do with the point that he makes. I shall deal shortly with the Statutory Sick Pay (Rate of Payment) Regulations 1990, which are in the batch before the House this afternoon, when the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question will become clear. Meanwhile, I have little alternative but to plough on through the complexities of the Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating) Order 1990 as briefly as I can.
  In 1990–91, class 1 contributions, which are the ordinary contributions that most people make, are expected to yield £32 billion. As is the case with contributions made in all classes, that revenue will be apportioned between the national insurance fund and the
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  National Health Service. Self-employed people pay national insurance contributions in two portions—the flat-rate class 2 contribution and the profits-related class 4 contribution. We do not propose any change to the class 4 rate, which will remain at 6·3 per cent. in the coming year. The profits limit for class 4 contributions, which determine the level of profits on which contributions are payable, will increase in the normal way and broadly in line with the earnings limit for class 1 contributions, to £5,450 and £18,200 respectively.
  The upper profits limit is exactly 52 times the class 1 upper earnings limit. We propose also to increase the class 2 contribution by 30p to £4·55 per week from next April. The class 2 rate is broadly linked to the class 1 lower earnings limit, and its increase reflects the proposed rise in that limit.
  In somewhat different terms, the result of all this is that self-employed people with profits at or below the present lower limit of £16,900 will pay about £25 less in class 4 contributions per year. Those with profits above the proposed upper limit of £18,200 will pay about £57 more. Self-employed people are expected to contribute about £1,200 million overall in contributions in 1990–91.
  Finally, certain categories of people—for example, those who are not gainfully employed or receiving contributions credits, such as people who retired before the age of 60—can pay class 3 contributions if they wish; they are voluntary contributions. We propose to increase class 3 contributions by 30p, making them £4·45 a week.
  Before leaving this tangled question of national insurance, I should note that, as usual, the Government Actuary's report on the effect of our proposals on the national insurance fund has been laid with the re-rating and uprating orders. Having referred to the report at some length in my speech on Second Reading of the Social Security Bill on 22 January, I shall merely remind the House now of what I consider to be its essential points.
  The expected balance of the fund in the present year, at 34 per cent., is more than twice the Government Actuary's recommended minimum. Although, in 1990–91, expenditure is likely to exceed income, the balance is expected to remain at 25 per cent., which is well above the minimum. While a problem could have been foreseen had that trend continued in subsequent years, it should be overcome by the proposals in the Social Security Bill to transfer from the national insurance fund to the Consolidated Fund payment of industrial injuries benefits, statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay. Since none of those is a national insurance benefit in the ordinary sense, as they do not depend on a contribution record, in my view, as the House knows, that is a sensible move in any case.
  I now turn to the draft Statutory Sick Pay (Rate of Payment) Regulations. Those regulations were referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee, and its report, together with my response, is also before the House. There are three main elements in the regulations. The first is to increase the lower rate of statutory sick pay by £3 a week, to £39·25, an increase of rather more than simply matching inflation would have required. That will improve the position of low-paid workers who experience short-term sickness. That has been widely welcomed, as has the knock-on effect of a modest real increase in the entitlement of more than 200,000 women receiving statutory maternity pay, since the SMP rate is the same as the lower SSP rate.
  As is the way of the world, comment has tended to ignore that aspect of the proposal and to concentrate on

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  the other two elements of the regulations, which are the more limited increase of 40p, bringing the higher SSP rate to £52·50, and the increase from £84 to £125—that directly relates to the point that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) raised—in the weekly earnings limit, above which the higher rate is payable. The concerns that have been expressed, and which he reflected, on the latter proposal are fairly reflected in the Social Security Advisory Committee's report, but for the reasons set out in my formal response the Government do not believe that those concerns are justified and they therefore do not intend to depart from the proposals, which have been conceived as a whole. Therefore, it would have been necessary to reconsider also the position on the real increase in the lower rate of SSP and SMP, which has been generally welcomed.
  In commending this order to the House and, at the same time, commenting on the point that the hon. Gentleman raised, I shall simply ask hon. Members to bear in mind three matters. First, since 91 per cent. of employees are now covered by occupational sick pay schemes, and 83 per cent. of those schemes in the private sector now top up SSP to full pay and most of the rest to at least half pay, very few employees are likely to be affected in practice in the way that the hon. Gentleman's constituents have suggested. There will be a change in the balance of what they receive—between what the State provides through SSP and what the employer provides through an occupational sick pay scheme—without affecting the individual. We expect that in practice very few employees will be affected.
  Mr. Tony Banks: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his patience in taking me through this highly complicated point, which I now understand better. Although he says that very few employees will be affected, has he any estimates? This matter has been raised with me by people in Newham, and I should not like anybody in Newham to lose under the provisions which have just been announced. Has the Secretary of State any estimate of the numbers involved, and what will he do if examples are brought to his attention of people who are manifestly losing out?
  Mr. Newton: I shall make three points in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, if he investigates the circumstances of everyone in Newham, as I am sure he does assiduously as a Member of Parliament, he will certainly find a fair number who are likely to gain. They will be either quite low-paid workers who will be helped by the increase in the lower rate of SSP, or women having babies who will be helped by the small real increase in the rate of SMP.
  Secondly, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a detailed figure of the sort he requires. Many of the theoretical effects will happen only if someone is sick. We think that about 290,000 spells of sickness might theoretically be effected. However, to know who is going to be sick and relate that statistic to the occupational sick pay scheme which they may or may not be in is a task that would be beyond even my Department's excellent statisticians.
  Thirdly, even at the present rate, somebody with substantial numbers of dependants would be likely to need—as they would be entirely entitled to if they were on only SSP—some topping up from income support or housing benefit. That remains open under the new arrangements in precisely the same way as it does at present.
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  The £125 dividing line, apart from the slight administrative advantage for employers of alignment with the dividing line which also exists in relation to contribution payments—the point that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) noticed earlier—does no more than restore the balance of numbers between those receiving the standard rate of SSP and the lower SSP rates to where it was when the SSP scheme started in 1983.
  While the proposal undoubtedly means that employers will bear a slightly greater proportion of the costs of short-term sickness, the actual amount involved—about £80 million—is small in relation to total labour costs in the economy of more than £250,000 million. Overall, I have no doubt that this relatively modest restructuring is a sensible and reasonable one, taking account of the many pressures for social security expenditure in sectors for which only the state can provide.
  You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will be glad to hear that I need address the third instrument only briefly—
  Mr. Tim Smith: What information has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the 9 per cent. who are not covered by occupational sick pay schemes? Does not common sense suggest that they are more likely to be part-time, and therefore low-paid, people, who will benefit, not lose, from this change in the arrangements?
  Mr. Newton: Common sense suggests that, as I implied when I originally announced this in my original uprating statement. That is one reason why I would expect many people to be helped by what I have done with the lower rate of SSP, which is likely to be disproportionately helpful to those lower-paid and part-time workers who may not be in occupational sick pay schemes.
  If only to take the opportunity to encourage more employers to do this, I must say that one encouraging factor is that employers generally are tending to extend their occupational schemes to part-time as well as full-time employees. Not least because of its effect on so many married women, that is something that I welcome and would wish to encourage.
  As for the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 1990, in line with my statutory duty under the Social Security Act 1986, the order obliges occupational pension schemes that are contracted out of the state earnings-related pension scheme to provide post-award increases in guaranteed minimum pensions, earned in the tax year 1988–89, of 3 per cent. from 6 April this year.
  The main uprating order follows the announcement that I made to the House in October about the generality of social security benefits rates that will be payable from 9 April 1990. It provides for an increase in retirement pensions, and in virtually all other benefits that are not income related, of 7·6 per cent. That is the increase in retail prices that took place between September 1988 and September 1989. As for income-related benefits, the order provides for a general increase of 5·2 per cent., which is the increase in retail prices, other than housing costs, over the same period. That difference, as is now well understood, reflects the fact that for people on income support there is generally direct assistance with housing costs, either through the payment of their mortgage interest, or some part of it, or through housing benefit.
  Rather than rehearse all the many benefit rates to which those general increases give rise, which are set out in the

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  order, it will be more helpful to concentrate on the ways in which its provisions depart from the general pattern that I have just outlined. They are quite numerous. On the one hand, the rate of child benefit remains unchanged. On the other hand, there is an extensive range of specific improvements that go well beyond the basic uprating percentages. They are closely associated with a number of important extensions of benefit coverage that we are making in other ways, especially for disabled people and their carers.
  The House will recall what I said about child benefit in my uprating statement. The requirement is to review the level of child benefit each year, taking account of all relevant considerations. Having done so, I came to the conclusion that other claims should, on this occasion, be given priority over those of a general increase in that benefit, particularly since such an increase of itself does nothing to improve the relative position of those who are least well off—the families on income support or family credit.
  I do not intend to repeat everything that I said on that occasion, but I shall make one observation which I hope hon. Members will bear in mind. Targeting—or whatever word we want to use—is not simply a matter of increasing benefits that pay regard to people's exact financial circumstances—the income-related benefits—rather than those which do not. It also involves making judgments about the needs of different groups at a particular time and the relative weight of their claims to any additional resources that can be made available.
  The incomes of people in work, which include the great majority of families with children, have been rising fast. Over the past year alone, the take-home pay of a married man on average earnings, including the effect of the £3-a-week reduction in national insurance contributions, has risen by about £20 a week. In the numerous cases where both partners are working, the overall increase in family income will have been even more.
  Against that background, I do not think that it was unreasonable to judge that the prior claims at this time lie in other quarters: families with children who are out of work or in low-paid jobs, the less well-off pensioners and—very much not least—disabled people, their carers and families with disabled children. It is on those groups that we focused additional help, both in the measures that we implemented last October and, in this order and in what we are doing in other ways.
  Mr. John Battle: I am sure that the Secretary of State accepts that one of the primary causes of the classic poverty trap is those on low pay who are not earning the average wage of £258 a week, according to the Department's latest figures. Does not child benefit cut through the poverty trap because it is not means-tested? It reaches, therefore, precisely those families who cannot claim other benefits but whose take-home pay is too low to qualify either for tax concessions or for other benefits. Does not the Secretary of State accept that it breaks helpfully and progressively through the poverty trap?
  Mr. Newton: I do not accept the full implication of that. As the House knows from what I have said on numerous occasions, the more effective way of tackling that problem is the one that we adopted with the move from family
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  income supplement to family credit, a significantly more generous benefit than its predecessor. I refer also to the efforts that we are making to channel amounts averaging £27 a week in family credit to low-paid working families with children.
  At the same time, we made changes that constituted an important aspect of the reforms introduced in 1988. Although they did not eliminate—I would not pretend that they did—the problem of high marginal rates of withdrawal associated with income-related benefits, they certainly mitigated those effects and, above all, virtually reduced to nil the number of people who could make themselves worse off by increasing their incomes. The hon. Gentleman is student enough in this area to know that we are discussing intractable problems. I do not want to over-simplify; I am sure that he does not want to, either. I do not entirely agree with his point, and I emphasise what we have sought to do by means of family credit.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: If the argument is about better targeting for the low-paid, why are the Government making cuts that amount, in the case of child benefit over the past three years, to £250 million, of which only £70 million—about 28 per cent.—will go to families in respect of family credit? Is not the right hon. Gentleman being a little dishonest by trying to pretend that the argument is not really about cuts?
  Mr. Newton: I am not being dishonest. It has just become apparent that the hon. Gentleman must have switched off during the past few minutes when I was talking about what I understood by targeting.
  Targeting is not merely a matter of picking out some money that has been going in one universal direction and deciding to add an income-related direction as well. We look more broadly at the various groups in the population and consider where it is necessary to direct extra help——
  Mr. Meacher: That is a diversion.
  Mr. Newton: I do not think so. I have made it clear that one aspect that has been in the Government's mind is the extent to which there has been a rapid and considerable increase in the standard of living, real incomes and cash incomes of the great majority of those in work, who include the great majority of families with children.
  Against this background, we thought that priority should be given not only to low-income families with children, including those out of work, but to people in other parts of society, not least to many pensioners and disabled people who do not share directly and immediately in the growth in employment incomes either. That is a much broader point and I should be surprised if, at the end of the day, the hon. Gentleman disagreed with it.
  I want now to cover as briefly as I can the many improvements contained in the uprating order. In income support we are increasing the premium for families with dependent children from £6·50 to £7·35, which is 50p more than inflation. We are increasing the adult disability premium from £13·70 to £15·40, which is a pound more than inflation. We are increasing the child disability premium from £6·50 to £15·40, which more than doubles it. We are adding more than £100 million to the income support limits for people in residential care and nursing homes, virtually all of which will rise by £10 a week as a result. At the same time, we are increasing the personal

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  expenses allowance for long-term hospital patients by more than £3, to £11·75 a week. These improvements all come into effect in April.
  Then, in October—it is October rather than April only for practical reasons—we shall introduce a new carers' premium into income support, for those receiving invalid care allowance, at a rate of £10 a week. In housing benefit and community charge benefit, all these increases in the income support premiums carry through into the starting points for calculating benefit, thus giving additional help to yet more families with children, disabled people and carers.
  In addition, we are making a number of other improvements aimed particularly at assisting those lone parents who are working or who wish to do so. The lone parent premium in those benefits is being increased by nearly 13 per cent. from £8·60 to £9·70 a week, and the amount that lone parents can earn without affecting their entitlement to them is being increased by two thirds from £15 to £25 a week.
  In family credit, the adult credit is being increased by £1 a week beyond what inflation would have required to £36·35, which we hope and expect will reinforce our efforts to maximise the effectiveness of that benefit in helping low-income families in work.
  In the social fund, we are increasing the maternity payment from £85 to £100, and doubling from £500 to £1,000 the amount of capital that people over 60 may have without affecting their entitlement.
  Apart from those improvements in income-related benefits, the order also provides for a number of beneficial changes in other aspects of the benefit system. For those receiving invalid care allowance, it increases the amount that they can earn without affecting their entitlement from £12 to £20 a week. For those receiving invalidity benefit or severe disablement allowance, it increases what they can earn under what is called the therapeutic earnings limit from £28·50 to £35, to improve encouragement for rehabilitation into employment.
  Not least—this will be particularly welcomed on the Conservative Benches—the order provides for a significant increase in the help given to the older war widows through the war pensions scheme, with a real increase in age allowances to all over 65, and a particularly large increase, from £15·30 to £20, for those over 80. It also doubles, from £5 to £10, the amount of war widows and other war pensions which is disregarded for the purposes of income-related benefits.
  Those increases in the DSS war pension scheme are separate from what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced on 11 December when he said that he would be making a special £40 a week payment to the pre-1973 war widows. Those extra payments will also come into effect in April and they will be entirely disregarded in calculating income-related benefits.
  While concentrating on the changes contained in the order, it is right that I should also remind the House briefly of a number of other changes which are being, or will be, brought about by other mechanisms but which are very much part of the context in which the order is brought before the House.
  Last October we abolished the pensioners' earnings rule and made substantial increases in the income support and housing benefit premiums for disabled pensioners and those over 75. We are preparing, and will shortly lay,
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  regulations to extend attendance allowance to disabled babies under two and to extend mobility allowance to those who are deaf and blind.
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I hear on the grapevine that there may be some difficulties in the implementation date for the welcome extension of the mobility allowance to the deaf and blind. Is there any suggestion that the improvement will not be made in April as expected?
  Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman will have seen me hastily consulting my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security, but all I can say is that the grapevine on which he heard that does not appear to have extended to Ministers in the DSS. Should it turn out that he is ahead of us in learning of those difficulties, I shall do my best to ensure that they are overcome, but I have not yet had any such difficulties brought to my attention.
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: In the unlikely event of the grapevine being correct, will that extension be backdated?
  Mr. Newton: I had better seek further advice to establish the merits or otherwise of the point that has been made before commenting further. I shall go no further than to say that my instinct is that if there proved to be some hiccup in the implementation of a proposal that is among those that are dearest to my heart in all these, I would look carefully at the possibility that my hon. Friend suggests.
  Ms. Dawn Primarolo: While the Minister is investigating that hiccup, may I mention another possible hiccup with regard to war widows? A constituent of mine aged 81 in a nursing home will, I am told, have all of the £40 announced by the Secretary of State for Defence clawed back in her nursing home costs. Therefore, it will not be disregarded but will be taken into account in her income support when calculating her contribution to the nursing home costs.
  Mr. Newton: It might be sensible if the hon. Lady sent me details of the case.
  Mr. Paul Flynn: She is right.
  Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman might just listen, because the possibilities are not quite as simple as he thinks.
  I have made it clear that our intention is to regulate to make sure that total payments are disregarded for the purpose of all income-related benefits. I wish to see the details of the case to which the hon. Lady referred, because it is not unknown, when a home learns that the income of a resident has increased, for it to increase its charge to that person. Clearly that would not be susceptible to action through the social security regulations. It might be susceptible to some form of intervention by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health or by the local authority. I hope that the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) understand that I need to consider that case. I cannot give an off-the-cuff answer.
  Mr. Timothy Raison: We read in the newspapers this morning that Wrens in the Royal Navy are to starting flying combat aircraft. Does the provision cover war widowers as well as war widows?
  Mr. Newton: That was a very helpful question, not least because it is primarily one for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. I shall ensure that his attention is drawn to it.
  I was referring to the mobility allowance for those who are both deaf and blind when I was subject to something of a barrage of queries and interventions. I was about to say that the Social Security Bill, which is now in Committee, in the able hands of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, extends attendance allowance to the terminally ill without the six-month waiting period and provides for the addition of invalidity allowance to severe disablement allowances later this year. We are preparing later legislation to introduce the proposed new disability allowance and the disability employment credit.
  Last week we referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee draft regulations, all of which we hope to make by April, which make further beneficial changes, many of them fairly small and technical, to income-related benefits. I shall mention just one of them. As announced by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State in a parliamentary answer last week, we intend to double to £10 a week the current disregard for charitable and voluntary payments made to people receiving an income-related benefit, and to disregard completely any regular charitable or voluntary payment intended and used for an item other than certain accommodation costs met by benefit, food, ordinary clothing or footwear and household fuel.
  We have been pressed hard by many voluntary and charitable bodies to make that change. It will allow charities, voluntary bodies and relatives to give more help to people, where they wish, without affecting their entitlement to income-related benefits.
  It is conventional to end the opening speech in a debate such as this with some reference to money. The money involved is vast. The increase in social security expenditure between 1989–90 and 1990–91, most of it arising from this order, is £3 billion. It takes the total social security expenditure next year to well over £55 billion. As I said in my uprating statement, that is over £1 billion each week. No less important than the amounts involved is what we are doing with it, and the people whom we seek to help.
  Taken together, the changes to which I have referred mean that in a comparatively short time we shall have brought about a real improvement in the position of nearly 3 million of the least well-off pensioners, 850,000 disabled people and carers, 1·5 million low-income families with children, including nearly 100,000 lone parents, and about 50,000 war widows. All those people have a particular claim to our concern as a community. We are pleased as a Government to be able to respond to that concern with this wide range of new steps to help, and I have no doubt that the House will be pleased to endorse those that are contained in this order.
  4.19 pm
  Mr. Michael Meacher: Although the Secretary of State treated us to an array of minor changes across a whole range of marginal benefits, this debate on the uprating orders is, in effect, a debate about the overall adequacy or otherwise of the income of the poorest quarter of the population. Although market capitalism is
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  dominated by the driving forces of money and wealth, the House never debates how that money is distributed throughout the nation.
  I have often thought that many of the most important events or processes in our society are never debated when they happen, which is when it really matters, whether they relate to internment in Northern Ireland, competition and credit control in the City, the internationalisation of the capital markets or the accountability of the security services. In the same way, the House never debates the distribution of income and wealth, although it is at the heart of our economic system. I suppose that today's debate is the nearest proxy that we shall get to that, and I intend to treat it in that vein.
  My first point, therefore——
  Mr. Tim Smith rose——
  Mr. Meacher: It is a little early, so if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make a few points, I shall gladly give way to him then.
  Mr. Smith: I have a helpful suggestion.
  Mr. Meacher: Well, I shall take the hon. Gentleman at his word, which may be a bit risky.
  Mr. Smith: I simply wanted to suggest that if these are such important subjects for debate, the Opposition might occasionally choose some of them for their Supply days.
  Mr. Meacher: A number of those issues arose when the Opposition were the Tory party. However, I was not seeking to make a partisan point—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, I am sorry, I am not seeking to make a party political point but a much—[Laughter.] The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) should contain himself and try to think a little more reflectively about what I have said. I am simply making the point that many issues in our society are not properly debated in the House. The system of income and wealth, which is absolutely critical in a market system, is rarely debated. This afternoon's debate is an opportunity to take that further, and I shall do so.
  My first point, therefore, is that the share of national resources that is allocated to the poor has been declining not increasing, and will further decrease this year as a result of the Secretary of State's uprating of 25 October last year. The right hon. Gentleman likes to say—he says this in every debate and he said it again today—that total social security expenditure is now running at about £1 billion per week, but what he does not say is that the total expenditure has declined from 11·5 per cent. of gross domestic product in 1984–85—the middle of the 1980s—to only 9·7 per cent. now.
  Part of the reason for that is, of course, the decline in unemployment, but the major reason is that, as one of their first acts in 1979, the Government deliberately broke the link between benefits and earnings. As a result, the quarter of the population which is long-term dependent on benefits has fallen further and further behind the living standards of the rest of our society. The right hon. Gentleman should be concerned that the Department of Social Security now gets a lesser share of national resources than in 1980, although there are 3 million more people on income support, nearly twice as many people unemployed and nearly 1 million more pensioners.

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  Clearly, this squeezing of the lowest-income quarter of the population will be taken a great deal further year by year as long as this Government remain in power. That is obvious from the techniques of what I sometimes think of as the Tory demolition contractors, which are now all too apparent, and are manifested, yet again, in the orders.
  First, the Government strip out any earnings-related supplement so that only the basic minimum benefit is provided. That was done to unemployment benefit in 1982 and to invalidity benefit a month ago. The savings to the Government have been enormous. Of course, the other side of the coin is the loss to those entitled to benefit. In the case of invalidity benefit, Government savings will rise to a staggering £1·3 billion per year by 2025.
  Secondly, the Government break any pension link with earnings so that poor families cannot keep up with rising living standards. Again, the savings to the Government from that device over the past decade have been colossal, as much as £20 billion, enough to fund the entire Government programme of tax cuts since 1979.
  Thirdly, they chop universal benefit. That is why child benefit is being frozen for the third year running, leaving it to wither on the vine until the Government have the honesty and decency to admit that their ultimate intention is to do away with it altogether.
  Fourthly, the Government start means-testing contributory benefits. That is why the former Chancellor of the Exchequer toyed publicly with the idea of shifting to means-tested pensions. That is why the former Secretary of State for Social Security, the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, made a stab at abolishing SERPS before he was forced by the public furore to be content with merely vandalising it.
  Fifthly, the Government privatise wherever possible. Sickness benefit and maternity benefit have both been handed over to the private sector. Now SERPS is being partially privatised by the encouragement to contract out into personal pensions, with the usual bribe, at public expense, if people satisfy Tory ideology.
  With friends like that, the welfare state does not need enemies. It was for those reasons that John Hills, who is widely recognised as a specialist in these matters, in his comprehensive study of taxes and benefits over the past decade, found last year:
  "Overall, the bottom half of the population has lost £6·6 billion of which £5·6 billion has gone to the top 10 per cent."
  That is the reality behind the Secretary of State's smooth reassurances today. We have had 10 years of steady dismantling—an erosion here, a whittling away there, a whole series of minor and inexpensive improvements, which the right hon. Gentleman rattled off again today. Those things are held up to disguise major cuts. There is a constant reshuffling of the pack, but always with the same or fewer cards.
  Exactly the same techniques are apparent in the uprating that we are debating. Clearly the Government have broken their promise that the poor would not lose under the poll tax when it is introduced in two months' time. There is a shortfall between the 20 per cent. of the poll tax that everyone, however poor, will be made to pay and the extra income support that is supposed to compensate. Let us take a local authority charging exactly what the Government claim will be the average poll tax—Kingswood in Avon. A couple there on income support
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  will have to find £39 a year to make up the shortfall out of what is supposed to be the minimum income necessary for basic living expenses.
  In the Prime Minister's constituency, in the London borough of Barnet, a similar couple will need to find an extra £55 a year, more than £1 a week. In neighbouring Haringey, a couple on the income support poverty line will be made no less than £151 a year worse off by the poll tax. I have the entire list of local authorities. The figures are large everywhere. Even those losses are likely to be exceeded in the event because they are based on the Government's published poll tax figures, which everyone knows are laughable under-estimates. The true figure could well turn out to be 25 per cent. higher, or more. The real point, however—I cannot emphasise it strongly enough—is that the very poorest people in our society should not have to pay poll tax at all.
  Mr. Edward Leigh: Just to confirm the point, does the hon. Gentleman consider that there should be no relation between what someone on income support pays and the expenditure of his local council, and that no pressure whatever should be put on that local council to keep spending down to essential levels?
  Mr. Meacher: I certainly do not think that people living on £35, £40 or £45 a week should be made to suffer in any way, whatever their local authority does. We have a ballot box. It is perfectly possible for the people in the borough to vote out a local authority if it acts in a way contrary to their general interest.
  Mr. Leigh rose—
  Mr. Meacher: I do not want to get into a general discussion of the poll tax. I just make the point that the hon. Gentleman is very unwise if he believes that the poorest people should be targeted—if I may use a Government word in a slightly different way—in order to punish local authorities. We totally repudiate that view.
  Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: I noticed that while my hon. Friend was talking, Conservative Members were muttering, "Haringey?" and asking, "Who runs Haringey?" I am a former member of Haringey borough council. I am not ashamed of it, because I, while I was a member, and subsequent members of the authority did our best to provide a high and satisfactory level of social services, housing development, community development and recreational facilities, for which the borough was penalised by the Tory Government and continue to be penalised by them. It is now vilified for the level of poll tax that will be set for the proportion of expenditure that the authority itself controls. The high poll tax in inner and other London boroughs comes about solely because of the Government's past treatment of inner London local authorities and inner urban areas throughout the country.
  Does my hon. Friend agree with me on those points?
  Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend is right: the basic reason for high expenditure in poor areas in inner London is unquestionably, first, the acute level of social need, and secondly, the sharp cuts in rate support grant by the Government, from about 61 per cent. to about 47 per cent. However, I do not wish to enter into a wider discussion of

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  the poll tax. It is not appropriate now. I simply make the important point that the poorest in our society should not be targeted for penalties under that tax.
  Not only are the Government failing to protect poor tenants—although that is certainly true—but they are turning a blind eye to the rip-off that landlords will make out of the poll tax. There is at present no obligation on a landlord to reduce the rent that he charges at the changeover from rates to poll tax, even though that rent includes a rates element that will soon be defunct. I want to quote one case given to me by a citizens advice bureau, which makes the point:
  "Client is a pensioner living in very poor standard private rented house (outside toilet, only one tap, no bath.) The client has paid a weekly rent which has included rates and water rates. Now had a letter from landlord saying she must pay these separately and had a bill from Yorkshire Water. Landlord has not made any corresponding reduction in the 'rent' she pays."
  We have consistently urged the Government to introduce legislation to outlaw that practice, but the Government have refused. They have not even sent a letter, or asked local authorities to send a letter, to all private tenants to warn them that they may be double-charged. That abuse has already netted some £40 million for landlords in Scotland in the past year, and it is expected that landlords in London will pick up a £90 million bonanza in the coming year because of that loophole. Since there are nearly a million private tenants on housing benefit, the total rip-off to landlords at the expense of tenants may turn out to be over £400 million.
  It is extraordinary that the Minister of State can be so lax about this malpractice when his own borough of Kensington and Chelsea has the highest percentage of private tenants of any local authority—29 per cent.—rising in south Chelsea, I believe, to 39 per cent., and also the highest number of houses in multiple occupation, where undoubtedly the worst abuses will occur. I beg the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider that issue, as it is crucial that he acts to prevent that abuse from hitting some of the poorest tenants and other poor people in our society.
  The Government like to pride themselves on being the party of the family, yet two of their actions—or, perhaps, omissions—in the orders strike at the heart of the family. The Government have not protected the poorest against the poll tax—as I have said—and, by freezing child benefit for the third year running, they have refused to find even an extra 50p for the family budget. That is not just mean but plainly dishonourable.
  In its 1987 manifesto, the Tory party promised:
  "Child benefit will continue to be paid as now, and direct to the mother."
  Four months later, the Government froze it, and it has remained frozen ever since despite the pantomime of a yearly review. The Government have now cut the real value of child benefit by a fifth. The Secretary of State now has the distinction of reducing total family benefits for the average family to the lowest level in the EEC, except for Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal. In Britain, weekly family benefits for a couple with three children under 12 are £21·75, whereas in France they are £43·30—almost exactly twice as high.
  After listening to what the right hon. Gentleman said today, I must say that one of the more pitiful sights on
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  these occasions is to watch him being forced to dismiss child benefit and to expound on the merits of family credit or diverting to other needy groups, when he knows perfectly well that other needy groups—which I shall come to in a moment—have not had the uncovenanted increase that he pretends.
  The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as anyone that family credit is riddled with defects. Child benefit has a virtual 100 per cent. take-up, whereas family credit achieves only 50 per cent. The Government formerly talked of targeting—now the word focusing is all the rage—but that focused benefit reaches only half of those for whom it is intended. Child benefit is cheap and easy to administer, but family credit is much more expensive and difficult. The last round of advertising recruited claimants to family credit at a cost of about £120 for every additional applicant.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) said in an intervention, child benefit does not contribute to the poverty trap, whereas family credit does, despite the Secretary of State's lengthy answer—and as do all means-tested benefits. I do not know whether it makes the right hon. Gentleman squirm to be forced by the Prime Minister to argue for things that he does not believe in, but it makes me squirm to have to listen to him being so dishonest.
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman sought to make a comparison between this country and our European neighbours. Does he agree that the picture that he painted looks less convincing when one adds what he forgot to mention—that no other European country has anything like family credit?
  Mr. Meacher: Family credit goes to about 340,000 people. There are 12 million children in this country and there are similar totals in receipt of the equivalent of child benefit in those other countries. Family credit is a drop in the ocean. If the hon. Gentleman believes that that makes any difference to the overall question of the amount of money that societies in different parts of Europe are prepared to give to all families, he should reconsider.
  Mr. David Nicholson: Will the hon. Gentleman take into account the fact, that, in Germany, Italy and Greece, child benefit arrangements are means-tested and that other countries do not have the same universal arrangement as ours? Does the Labour party plan to means-test child benefit?
  Mr. Meacher: No, we certainly do not, because it is unwise and we do not accept it. The levels of the means-tested benefits that the hon. Gentleman mentions are substantially higher than those in this country, so I suspect that the average family in those countries still gets considerably more than the average family in this country.
  We also strongly object to the downgrading of statutory sick pay. I use the term "downgrading" deliberately. This further chipping away at an already eroded benefit is typical of the Government's emasculation of the benefit structure. As the Secretary of State fully explained, employees now get the full statutory sick pay rate as long as their earnings are over £84 per week. From April they will get it only if their earnings are over £125 a week.
  To sugar the pill for the low-paid—that is the most euphemistic phrase that I can think of—the lower rate of

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  sick pay is to be increased by a magnificent 25p a week more than is needed to compensate for inflation. The Secretary of State made enormous play of that, but I suspect—I do not want to be patronising—that he would hardly stoop in the street to pick up such a paltry sum.
  This act of unstinting and abundant magnanimity has to be balanced by more than equivalent cuts elsewhere in the sick pay uprating. Hence, the higher rate is being cut to the tune of £3·55 a week less than the amount that is needed to compensate for inflation. The right hon. Gentleman did not make that clear. The handling of the net effect of all those manoeuvres is characteristic of the Government. The Secretary of State parades the extra 25p as if it were generosity beyond the dreams of avarice, but the Government are clawing back £70 million to £80 million per year out of the whole shabby contrivance.
  The Government's excuse for the change is that, since statutory sick pay started in 1983, the earnings threshold for the higher rate has been raised only in line with prices and not with earnings, so a much bigger rise in the threshold is now justified. That is fine. That means that the Government are at last coming round to the belated recognition that the logical basis for uprating earnings-replacement benefits is an index of average earnings rather than prices. The trouble is that under this Government, logic is partisan, selective and always rather self-interested.
  The Government are using the earnings link to raise the threshold in order to disqualify hundreds of thousands of workers from the higher rate of statutory sick pay. However, when it comes to the earnings link for the uprating of pensions so that millions of pensioners will qualify for higher pensions, the Government do not want to know. Logic is fine for the Government as long as it leads to cuts.
  Mr. Tim Smith: Let us be quite clear about Labour policy. Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that the logic of his argument would be to increase the starting point for the payment of national insurance contributions by the increase in earnings, thus increasing it at a faster rate than over the past 10 years? That would disqualify more low-paid people from benefit.
  Mr. Meacher: Not at all. It is right that in general we should link contributions and benefits to earnings as far as it is possible to do so. We have certainly made a fundamental commitment, of which the hon. Gentleman is well aware. We believe that pensioners ought to maintain their share of rising living standards. National insurance contributions, which are a percentage of incomes, are based on buoyant income. That is why there is such a large surplus in the national insurance fund. We support that general principle as a means of ensuring that people in need maintain their share of the community's rising living standards.
  When we take the fiddle on statutory sick pay into account, it becomes possible to net out the whole balance of expenditure over this benefit uprating. The Government are currently increasing expenditure on disability and carers' benefits by £100 million. They are helping low-income families with the five new measures that the Secretary of State announced in the uprating statement, which was repeated today, and that will cost £70 million. They are providing a small number of concessions for pensioners, which will cost £15 million. The total is £185 million.
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  I readily acknowledge that the Government are also spending £100 million on raising income support levels for people in residential care and nursing homes. The Secretary of State slipped over the point that that does riot anywhere near match the rise in inflation and could thus be construed as a cut in real terms. It still leaves a problematic gap between benefits and charges of up to £50 a week, and it is usually treated separately from the benefits uprating. For that reason, I do not include it here, and I think that that is right.
  On the debit side, the Government are saving £250 million on child benefit and, as I have said, a further £70 million to £80 million on statutory sick pay. That gives total savings of about £325 million. Despite all the paraphernalia of minuscule extras with which the right hon. Gentleman sought to adorn his uprating statement and with which he regaled us, the stark truth behind the orders is that, overall, the Government are not giving the poorest quarter of the population any extra money at all. They are relieving a very large part of the population of about £140 million. We all know the old adage:
  "I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."
  That takes on a new meaning under the Government. When the Government or the Secretary of State give us something, we would be well advised to count our fingers afterwards.
  Mr. Newton: In the course of the past few minutes, the hon. Gentleman appears to have slipped into a proposition based on the assumption that all recipients of child benefit are among the poorest people in the population. If he does not think that, he could not justify his last sentence. However, we know that a surprisingly large part of any payment of child benefit goes to those with earnings of over £20,000 a year. Secondly, he has totally ignored the major increases in benefits for older and more disabled pensioners, which were made last October, and he has ignored the abolition of the earnings rule, both of which lead to significantly greater expenditure in the forthcoming year than in the present year. The cost is £600 million in a full year, and it was £300 million last year. Another £300 million has to be found this year. To be fair, the hon. Gentleman should take that into account in his presentation of these matters.
  Mr. Meacher: I shall deal shortly with disability benefits and the earnings rule. I certainly acknowledge the right hon. Gentleman's point, but I made the same point to him, that I suspect that the great majority of the benefit does not go to the lowest quarter of the population that we are considering.
  The cuts and the dismantling of the social security underpinning of our society do not stop here. I pay the right hon. Gentleman the compliment of saying that he is something of a master magician. He specialises in two tricks, one of which is the constant recycling of old money and endless exercises in the redistribution of poverty so that one group's gain is another's loss. However, it is called the provision of new money. The other trick is to flash a whole array of cards announcing trivial increases in marginal benefits before the bemused eyes of his onlookers while keeping the joker firmly tucked up his sleeve. The right hon. Gentleman did that today. In this case, the joker in the pack is the Government's sudden and unilateral abolition of the additional pension to invalidity benefit.
  In his statement on disability benefit—for which, I might say, disabled people have waited 10 years—the right

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  hon. Gentleman took us all round the houses about how he was going to do this, that and all the other to improve the lot of the disabled. But about the abolition of the earnings-related pension he kept very mum indeed. We can now see exactly why. He bragged about how he was increasing expenditure on disability benefit by £300 million a year by 1993, but he did not tell us that the figure would then fall steadily to nil by the year 2000 and would continue to fall steeply over the following 25 years. So, overall, the Government are making a colossal saving at the expense of disabled people.
  The answer that the Minister of State gave me a fortnight ago—in Hansard of 26 January—shows clearly that over the first quarter of the next century the Government will rake off a staggering £9 billion by way of reductions in disability benefits. The disabled people's organisations have certainly made clear their intense disappointment with the Government's review, but even they had not anticipated that what was called a review could turn into ransacking and plunder on such a scale.
  The last issue that I want to raise concerns pensioners. I want to repeat the central point about this uprating order: if the Government had not peremptorily ended Labour's link with earnings, a single pensioner, in two months' time, would be getting a pension of exactly £60 a week. As it is, he or she will get only £46·90—£13·10 less per week than Labour provided for. Similarly, a married couple would be getting a basic pension of no less than £95·80, whereas they will actually get £75·10—a full £20·70 less. I accept, of course, that there is in Britain one person over 60 who thinks that pensioners are getting a very good deal, but, of course, the Prime Minister does not actually have to live on the old-age pension.
  It is not as if the Government did not have the funds to give more help to pensioners if they wanted to do so. Last April, the cumulative total in the national insurance fund was touching £10 billion. In 1988–89 alone, it grew by £2·25 billion. Yet, instead of paying higher pensions—which are desperately needed, as more than half of all pensioners live on, or only very slightly above, the poverty line—the Government are currently trying to reduce the surplus by giving money back to people in work. Indeed, the cost to the national insurance fund of the 2 per cent. bribe to personal pension schemes is already £1·5 billion over budget. If the Government had so chosen, that sum could have been used, instead, to double the pension increase that we are debating under the order.
  Sir George Young: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead pensioners, who may be following the debate. In the first year of any Labour Administration, would the link be restored?
  Mr. Meacher: Indeed. I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman understands what we have been saying repeatedly. I am very glad that he is now tuned in. We have said that we shall restore the link. There is no question of retrospective payments. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] Of course there is no question of retrospective payments. There can be no question of retrospective payments. However, we have said that we would restore the link with earnings, so that, over a 10-year period, pensioners would get an extra amount of the magnitude about which I have been talking.
  Sir George Young: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Meacher: No, not again.
  The Government say that they believe in targeting, but it is now becoming all too clear that what they mean is targeting their friends in the City for bonuses for privatised schemes, at the expense of pensioners, who are being given the meanest possible increase that the Government can get away with.
  I began my speech by saying that the debate was about the share of national resources allotted to the poorest quarter of the population. I think that it will be widely accepted that in this country there is a majority view that the divide between rich and poor is now too wide and should be reduced. It is because the Government have repeatedly and deliberately widened that divide, and have no intention whatever of closing it, that we shall vote against the orders.
  4.55 pm
  Mr. Timothy Raison: At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) made one point on which I should like to comment. He said that the House is not really very good at discussing strategic issues. Some of his examples were a bit far-fetched, but I think that we suffer from the fact that we do not discuss taxation and public expenditure together anything like as much as we should. That has particular relevance and force in the context of the subject about which the House will not be surprised to hear I intend to speak—child benefit. The history of child benefit is that it is a replacement both for a social security benefit and for a tax allowance. I shall come back to that.
  In his opening speech, my right hon. Friend made a number of points with which I am entirely happy. The uprating that he is introducing is useful in many respects. He is a Secretary of State for Social Security who cares deeply about what he is doing, and he is held in very high regard by the House. Having said that, however, I must say that I think he is wrong in respect of child benefit. Every year, in the public expenditure plans, we make provision for an uprating of child benefit in the following year. Every year, the Secretary of State is required to review the level of child benefit. Every year for the last three years, this review has taken place, and every year for the last three years the result has been no uprating. I am bound to say that, with each year, our election pledge to continue to pay child benefit as at present sounds a little more hollow. It is time that we changed this policy.
  We have debated child benefit so often in the last few years that I do not intend to run through all the arguments—I will simply itemise them. There is the fact of the poor take-up of family credit, as against child benefit; there is the fact that child benefit does not lead to the poverty trap in the way that selective benefits do; there is the fact that it goes directly to the mother; there is the simplicity and certainty of child benefit, as opposed to the complexity and uncertainty of means-tested benefits; there is the history of child benefit; there is the long tradition of help in this country for all those who bring up the children; and, as I have said already, there is the fact that when it was brought in, it was intended very clearly as a replacement not only for a benefit but for a tax allowance.
  All this is familiar, but it is very important. Of course, as always, we come back to the argument: why provide a universal benefit and not be selective? This rings false when we look at tax allowances, which are the other half of the

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  equation. After all, we provide tax relief on mortgages—the main effect of which is probably to push up the price of houses—for everybody, regardless of income. We provide tax relief on pensions contributions for everybody, regardless of income. We have now actually brought in a benefit by which we provide tax relief on private health insurance for people over 60, regardless of income.
  In all these cases, it may even be argued that the richer one is, the greater the benefit in tax allowances. I do not think that it is possible to continue to argue that there is something wrong with the unselective nature of child benefit while at the same time continuing to accept, and even to introduce, a new tax allowance that provides specific help for those with private health insurance. I do not think that that is sustainable.
  I have some sympathy with the view that some of these tax allowances should be cut. However, that is not the Government's position. The Government have brought in a new allowance, yet they say, at least by implication, that we have to think in terms of pruning child benefit in real terms. I do not think that that is on. The one certainty is that bringing up children involves additional cost. That has always been recognised in this country. I realise, of course, that child benefit goes to some people who certainly do not need it, but its advantages are so great that that is a price worth paying.
  What about this year's review? After all, the Secretary of State is required, each year, to look at the special circumstances of the year ahead. Let me again say that the money for an uprating was allocated in the public expenditure round for this year, so there is no question of an additional call on public resources. There are special reasons why there should be an uprating this year. I believe that it should he automatic, but in the present situation we have to look at the special circumstances—the relevant considerations—as the Act requires.
  Some of this is political but some of it, much more importantly, is a matter of basic concern for our fellow citizens. The first special reason for an uprating is that it would offset the impact of the community charge, particularly on those people who are just above the rebate level. These are the people in my constituency who have been paying rates of £300 to £400 but who, as a couple, will face a community charge of £700 to £800 a year. There is transitional relief but that will be of no more than limited help in these cases. Many people will be affected, and they are beginning to come to our surgeries and to write us letters because of their special circumstances.
  The House will recall, how, in 1988, we had to face up to the consequences of the Social Security Act 1986 and its effect on housing benefit. Hon. Members will recall the flood of letters that we received then and the flood of people who came to our surgeries saying, in particular, that the capital limit for housing benefit introduced in that Act was causing considerable problems. I should like my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security to let us know what will happen to transitional payments on housing benefit from April 1990. As well as that, we can recall the fact that, under pressure, the Government had to give way and, quite rightly, make concessions.
  I believe that the Government will be faced with a much greater storm as a consequence of the community charge than they experienced as a consequence of that Act. The Government will have to make concessions. The simplest way to do that would be to recognise that the people who will have most difficulty as a result of the community
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  charge, in the categories which I have mentioned, will be those who have to pay the cost of bringing up children. If we can do something to meet that cost by, even at this late stage, uprating child benefit, we would have a useful measure and something that would be entirely inside the terms of the Act.
  The Government are clearly worried about wage pressure. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others are making clear their concern about this. An increase in child benefit would do something—not everything: I am not trying to exaggerate —to help to head off the problem of wage pressure.
  Furthermore, there is a growing campaign for tax relief on child care costs. I do not agree that there should be such tax relief, because I think that it would be unfair if the women who go out to work derived benefit not only from the income from that work but from tax relief, while mothers who stay at home to look after their children get nothing at all. That would be unfair. The simple answer to this is to approach it in a different way—by an increase in child benefit, which goes equally to the mother who goes out to work and to the mother who stays at home to look after her children. That would be neutral, which is as it should be.
  Mr. Corbyn: Is there not the serious problem of a shortage of pre-school child care places? As a result, many private nurseries charge exorbitant fees, which people are forced to pay because there is no other way to have their children looked after. They naturally look to tax relief to offset that cost whereas a better solution would be larger and better statutory state provision of pre-school facilities for small children, who benefit from it in. many ways.
  Mr. Raison: That is a whole new topic. As it happens, I was Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts when it produced a report advocating a substantial expansion of nursery education, so I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I do not want to go down that path.
  I have given the reasons why I believe that child benefit should go up. It is true that the additional child benefits resulting from one year's uprating would not offset all the needs about which I have spoken. However, it would more do so if we had uprated child benefit every year, and it would more do so now if we were to uprate child benefit in a way that includes an element for catching up on our failure to uprate it in the past.
  Increasingly, I believe that we could go much further, again if we are willing to look at the tax and benefits systems together. As the House knows, the taxation of husband and wife is about to be separated—on the whole, an admirable measure. There is to be a married couple's allowance and a similar allowance for unmarried couples who have children. I thought it would be interesting to ask what the cost to the Exchequer of these allowances will be.
  My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied:
  "The direct revenue cost of the married couple's allowance in a full year at 1990–91 levels of income is estimated to be £5 billion. If the allowance were to be given only to married couples where either the husband or wife was a 65 or over, there would be a saving of about £4·5 billion."—[Official Report, 20 December 1989; Vol. 164, c. 241.]
  In other words, the married couple's allowance is absorbing just about the amount of money that it costs to provide child benefit in any one year. We should seriously

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  consider the possibility of scrapping these allowances and doubling child benefit. That could be done without any net cost to the Exchequer.
  It so happens that I am a strong believer in conventional, traditional, orthodox marriage, and in itself I like the idea of the married couple's allowance. On the other hand, if I look at the real problems in society, I find it impossible to deny that those who have children clearly have costs that do not arise simply from the fact of being married. Therefore, I put it seriously to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, as I would, if he were here, to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they should look at the different ways in which we are providing help to families. They should take this opportunity to see whether, by scrapping the married couple's allowances, we could double child benefit, which would have enormous advantages. Nobody can say anything about targeting, because the married couple's allowance, like all the other tax allowances, is non-targeted.
  Mr. Christopher Hawkins: I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said, except his last point. The danger of getting rid of a tax allowance and turning it into child benefit is that the Government would continue to freeze it. The irony of the present problem is that, if child benefit had remained a tax allowance, we would have increased it by more than the rate of inflation and said what a good thing that was because it was part of our overall strategy of reducing taxation. However, because we converted a tax allowance into a benefit, it is a bad thing to increase it in line with inflation.
  Mr. Raison: My hon. Friend has a strong point. The answer is that the arrangement about which I am talking would have to be statutorily compulsory, and the trouble about child benefit, as we know, is that it has been optional. We would have to have a firm guarantee, by some means or another—perhaps something like the Rooker-Wise amendment—that this would be an automatic process, and that would meet my hon. Friend's point.
  By this approach, we could have a real means to help those with children. Many of our other anxieties would disappear. I have already mentioned child care, but in this way we could also provide help for single parents without having an allowance that is seen by some as an incentive to become single parents. Many other advantages would flow from this, and nobody could argue that we were abandoning a system of targeted benefits in favour of untargeted benefits.
  I appreciate that such a change would have substantial consequences, and I do not expect the Minister, when replying, to say that the Government accept all that I have said. But they should at least take note of the fundamental changes that I have outlined. While many complications may be involved, we must get away from the annual refusal to uprate child benefit. It does the children and our party no good. I hope that my right hon. Friend has enough wisdom and understanding to appreciate that the policy we are pursuing is wrong, and that he will make sure that we change it.
  5.10 pm
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: It is a pleasure to speak following the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) who made a powerful and impassioned speech, the majority of which I supported wholeheartedly. He has a notable record as a champion of child benefit and did that cause much justice in the way that he deployed his case.
  Today, I think for the first time, the Secretary of State came up with what could be described as a relevant consideration. I have complained to his predecessors that child benefit has been frozen willy-nilly and without the semblance of an argument to justify that course. I was confused by the right hon. Gentleman's argument today: although I recognised the sense of his case generally, he seemed to suggest that, because average earnings have been increasing and money is therefore available to the average family with children, that is a relevant reason for freezing child benefit this year.
  I suspect that there will be few years in the near-to-middle future when that will not be the case. In other words, if it is a relevant consideration now, and if it applies next year, child benefit will remain frozen for years to come. If so, the right hon. Gentleman should say so. It would be more honest of the Government to admit that, rather than continue with annual charades and uprating statements seeking to defend the freezing of child benefit. I endorse everything that the right hon. Member for Aylesbury said about that, and I will not rehearse again the important positive arguments that he adduced in favour of child benefit.
  I wish to deal principally with the effects that the uprating will have on the elderly. Last March, there was an uprating of 5·9 per cent. The year-on-year inflation increase was 7·6 per cent. last September, and that is the figure that we are now discussing for basic increases in the state pension. Considering the monthly inflation increases that have occurred since April of last year—some monthly increases have reached 8·3 per cent.—and looking ahead, not even a 7·6 per cent. increase will measure up to the real increases in inflation that basic state pensioners will have to face after April. That is why it is inevitable, for at least another 12 months, that pensioners who rely for their income on the state pension will see their standard of living eroding.
  The right hon. Gentleman cannot, in all conscience, allow that to happen year after year. There is a respectable argument for considering going back to the link with earnings. I would not go as far as the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) in that respect. The inexorable erosion of the standard of living of pensioners cannot be countenanced by the Government, who will have to do what they were forced to do last October, and I welcomed the one-off payment which they gave and which did not affect transitional relief. That was a payment of £2·50 or £3·50 to certain retired people who were in particularly straitened financial circumstances.
  The Government will have to take that action with monotonous regularity unless they recognise the ongoing real needs of pensioners. The Social Security Advisory Committee pointed out to the Government years ago that they would occasionally—not every year—have to redress the balance between earnings and price increases if they were to be anything like fair to pensioners who struggled for their day-to-day existence on the basic state pension.

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  The increases to which the Secretary of State refers regularly in respect of pensioners with occupational pensions are welcome, and in the next century there will not be a problem if things go according to plan. That, too, is to be welcomed. But nearly 60 per cent. of present-day pensioners rely for more than 75 per cent. of their income on state benefit. The right hon. Gentleman cannot ignore that, or he will be ignoring generations of pensioners, between now and 10 or 20 years hence, who will suffer terribly unless the Government do something for them.
  I am disappointed that the Government have not found a way to extend mobility allowance beyond retirement age. The age cut-off point is now 66. If the Government feel that it would be too expensive to do that immediately, they should accept that in cases where the payment of mobility allowance to people over retirement age would prevent them from having to be institutionalised—a precedent exists for taking such action with social fund community care grants—limited change could be made as a first step. All sorts of improvements could be made, but we should be opposed to having age discrimination built subliminally into the benefits system.
  Some of the changes that the Secretary of State announced are imaginative, but there is force in the argument that he has been engaging in some sleight of hand by moving the money around, rather than trying to argue the case for more funds from the Treasury. I am not privy to the inside negotiations that he conducts with the Treasury, but a strong case exists for improving matters for the elderly and needy. and I hope that he is arguing strongly on their behalf privately, if he is not doing so publicly.
  Mr. Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the mobility allowance. In rural areas such as Cornwall, pensioners who are capable of looking after themselves and living alone, but who are unable to do so because they are not mobile, are isolated without such an allowance. They find the cut-off point hard to understand, and I cannot justify it to them when they come to my surgery.
  Mr. Kirkwood: My hon. Friend makes a helpful intervention. He and I, along with many Conservative Members, represent rural constituencies and are well aware of the problem.
  We must take note of the increased fees that are having to be paid for residential accommodation for the elderly. I welcome, as far as it goes, the £100 million improvement that has been made, but I fear that difficulty will arise. I also appreciate that it is not the normal category of expenditure that we consider when uprating statements are made.
  It appears that the Government have changed their policy of positive discrimination in favour of the behaviourally disturbed elderly patients in residential homes as opposed to the simply frail elderly. In the last four or five years, the increased payments made in the dementia category—the really severely behaviourally disturbed elderly—have suffered and the positive discrimination that such cases enjoyed in 1986 has been eroded to the point where the payments available after April from the DHSS to meet fees will be equal as between the frail elderly and the behaviourally disturbed elderly.
  I have been conducting a lengthy and worrying correspondence with a constituent of mine who runs a
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  good bona fide residential home for elderly demented people. That constituent is having great difficulty in trying to make ends meet and provide the level of service that he is anxious to maintain and would maintain if he could get a sensible level of support from the Department. Over the past four or five years, far from enjoying the £50 increase to which the Department said that he was entitled, he received only a £20 increase in weekly fees. Meanwhile, he has incurred extra employment costs because of Whitley Council increases and the need to employ the more highly qualified staff required for psychiatric patients. The Department should consider carefully that category of fees and the limits for that category of patient.
  The community charge has been in operation in Scotland for almost one year. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) made the point that the Government will be obliged sooner or later to reconsider the support given to claimants liable to community charge when it is introduced in England and Wales in April. The one-off compensation payment of £1·15 in income support rates for 1989–90 is significantly less than the amount for which many claimants paying above-average levels of poll tax will be liable after April. When that compensation was first given, an income support clawback of 50p was made that has never been made good.
  It should be possible to identify a separate amount to compensate claimants for poll tax contributions, which should be increased by the average rise in poll tax each year. One hundred per cent. rebates should be given to all income support claimants liable to poll tax. If the Government set their face against that, there is an unanswerable case for increasing the 20 per cent. contribution element by the average annual increase in poll tax payments.
  As I read the figures, the social fund has effectively been frozen, for the third year in succession, at £205 million—which shows a degree of bad faith on the part of the Government. The social fund was bruited as an experiment that would be progressive, flexible, and capable of overcoming the anomalies introduced by the 1988 changes, which were themselves the consequence of the Social Security Act 1986. To leave the sum at the level proposed for next year would be a huge mistake and a great shame. Figures for December 1989 show that 56 per cent. of people requesting community charge grants and 40 per cent. of claimants for budget and loan facilities from the social fund were refused. There is a vast potential for the social fund to meet, but its effective freezing for the third successive year is a retrograde step.
  The £20 million saving made in the 1988–89 Budget should be made good in 1990–91 and community care grants uprated regularly in line with inflation. For a variety of reasons, the proposed increases in pensions and benefits do not deserve support. They fail to meet the needs of the current generation of retired people who rely on the basic state pension as their principal source of income. Nor will they provide assistance to those struggling to cope with a 20 per cent. contribution to their poll tax or families relying on child benefit to make ends meet. Such improvements as have been made will be at the expense of other claimant groups. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject the orders.
  5.24 pm
  Mr. David Nicholson: The answer that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) might have given to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) was that the Opposition have not proposed debates about the distribution of income and wealth on their Supply days because those responsible for purging and purifying the Labour party would not like that or allow it to be done.
  I welcome the largely constructive approach taken by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. KirkWood), although I regret his call to right hon. and hon. Members to vote against the orders. I hope that my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister for Social Security will consider the hon. Gentleman's remarks about mobility allowance and the fees paid to nursing homes.
  I welcome the positive way in which the hon. Gentleman responded to the interesting speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison). From it, there does appear to be new thinking in the House, and, I am told, outside it, in the child benefit lobby. Although I have not until now been sympathetic to many of that lobby's arguments, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury addressed himself to new circumstances imposed by the community charge and other factors, and I hope that his proposal will be carefully considered.
  A critical letter that I received from one of my constituents complains that the Government are adopting a social policy of "Victorian laissez-faire". I question how that can be squared with an increase in social security expenditure of 36 per cent. in real terms since 1979, with more than £1 billion per week in social security benefits in the coming year, and with total expenditure on cash benefits for the long-term sick and disabled doubling in real terms what it was in the last year of the previous Labour Government. Those are extraordinary achievements purely in resource terms, and do not justify the criticism of Opposition Members. I also praise, as I have before in private, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the considerable skill that he has shown in the few months that he has held his present office, in using those resources in an imaginative and intelligent way.
  When I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Oldham, West in respect of European comparisons, he made the point in response that levels of child support in the countries I mentioned were very much higher than in this country. I wonder, for example, whether that is true of Greece. In France, Germany and the Irish Republic, there is no guarantee of annual uprating of child benefit, and in Italy and Portugal, eligibility is linked to insurance status. France does not pay benefit for the first child. Opposition Members should be careful before arguing that this country is behind in the European family.
  Mr. Battle: I invite the hon. Gentleman to spell out France's policy on child benefit. Does he not agree that it introduced family support because of its declining population? France's benefits are well ahead of those of this country, and have been for many years.
  Mr. Nicholson: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I hope that we can explore that point in future debates.
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  I have welcomed before, and welcome again, my right hon. Friend's imaginative proposals for giving more support to those who care for the disabled, which will benefit 30,000 carers. That is a positive improvement.
  The deal for pensioners has always dominated social security debates, and is important to my constituents and to those of many other right hon. and hon. Members. There is a considerable difference in philosophy between the Government and the Labour party, which says, "Let's promise to raise the universal pension by a very large amount, by keeping it in line with earnings." When Labour was in government before, we discovered that that could not be done all the time, and that this effort had a horrifying effect on our economy in terms of spending, taxation and borrowing. The present Government guarantee a minimum, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has managed to improve this past year with the benefits paid to poorer pensioners. Above that minimum, pensioners are now benefiting from their own savings and enterprise in their working lives.
  Pensioners' total net income, which is something that we must always consider rather than simply the value of pensions, grew by 23 per cent. above inflation between 1979 and 1986. That is as much every year as in all the five years of the last Labour Government. Between 1979 and 1986, pensioners' incomes grew twice as fast as those of the population as a whole, and that is an important factor.
  We must bear in mind the fact that in 1979 only 60 per cent. of pensioners had savings incomes. In 1986, the figure was 70 per cent., and among recently retired pensioners in 1986 the figure was 85 per cent., so it is increasing all the time. According to the latest figures, 50 per cent. of all pensioners and 70 per cent. of recently retired pensioners have occupational pension which helps them to cope.
  Approximately half of all pensioners own their own homes—44 per cent. own them outright and 4 per cent. own them with a mortgage. Let us consider how the capital value of those homes has increased all over the country, but particularly in the south. It is another matter for debate, because the price increases have caused considerable difficulty in those areas, but we need to consider more imaginatively how income-poor retired people can draw upon the considerable capital values locked up in their homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) tried to carry an amendment two years ago, and I hope that more can be done in that issue.
  I move on to comparisons with pensions in Europe. There has been a lot of propaganda on this subject. We have all received in our mail allegations that British pensioners are the poorest in Europe. However, there are significant variations between pension arrangements in European countries. For example, in France the pension is half the average earnings in theory, but in practice only one third of French pensioners receive a minimum pension which is designed as a safety net. Only the United Kingdom provides a separate pension for a wife who has not worked.
  The comparisons that have been made by the Opposition omit to mention the role played by occupational pension schemes, which are rare in the rest of Europe. Also, in several European countries pensioners are charged for the use of health and social services, but in Britain those services are free of right to every pensioner.

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  Mrs. Dorothy Rhodes is president of Pensioners' Voice, which has lobbied strongly on the subject, and she concedes:
  "I have been one who has spoken loudly in support of parity with Europe, but during the past year I have been to Pensioners Congresses in Italy and Greece and, having spoken at length to those who actually receive the Euro pensions…discover that in many cases the actual cash received in relation to the cost of living is often lower than that in the United Kingdom. I am revising my opinion; for in no way can our Federation ask for an equality that would disadvantage our own people."
  That is an important concession and we should remember it when we pursue the argument about comparisons with Europe.
  Every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate has mentioned that we are on the threshold of the new community charge regime. The hon. Member for Oldham, West mentioned double charging by private landlords. There are not many private landlords in my constituency—I wish that there were more, because it would help with the housing situation. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will respond to that remark and give his attention to it, because it is a problem and an abuse and it is used as a criticism of our arrangements for the community charge.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West also alleged a failure to increase family support to meet the community charge level in local authorities which were keeping to the Government's spending guidelines. I am not arguing that income support should increase to a level such as that in Haringey or Islington. I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) is no longer in his place, because he intervened on this subject. I do not think that anyone would argue that, because all voters, including pensioners, must recognise that they have to pay for Labour extravagance in those areas. [Interruption.]
  I am making a point that I think Opposition Members will recognise is fair, because the hon. Member for Oldham, West mentioned Kingswood, which is near my constituency, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will respond to that because it is an important point.
  On the subject of the community charge, I shall quote what I wrote in my local newspaper recently. It is no bad thing for hon. Members to say to the Government and to the Opposition in this House what they are saying to their constituents outside it. I said:
  "My constituents (and I) have a right to be angry—but with the Department of the Environment, not the County Council at the huge discrepancy between the final figure, whatever it is, and all the figures previously forecast."
  We think that the figure for the community charge in my area is going to be near £350. The reason I mention this is that the elderly and families on low incomes are told all the time to plan ahead and to budget. They do plan ahead. They listen with care to the figures that my hon. Friends and I have given them as to what we thought the community charge would be. We were guided by the figures that the Department of the Environment issued year after year.
  Mr. Leigh: That was rash.
  Mr. Nicholson: My hon. Friend says that that was a rash thing to do, and perhaps I should take his advice and not believe the Government's statistics, but I think we would be in bad trouble if we had to believe the statistics that the hon. Member for Oldham, West uses all the time.
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  On 17 November 1987, the estimate for the community charge in my constituency, based on 1987–88 spending, was £187. On 23 June 1988, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, as he now is, estimated that the figure, again based on current spending for 1988–89—I am not talking about Government targets or assessments—was £212. Finally, on 19 July 1989, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, as he now is, produced a table which again illustrated the impact of the community charge, if it had been implemented last year, giving a figure of £253. I fear that those figures are way below the amount that we are going to have to pay, and I think that that chiefly reflects an unsatisfactory grant settlement.
  Over the coming months, I shall make efforts—and I think that many of my hon. Friends will join me—to help my elderly constituents and families on low incomes with the community charge in two ways. First, we shall carefully examine local government spending, make comparisons with other local authorities, see where local authorities managed to come up with a charge which is lower, what they have done and what efficiencies they have introduced. I think that we will benefit from the work of the Audit Commission because it has a powerful role in these matters. And we shall try to get the total spending by local authorities down wherever we can. I am sure that Labour-controlled local authorities have a major role to play in that.
  Secondly, we shall try to obtain a better grant from central Government by next year—I do not think there is much to be done for this year. I think that is particularly valid for Conservative-controlled local authorities, so that we can move closer to the figures that the Department forecast for the charge.
  I make no apology for raising this subject during a debate on social security because the beneficiaries of social security—the elderly on limited incomes and poorer families—are very concerned about it, and I am sure that that will be reflected in my surgery and in my mail box during the next few weeks.
  On this side, we all praise Ministers in the Department of Social Security for what they have done to obtain and use resources. They should look to one or two Ministers in other Government Departments for co-operation in dealing with these problems. But we certainly want more sense and reason from Labour-controlled local authorities in meeting the need to help people in vulnerable positions.
  5.40 pm
  Ms. Dawn Primarolo: I shall make two points to the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson), the first by way of advice: beware Ministers bearing tables quoting poll tax figures; do not make press statements until the final figure is announced. Secondly, when he goes to the Minister to negotiate a better grant settlement for his local authority, we should like to add a few more local authorities to give him a rather long list. I am sure that he will be prepared to argue for Avon county council, a hung council, run by the Tories, in which Kingswood is based.
  Mr. Raison rose—
  Ms. Primarolo: I have not started yet.
  Mr. Raison: I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me to interrupt so early. Any local authority wanting to increase its revenue support grant next year might note that one

  919
  factor which contributes to the size of the needs element in the revenue support grant is the number of false fire alarms. Therefore, if one stimulates many false fire alarms, the needs element goes out.
  Ms. Primarolo: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that little tip, which I shall pass on to the local authority in Avon.
  To return to the instruments that we are discussing tonight, when there is a massive redistribution of income through cuts in income tax for the top scale of those who pay the tax, little is said by the Government, although there is a massive loss of income to the Exchequer. When pensioners, the disabled, single parents and those on benefits are given a 50p a week or 25p a week increase, we are supposed to congratulate the Government on their generorsity to those people.
  When we have debates on social security in this House, a little puzzle always goes through my mind: how is it that the Government keep telling us that they are spending so much more money which people in need are receiving, yet the people themselves are not getting any more disposable income—in fact, they often end up with less money? I have finally come to the conclusion that, if the social security system is set in the context of the 1989 reforms that the Government have undertaken over a period, what has been set up is a much meaner system all round.
  Even so-called acts of generosity—such as the Government finally giving the war widows their increase—are transferred into people's lives as further cuts. I shall give the example of one of my constituents whom I mentioned in an earlier intervention and about whom I shall write to the Minister. Her name is Mrs. Bidwell. She is 81 years old, and suffers from Parkinson's disease and a number of other illnesses. She is in a private residential nursing home. Her daughter called to see me; she is allowed to earn £40 a week under the new regulations because her husband is in receipt of invalidity benefit.
  Mrs. Bidwell now pays £270 a week to the private nursing home. She has to be in a private home because there are no other types of nursing home in our area. The nursing home charge went up to £295 a week from 1 February, and at present there is no increase in her income support to compensate for the increase in nursing home charges, so she has lost her £40 and is now £2 a week worse off. When the Government increase income support by £10 on 1 April, her net loss will be £32. Therefore, of the £40 that she was given—supposedly disregarded—she has only £8 a week left, with which she has to buy all her extras such as toiletries.
  Naturally, Mrs. Bidwell's daughter was extremely upset and distressed when she called to see me. She felt that it was outrageous that her father, who had been killed, as she said, fighting for this country, and her mother, who had struggled all her life raising five children, had finally won justice in the form of the £40 a week rise only to have it taken away because it was still included in the calculations for income support. I should be grateful if the Minister would write to me about this.
  That example highlights another point about the Government's policy. Such people are worse off because the Government have allowed the privatisation of nursing
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  homes, which are now able to charge whatever they like. As the Minister said, the Government have no control over those increases.
  Clearly, under the benefits system, the Government are robbing Peter to pay Paul. When extra benefits are given, they are clawed back from other parts of the benefits system. My case work load shows, as I am sure those of many hon. Members do, that claimants from all the priority groups identified in the 1989 social security reform —pensioners, single parents and those leaving institutions to settle in the community to try to establish a normal life—are in extreme need. Those people are being refused grants and loans because of insufficient funds in the local office.
  The social fund manager in Bristol, South confirmed yesterday that, despite January's top-up of £8,000 on the grant budget and £25,000 into the loans budget for this financial year, there was to be no change in the policy which rules out a category of claimants from qualifying from that fund. Those who have been ruled out are families under exceptional stress. No one in the Bristol, South office area who comes in that category will be considered for loan or social fund grants. The local office policy is to rule out claims for grants or loans from families under exceptional stress, even though that is one of the priority groups in the social fund manual. Therefore, single-parent familes are being singled out for exclusion from cash. That is the opposite of the undertaking and promises that have been given in this Chamber.
  From my case load, it is clear that discretion in the discretionary system operates to exclude the needy from help in order to allow the DSS managers to balance their puny budgets. From the claimant's point of view, there is no discretion or flexibility, merely interminable bureaucracy leading to closed doors. I shall give a couple of examples of such treatment.
  A single mother on income support and her two children—one aged two years and the other four months—spent two months in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and were then housed in unfurnished accommodation. She applied for a community care grant of £940 for essential furniture. There is nothing in the house—not even floor coverings. In her letter she said:
  "My daughter and I are sleeping on the floor"—
  bare floorboards—
  "with borrowed blankets from a neighbour. I am very depressed and cannot look after or care for myself and my children in these conditions—we have nowhere to store our clothes and no means of cooking our food."
  The grant was refused because
  "there are no exceptional circumstances",
  to quote directly from the social fund officer's decision in October 1989.
  The demands on the budget at the time were so great that these circumstances were considered unexceptional enough for the claim to be disallowed. I dread to think what an exceptional claim in Bristol, South is. If those circumstances are so unexceptional in the welfare state, exactly whose welfare is the state protecting? I suspect that the state is looking after people with money who are getting tax cuts.
  One of my constituents who was re-establishing himself in the community after a long period in prison secured the promise of employment, which was vital to him, on a construction site, provided that he had his own tools. He applied for a community care grant. Those grants, we are

  921
  told, are aimed at priority categories. His application was refused. It was not even considered, because the rules stipulate that such items are specifically excluded.
  A woman who was born in 1908 was recently hospitalised after she suffered a stroke that disabled her last summer. She needs constant day and night care. Her daughter is on income support. She could not afford the daily bus fares—which worked out at £15·40 a fortnight—to visit her mother in hospital. She visited the hospital daily because she was being trained by the staff to care for her mother.
  They applied for a community care grant, both for the fares and for the additional items that they need at home. The old lady is incontinent. Their grant application was refused because the circumstances were unexceptional. Bus fares are paid only for the parents of sick children. Once again, both claimants were told that they were not in the exceptional need categories. Time and again we are told that the benefit system is targeting the needy, but time and time again the needy are told that their circumstances are unexceptional.
  A Bristol-based charity wrote to all the advice-giving agencies asking that the number of applications made to its charitable fund for help for those in exceptional need but who had been refused grants and loans from the social fund should be reduced because its funds were running out. The Government are breaking up the decision-making process, thus reducing the amount of money that is paid to people in need. They try to convince us that they are giving them more money, but that is not true. At one time, we could be proud of our welfare state. How can we be proud of a welfare state that describes the needs of those people as unexceptional? How bad do people's living conditions and their poverty have to be before the welfare state recognises that they need support?
  5.54 pm
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes: I listened with care to the harrowing constituency cases that the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) drew to our attention. I am sure that she will concede, however, that it is difficult to understand all the facts surrounding constituency cases until we have all the details. I therefore cannot comment on the cases that she has drawn to our attention.
  The hon. Lady's sincerity and depth of knowledge compares favourably with what was said by the only other Labour speaker in the debate so far, the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). His insincerity and vagueness went down extremely badly on Conservative Benches—and perhaps on Labour Benches as well. He told us that he wanted to talk about poverty and relative incomes. He did neither. Perhaps he thought that it was sufficient to mention them and then to move on to something else.
  The hon. Gentleman said that he would outline the Labour party's policy. We should have known better than that. All he did was to add to the interminable list of areas where the Labour party's policy is, to put it at its kindest, far from clear. It is also deliberately transparent. Over £1 billion a week is spent on social security. We have to ask whether that is sufficient. The Labour party has a duty to the House and to the electorate to say what it would spend. Perhaps we shall be told later what the size of the Labour party's social security budget would be this year, if it were
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  in office. I think that I can guaranteee that we shall not receive an answer to that question, since the Labour party has not bothered to answer all the other questions that it has been asked.
  Under this Government, the social security budget has increased in real terms by 36 per cent. since 1979. That is far better than the Labour party's record when it was last in government. Whether it would be found to be better than the record of the next Labour Government, should there ever be one, we do not know.
  Mr. Eddie Loyden: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that people are living below the poverty line and that bandying figures about will not change that fact?
  Mr. Hughes: I shall deal with the figures during my speech. The Labour party wants people to look at its social policy through rose-tinted spectacles. It does not want them to look at the figures. If the Labour party cares about the problems that face the poor, it must tell us what a Labour Government would spend; otherwise, it cannot be taken seriously.
  Is the £1 billion that is being spent each week on social security going to those who are most in need? My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave a number of examples of additional money being specifically targeted on those who are most in need. I shall give two other most important examples of people who will be most grateful for additional help from the Government.
  The first is the extra £100 million a year to help 500,000 disabled people and their carers. Those people particularly needed extra money and they will get it as a result of the uprating. Secondly, those of us with young children know that they can be a great expense, but people with severely disabled babies must face enormous extra expenses. The fact that families with severely disabled babies whom one parent stays at home to look after can receive an extra £65 a week under the uprating is a matter on which the Government are to be congratulated.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West pretended to answer one question, but in fact he did not. He told us that the Labour party will restore the link with earnings. He told us how the pensioners and other groups have been robbed by the Government because of their failure to keep the link with earnings. But he failed to tell the House that the reason why the Labour party made the link with earnings, as opposed to a link with inflation, was that that was the cheaper option. The Labour Government had so lost control of the economy, and inflation was so high, that that was the only option that they could afford.
  If, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West said, the link with earnings would be restored—he hedged his comments about with some weasel words—he must answer a further question. If a Labour Government lost control of inflation, as they undoubtedly would because their policies point in that direction, would they restore the link between the cost of living and the annual upratings? Would they use the best method or the cheapest method?
  The Labour party uses statistics to disguise and distort reality instead of telling us the truth—
  Mr. Battle: I want to get the record straight, since the hon. Gentleman has talked about distortions. Did not the Labour Government offer a link either with earnings or with inflation, whichever was the higher? That is the truth.
  Mr. Hughes: No, it is not. History shows that that is false; otherwise, pensioners' incomes would not have fallen so far behind the cost of living under the Labour Government, who stole their £10 Christmas bonus and took away many other things from them. The Labour party cannot preach on this subject, as it allowed pensioners' incomes to fall behind the cost of living.
  The Opposition use a number of statistics when discussing the incomes of poorer people, but they use them to distort. Why did they not tell us that between 1981 and 1985 the living standards of the bottom 10 per cent. increased by 8·3 per cent., against an average 6·4 per cent.? Why did not the Opposition tell us that real take-home pay for those on half average male earnings has risen in 10 years by 28·7 per cent.? Between 1973 and 1979 it rose by a pitiful 2·4 per cent.
  Why did not the Opposition tell us that, for many of the poorer people in society, tax reductions have an enormous impact? Why did they not congratulate the Government on the fact that the personal allowance increase has taken 1·7 million of the poorest paid people out of paying tax altogether? The answer to all those questions is: because it is uncomfortable for the Opposition.
  We can never be satisfied that all those who are most in need are being helped. I would never suggest that they were. A problem mentioned by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), in an honest and reasonable speech, and by the hon. Member for Bristol, South, related to those living in private homes for the elderly. What I want to say applies also to elderly people living in some of the homes run by housing associations. We would all accept that many, if not most, of those homes are run to high standards, but the money available does not cover their running costs. As a member of a committee of a housing association, I know that the money that we receive from the DSS does not cover our running costs, so we are running at a loss on some of the people whom we want to keep in the homes. That problem must be dealt with.
  I want to discuss two issues connected with housing—first, housing benefits. I hope that all hon. Members agree that it is no criticism of anyone to say that housing benefits have hardly been mentioned in the debate, and for a good reason. If one discusses housing benefits in terms of their relationship to any of the rented sectors, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will rightly reply that they are a matter for the Department of the Environment; but if one raises the subject of housing benefits with a Department of the Environment Minister, he will reply that it is a matter for the Department of Social Security. It is thus impossible to debate whether the figures in the upratings are reasonable or unreasonable, sufficient or insufficient, because they have to do with housing policy.
  I firmly believe that housing benefits must be returned to the Department of the Environment. The only reason why they have not been returned so far is the opposition of civil servants in the Department. They do not want them back; one told me once that they did not want the bother of them. However, most of us recognise that housing benefits are important and we believe that they would be better administered alongside housing policy. As such, that would be better done by the DOE.
  I want finally to mention a group who may see little or nothing from the upratings—the visible homeless. They are not a problem; they are a series of interrelated problems needing a variety of solutions. Such solutions
  924
  will help many vulnerable people who cannot cope with society. Many of those whom I am discussing, who sleep on the roadside and in shop doorways, could not cope in a house or flat. Many of them would even reject a conventional hostel.
  I should like to suggest an additional form of help as part of the pattern of provision. I propose minimalist hospitals funded by the Government and run by the voluntary sector. People could crash out and get a meal in them, and most importantly, they would have access to psychiatric and counselling help. Without such provision, many people will inevitably continue to sleep rough, whatever other solutions the Government come up with.
  We must face the problem honestly: many of those whom I am talking about will still prefer to sleep in the streets. Near where I live there is a lady who has lived by the side of the road for 25 years. She has a bed in a mental hospital around the corner and she goes there when it is very cold and for her meals. It is precisely such people, and young people who find themselves in the same position, who need specific but non-threatening help. I hope that the Government will turn their attention to that in their welcome reappraisal of the help that they give the homeless.
  6.10 pm
  Mr. Clifford Forsythe: I welcome some parts of the uprating—for instance, the extra help for poorer families—but I hope that there will be greater take-up of family credit in future. Until now, the take-up has not been good enough, and I hope that some effort will be devoted to publicising the benefit.
  I also welcome the extra help for the disabled and their carers, although I have a feeling that the improvement is being paid for by the freezing of child benefits and the cutting of statutory sick pay.
  It is disappointing that benefits in general have not been uprated in line with inflation. The most obvious example of that is the freezing of child benefit, which concerns many people. The right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) made an excellent speech in which he put the case for child benefit very well. I hope that Ministers listened to it.
  It is said that child benefit will eventually be phased out, but if it is, the Government will have cause to regret that at the next election, leaving aside high interest rates and the community charge.
  The social fund has also effectively been frozen for the third year at around £205 million, despite numerous reports of more and more claimants being turned down for grants or loans for urgent needs. The full effects of the way in which the social fund operates are only now becoming clear. Unfortunately, they will become clearer as time goes on.
  Those effects were concealed when the social fund was introduced because an applicant who genuinely required help through force of circumstances could, or perhaps one should say were forced to, take a loan instead of a grant. That loan had to be repaid, reducing the applicant's income. If a further problem befell one—for example, if a cooker needed to be repaired quickly—a further loan had to be made resulting in higher payments. Such applicants may eventually be unable to apply for an emergency loan

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  because they have exceeded the amount of weekly payments that they are rightly allowed by DSS rules. That is a continuing situation that can only get worse.
  Unfortunately, it is at that stage that the sad part of the story begins. Such people then turn to the only source of cash available— the moneylenders. People who, for the best of reasons, need finance but cannot obtain it from the social fund, either because of high repayments on previous essential loans or because no money is available in the fund, then approach loan sharks. Such people will then be worse off than they were in the beginning. High interest charges and intimidating collecting methods become their fate.
  It is not unusual for people in such a position to hand over their benefit books in order to obtain a loan. The debtor is then allowed to take the book to cash a weekly order, which he then uses to pay the required amount of money to the lender who then retains the book for the future. That, sadly, is one of the bad results of the social fund which is there to help people. The situation can only get worse.
  Support levels for people in nursing or residential homes do not match the rate of inflation. They certainly do not match their needs. Yet more and more such homes are being required as a result of Government policy in other areas, bringing people into the community who then end up in such homes.
  Retirement pensions are uprated in line with inflation, but I am disappointed that they are not being increased in line with average earnings. The pensioners of today once created the country's wealth. It is a disgrace that they are now being treated so shabbily.
  I am glad to have had the opportunity to point out some of the concerns that I and my right hon. Friends have about uprating. But other hon. Members hope to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall conclude my remarks and hope that they will deal with some of my other worries.
  6.14 pm
  Mr. Tim Smith: The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) said that he wanted a broad debate on incomes, benefits and poverty generally, but he proceeded to make a narrowly based speech. He talked only about state provision. Whether one considers the position of pensioners, those who are at work and become sick, or families, it is not good enough to look only at what the state provides. One must look at a broader picture, but the hon. Gentleman failed to do so.
  The hon. Gentleman also complained about the cut in invalidity benefit at the very moment when the Public Accounts Committee is considering why expenditure on that benefit is rising so fast and the number of claimants has risen so rapidly.
  The hon. Gentleman might have recognised that the 1980s were a decade when the average income of most pensioners rose more rapidly than ever before. That was not due to state provision alone. The position of pensioners improved because of private sector provision—occupational pensions.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) said, European comparisons no longer stand up to close examination because at the end of the 1980s the pensioner is much better off than he has ever been before.
  926
  Of course there are exceptions to that, and that is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was right, last October, to give extra benefis to those in most need.
  The Government have the right approach to social security benefits. It is right to give the extra cash that is available to those who are most in need. That is why I welcome this series of orders. In particular, I welcome the new carers' premium and I especially welcome the fact that the attendance allowance is to be extended to babies under two. The abolition of the earnings rule last October was most welcome, as is the substantial improvement to be made in April by the Department of Social Security and the Ministry of Defence to the war widows' pensions.
  On child benefit, too, it is right to look at the overall position of families. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave the House an interesting piece of information. He told the House that, over the past 12 months, the average net income of a working man had increased by more than £20 a week. It is that that we need to look at when we consider child benefit.
  If we compare the Government's record in just the past 12 months with the previous Labour Government's record, we can see why the policy announced by the hon. Member for Oldham, West is such a fraud. We all know that, if we have the misfortune to have another Labour Government, it is most unlikely that earnings will rise in the way that they did during the 1980s. Earnings will probably only just keep pace with prices, as they did under the previous Labour Government. Since there is no question of retrospection in the Opposition's proposal, it amounts to no more than a confidence trick.
  When child benefit has been reviewed each autumn recently the Government have been right to say that the appropriate policy is to freeze it and to devote the extra resources to other benefits. But I also agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, (Mr. Raison) that we need to come up with something better by the next election and to have a clearer policy. He suggested one alternative, which was to double child benefit and abolish the married man's tax allowance. He thought that the Government were inconsistent in introducing new tax allowances while at the same time freezing benefits.
  Up to a point, I agree. I even took the trouble to come here last week to explain to the Treasury why I thought it was wrong to introduce a new tax relief for private health premiums. The Department should look carefully at my right hon. Friend's proposal, but other possibilities could be examined.
  For example, it has been suggested that we could have a higher benefit for children under five and a lower benefit for children over five on the ground that it is during that first period that the mother is less likely to be at work, so it is then that the family is most likely to be in need of help. Against that, it could be argued that children get progressively more expensive, as I believe to be the case. That would suggest that the benefit should be the other way round.
  It would be sensible to have a proper debate about how to proceed. It is not sensible simply to index-link child benefit year in, year out, when so many families that receive it do not need it. We need to come up with something better. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department will consider that and try to come up with something better. Subject to that, I welcome these orders.
  6.19 pm
  Mr. John Battle: As an introduction, I shall make a few remarks about the context of the debate. We are being asked to approve an uprating on the same day as we read that some right hon. Members fare very well indeed. I refer to the second, or what in all justice should be called the third, job of the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let us not forget that his Budget last March and previous Budgets set the structural arrangements for this uprating and for previous arrangements for people on low pay and in poverty. I agree with the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) that we always have the difficulty that we cannot discuss tax and benefit arrangements in the same debate and relate one to the other.
  We now hear that the right hon. Member for Blaby has been offered another job at £40,000 a year, working as an non-executive director of GPA, the world's biggest aircraft leasing company based in Shannon, County Clare. That is on top of the job that he has already been offered at £100,000 a year, working two days a week for Barclays.
  That focuses our attention on part-time work, which is a crucial issue in this debate. The right hon. Gentleman may well have spare time to write his memoirs and fit in political activities with doing those two jobs, but it is a shocking contrast with the 9 million people in part-time, temporary and low-paid work who make up the bulk of people in poverty, because low pay is the primary cause of poverty.
  Today, the working party set up by Sir Gordon Borrie, the Director General of Fair Trading, reported that more than 200,000 households were in severe debt difficulty and that a further 500,000 people were having difficulty in coping with the debts that they had incurred. I hazard a guess that many people with such debts are precisely those who are on much less than the average wage. I am tempted to believe that most people with such debts are on low pay or low benefits.
  I do not have time for a part-time job because I fill all my time responding to the inquiries of constituents who find it hard to get by on low incomes, low benefits and low pensions. I shall quote an example from the Department of Social Security agency benefits unit:
  "Mr. Garnett's requirements have been calculated at £75·60, comprising of a personal allowance of £54.80 for a couple, a £19·50 disability premium as Mr. Garnett is in receipt of invalidity benefit, plus £1·14 a week housing costs. The latter consists of rent and general rates less housing benefit and the statutory 20 per cent. deduction of the gross rates. There is also a £12·50 deduction in respect of non-dependents. (Mr. and Mrs. Garnett's daughter Denise lives with them)…The comparison between Mr. Garnett's resources of £75·60 and his requirements of £75·44 resulted in an excess figure of £0·16. On this basis they are not entitled to help with prescription charges and are deemed able to meet the first £0·48 of any other NHS charges…I am sorry that this reply may be disappointing for Mr. and Mrs. Garnett but I hope you feel the explanation helpful."
  It is more than disappointing when people are trying to survive on incomes which are below half or even a third of the average wage.
  In another case, Mrs. Whiteley has an income of £49·31. Her needs are £46·10. She is not eligible for income support and the extra £2·50 that she received last October makes no real difference to her income.
  Mr. and Mrs. Stanley wrote to me to say:
  928
  "We are not destitute, but over the last 12 months the cost of living has risen so much. Every week the cost of different items, especially food, it is frightening to think of what is to come and new clothes are a non-entity.
  The future looks very grim, I dread to think what next year will bring, what with the poll tax and increases are expected on electricity etc…My Wife and myself know how things are worsening from the fact that the small luxuries that we used to enjoy, such as a visit to the theatre and an occasional evening meal, to celebrate a birthday or anniversary are now a thing of the past."
  They are hardly living on the average income or even half the average income, yet they are being denied some of the things that we take for granted as ways of participating in society.
  Today I received a letter from someone who was worried about residential nursing homes. I ask the Minister to consider this issue. I tabled a parliamentary
  question asking why personal expense allowances, in particular the pocket money part of the board and lodging allowance, are being reduced to top up fees paid to private residential establishments. That pocket money is being absorbed. I hope that the Minister will suggest that that money will not be absorbed and that people will not have their pocket money withdrawn to cover increasing costs. Although the order suggests that there will be an increase of £10 a week, it will not match increases in inflation or needs. There will be a shortfall in the provision for the true cost of care. Many people will have to pay a huge shortfall out of their own pocket. The shortfall should not come from the personal expenses allowance.
  I do not have time to speak about the knock-on effects on rents. The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) said that he had noted that only one Labour Back-Bench Member had been called so far. May I assure him that there is plenty of scope to talk about housing benefit.
  At the turn of the century, Seeborne Rowntree, in his study of York, identified one of the primary causes of poverty as the fact that people have to spend almost a third of their income on housing costs—either on rents or to purchase their home. I should like the Government to tell us what market rent levels should be, because it is the policy of the Department of the Environment to push up rents to market levels which will absorb more than a third of people's incomes and effectively price them out of their housing.
  I hope never again to hear Conservative Members make comments such as those which the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) made on 24 January. He suggested:
  "The long term homeless have turned their back on society."
  He continued with a little slip:
  "Young offenders should be the responsibility of their parents, not of this Government. The Government have done quite enough for the homeless. I hope that they will spend no more money on them."—[Official Report, 24 January 1990; Vol. 165, c. 879.]
  I invite the Minister to repudiate that remark, and to dissociate himself and the Government from those ill-informed remarks. Not least, the Minister should not associate himself with the suggestion that anyone who is homeless is also a young offender. That criminalises the victims of homelessness and blames them for their plight.
  In an intervention, I mentioned child benefit. I hope that the Minister will accept that raising means-tested

  929
  benefits is not adequate compensation for failing to maintain a non-means tested benefit which could cut through the poverty trap.
  The Secretary of State has shifted from using the word "targeting" to "focusing". I suggest that the Government have bifocal vision. They see through one lens the larger image of tax cuts and those who do well. Then they look through the other lens and see a smaller image where they are reducing benefits. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) said, it is clear that money is being taken from the poor and redistributed to the rich. In booming Britain, it is not enough to tell us about average wages. It may be that those who are at the top are doing well, but those at the bottom are paying the price because their incomes are going down. It is possible for that to happen even when the average is rising.
  We have a new Secretary of State for Social Security and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Already the new Chancellor is rejecting the policies and direction of his predecessor. I hope that the Secretary of State for Social Security will say, "Now that we have a new Chancellor of the Exchequer with new policies, why should we accept the uprating statements of his predecessor?" I urge him to take that statement back to the Chancellor and ask him to look at it again to see whether the Treasury could be more generous to those in need rather than insisting that the House divide on it tonight. If we have to divide on it, I urge hon. Members to vote against it.
  6.29 pm
  Mr. Edward Leigh: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) for allowing me three or four minutes in which to speak at the end of this interesting debate.
  I have always thought that there is something rather artificial about these debates, and to listen to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), one would think that when looking at the Treasury Bench, one was looking at Scrooge before his conversion. That image sits unkindly on the shoulders of my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister for Social Security, and does not accord with the facts.
  I do not want to repeat what has already been said, but we have a social security budget of £55 billion, and in 1992–93 it is forecast that it will be 4 per cent. above inflation, running up to £63 billion. Therefore, the argument that we may have to address is not that the Government have been less than generous, but that we must now establish where we are going. That is why I wanted two or three minutes in the debate to put down one or two markers.
  The Government have won the argument against economic collectivism. Indeed, that argument is being won right across Europe and not only in this country, but we have not yet won the argument on social collectivism, and we must now address that problem in time for the general election. After all, we have a Government who are courageous enough to address the difficult subject of the reform of the National Health Service—I applaud what the Government are doing—and I believe that we have a Government who will be courageous enough also to address the problem of a social collectivist society.
  That is a difficult problem to address, and nowhere is it more difficult than in the conundrum of child benefit. On the one hand, we have a universal benefit, which is
  930
  universally taken up, does not add to the poverty trap, and which we should all like to keep; on the other hand, it is given to all members of society regardless of wealth.
  In addressing that problem, perhaps we should think in terms of combining the two structures of taxation and benefits. I hesitate to say this to my distinguished colleagues on the Treasury Bench, but perhaps the Department of Social Security should become part of the Treasury.
  When I talk of the two systems being combined, I am not talking of a tax-credit system or of a system of minimum income guarantees. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) argued in The Times earlier this week, perhaps we could use a combined taxation and social security system to try to encourage people to invest not only in bricks and mortar, but in social security provision, pension care, health and education. It is an exciting prospect and one to which the Government must look if we are to solve the problem of how we can cope politically with a social security budget that is now running at £1 billion a week.
  Finally—I know that this is a courageous remark, but it must be made—I am not questioning that we have a commitment to provide all those who are now of working age with a state pension that will keep pace with prices, but we must remember that the state pension now accounts for £28 billion out of the total budget. Perhaps we should use the taxation and benefit system to give people more incentives and to encourage future generations to provide for their own future.
  If we are to be honest with people, we cannot continue to tell young people that the state can provide for them. I stress that I am not talking about people in middle age or those coming up to old age, and I am certainly not talking about old-age pensioners. Perhaps we should have the courage now to encourage young people, through the taxation and social security systems, to invest in their own future.
  As a society, it is easy to be generous with other people's money. However, those societies that are most collectivist are often the most barren in personal generosity. The taxation and social security system must encourage personal generosity. We must escape from our dependency society, which creates two nations. If we had the courage to address those problems, I believe that we could make considerable progress and seek to end the ratchet effect of an increasingly collectivist society.
  6.33 pm
  Mr. Paul Flynn: It is a pleasure to reply to this informative and worthwhile debate, in which we have heard creative ideas and constructive arguments from hon. Members of all parties. I deal first with the final points of the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), who seems to have swallowed the myth of Government generosity as a result of the £55 billion figure. Although that figure is impressive in itself, it represents only 9.7 per cent. of our gross domestic product, whereas as recently as three years ago the social security budget accounted for 11·5 per cent. Therefore, with an aging population and growing demands for more expensive medicines, we are spending less on such services as a proportion of our national wealth.
  The hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) and for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) made useful contributions

  931
  about the great difficulty of making comparisons with our fellow members of the European Community. Although they are real, there is no question about the selectivity of the figures quoted by the hon. Member for Taunton, which did not help the argument. The European Commission has made a serious attempt to make objective and valid comparisons. It took as its standard the amount paid to each new pensioner who had worked for an average wage in manufacturing industry and it compared the figures for each country in two ways.
  First, the cash amounts were converted into European currency units by using a standard rate of exchange called the purchasing power standard, which takes full account of the cost of living in each country. The pension was thus related to what it would buy locally. The United Kingdom came badly out of that comparison because, on that basis, the British pension is £55, which is barely half the £104 paid in Luxembourg and the £101 paid in the Netherlands. In that comparison, Britain was beaten into bottom place only by Ireland.
  The second comparison involved calculating the pension as an average of manufacturing earnings in each country after taking account of tax. The figure of 100 was used as the base for the ratios. On that basis, the best countries in Europe paid 90 per cent. of average earnings, while Britain came bottom, along with Ireland, paying 46 per cent. I do not ask the Government to accept those figures, although they were produced independently by the European Commission which does not have an axe to grind. However, I have used parliamentary questions to ask the Government to carry out the same calculations themselves.
  Sadly, the reply has been that the figures cannot be given except at disproportionate cost. That is an unfair answer. If they want to make a comparison, the Government should match the figures from the European Community. The truth is understood by our pensioners—not only by the ones who have been on holiday to Greece—that, especially in relation to West Germany and to France, they have fallen behind their European counterparts in many ways.
  If we want proof of the way in which the Government present their figures, we need only to consider the thoughtful speech of the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), who, like his hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle, referred to the European tradition and to how we should set an example to the newly democratised countries in Europe. I hope that those right hon. and hon. Members saw a telling programme a few weeks ago on Channel 4 in which a Conservative Member was rash enough to explain how to write a manifesto to aspirant Members of Parliament from Hungary and Poland.
  I shall not identify that hon. Member because I am a kindly person, but he said, "In the Conservative manifesto of 1987 we made a promise about child benefit, saying that it would be paid as now and direct to the mother. Of course, when we come up against a problem, we can look back to the manifesto and if we want to pay the benefit, we can pay it, but if we do not want to pay it—if we want to freeze it—we can freeze it, because the sentence was ambiguous." There is the truth of the Government's duplicity in this matter.
  932
  The minor calamity of the national insurance scheme has hardly been mentioned in the debate. The scheme has been plundered and pillaged by the Government during the past 10 years. They have jacked up the contributions from 6·5 per cent. to 9 per cent. and have held down the benefits. The Government have had a particularly bad year this year. I can remember the Minister of State describing the buoyant state of the national insurance scheme last year. He said that we were heading for a surplus of more than £2 billion on the year—and, indeed, the Government achieved that.
  On that basis, we as a Parliament decided for the first time since 1911 to withdraw the Treasury supplement. It was significant that in 1911 Lloyd George sold the idea by saying, "You'll get 9d. for 4d." The Government contribution has been more or less the same for a long time. Even in 1979 it was paid at the rate of 18 per cent. If it were still at the same level, the Government contribution to the national insurance scheme would be £5·3 billion. That would go directly to pensions. When hon. Members ask where the money comes from, let them remember that figure.
  What has happened this year? We were promised that there would be a surplus on the scheme of £519 million. A few weeks ago, we were told that there is a deficit of over £900 million, an error of £1·5 billion. The Treasury supplement has gone, but the deficit is also caused by the large take-up of personal pensions. Nearly 4 million people have taken up the bribe offered by the Government on personal pension schemes and their contributions have been denied to the national insurance scheme.
  Therefore, the genuine rises that pensioners should have had have turned up in the profit sheets of insurance companies. It was no coincidence that, on the very day it was announced that the national insurance scheme had lost £1 billion, the Prudential announced a 26 per cent. increase in business, including 250,000 new personal pension schemes. So we are targeting the scheme to give to the richest pensioners of the day after tomorrow by robbing the poorest pensioners of today.
  The Secretary of State gift-wrapped the changes to be made in the statutory sick pay scheme. It was an interesting performance. He said that he was criticised by someone—a sketch writer, I presume—for not being jovial enough at the Dispatch Box. I was once unkind enough to accuse the Minister of State, when his jovial mask had slipped, of wearing the guilty look of a vulture that had stolen the wrong eyeball—a description borrowed from America. I think that that is a suitable demeanour for Ministers who are carrying out the wretched task of dismantling the welfare state and spreading misery.
  What is behind the extraordinary decision on the statutory sick pay scheme? The Secretary of State mentioned that it had been considered by the Social Security Advisory Committee. Indeed it was, and the committee disagreed with it. The Government announced their decision in October but did not put the details out for consideration until late in December, just about Christmas. Opinions were received from 13 prestigious groups and individuals. The view was unanimous: they all said that it was wrong. However, we are going back to the old eastern European strategy. There is not so much a consensus as a Ceausensus, as Mr. Ceausescu would have understood it. The Government ignored all the opinion that came in and have gone ahead with their scheme.

  933
  The Secretary of State mentioned several times the increase in benefit. It is an increase of 25p for a small group. At the other end there is a cut of £3·55. One point is very important. The Minister made light of the fact that it is a cut of between £70 million and £80 million, but there will be a severe cut for 2 to 3 per cent. of workers, the disabled, who will find it difficult to get employment because their employers will have to pay the full cost. There will be a great additional burden for people in that position. It makes a mockery of the Government's claims about helping the disabled.
  Behind the changes in statutory sick pay introduced by the Government is another part of the strategy of reducing the panoply of the welfare state. One wonders why the Government go on in this way. My great fear is that the myriad of small cuts here and there—little deceptions in the Health Service and elsewhere—mean that we are going down precisely the same road as they did in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The British Government are adopting the same philosophy as America. As all who have visited America know, there are 3 million casualties of the collapsed welfare state. There are 3 million walking wounded, many with histories of mental illness, living on the streets—the homeless, the shunned, the despised, the tent people.
  We have a social fund that is not delivering. Terrible cases are brought up week after week—a boy who was told that he could not have a loan because he could eat in soup kitchens; a pregnant mother who was told that she could not have a loan for a bed two days before her baby was due because she could sleep on the floor; a disabled husband and wife who were told that they did not need a grant for a cooker because they could go out to eat. That is the reality of Britain today. Anyone who walks the streets of London sees a growing army of despised and homeless. Bush has called America's homeless America's shame. What is being created now will become known as Thatcher's shame.
  6.45 pm
  The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Nicholas Scott): As the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) ended with an American analogy, I am inclined to refer to his speech by using the words of a former mayor of New York who said of an opponent's speech that however it was sliced, it was still baloney. The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and for Newport, West portrayed the present state of the social security system in a totally distorted and perverse manner.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) entered robustly into the lists. The ratchet that he described was a phrase invented, I think, by my noble Friend Lord Joseph. I think that the ratchet has been moving rapidly in the opposite direction for the past 10 years. We are not moving toward the collectivist society that Lord Joseph envisaged when he invented that concept.
  Before dealing with the detailed points raised in the debate, I want to correct some of the apparent misunderstandings on the Opposition Front and Back Benches about the Government's record on social security. It is easy for Opposition Members to forget that, since 1979, spending on benefits has risen by 36 per cent. Spending on the elderly is up by 24 per cent. ; spending on
  934
  the long-term sick and disabled—a group in which I take a particular interest—has almost doubled; spending on working families with children is double the spending through its predecessor, family income supplement.
  Ms. Clare Short: That is not true.
  Mr. Scott: It is true beyond peradventure. I cross swords with the hon. Lady in Committee twice a week. If she wants to intervene, she may, although she will understand that I have only 13 minutes left in which to reply to the debate.
  Ms. Short: I shall be brief. This is a crucial question in the conflict between the two sides of the House. The question is how we share the economic growth that we have, year in, year out. The Government have not allowed the poor, the sick and the elderly to share in the economic growth. There has been marginal growth, but they have got worse and worse off.
  Mr. Scott: What is true, and cannot be denied, is that at all levels people have benefited and have had improved standards under the Government. I do not resile for one moment from the fact that there has been more inequality. I believe that the competitive society, which includes extra rewards for those who do well, is the engine that enables us to provide the resources for the poorest. For Opposition Members, at least some of whom were members of a Government who failed manifestly to have sufficient economic resources to provide for the poor, to criticise us for a growth in inequality while we are still managing to provide resources to look after the poor, the sick and the elderly, is beyond the pale, as we used to say across the water—as the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Forsythe) will remember. We are certainly not seeking to starve the social security system of resources. The hon. Member for Leeds, West had some fun with the change of phrase from targeting to focusing. We are trying to make sure that the help available in the social security system goes to those who are in real need.
  I should like to deal with a couple of points made by the hon. Member for Newport, West. It is not really the incentive that has created the problem within the national insurance fund—there were two other matters: the ordinary rebate was introduced for all contracted-out schemes some time ago and this was combined with the reduction in national insurance contributions, a move widely welcomed on both sides of the House when it was introduced.
  Nor is it any good looking at European pension provision and trying to compare it with ours in the way that the hon. Member for Newport, West did.
  Mr. Flynn rose—
  Mr. Scott: I am sorry, but I now have only 10 minutes.
  We are concerned about total pensioner incomes. It is all very well to draw on some theoretical position in which people might find themselves in Germany or France if they had paid enough contributions, if their earnings had been at certain levels, and so on. It is the total income of pensioners that we are concerned with—and very few countries in the Community keep any data at all about the total income of their pensioners. The hon. Member for Oldham, West said recently that he would be the first to admit that it was difficult to make comparisons with

  935
  Europe, not only on pensions but on other aspects of social welfare, and that any comparison must be significantly qualified.
  It would be a help in discussing these matters to get away from European comparisons. It is clear to me that it is the total income and standard of living of retired people that matters to them rather than the level of the basic state pension. We have seen a tremendous growth in occupational coverage and in the income from savings of retired people, which have contributed substantially to their prosperity.
  The hon. Member for Newport, West also went on to claim that the changes that we had made in statutory sick ply would somehow damage the prospects of the disabled and those with poor health records. All those allegations were made when statutory sick pay was introduced. None of them has turned out to be true, and I do not for one moment believe that the changes that we have made now will have that result.
  I refer now to the hon. Member for Oldham, West. It is a debating point—I freely confess it to him before I make it—but he said that we had never had debates on the distribution of wealth and so on at the right time. We had an Opposition Supply day last week, when we had the chance of a proper debate. I do not know which part of the Opposition was responsible for managing to waste most of the day on discussions about identity cards for football supporters rather than—[Interruption.] We know what was going on among the Opposition——
  Mr. Meacher: It is a bit rich for the Minister of State to try to make a political point about debates on the distribution of income and wealth. When we had an opportunity last week, what did the Government do? They spent 50 minutes on a footling statement on hill farming when there was nothing of any significance to debate—[Interruption.]—and then took 20 minutes on points of order to prevent my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) from introducing a ten-minute Bill.
  Mr. Scott: I detect a certain amount of agitation among hon. Members who have hill farmers in their constituencies, about the very proper contributions made on that issue. It was up to the Opposition business managers to decide how the remaining time was distributed, and they preferred to spend it debating identity cards rather than poverty, the subject that they had chosen for their earlier debate.
  It is quite untrue that fewer resources are going into social security now than 10 years ago when we came to office, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West said. In 1978–79 social security took 9·5 per cent. of the gross domestic product; in the current financial year it is taking 10·2 per cent. of gross domestic product. As a percentage of public expenditure, which in many ways is a better guide to the priority given by successive Governments to social security over other matters, it has risen from 25 per cent. in 1978–79 to over 30 per cent. at present. It is therefore wrong to portray this as a reduction in the priority that we give to social security.
  On inclusive rents, referred to by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, I hope that landlords will take account of the introduction of the community charge and the abolition of rates and reduce their rents. But it would be
  936
  living in cloud cuckoo land to imagine that one could legislate to force the rents down in such a complicated area of housing, where there are inclusive rents and where many contracts entered into are not even signed but are simply verbal agreements to pay a particular rent. Many housing experts have agreed that that would be totally unworkable.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West might like to try it, but he would end up reducing the resources available for rent assistance to claimants on social security or housing benefit. That would be the inevitable outcome of the hon. Gentleman's attempts to trample into this area with his boots on. Our interest is in making sure that those claimants are able still to pay the rents to which they are committed not to damage the claimants at all. That has been our first priority.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West went on to say that we have somehow broken our promise over the compensation for community charge. That is absolutely wrong, and the figures that the hon. Gentleman gave are totally wrong. Income-related benefits were adjusted at the last uprating in April 1989 to include help towards the 20 per cent. contribution that income support beneficiaries will have to make. The amounts included £1·15 a week for single people of 18 to 24, £1·30 for single people of 25 and over and £2·30 for couples, and the amounts will be uprated from April as part of the overall benefit levels. The amounts included in benefit levels will be more than adequate to meet the average 20 per cent. contribution, if local authorities are able to keep their expenditure within appropriate levels—one of the main reasons for introducing the community charge in the first place.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West made great play of what he called the joker in the disability package—that is to say, that we would be stopping entitlement to increases in additional pension for purposes of invalidity benefit once the Social Security Bill had gone through. That is a sensible measure, for more than one reason. It will improve the balance of benefits between those who are in and out of work in the longer term. I believe that we were right in our disability package to try to shift the balance so that those who are disabled early in life or from birth have a more equitable provision of benefit compared with those who have enjoyed a whole working life and have been able to build up savings, contributory benefits and occupational pensions as a result.
  Ms. Short: The Minister has taken from the elderly disabled to give to the young disabled.
  Mr. Scott: I do not agree: I think that the balance is right. In the longer term, the savings which may accure from this measure might give my successors—I suppose I have to say—greater room for manoeuvre in negotiating improvements and in increasing benefits in the future. The hon. Member for Oldham, West, however, could not bring himself to admit that, even with the change that we propose in the legislation, the cost of additional pension will rise from £450 million now to over £1·3 billion by the turn of the century.
  I have been unable to address several points made in the debate but I undertake, as I usually do, to read the debate in the Official Report—although I have listened to almost all of it—and to take careful account of all the contributions made. I simply add that Opposition Members ought to be more realistic in their attitude. It is all too easy for them to come up with recipes and

  937
  prescriptions for spending more money; the fact is that when in government they were never able to produce the necessary resources.
  From the low base that we inherited when we took office in 1979, this country's economic performance has been transformed and an increasing share of the resources, both of public expenditure and of gross domestic product, have been spent on those who need it most. It is a record of which we can be proud and which would never have been achieved by the Opposition.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating) Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  Resolved,
  That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.—[Mr. Newton.]

  TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Statutory Sick Pay (Rate of Payment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.—[Mr. Newton.]
  The House divided: Ayes 285, Noes 222.

  Division No. 68]

  [7 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Carrington, Matthew

  Alexander, Richard

  Chapman, Sydney

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Allason, Rupert

  Colvin, Michael

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Amess, David

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Amos, Alan

  Cormack, Patrick

  Arbuthnot, James

  Couchman, James

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Cran, James

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Critchley, Julian

  Ashby, David

  Curry, David

  Atkins, Robert

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

  Atkinson, David

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Day, Stephen

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Devlin, Tim

  Baldry, Tony

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Batiste, Spencer

  Durant, Tony

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Dykes, Hugh

  Bellingham, Henry

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Bendall, Vivian

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Benyon, W.

  Evennett, David

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Body, Sir Richard

  Favell, Tony

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Boswell, Tim

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Bottomley, Peter

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Fishburn, John Dudley

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Fookes, Dame Janet

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Forman, Nigel

  Bowis, John

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Forth, Eric

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Franks, Cecil

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Freeman, Roger

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  French, Douglas

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

  Fry, Peter

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Gale, Roger

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Gardiner, George

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Gill, Christopher

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

  Burt, Alistair

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Butcher, John

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Butler, Chris

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Butterfill, John

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Gorst, John

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Allen, Graham

  Dalyell, Tarn

  Alton, David

  Darling, Alistair

  Anderson, Donald

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Armstrong, Hilary

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

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Dewar, Donald

  Ashton, Joe

  Dixon, Don

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Dobson, Frank

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Doran, Frank

  Barron, Kevin

  Douglas, Dick

  Battle, John

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Beckett, Margaret

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Beggs, Roy

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Beith, A. J.

  Eastham, Ken

  Bell, Stuart

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Fatchett, Derek

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

  Faulds, Andrew

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Fearn, Ronald

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Blair, Tony

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

  Blunkett, David

  Fisher, Mark

  Boateng, Paul

  Flannery, Martin

  Boyes, Roland

  Flynn, Paul

  Bradley, Keith

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Foster, Derek

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Fraser, John

  Buchan, Norman

  Fyfe, Maria

  Buckley, George J.

  Galloway, George

  Caborn, Richard

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Callaghan, Jim

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  George, Bruce

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Canavan, Dennis

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Gordon, Mildred

  Cartwright, John

  Gould, Bryan

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Graham, Thomas

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Clay, Bob

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Clelland, David

  Grocott, Bruce

  Cohen, Harry

  Hardy, Peter

  Coleman, Donald

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Corbett, Robin

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Cousins, Jim

  Henderson, Doug

  Cox, Tom

  Hinchliffe, David

  Crowther, Stan

  Hoey, Ms Kate (Vauxhall)

  Cryer, Bob

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Cummings, John

  Home Robertson, John

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Hood, Jimmy

  Gow, Ian

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Greenway, Harry (Eating N)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Gregory, Conal

  Mills, lain

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Grist, Ian

  Mitchell, Sir David

  Ground, Patrick

  Moate, Roger

  Grylls, Michael

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Hague, William

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Mudd, David

  Hannam,John

  Neale, Gerrard

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

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Harris, David

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Hayes, Jerry

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Hayward, Robert

  Norris, Steve

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Page, Richard

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Paice, James

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Hill, James

  Patnick, Irvine

  Hind, Kenneth

  Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Holt, Richard

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Pawsey, James

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

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Portillo, Michael

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Price, Sir David

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Redwood, John

  Hunter, Andrew

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Irvine, Michael

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Irving, Sir Charles

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Jack, Michael

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Janman, Tim

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Jessel, Toby

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Rost, Peter

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Rowe, Andrew

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Ryder, Richard

  Key, Robert

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Knapman, Roger

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Knowles, Michael

  Shelton, Sir William

  Knox, David

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Latham, Michael

  Shersby, Michael

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Sims, Roger

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Lilley, Peter

  Speller, Tony

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Squire, Robin

  Lord, Michael

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Luce, Rt Hon Richard

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Steen, Anthony

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Stem, Michael

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Stevens, Lewis

  Maclean, David

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Stewart, Rt Hon Ian (Herts N)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Madel, David

  Sumberg, David

  Malins, Humfrey

  Summerson, Hugo

  Maples, John

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Marland, Paul

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Thorne, Neil

  Warren, Kenneth

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Watts, John

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Wells, Bowen

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Wheeler, Sir John

  Tracey, Richard

  Whitney, Ray

  Tredinnick, David

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Trippier, David

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Trotter, Neville

  Wilkinson, John

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Wilshire, David

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Wolfson, Mark

  Viggers, Peter

  Woodcock, Dr. Mike

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Yeo, Tim

  Walden, George

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Walker, Bill (Vside North)

  Waller, Gary

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Mr. Michael Fallon and

  Ward, John

  Mr. John M. Taylor.

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Patchett, Terry

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Pendry, Tom

  Howells, Geraint

  Pike, Peter L.

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Hoyle, Doug

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Randall, Stuart

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Redmond, Martin

  Illsley, Eric

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Ingram, Adam

  Richardson, Jo

  Janner, Greville

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Johnston, Sir Russell

  Rooker, Jeff

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Kilfedder, James

  Ross, William (Londonderry E)

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Rowlands, Ted

  Lambie, David

  Ruddock, Joan

  Lamond, James

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Sheerman, Barry

  Leighton, Ron

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Lewis, Terry

  Short, Clare

  Litherland, Robert

  Sillars, Jim

  Livingstone, Ken

  Skinner, Dennis

  Livsey, Richard

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Snape, Peter

  Loyden, Eddie

  Soley, Clive

  McAllion, John

  Spearing, Nigel

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  McCartney, Ian

  Steinberg, Gerry

  McFall, John

  Stott, Roger

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Strang, Gavin

  McKelvey, William

  Straw, Jack

  McLeish, Henry

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  McWilliam, John

  Taylor, Rt Hon J. D. (S'ford)

  Madden, Max

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Maginnis, Ken

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Turner, Dennis

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Vaz, Keith

  Martlew, Eric

  Wall, Pat

  Maxton, John

  Wallace, James

  Meacher, Michael

  Walley, Joan

  Meale, Alan

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Michael, Alun

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Wilson, Brian

  Morley, Elliot

  Winnick, David

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Worthington, Tony

  Mullin, Chris

  Wray, Jimmy

  Murphy, Paul

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Nellist, Dave

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Tellers for the Noes:

  O'Brien, William

  Mr. Frank Haynes, and

  O'Neill, Martin

  Mr. Martyn Jones.

  Parry, Robert

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  It being after Seven o 'clock, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order [5 February], to put forthwith the Question on the motion relating to pensions.
  Resolved,
  That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.—[Mr. Newton.]

  Social Security
  7.14 pm
  The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Nicholas Scott): I beg to move,
  That the draft Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Regular Employment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): It will be for the convenience of the House to debate this motion together with the following motions:
  That the draft Social Security (Recoupment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 25th January, be approved.
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1989 (S.I., 1989, No. 2340), dated 12th December 1989, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th December, be annulled.
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Amendment Regulations 1989 (S.I., 1989, No. 2388), dated 19th December 1989, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th December, be annulled.
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Regulations 1990 (S.I., 1990, No. 73), dated 22nd January 1990, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23rd January, be annulled.
  Mr. Scott: The House has before it two affirmative instruments—the draft Social Security (Recoupment) Regulations 1990 and the draft Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Regular Employment) Regulations 1990. There are also three negative instruments: the Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Regulations 1990, the Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Amendment Regulations 1989 and the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1989.
  I shall deal first with the recoupment regulations. These stem from section 22 and schedule 4 of the Social Security Act 1989. That sets out the scheme by which the compensation paid for personal injury or disease will be reduced by an amount equivalent to benefit paid in respect of the same injury or disease. It will apply to compensation payments made from 3 September this year for injuries or diseases which occur on or after 1 January this year. The recovery scheme will replace the present offsetting rules which have grown up over the past 40 years and which I think were regarded by most commentators as ripe for reform.
  Broadly speaking, at present either one half or the whole of benefits paid over five years, or longer in some cases, is deducted from the compensation payment and used to reduce the compensator's liability to compensate the injured person. Therefore, in effect state benefits have been subsidising compensation liability.
  The new legislation is based on two fundamental principles—that compensation should not be subsidised in this way but that compensators should meet their full liability and, secondly, that the injured person should not receive more from two sources than he could have received from one. The scheme provides that the compensation payment will be reduced by payment of any of the benefits listed in regulation 2 of the draft regulations which have been paid for the same injury or disease. The deduction
  942
  will be in respect only of what has been paid up to the date when the compensation claim is finally settled or five years if that is earlier.
  Some 80 per cent. of claims are settled within two and a half years and we expect that the majority of injured people will see no difference whatever or may get more than under the existing rules. The difference will be that the amount formerly retained by the compensator, usually an insurance company, will in future be repaid to the Department. I emphasise that we are not taking away benefit entitlement any more than the current offsetting provisions do. It is the compensation payment that is reduced in either case.
  The regulations are affirmative because of the list of benefits and the lower limit of compensation above which recovery will apply. Some hon. Members may remember our discussions last year in Committee, when I set out what the relevant benefits would be. They are listed in regulation 2. They are broadly the same range of benefits to which offsetting currently applies, and are those which the victim of an injury or disease may claim in respect of incapacity, disability or inability to work.
  I shall now deal with the small payment limit in regulation 3. The level of £2,500 was announced on 21 December in reply to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd). The limit results from a recommendation to us by Touche Ross that in 1987 about 36 per cent. of settlements were at £1,500 or below, and represented about £2 million-worth of benefits. We accepted then that it would make sense to exclude small payments to avoid the paperwork with which insurers and ourselves would have to deal for a relatively modest amount of benefit revenue.
  We provided that these small payments would continue to be subject to the existing system, which is 50 per cent. offsetting over five years. That serves a dual purpose. It ensures that injured people are treated in roughly the same way as they are now with some reduction in compensation, and provides some relief to insurance companies in the additional costs that they incur as a result of the new scheme in general. The £2,500 figure is a 60 per cent. increase on the original £1,500 and we estimate that it will obviate the need to deal with about 37 per cent. of all settlements. At the same time, insurers will retain about £2 million to offset their costs.
  The other regulations are largely administrative details which have been worked out by officials in consultation with the private sector, whose co-operation we greatly appreciated. We have tried to place the minimum burden on them, to take their advice very carefully, and to take account of the procedures that are used already in the insurance industry.
  I turn now to the draft Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Regular Employment) Regulations 1990. The House will recall that last October the Government removed the pensioners' earnings rule. I think that that step was widely welcomed. As a result of that decision, these regulations, which I commend to the House as wholly beneficial, help to clarify the likely entitlement to reduced earnings allowance of people who either are approaching or are over pensionable age. Reduced earnings allowance is payable when earnings are lost as a result of an industrial accident or disease, and since April 1989, when a person reaches pensionable age and retires from regular employment, reduced earnings allowance is

  943
  replaced by retirement allowance. That is payable at 25 per cent. of the rate of the reduced earnings allowance paid at the date of retirement.
  Since October 1989, when the abolition of the pensioners' earnings rule took place, those who continue to work past normal pensionable age, and indeed those who previously retired and then decided to return to regular employment, have been able to retain or regain REA. However, regulations are needed to define "regular employment" for the purposes of these entitlements. I believe that the regulations themselves prescribe quite generously the condition of being in regular employment.
  Basically, when pension age is imminent, or when someone has retired and decides to return to regular employment and wishes to claim reduced earnings allowance, the adjudication officer will have to be satisfied that the person works, on average, 10 hours a week over a five-week period in order to qualify. Anybody getting reduced earnings allowance while incapable of work, or while unemployed as a result of industrial injury, will be treated as being in regular employment. These regulations are wholly beneficial, and I commend them to the House.
  I want to turn now to the instruments that are subject to negative resolution. Regulation 13 of the Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Regulations 1990 has been around for some time. I see at least one Opposition Member poised on the edge of his seat as I come to this matter. Originally the regulations were to have been laid at the end of October, but, following representations from some Opposition Members, I withdrew them temporarily to give time for further consideration and, in practice, to provide time for the possible revocation of the regulations to be publicised.
  A very large number of applications under this regulation have been received by the Department in the intervening period. I hope that, whatever complaints hon. Members may have about the ultimate revocation, they will recognise that I acted in a way that was helpful, both in practice and in theory.
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: I am obliged to the Minister for showing his usual courtesy in giving way.
  May I ask him to confirm that any letter concerning a backdated claim for disablement benefit, no matter how rudimentary, will be accepted by officers of the Department of Social Services up to closure of the Department's offices on Monday next? Can he confirm that people living in areas remote from DSS offices will also have their letters of application for such benefits considered if those letters are posted before the evening of next Monday?
  Mr. Scott: I can agree with the hon. Gentleman's first proposition. I shall ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, who will reply to the debate, to clarify whether the latter proposition can be acceded to. The hon. Gentleman will no doubt accept that in this area, I have tried to be as helpful as possible. Perhaps I should clear up one possible misapprehension. It is not true that from the relevant date there will be no further applications
  944
  under regulation 13. I think that the hon. Gentleman understands that, but it has been suggested that, somehow, the whole operation is being revoked.
  The position is simply that any applications received after that date will be treated under the new rules that were introduced in 1986, rather than under the previous rules. Broadly, those cases where it is judged that less than 14 per cent. disability arises from the injury or disease will not be allowed, whereas those in which it is judged that the disability is over 14 per cent. will be allowed. I think that that reflects the intention that help should be concentrated on those who need it.
  As I have indicated, regulation 13 was introduced on 1 October 1986 as a transitional measure to help people who suffered an industrial accident or the onset of a prescribed industrial disease before 1 October, but did not claim disablement benefit until after that date. The intention was quite clear: that those people incapable, by physical or mental disability, to make their claims before 1 October 1986 should be safeguarded. But a tribunal of commissioners widened the scope of the intention by asserting that "incapable" could encompass justifiable ignorance that a claim to disablement benefit could be made. But since that commissioners' decision became known—and I suspended the earlier amending regulation at the end of October—a very substantial number of claims have been made.
  Mr. Eddie Loyden: Does the Minister recognise that, in Merseyside alone, about 5,000 applications were made during the period of the relaxation? Does he agree that 14 per cent., which is the cut-off point, represents a very high proportion of disability, not only in this field but generally? Will he take that into account when he is considering the whole question of the cut-off point for industrial benefit?
  Mr. Scott: I cannot give an undertaking to reconsider the 14 per cent. cut-off point. This was a sensible rationalisation of the system introduced in 1986, and, four years later, it would take an awful lot to persuade me to reconsider it. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make any representations we shall take account of them, but I do not think that I could consider going in the opposite direction. Of course, the decision was made before I became a Minister in this Department, but I have considered it carefully in the context of my discussions with hon. Members who came to see me, and I certainly do not think that there is a case for resiling from it. It is now about three years since the transitional regulation came into force, and it is about time we revoked it.
  I want to turn now to the Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Amendment Regulations 1989. The main purpose of the regulations, which I hope will be welcomed, is to enable elderly people who are receiving income support to qualify for cold weather payments whilst retaining up to £1,000 of their savings. The capital limit is increased from £500, with effect from 1 January 1990. This is the increase in the amount of capital to be disregarded that was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 25 October. It will apply to help from the rest of the social fund for the elderly, except crisis loans, from April this year.
  These regulations apply to the cold weather payments and are operable from 1 January. This set of regulations will enable more elderly people to obtain help with the

  945
  extra cost of heating their homes at times of very cold weather. In addition, the regulations put it beyond doubt that a partner's capital is to be treated as the claimant's, as is the practice throughout the social fund, as well as in respect of income support. There are minor amendments to the description of areas linked to certain weather stations necessitated by the closure of Oakhampton station, and to rectify defects that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments identified in the original set of regulations.
  I am slightly surprised that Opposition Members should be seeking to have the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1989 annulled. These regulations are wholly beneficial. It may be that hon. Members, simply want the opportunity to have a canter round the course, rather than that they seriously want the regulations to be annulled.
  Before outlining the impovement, and the reason for it, I should like to remind the House of the transitional protection arrangements. I think that all hon. Members are well aware of the fact that we reformed all the income-related benefits—income support, family credit, and housing benefit—in April 1988. Also, of course, community charge rebates have been introduced since then. Our aim, in reforming the system, is to provide so far as possible, a sound common basis for all the benefits affected.
  To do this, we had to get rid of the complexities of the old supplementary benefit schemes, such as additional requirements, which had grown up piecemeal since the end of the second world war, and the introduction of national assistance, as it was called then, in 1948. That was no easy task. We achieved our aim through a modern system of personal allowances and premiums, which has targeted help more effectively on those in greatest need. Inevitably, with such a major change in approach, some people fared better than others. Therefore, we introduced transitional protection to ensure that such claimants did not suffer a drop in the cash that they had coming into their households.
  Our declared intention was to provide a temporary cushion at the point of change, which deflates as claimants' new entitlement catches up with the old one, or their circumstances change. All this was spelt out in the White Paper on the reform of social security as long ago as 1985. Nevertheless, we have made some special exceptions to the general rule for the most vulnerable. For example, we recognised the exceptional needs of severely disabled people in two ways. First, we provided special transitional protection for those who had to pay high charges for domestic assistance. This special protection has been, and is being, increased in line with inflation each year. Secondly, we ensured that increases in benefit arising from spells in certain types of respite care do not reduce protection either.
  The amendment regulations before the House further demonstrates our willingness to respond to difficult situations. By these regulations, we shall be helping families with children in the care of the local authority. Hon. Members will be aware that such children very often return home for weekend leave or their holidays, and we should all want to encourage this continued link with family life.
  Mr. Patrick Thompson: Will my right hon. Friend spell out—if he cannot do so now, perhaps my
  946
  hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will do it later—the significance of the eight week period in the amendment regulations and what would happen to a family if a child returned from care and then remained at home and would no longer qualify for this relief?
  Mr. Scott: The object of these amendments is not to affect what would happen if a child returned to the family home for a long period and then had to be taken back into care. It is to take account of a child going home for a weekend or being taken away for a holiday, which is still the proper subject of the transitional protection arrangements. I want to ensure that it is possible for children to go back to their own homes or to go on holiday for short periods, but not to undermine the fundamental principles. I accept that at the moment such families could lose transitional protection, which is unfair and could discourage families from having children on home leave. In these regulations, we have taken steps, which I hope that the House will applaud, to remove that disincentive.
  7.33 pm
  Ms. Clare Short: We are discussing a batch of social security regulations that are part of the Government's ever continuing programme to redistribute income from those with least to those with more. I have quoted the figures to the House before, but I intend to continue to do so until every hon. Member and, I hope, many more people outside understand what the Government have been doing. I hope also to correct the false impression given by the Minister for Social Security in his winding-up speech in the previous debate.
  John Hills has written a book called "Changing Tax: How the Tax System Works and How to Change it" in which he looks at the system over the past 10 years. If we take the old tax and benefit system and see where it would be if everything had been uprated in line with economic growth and compare it with what we have now, we find that those in the bottom 60 per cent. of the income distribution have lost, while those in the top 30 per cent., especially in the top 10 per cent., have gained. The losses to those in the bottom 50 per cent. average out at nearly £8·50 per family. Anyone in that category who feels hard up should be made aware that it is because the Government have taken £8·50 from him.
  On the other hand, the top 10 per cent. have gained nearly £40 per family. Overall, those in the bottom half of the population have lost £6·6 billion, of which £5·6 billion has gone to those in the top 10 per cent. Indeed, £4·8 billion has gone to those in the top 5 per cent. That is the reality, and it is important to keep pointing out that reality so that we do not have speeches from those on the Government Benches who pretend to care, who pretend to be concerned about the groups in our society who find it difficult to make ends meet, and who pretend that social conditions are not much more unequal than they have been for a long time.
  The Minister admitted as much a moment ago. He said that he thought that greater inequality meant greater economic growth. It is funny that the Government are boasting about economic growth when the economy is in such serious difficulties, with high inflation and a dreadful balance of payments, and when we are heading into a recession, as everybody understands. What the Minister was saying was that homeless young people on the streets

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  and pensioners who have managed for years but now find it difficult, produce economic growth. That is morally unacceptable and economically untrue.
  Mr. Michael Jack: I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady's line of argument. Is not the greatest scourge to all social security benefits the robber baron—inflation? Will she comment about the effects of inflation during the last Labour Government on the value of a whole range of benefits?
  Ms. Short: It is interesting that Tory Members want to draw attention to inflation. The incompetence of the previous Chancellor—now happily gone and being paid far too much elsewhere—led to a big growth in inflation. Compared with the average in Europe, ours is a poor performance. We have to compare the performance of the last Labour Government with the OECD average for inflation, when inflation was high across the world because of the effects of American spending in the Vietnam war.
  Inflation is a serious problem, which erodes the value of benefits if they are not updated. It is serious because the Government have used it to erode the value of the income of many people. It is an example of the Government's failure in economic policy and the failure of their policy of using inequality to create economic growth. Instead of producing economic growth, it has produced more and more inequality.
  This weekend I was approached in my advice bureau by two 17-year-old girls, both of whom were working and both of whom were homeless. I have not had that experience before, but I am having difficulty in helping them because the Government's benefit changes have resulted in the closure of many hostels that used to provide for such people. I was also approached by two young mothers—competent and able women—who cannot manage to buy enough food for their children and heat their hard-to-heat houses.
  I was approached by a number of pensioners who told membercontribution—I have had this experience time and again—"I can't understand it, Clare. I've managed for years and now I can't manage. Surely there is something wrong with my benefits as I don't seem to be able to pay all my bills and find the money I need." That is the result of the Government deliberately cutting the value of the state pension and making poorer those who are dependent on that state pension.
  We are continuing that process tonight in this the 15th richest country. It is unforgivable and uncivilised that so many people are having such a struggle every week to live decently. The regulations are more bad news for those who are sick or cold or have been injured at work. They are part of the continuing erosion of civilised standards.
  I shall deal with the instruments in the order that they are set out on the Order Paper. The first needs little debate and is not contentious. As I understand it, the Government are correcting the law to reflect current practice, as there is a loophole in the law, to allow somebody between the ages of 60 and 65 in regular employment to retain reduced earnings allowance. We support that, but we should note that the Government have recently announced that they are to abolish reduced
  948
  earnings allowance for all new claimants, so although there is a tiny bit of generosity here, they are planning a big dollop of cuts in incomes a little later.
  The draft Social Security (Recoupment) Regulations 1990 are designed to implement the provisions of the Social Security Act 1989 to take back from anyone who has received compensation for an accident or injury at work up to 100 per cent. of that compensation. Since 1948, the Government have had power to take back up to 50 per cent. of such compensation.
  Mr. Scott: That is not true. They can take back 50 per cent. of some benefits but up to 100 per cent. of others. A patchwork arrangement has been built up over the years. We are seeking to have a common rule.
  Ms. Short: I think the Minister misguides the House when he suggests that the Government are not increasing the proportion of compensation that they can take back. What they propose is a contentious move, and those who served in Committee on the 1989 Act recall that the Government were honest enough to make it clear that everyone they had consulted about the change was opposed to it.
  The consequence of the change is that there will be further delays for victims of accidents and industrial injuries receiving compensation. Money will be clawed back from compensation given for things other than loss of income—for pain, hurt and suffering—in lieu of benefits paid by the state to make up for loss of income. The regulations implement that unfair and unpopular move. The Government are cutting benefit payments at the expense of those who have suffered serious accidents or injuries at work.
  Mr. Scott: It is not true to say that what is proposed will damage the interests of those who have been compensated. What we are doing at the moment is, in effect, allowing insurance companies to reduce the amount of money that they pay to claimants because of the benefits that they are being paid. We are anxious to make sure that the claimant will not suffer and that those who accept the contract for insurance should pay the full amount of money and not shift some of that burden on to the state. That is the principle behind it.
  Ms. Short: My understanding is different from that of the Minister's and I shall be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman will tell me if I am wrong. He and I served on the Committee which considered the relevent measure. The Government are taking power to take back money—to make up for income paid out in state benefit by way of basic family income credit, unemployment benefit, income support or whatever the case might be—from compensation paid, even if part of the compensation is given not for loss of income but for pain, hurt or suffering. We, and most people, believe that it is wrong for the Government to take power to do that, and that is one of the major reasons why we are objecting to the regulations.
  The Minister is right to say that we do not object to the Income Support (Transitional) Amdt. No. 2 Regulations 1989. We accept that it is a good idea that families who have had children taken into care should have those children back to stay. I agree with the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) that it is sad that they

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  can have them for only up to eight weeks and that, should they have them for longer than that, they will lose their transitional protection.
  It is shocking that special exemption must be made in such a case. The whole provision for transitional protection mislead the public and hid the vicious cuts that were introduced under the last re-organisation of social security benefits. The truth is that the Government could not bear the idea of individuals suddenly seeing a massive cut in their benefits. They knew that such awareness would be deeply unpopular and would make people angry.
  So while they said that nobody would lose in cash, they knew that, with the passage of time, inflation would erode the value of the transitional protection and that people would become poorer. That is happening and that is why many pensioners are hurting, for with the passage of time the value of the transitional protection has diminished, their incomes are lower and they are finding it difficult to manage.
  Mr. Patrick Thompson: The hon. Lady has failed to explain why the Opposition are seeking to annul the regulations which will benefit families by up to £10 a week.
  Ms. Short: Had the hon. Gentleman been listening to the Minister, he would have heard the answer to that question. The right hon. Gentleman said that he thought it unlikely that we would oppose the regulations, but appreciated that we wished to discuss the question of transitional arrangements and to criticise the fact that such provision was necessary. I am doing that now, and the hon. Gentleman will note later the way in which we vote on this issue. The regulations themselves are not objectionable, but the need for them reveals an objectionable feature in the way in which the Government made provision for transitional protection, when they were cutting benefits.
  The Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Amendment Regulations 1989 slightly modify a wholly unacceptable scheme of providing help to people on very low incomes in times of extremely cold weather. The Minister explained that they allowed for a capital limit of £1,000 instead of £500. In the past, some poor pensioners who had saved more than £500 for their funerals could not apply for help, to the tune of £5 a week, when it was severely cold in their areas.
  We need to set the proposed improvement in the context of what has been happening in help for heating costs to people on low incomes. The organisation Neighbourhood Energy Action has a fine record of work in this sphere. It points out that the figure of £5 a week has remained at the same level since its introduction at the end of 1986. So inflation has been eroding the value of that payment to those who are poor and who need extra help because the weather is severely cold.
  Neighbourhood Energy Action also points out that the system of payment is wrong. It claims that the payment should be made automatically to all income support claimants, which would obviate the need for people to make individual claims and would avoid money being wasted on advertising campaigns and so on. It would mean that women such as the two who came to my advice bureau, who live in bad housing that is hard to heat, would receive some help, whereas at present they receive none.
  Before April 1988, supplementary benefit claimants received more than £400 million a year by way of
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  additional payments for heating. That was in addition to severe weather payments. That £400 million was supposedly absorbed into income support premiums. That meant that help that had been directed at specific problems—cold homes, expensive heating systems and so on—was lost.
  The result is that many people living in badly built and poorly insulated homes are having to spend on heating money that was meant for their children's food. The alternative for them is to allow their children to be cold. The cold weather payments system is an outrage and must be changed. The minor change that we have before us is, of course, acceptable, but it is not good enough, and that is the basis of our case.
  The Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Regulations 1990 represent a further cut in benefit for people injured at work. It comes on top of the previous cut to which I referred. In 1986, the Government abolished compensation for those whose injuries had a less than 14 per cent. disability determination and who previously received a lump sum. It had also been provided that, if one failed to claim before the cut-off date—before the benefit was abolished—because one was misled by the DSS or was ignorant of one's rights, one could claim.
  In December 1986, Mr. Kenneth Potts successfully claimed under that provision. He was awarded compensation for contracting vibration white finger disease, which was recognised only in 1985 as an industrial disease. He had left his job in the shipyard in 1980 having no knowledge, of course, of the availability of the benefit.
  The Government were furious. They appealed to the Tribunal of Commissions in August 1989, and lost. Now we witness the Government's respect for the rule of law. The law went against them, so now they are changing the law so that others in Mr. Potts' position will not benefit in future. We should also note that those with an injury causing more than 14 per cent. disability who had the capacity to receive a reduced earnings allowance will lose that entitlement under the current social security legislation.
  Mr. Jack Thompson: Is my hon. Friend aware that we in the mining industry have a dual problem? Not only are we losing benefits, but there is an increase in the rate of serious injuries caused by new production methods and a reduction in manpower.
  Ms. Short: I appreciate the point that my hon. Friend makes A cynical package has recently been announced that is meant to give the impression of increasing benefits for people with disabilities. Announcements about such matters are made by the Government every few days in the hope of proving that what is, in fact, a paltry package is a big improvement for people with disabilities. It has partly been paid for by cuts in benefits. People injured at work who in the past could claim reduced earnings allowance will in future lose that right in order that other deserving people with disabilities, who of course need help, can receive something. It is not right that one group of disabled people should pay for the benefits of other groups of disabled people.
  The package represents another series of sordid little cuts and unfair provisions from a Government that is busy still, at this late stage and even given their current level of popularity, to redistribute money from those with less to

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  those with more. That is making our country more unfair and more unequal. The Labour party opposes that—and so do the British people, who are showing more and more their deep concern at Britain becoming an increasingly divided, unequal, unfair, and economically inefficient society. We look forward to the return of a Labour Government and to values of fairness and reasonableness, to protect people who are old, sick or cold in the decent way that the British people would like to see them protected.
  7.50 pm
  Sir George Young: I was amazed by the speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), who described the measures before the House as "another series of sordid little cuts" that was part of some package of promoting inequality. She tried to link the orders to a broader debate about the redistribution of wealth. However, having listened to the measures being described by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and having examined them myself, I find that they contain some relatively minor but useful social reforms. Many of them will help claimants, some are neutral, and one of them does reduce benefits but in a way that was trailed four years ago, when transitional provisions were introduced. To link the measures before the House tonight with some so-called grandiose and sinister package is incredible.
  I believe that the hon. Member for Ladywood misunderstood the recoupment provisions. My right hon. Friend clearly said that he is not taking away any benefit entitlement. Instead of the insurance company pocketing the recoupment, it will be returned to the taxpayer, which is neutral so far as the beneficiary is concerned. I do not comprehend how any responsible right hon. or hon. Member could object to that change.
  Ms. Short: I was listening, and I served on the Committee on the Social Security Bill 1986 that introduced the powers being implemented by regulations. There is no dispute between us that claimants should not be paid twice, and that if they have received a state payment for loss of income, the insurance payment for loss of income should balance it out. However, the Government are taking the power to claw back money that is paid as compensation for pain, injury and hurt, to make up for the payment of unemployment benefit, family credit or income support. We believe that that is wrong.
  Sir George Young: We can all read Hansard tomorrow, but my understanding of my right hon. Friend's remarks is that he is not taking away benefit entitlement any more than the existing offset provisions do. The compensation payment is reduced in each case. My right hon. Friend went on to explain that the money pocketed by insurance companies will be returned to the taxpayer. I see nothing objectionable in that arrangement, which is neutral so far as the claimant is concerned.
  The hon. Member for Ladywood did not mention the 60 per cent. increase in the small payments limit—a useful reform that might have found a place in her speech. As to cold weather payments, she did not mention the useful
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  increase from £500 to £1,000 in the capital disregard, which I hope signals more general examination by the Government of the whole question of capital cut-offs.
  The removal of any disincentive to a child returning home for the summer holidays is also to be welcomed. However, in the light of the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson), it will be helpful if my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security will explain, when she winds up, what would be the financial implications for child benefit entitlement, for example, if a child remained at home. One could then think through the consequences if what was originally planed as an eight-week visit transpired to be the prelude to the child returning home permanently.
  All right hon. and hon. Members must surely accept that, unless transitional arrangements are eventually brought to an end, there can never be a move to the new structure. We all remember the debates of two years ago when the new scheme was introduced, when argument centred not so much on structure but on the level of benefits and the transitional arrangements. If one argues against transitional arrangements being phased out, the logical consequence is that the new structure will never be introduced.
  I happen to believe that the new structure is better and fairer. Transitional arrangements must be truly transitional, and those right hon. and hon. Members who supported their introduction did so in the acceptance that, as benefits moved up, those of people enjoying transitional protection would stand still until they in turn benefited from general upratings.
  I find no difficulty in supporting the package, but I find it impossible to relate the measures before the House to the rather emotional speech by the hon. Member for Ladywood.
  7.55 pm
  Mr. Bob Clay: In speaking mainly on the revocation of regulation 13, I want to make it clear that in no way do I make light of the other squalid and appalling cuts that the regulations impose, but that I have a particular constituency interest in regulation 13.
  It is generally acknowledged that most of the people who will be disadvantaged by the revocation of regulation 13 are those suffering from vibration white finger. I trust that Conservative Members in particular do not imagine that vibration white finger is some sort of minor technical disability. Even in its early stages, it can cause numbness, leading to a considerable loss of facility and of ability to work in particular trades. It can lead also to the end of participation in a number of social or cultural activities. A darts player, for example, may no longer be able to throw darts, and a pianist will be unable to play. I shall not go through all the condition's ghastly stages, but eventually it can cause, through gangrene, the loss of the use of the hand, or something worse.
  Very often, the level of disability exceeds 14 per cent. When the Minister says that the new arrangement will deny people whose disability is determined at less than 14 per cent. the right to a payment, in fact he is talking about well over 90 per cent. of people suffering from vibration white finger.
  The Secretary of State referred to the decision of the commissioner in respect of my constituent, Kenneth Potts, which he said widened the law. That is an interesting

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  concept. The law is the law. Initially, it was not the commissioner but the social security appeal tribunal that found in favour of Mr. Potts, and it did not widen the law but merely interpreted it. Its decision was upheld by the commissioner, who also interpreted the law. It is wrong for the Government to regard that decision as a widening of the law and now to put a stop to that benefit, simply because many more people would be entitled to claim it.
  It is worth considering why the commissioner concluded that Mr. Potts—and, now, many thousands of others—have good cause to make late claims. It has been established that vibration white finger did not become a classified industrial disease until 1985. Not a great deal of time elapsed between then and 1 October 1986, when the Social Security Act 1986 took effect.
  This case illuminates two wider aspects of Government policy. First, if one decimates every industry—shipyards, coal mining, heavy engineering—which cause this disease, the people who worked in them are scattered to the winds. There was a community of information in which shop stewards, health and safety representatives and others could go around and say, "By the way, Ken, that vibration white finger that you already claimed for, or maybe you were told not to bother because it was not a prescribed industrial disease, is now a prescribed industrial disease." But the ability to do that in the workplace is limited if the workplace has gone or been significantly reduced.
  Some of the people displaced from the workplace because of redundancies or closures have taken the advice of the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) and got on their bike. They are now working somewhere else, where they do not have mates who will say, "By the way. did you know that vibration white finger is now a prescribed industrial disease?" There is very good reason, as the commissioner found, for them not to have heard the good news that they could now claim
  Secondly, there is the Government's attitude towards trade unions. People affected by the disease are most likely to find out that the law has changed through their trade union. I do not think that we would expect to find the Government publishing notices in the press, warning all trade union members that if they do not regularly attend trade union branch meetings, they might miss out on information to their benefit. But that is precisely what has happened in this case.
  Members of the GMB, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, or the National Union of Mineworkers, who were regularly in contact with and active in their trade unions found out that they could now claim for vibration white finger. Workers who had been scattered by the four winds, had become apathetic or had found it difficult to keep in touch with the trade union, particularly while they were unemployed, did not find out. The Government, who are so hostile to trade unions, are taking advantage of the fact that it is more and more difficult for trade unions to carry out the job of communication. But if the information had been communicated more effectively, with Government assistance, it might not have meant that so many people had good cause, as the commissioner found, to make a late claim. That is the position now—we have a large number of late claims.
  In one social security office in my constituency—Dunn house—in early January there were already 1,500 requests
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  to review old cases and 2,000 new claims. That number will have increased significantly by tonight, and will no doubt continue to increase until a week on Monday.
  The Government cannot have it both ways. If they find that there are an alarmingly large number of claims, surely they have to accept that that means that a significant number of people had good reason for not claiming and, in justice, since it is therefore a widespread and serious problem, they should not revoke the regulation and they should allow more late claims. If the claims are coming in by the thousand now, they will not all be dealt with by the cut-off point; indeed, they will not all have been made by that date.
  If the Government take the view that most people who have good cause to claim will now have done so, and only a handful of peculiar cases are left, why do they revoke the regulation? Surely there is no problem. If they are expecting only a handful more claims after a week on Monday, they could leave the regulation and allow all the time in the world for the few remaining claims to come in. After all, this case is a closed universe, because those who started suffering from vibration white finger since 1986 are in a different position. In this instance we are talking only about people who developed the disease before 1 October 1986, and that is a limited number. The Government ought to accept that.
  It comes down to this—I think that this is an illustration of what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) said earlier. What is the point of the regulations and what is the point of the social security system? Is it to provide justice for people who are genuinely entitled to it, or is it to provide an obstacle race, in which the best-informed, the cleverest and the most persistent finally get over the obstacles and win? If the Government deny that it is the latter, and say that the purpose of the system is to provide justice for those entitled to it, the fact that there are now thousands of claimants with this disability ought to lead the Government to say that they will not put another obstacle in their way, as they have already suffered enough.
  Many of the late claimants have suffered because they have been made redundant, and they have had to change their place of work and move their home. They have suffered many times over, and now they suffer the final insult of an unnecessary cut-off date.
  I repeat that the Government cannot have it both ways. Justice means that all those who have vibration white finger, or any other disease that became a prescribed industrial disease at a later date, ought to be able to claim, provided that they can show good cause, in line with the commissioner's decision.
  If the Government are trying to limit claims because of the amount of money, why do they revoke the regulation now, when it will not cost very much and they might as well leave things as they are?
  I genuinely cannot make my mind up why the Government are doing this. I attended a meeting with the Minister last October with some of my hon. Friends. We were told that this policy had nothing to do with the commissioner's decision in the Potts case. It was only a temporary regulation to allow fairly late claims after 1 October. The Government had meant to revoke the regulation earlier, but they had somehow overlooked it, and now they were tidying up. I think that the Minister may have said that if it was causing a lot of problems, they would reconsider and give people a few months more.

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  That is one interpretation of what happened, but it did not have anything to do with the commissioner's decision. However, what the Minister said tonight implied that it had something to do with the commissioner's decision, because it widened the law. I have already disputed that. The Minister said in a rather horrified manner that it had produced thousands of claimants, and had cost a lot of money, and the implication was that the Government would revoke the regulation for that reason. The Minister should tell us which interpretation is correct. Whichever it is, it is unsatisfactory.
  If the Government are admitting to stopping claims because many people are claiming, it is a complete contradiction of what the social security system should be about. On the other hand, if it is genuinely a tidying-up measure that they were going to take anyway, they should recognise that thousands of people have been caught out by the change, and they should allow more time for those people to claim, since there are a limited number of people left who can claim.
  Whatever the explanation, the Government should say that this change is stupid, unnecessary, cruel and vindictive, and they should not revoke regulation 13.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. It seems that the debate is over-subscribed, but with some self-restraint all round, all hon. Members may be able to speak.
  8.8 pm
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell: Before dealing specifically with the two affirmative instruments and the three negative instruments which we are debating, I shall make a few general comments on the Government's record on social security uprating and on their priorities in this important matter. But before I do that, I shall comment on the speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), for whom I have a great respect, not least because she once attended the House at 4.30 in the morning when I was moving an important Adjournment debate on Nottinghamshire. She took part in that debate.
  The hon. Lady describes our record as one of squalid cuts. I and other Conservative Members cannot recognise that description. It is simply not true. I do not want to bandy statistics with the hon. Lady because, as she will agree, that is not sensible. However, this year we are spending £1 billion a week on social security, there has been a 36 per cent. real increase in the past 10 years and cash benefits for long-term sick and disabled people have doubled in real terms since 1979.
  I am quite content to agree with the hon. Lady that there is still an awful lot more to be done about these matters, but she should at least give credit where it is due and agree that the Government have prioritised some of these issues and done a great deal to help.
  Ms. Short: One reason for the increase in spending is that unemployment is still higher than it was when the Government came to power. Secondly, we have more of an elderly population than we used to have. The hon. Gentleman should also know that the Government have been in power 10 years and that roughly every 20 years the
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  income available in Britain doubles. The income of people in the same position as the hon. Gentleman will have increased significantly because of the general economic growth we have experienced every year since the second world war, if not before. Those in greatest need—the old, the sick and so on—are becoming relatively worse and worse off and are not sharing in the benefits of general economic growth. To say that there has been some growth in spending does not answer my fundamental point.
  Mr. Mitchell: I do not accept the hon. Lady's last point, although I have some sympathy with her first two. The Government's record on this matter is good. The hon. Lady should pay credit where it is due and acknowledge that in those important matters, the Government have prioritised expenditure. I do not wish to make a particularly party political point, but the Government's record is a great deal better than that which the last Labour Government achieved. I entirely accept that they had aspirations, but they were not able to deliver the economic goods to meet them.
  Two of the Government's most important priorities should be to tackle the problem facing the disabled and give aid and support to those coping with long-term sickness. The hon. Lady mentioned child benefit. That is not an easy issue to deal with, but we should at least accept that it would have been ludicrous to increase child benefit last year. To do so would have helped people like me with young families who are not prime candidates for it. It would not have helped those who most need it. The extra help that we have been able to give this year means that 1·5 million families and 3 million children, who would not have gained from an increase in child benefit, have benefited. It is important to recognise that.
  The hon. Lady also mentioned pensions. Perhaps we could do more for pensioners. I believe that we could. The Government have honoured their electoral pledge. There are five new measures that will benefit pensioners from this April. For example, 200,000 elderly and disabled people living in residential care and nursing homes will benefit from an increase of £10 in their weekly benefit limit. That is important.
  Last year, I and many of my hon. Friends argued strongly that the poorer pensioners' package should be brought forward. That proposal has been implemented and will do a lot to help those people who are least well off. The hon. Lady should welcome that and I regret that she did not do so in her speech.
  Much is changing in the pension world. By the time that I retire there will be a different picture for pensioners from that which now exists. It will then be much easier to help those who are least well off and those who fall through the net.
  The hon. Lady hinted at a comparison between British pensions and those paid overseas; to do so is beguiling, but wrong. The only countries with a universal state pension are the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark. Only the United Kingdom provides separate pensions for wives who have not worked. The Labour party omit the part which occupational pension schemes play in British pensioners' total income when they produce the figures. Above all means-tested benefits in this country for elderly people are among the best in Europe.
  About a year ago an interesting comment was made by the president of Pensioners' Voice, Mrs. Dorothy Rhodes——
  Mr. Paul Flynn rose—
  Mr. Mitchell: I shall just finish my point.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) has already made this point but it bears repetition. Mrs. Dorothy Rhodes said:
  "We have talked about percentages of pensions in Europe, and I have been one who has spoken loudly in support of parity with Europe, but during the past year I have been to Pensioners Congresses in Italy and Greece and, having spoken at length to those who actually receive the Euro pensions [sic] and discovered that in many cases the actual cash received in relation to the cost of living is often lower than in the UK, I am revising my opinion; for in no way can our Federation ask for an equality that would disadvantage our own people."
  If that lady is revising her opinion, just possibly the hon. Member for Ladywood might consider revising hers.
  Mr. Flynn: Opposition Members who have been here since 5 o'clock are getting vivid feelings of déjà vu. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) made not only the point but the hon. Gentleman's entire speech and to avoid my answering the speech again it might be useful if the hon. Gentleman returned to a speech of his own.
  Mr. Mitchell: All that demonstrates is that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton is a wise man who, like me, makes important points which the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) should bear in mind. When I read that quote—it is quite clear that the hon. Gentleman did not like it—I said that the point might have already been made by my hon. Friend, but was important enough to bear repeating.
  Mr. David Nicholson: The Opposition do not like it.
  Mr. Mitchell: As my hon. Friend says, the Labour party do not like it when we make the facts clear.
  I particularly welcome a number of changes in this year's social security upratings, some of which fall wider than the regulations, but are extremely important. I am particularly pleased that the disability premium for families with disabled children who are also on income-related benefit has been increased. That will give extra help to 20,000 families, which is extremely important.
  The carers' premium, which has been introduced into income support for those receiving invalid care allowance of £10 per week is also important and will help 30,000 carers. I am pleased that mobility allowance will be extended to deaf and blind people. That is worth £26·25 more per week to 3,000 people.
  Mr. Jimmy Dunnachie: The hon. Gentleman is in the wrong debate.
  Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman says that I am in the wrong debate, but these are important matters to do with this year's upratings.
  The overdue changes in attendance allowance are particularly welcome. More money will be made available to terminally ill people without the normal six-month waiting period. That will help 50,000 people by anything up to £37·55 a week and is extremely important.
  This year's measures, over and above the normal uprating, will reach 500,000 seriously ill disabled people and carers.
  Ms. Short: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not want to be unfair to the hon. Gentleman, but his speech is completely out of order. We are debating a number of regulations to which he is not referring. He appears to be discussing issues that were before the House before the vote at 7 o'clock.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I must confess that I find it difficult to follow where we are with so many different and complex regulations before us. I am sure that the whole House finds this difficulty, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make it clear to which of the regulations he is referring.
  Mr. Mitchell: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for reminding me of that. I am dealing with an overview of many of the regulations——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but although there is a temptation to have a general debate, the hon. Gentleman must relate his remarks to the specific regulations before the House.
  Mr. Mitchell: I am again grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  I shall turn to a number of specific aspects of the regulations the first of which is the Social Fund Cold Weather Payments (General) Amdt. Regulations 1989. The Government deserve credit for that for two reasons: first, for bringing forward the date to 1 January. It must have been tempting for social security Ministers to save it until later but they did not do so. Secondly, they deserve credit for doubling the capital limit to £1,000. That was much needed, and I am glad that it has been done. My hon. Friend the Minister might consider going further with this matter next year and I hope that she will listen to Help the Aged and to the local authorities to find out whether anything else could be done to improve the operation of the scheme.
  Secondly, it is right to reform the recoupment regulations. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) made a fair point when he said that it is wrong for state benefits to subsidise compensation that is paid out by insurance companies under valid insurance policies. We should act as guardians of the taxpayer and ensure that sums which are lost to the taxpayer are recouped. The insurance companies should pay out. Thirdly, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said that the private sector was consulted about the administrative details. That is long overdue and unusual. The business community often says that it is not consulted. I am glad that it was consulted on this occasion.
  Fourthly, I greatly welcome the help for families whose children are in care but who return home for the weekend and for holidays. I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, (Ms. Short) on this and I hope that the Minister will deal with the point. We must provide direct support for families united in this way. I am very pleased that additional funds will be provided through income support for children who return home for holidays and at the weekend.
  Finally, if a new system is introduced, which I believe will be both fairer and better than the old one, there must be transitional arrangements, but at some point they must be brought to an end, I welcome that aspect, too. I strongly support the Government tonight and I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to take part in the debate on these regulations.
  8.21 pm
  Mr. Eddie Loyden: I want to refer to regulation 13, which was so ably spoken to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay). We welcomed the extension of the transitional period. However, since then, it has become clear that vibration white finger is now found in industries where it was not previously considered a problem. We have to thank welfare rights officers for having drawn to our attention the fact that so many people suffer from the disease.
  All Governments have overlooked the fact that when people start work they will, in almost all cases, be putting their health, or even their life, at risk. Most workers are completely unaware of the dangers of working in certain industries. Mine workers suffer from pneumoconiosis and emphysema and building workers suffer from asbestosis, while workers in shipbuilding, ship repairing and other industries suffer accidents, and workers in the chemical and rubber industries suffer from carcinoma of the bladder. Workers suffer from many other diseases simply because they work in certain industries.
  The Government should allow them to claim benefit for industrial diseases. Workers have difficulty in establishing their right to benefit. It is difficult for them to prove that their disease was caused by their working environment. In its heyday, Merseyside employed 24,000 workers in the shipbuilding and ship repair industries, but that number has long since been cut. No doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) will confirm that there are only about 1,000 workers in those industries.
  Mr. Frank Field: About 2,500.
  Mr. Loyden: There is no comparison between that figure and the 24,000 workers who previously worked in the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries. Many of them are now out of contact with various organisations, in particular the trade unions, who could give them advice.
  The Government spent a large amount of money on television advertising when they decided to privatise certain industries. It is shameful, therefore, that the Department of Social Security has not spent money on television advertisements so that workers might know about their right to industrial and other benefits. It would be inappropriate to end the transitional period; many people still do not know about their right to benefit. The scheme ought to go further.
  Mr. Clay: Before my hon. Friend leaves the point about Government publicity, will he confirm that I am right in believing that in the case of vibration white finger, which became a prescribed industrial disease in 1985, the Government provided no publicity whatsoever about its having become a prescribed industrial disease? Despite that fact, they want to revoke legislation that would permit late claims, with good cause, to be made for industrial benefit.
  Mr. Loyden: That is a very important point. I hope that the Minister will take it on board.
  The magic figure of 14 per cent. excludes many people from benefit. I do not accuse the Minister of conspiring to set that figure, but civil servants have probably said that such a figure would preclude many thousands of people from claiming benefit. There is evidence that industrial disease and injury figures are set at a certain level in order to exclude genuine cases of industrial disease and injury
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  which can result in disability and even death. The Opposition are very concerned about that, as well as about industrial disease and accidents throughout industry. I emphasise the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North that the transitional period ought not to be revoked, so that people with a rightful claim can claim benefit.
  8.28 pm
  Mr. Lewis Stevens: The hon. Members for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) and for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay) offered reasonable points of view on why the Opposition wanted to debate these regulations. Difficulties always arise when people come forward to claim for industrial injuries, but the first decisions were taken in 1986 and there must be a cut-off at some point. It is not unreasonable to implement it now.
  The hon. Member for Garston said that these people had been given a considerable extension of time and were grateful for that—
  Mr. Loyden: I said "a brief period".
  Mr. Stevens: I apologise.
  The Government have been reasonable. It is true that, when people leave industries, their trade unions have more difficulty in tracing them and they have problems finding their unions again, but the vast majority of people have had a good chance to claim.
  The hon. Member for Sunderland, North asked whether social security was designed to give people their just entitlement or whether it was an obstacle around which only those who were clever and persistent enough could get. When we debated the Social Security Act 1986, it was clearly the Government's intention to simplify an extremely complex system which lent itself precisely to those who could work the system and thus come off better than those who went through the routine procedures only to end up in an unsatisfactory position. The new system is more simplified and easier to understand.
  Ms. Short: The new system has replaced a system that the hon. Gentleman describes as complex but which I would say provided for need. The new system is meaner.
  Mr. Stevens: That is exactly what I would expect the hon. Lady to say. Hers is the attitude that the Opposition displayed throughout the passage of the 1986 Act and ever since. Whenever the Government try to help specific groups of people, the Opposition say that they are wrong or not doing enough. When in government, the Opposition never even contemplated directly helping some of these groups, but they ignore that completely.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) started from the premise that we should have stuck to a link with pay. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) took the same line when working out what she called cuts. If the Opposition had been in government for the past 10 years, they would not have had the slightest chance of maintaining the link. They messed up the situation when in government. They needed economic growth to be able to put the money into the benefit system. As my hon. Friends have said, this Government can put £1 billion a week into the system, and have spent it on, for example, the disabled. The mobility allowance is now claimed by six times as many people as before, and that is a significant difference.

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  Whatever the Government do, the Opposition always say it is not enough, but they would not generate the economic growth to do as much themselves. They want to cut—
  Mr. Patrick Thompson: Surely my hon. Friend recalls that the last time the Opposition formed the Government they had to go to the International Monetary Fund for money, and they made cuts the like of which we have not seen since and hope never to see again.
  Mr. Stevens: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Earlier, the hon. Member for Ladywood said that the Government cut taxes, so the money did not go to the Exchequer. She should have attended some of our Treasury debates. We cut some of the high rates of tax, and that increased the money coming into the Treasury, which could then be spent on social security and so on.
  The Opposition are guilty of a strange contradiction over the recoupment regulations. As I understand it, the system did not disadvantage people who were recipients; the money was taken from the insurance companies. It is rare to find the Opposition supporting the insurance and financial sector, yet here they are, dedicated to saving insurance companies money.
  Ms. Short: It is not good enough to put false propositions before the House and to seek to mislead people in the country. We all agree that if people are compensated for loss of income with a state benefit the insurance money should be paid to the state. But the Government have wrongly taken power to take money paid to people not for the loss of income but for pain and suffering—to recoup state benefits.
  Mr. Stevens: That is what the hon. Lady said before, but it does not alter the fact that the insurance companies should pay. They receive the premiums from companies and from people.
  We welcome the raising of the capital ceiling for cold weather payments to £1,000. That is helpful. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson), who said that young people visiting home should have no detrimental effect on the support that their parents receive. I, too, ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to extend the eight-week period——
  Ms. Short: Good for you—very brave.
  Mr. Stevens: All the regulations are evidence that the changes that the Government have made to improve the social security system have generally been in favour of individuals and groups. I only wish that the Opposition would look more kindly on the upratings announced earlier; they were good news for people. The Opposition, however, take delight in trying to squash the good news and degrade what is being provided. That suggests that they do not care about the people who receive social security and are more interested in making political points at the expense of the Government. They may always say that they want more, but they should at least give credit to the Government for what they have done for those most in need.
  8.37 pm
  Mr. David Winnick: I want to put the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) right on one point. The Opposition are certainly interested in those who
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  receive or should be receiving social security. We are passionately interested in trying to improve their lot, and time and again, in letters or in our regular surgeries, we come up against constituents who come to us for help and who live on the barest minimum incomes. I ask the hon. Gentleman to bear that in mind. No doubt Conservative Members will earn their brownie points from the Whips Office for coming here and trying to justify and defend the Government's social security policy.
  I want to concentrate on the cold weather payments. As my hon. Friends will know, I have raised this matter in the House several times over the years. Pensioners on income support and those just above that level undoubtedly face immense difficulties in paying their fuel bills during the winter months. I remind the House of the increases in the price of gas and electricity. Between November 1979 and November 1989 the pensioners prices index rose by about 85 per cent. But gas went up by 127 per cent. in that time and electricity by 96 per cent. Moreover, fuel takes up a larger part of a pensioner's budget, as we all know.
  In some respects, the fact that temperatures this year have not triggered off the cold weather payments illustrates my argument. It could be argued that, rather like last year, we are witnessing an ordinary British winter with some storms thrown in. However, temperatures have not reached freezing, so cold weather payments have not been made. But imagine what this House would be like if there were no heating on now. I am sure that every hon. Member ensures that his or her home is heated. It is not freezing, but some form of heating is necessary wherever we are, be it at work in the House of Commons, or in our private homes.
  As a result of various comments that I have made in the local press, many of my constituents with small incomes, mainly pensioners but not entirely so, have complained to me bitterly about the rent that they pay. I raised the matter during social security questions on Monday when I gave as an illustration a constituent of mine with an income of £54 a week who, due to the substantial reduction in housing benefit, is paying £10 a week in rent. That is not due to the local authority; it is due purely to the Government's policy on substantially reducing housing benefit.
  Mr. Loyden: Disgraceful.
  Mr. Winnick: As my hon. Friend rightly says, to have an income of £54 a week and to pay £10 a week is disgraceful, but in addition to the cost of food and other daily essentials, money has to be found for fuel. Pensioners' fuel bills, after all, are like ours. There is no discount because they are pensioners. The Government may argue that the bills can be paid in weekly or monthly instalments—I accept that—but at the end of the day the same amount of money has to be paid and, as I have just said, during the past 10 years gas has gone up 127 per cent. and electricity 96 per cent. That is why the Opposition are deeply concerned about the poorest in our community, and certainly pensioners on the basic minimum, who clearly do not have sufficient income to heat their homes adequately.
  I accept, of course, that the increase in the capital threshold from £500 to £1,000 for cold weather payments is a step in the right direction. We would not for one moment argue otherwise. Common sense ensures that that is right. But many conditions have to be met before the cold weather payment is made. The average temperature

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  has to fall to freezing point for seven consecutive days before the £5 a week is paid. Moreover, the discretionary social fund does not meet the cost of fuel consumption. It is no good the poorest pensioners on income support going along to the DSS office because they do not have sufficient funds and asking for help with winter fuel payments. By regulation, no additional help would be given.
  Heating allowance ended when income support replaced supplementary benefit. Before the changes in April 1988, some £400 million a year was received in additional payments, quite apart from the cold weather payments. But that all ended when supplementary benefit went and income support came in. The Minister will argue, no doubt, that that sum of money has been duly absorbed in the income support premiums, but I doubt whether that is the case.
  Pensioners have less income because the pension is no longer increased in line with earnings. We have already given the figures. As a result of the decision by the Government in 1980, a married pensioner will have lost £21 a week in April and a single pensioner £13 a week. That simply means less money to pay for fuel during the winter months.
  Reference has been made in previous debates to the dangers of hypothermia and other cold-related diseases to the elderly in the winter months. Far more elderly people die during the winter months in Britain than in a number of other European countries. Undoubtedly, one reason must be the poverty that exists among so many of our elderly people for all the reasons that I have been explaining. We in Britian suffer from fuel poverty. Far too many of our elderly people simply do not have an income that is adequate to meet their fuel bills. Winter is a nightmare for so many of our elderly people.
  Our constituents have done nothing wrong. They have simply not earned enough money during their working lives. They do not have much by way of an occupational pension, if any, and if they do, if they are council tenants, it is taken into account in housing benefit. It is wrong that those people should be penalised every winter in the manner that I have been describing.
  Much more needs to be done. I would like £5 a week, which after all does not add up to much, to be paid during the winter months regardless of the temperature. Hon. Members should not forget that even if it is freezing, cold weather payments can be made only to those on income support. I have said it before and I do not care how many times I say it, and I shall go on doing so until the situation improves: we should be thoroughly ashamed that we allow our elderly people to suffer the poverty, discrimination and deprivation in the winter months that we do.
  Conservative Members have a responsibility to put the kind of pressure on their Government that Opposition Members would be doing if a Labour Government were not carrying out the kind of policies that we would wish to see. There is no doubt about that; we have done it before. We would be putting pressure on a Labour Government. However, Conservative Members have come along tonight and made nice complacent speeches. I only wish that they could be more concerned with the poor pensioners who have to suffer the hardship that Conservative Members, and we ourselves, do not have to suffer.
  8.47 pm
  Mr. Patrick Thompson: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in this important debate. I listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). In my constituency also there is concern about elderly people who suffer from cold. That is why I pay tribute to the Government. They were the first Government to introduce severe weather payments some years ago. The least that the hon. Gentleman could have done was pay tribute to them for that. We can look at the details of the scheme, but once again it is a Conservative Government who have taken action and who have moved forward on cold weather payments.
  I want to speak briefly on the Opposition's motion to annul the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1989 which were laid before the House just before Christmas. It is important to set the whole question of the transitional arrangement in income support against the background of the Government's achievement in income support.
  I was amazed that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), should challenge my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), who rightly pointed to the fact that spending on social security under the Government has risen by 36 per cent. in real terms since 1979. She also challenged the correct assertion of my hon. Friend that we are now spending £1 billion a week on social security benefits.
  Ms. Short: I did not challenge it.
  Mr. Thompson: I remember the hon. Lady's exact words. She failed to recognise that it is only because of the economic growth and success under this Government that we have been able to increase payments to those levels.
  Transitional arrangements protect people affected by the more efficient targeting of benefits. In my constituency in Norwich few people when they think about it challenge the Government's intention to target benefits where the need is greatest. That must be right, and it is one of the reasons why we are debating these regulations tonight. Total expenditure on income support will reach £7·7 billion this year.
  I express amazement that the Opposition, led by the Leader of the Opposition, wish to annul a measure which will benefit families in my contituency by as much as £10 a week or more. The Opposition Front-Bench team is ill advised to put out the message in my constituency and elsewhere that the Opposition want to annul a measure which will provide such benefits.
  The Government's record on support for the family is good. I shall use even more statistics to make my case, because they speak truths which cannot be refuted by Opposition Members. In 1990–91, the Government will spend almost £10 billion on the whole range of benefits for the family. That is an increase of 27 per cent. in real terms since 1979. In case the hon. Member for Ladywood and her colleagues have forgotten, it was their Government who cut such support by 7·3 per cent.
  I do not wish to stray too far from the regulations. The Government's record on family support leaves the record of previous Labour Governments completely in the shade. The facts speak for themselves. With a little help from the Library, the staff of which I commend—I shall speak later about the complexity of the social security regulations and

  965
  be a little more controversial—I have found out that a family on income support of £50 a week may have a transitional addition of some £10 a week, making a total income of £60 a week.
  We now come to the point of the transitional regulations. If the family have a child under the age of 11 in the care of a local authority who rejoins the household for a short period, the family's income support could be increased by some £11·75, leading to a total of £61·75. Under the unamended regulations, which would still apply if the Government had not taken the action that we are debating tonight, such a family in my constituency would receive only £1·75 extra to help with the child.
  It must be right to introduce these regulations to bring back transitional support. I have read the regulations and with the help of expert advice I have got it right. The family will benefit by some £10.
  I support the Government in laying the statutory instrument before the House. I repeat that I am amazed that the Opposition, led by the Leader of the Opposition, seek to annul such a measure. My constituents will find it difficult to understand the points that the hon. Lady made in defence of that position.
  My second point is rather different. I should like to quote from the written evidence submitted to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on this matter. I make no apology for reading it out in full:
  "Regulation 14(1) of the Transitional Regulations provides for the reduction of transitional additions. In particular regulations 14(1)(a) and 14(1)(d) provide for reduction in the additions by increases in the applicable amount. There is no provision in these Regulations for the increase or re-introduction of a transitional addition once it is reduced or lost."
  In case you are wondering why I am reading this out, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the reason will become clear in the next paragraph.
  "The unintended consequence of the interaction of the provisions of regulation 16 of the General Regulations and regulation 14 of the Transitional Regulations is a loss in benefit to families whose children are in the care of the local authority if such children subsequently come home on leave."
  I draw attention to the word "unintended". In the drafting of the regulations, it was not noticed that the effect would be a loss in benefit.
  My last substantive point is that we do not have a satisfactory system for drafting social security regulations which are comprehensible to those who work closely in the system, never mind to Back-Bench Members of Parliament trying to debate them. That is amply illustrated by the statutory instrument.
  My last quotation supports a campaign which I first initiated and supported in 1984, a campaign to get rid of gobbledegook in government and to move towards more comprehension, particularly of social security matters:
  "In regulation 14 of the Income Support (Transitional) Regulations 1987(b) (reduction and termination of transitional and personal expenses addition) after paragraph (1F) there shall be inserted the following paragraph—
  '(1G) Notwithstanding paragraph (1)(a) or (d), where a claimant's applicable amount increases because a child or young person mentioned in paragraph (5)(c) of regulation 16 of the General Regulations (circumstances in which a person is treated or not treated as a member of the household) is treated as a member of the claimant's household under paragraph (6) of that regulation, the claimant's transitional addition shall not be reduced by the amount of that increase unless the child or young person has been treated as a member of the household for a continuous period which exceeds eight weeks'.".
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  I support the Government in their intentions and their measures. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who ably supported the Government's record and their intentions.
  Eventually we must do something about the language of drafting. I know that it is said that it is required for legal purposes, but that is not good enough. Other countries can do things better. When a Member of Parliament has to spend three hours in the Library to begin to understand the simplest statutory instrument, something is wrong. Therefore, I hope that I shall have all-party support in saying that we must work to remove gobbledegook and to increase understanding of our regulations.
  8 pm
  Mrs. Audrey Wise: You will be pleased to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, not only that I intend to speak exactly to the terms of the debate and to the regulations, unlike most Conservative Members, but that I do not intend to waste a lot of time reading out the regulations from the papers in front of us.
  So far as Conservative Members have dealt with the regulations at all, they have paid fulsome compliments to the Government for, as they have put it, "helping" families with children, with disabled relatives or with children in care when they come home for the weekend, as if the Government were giving those families something.
  I shall quote just one line from the regulations, a sub-title that refers to
  "Amendment of regulation 14 of the Income Support (Transitional) Regulations 1987".
  That means that, since the regulations came into force all that time ago, families with children in care who have come home for the weekend have been penalised. Although it took the Government until 14 December 1989 to remove that penalty, Conservative Members compliment their Front Bench on that dilatory action. Obviously, their expectations of their Government are low.
  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay) on his able speech on vibration white finger. I shall not repeat his comments, but I will repeat his challenge. If the regulation will not affect many people because most people have already been able to claim their benefit, why waste the time of the House in bringing it forward, and why cut from benefit the very few people who might be left? However, if the regulation will affect a great many people and save the Government a lot of money, it is grossly unjust. The provisions will mean that people who have been injured through their work—often because of the carelessness of their employers, in my opinion—are to be deprived of benefit. My hon. Friend's challenge needs to be dealt with.
  We also face a clawback on some compensation payments. There was an interesting contradiction in what the Minister of State said. In his speech he said that claimants should not get more from two sources than they would have got from one. That makes it clear that claimants are being deprived of what he sees as an extra benefit. However, in an intervention, he told my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) that the provisions were directed not against claimants, but against insurance companies. The right hon. Gentleman should remember what he said in his speech when intervening only a few minutes later. I hope that that will be clarified.

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  My hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood pointed out that the state will claw back money that has been given in compensation for pain and suffering. The Minister of State did not deny that. The state, which has felt no pain or suffering, is taking from people who have felt such pain and suffering the money to which they are entitled. The right hon. Gentleman expects us to believe that the provision is simply to ensure that insurance companies do not make too much profit.
  I conclude by referring to the severe weather payments. As my hon. Friends have said, the statutory instrument is an improvement, but it is a meagre improvement. It would be foolish of us not to take the opportunity of this debate to show exactly how meagre it is. Eligibility for the benefit is still far too restrictive. Yes, the Government have brought the age limit down to 60 and have increased the capital threshold from £500 to £1,000. However, it is possible to be severely ill and still not qualify for the extra £5. A claimant must either be chronically sick and in receipt of a benefit or have been sick for at least 28 weeks. That means that a person can suffer a severe or dangerous illness and yet not meet the eligibility requirement for this meagre benefit. In addition, the Government have retained the £5 claim limit that has existed since 1986, thus allowing the benefit to wither.
  The Government have also retained the same silly way of measuring whether claims can be made. People who do not live near weather stations might suffer severe weather—and even meet the ridiculous stipulation about seven days at freezing point—but because they do not live near a weather station, their weather may not be recorded and they cannot claim.
  The Government have also retained the system whereby people have to make a claim. They need to know that the weather station has recorded seven consecutive days of "freezing point" weather and that they will therefore be eligible. How many people would know that? It is within the competence of the Department of Social Security to pay the benefit automatically. The Department is keen on talking about efficiency. This would be a way of demonstrating it.
  In all, we are justified in regarding such improvements as are contained in the regulations as completely inadequate and meagre, and the cuts as mean-spirited in the extreme.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If hon. Members follow the example of the hon. Lady and take no longer than seven minutes, the four hon. Members who have been waiting patiently for a long time will get in.
  9.5 pm
  Mr. Michael Jack: The speech by my neighbour, the hon. Member for Preston (Mrs. Wise), and other Opposition speeches highlight a problem for the Opposition in debating social security. They are long on advice but short on ideas as to how we might have a workable social security system, sufficiently resourced. That point was made amply by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell).
  One fact that seems not to have been made clear by Opposition Members is that the Social Security
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  (Recoupment) Regulations will add £55 million to the social security budget. We have heard a lot from the Opposition about how we will pay for the improvements which the various regulations bring into force. Here is £55 million, but there was not a word of praise from the Opposition for the Government's courage in producing the regulations.
  I am concerned about how the recoupment regulations will operate. I am worried about the complexity of the regulations which appear to take away something. The public may worry that their entitlement to a range of benefits listed in the regulations will be denied them. When people talk to me in my advice bureau about how the social security system works, they are worried about the principle that a person cannot be compensated twice for the same type of claim. I seek from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State reassurance that the Department will address the question of communication with potential claimants.
  I am also concerned about how insurance companies may react to the implementation of the regulations. I seek reassurance from my hon. Friend that insurance companies will not try to minimise compensation, particularly in out-of-court settlements, so as to reduce their liability to recompense the Department of Social Security. Obviously, insurance companies, whose requirement is to look after the interests of their clients, might be tempted down that road. It would be helpful if my hon. Friend could reassure the House that she will keep the operation of the regulations under close scrutiny to ensure that people are not disadvantaged by sharp practice.
  Something positive could result from the recoupment regulations in that insurance companies and those subject to compensation claims may recognise where their liability lies. For example, industrial injury claims may be made because of a company's inappropriate practices that could injure workers. The insurance company might say to that company, "We have had to stump up on a number of claims. Your claims record is costing us money. Put your house in order." That positive benefit might come out of the introduction of the regulations.
  I praise the Government for ensuring that the Macfarlane Trust, whose funding has been increased recently to deal with haemophiliacs, will not be subject to the recoupment provisions. That shows an appreciation of the problems of that group who are much in need of support.
  I also note that miners are singled out for——
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman rose——
  Mr. Jack: I am sorry, I am trying very hard to keep within the time limit.
  I see that miners are also a favoured group under the pneumoconiosis regulations. Did my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary give thought in drafting the regulations to the needs of nuclear workers who might be affected by industrial injury? I have some in my constituency who would be interested in her comments, either when replying to the debate or by letter afterwards.
  The regulations also indicate that the Department of Social Security must advise people of their liabilities to recoupment within four weeks of request for that information. Will my hon. Friend assure me that her

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  systems are capable of delivering that information as rapidly as it is required? Recoupment, therefore, has much to commend it.
  On the subject of cold weather payments, however, while I support the order—any improvement is better than none—when I checked with my local social security office I found that the last time this particular benefit was paid—I note from comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) that it was not available to people under the last Labour Government—the office had received about 3,000 applications, only 500 of which were granted. If my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary cannot at this juncture move as far as some kind of additional flat-rate payment during the cold winter months, could she look at ways, perhaps through the use of the order book, of helping people to understand who is entitled to this particular payment? I am sure that, being a cost-conscious Minister, she will understand that to process 3,000 requests and pay out on only 500 of them costs a lot of money.
  The problem of the aged and heat is one that voluntary organisations and local newspapers have tried to address. I put on record my praise of my local branch of Age Concern and the Blackpool Evening Gazette for what they have done this winter in trying to show elderly people how they can keep warm. Having visited many elderly people in my constituency, I was struck by one particular constituent who lives in a house with rather old-fashioned electric central heating. She was worried about being able to pay the bills and whether she should turn the heating on.
  I am aware of the efforts made by the gas and electricity boards to assist elderly people. If my hon. Friend cannot change the regulations, could she discuss with the power suppliers the possibility of providing advice, such as energy audits of elderly people's houses, so that they can make the best use of their money? After this order is in place, perhaps my hon. Friend could reconsider the whole question of reassuring elderly people, perhaps through financial means, that keeping warm must be their first priority.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who I am pleased to see in his place on the Front Bench, knows of the efforts in my constituency—he attended an excellent meeting two years ago—and knows of the worries expressed by elderly people on this score. The time must now be right to look at the whole question of heating for the elderly and how it can be made affordable.
  9.12 pm
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: I begin by asking the Secretary of State a question about cold weather payments. Will he ensure that they are paid promptly and that delays in payment are reduced to an absolute minimum? I want also to make a plea on behalf of my constituency that a more appropriate weather station be chosen for it. Many of my constituents in Greenock and Port Glasgow who live in poor housing are several hundred feet above sea level and hence several hundred feet above that particular weather station.
  I want to speak principally about statutory instrument No. 73, regulation 13. I shall preface my remarks with a comment about one of the aims of the regulations, which must surely be an improvement of the quality of service given to claimants. The Minister seems not to show dissent when I say that. That is how it should be, especially in the
  970
  light of the report of the Public Accounts Committee, which was concerned with the quality of service to the public at local social security offices. When that report was debated in the House on 30 November last year, I directed most of my remarks to the sufferers of vibration white finger. I said that the tough criticisms of the poor quality of service to claimants did not hold for the two offices in my constituency.
  With hindsight, that was a little rash of me, because on 15 December I received a report from the parliamentary ombudsman concerning an investigation that I had asked him to conduct into the disgraceful treatment meted out by DSS officials in Greenock and Port Glasgow to a young pregnant woman. Because of her resilience and determination and the assistance that she was given by an able social worker, she persisted with her applications for financial help. Her mother had put her out when she had announced that she was pregnant. At the time, I said that it was like a Victorian melodrama. The parliamentary ombudsman was scathing in his criticism of the treatment meted out to that young girl.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, I am fair-minded, so I must point out that the Under-Secretary—who is not in her place at the moment, although she has been here all evening—sent me a lengthy letter offering the Department's apologies to that young woman. She assured me that no other young woman in those circumstances would be treated as that girl was. I am willing to accept the assurances of the Under-Secretary and of the Minister concerning such treatment.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: The hon. Gentleman will have to keep a close eye on them.
  Dr. Godman: I shall keep a close watch—as I always do—on the behaviour of DSS officials in my constituency, given that several thousand people are directly dependent on social welfare incomes. I am sometimes tempted to think that the Minister should clear out, in wholesale fashion, the senior management of the DSS in the Scottish headquarters in Lady Lawson street in Edinburgh, but that is another matter.
  Mrs. Wise: On the question of young pregnant girls, it is not simply the attitude of officials that is at fault, it is the regulations. My hon. Friend may not be aware that 16 and 17-year-old girls who become pregnant are not entitled to income support—even if they are put out of their homes, such as in the case that my hon. Friend described—until they are six months pregnant. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is disgraceful?
  Dr. Godman: Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. As I have said, it is not only the disgraceful treatment meted out by officials, but the gaps in the regulations which, at that time, were new regulations. The problem was caused by a combination of the regulations and the treatment meted out by officials.
  Let us now return to vibration white finger. Since I met the Minister, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay) and two or three others—and we were treated courteously—about 2,200 men in Greenock and Port Glasgow have made applications for that backdated disablement benefit and for the reduced earnings allowance. I regret to say that when I sought from the Minister's office details of the numbers who had

  971
  applied for the benefit throughout the United Kingdom, I was told that they were not available. However, I received them readily enough from my local DSS office.
  For example, I wanted to know how many shipyard workers in Belfast had applied for that benefit, to which they are entitled. If the Minister is not willing to extend or to pull back the statutory instrument, I must ask him to answer my earlier question about letters of application that are to be posted on Monday of next week. When the doors of the DSS offices are closed on Monday evening, the 2,200 claims from Greenock and Port Glasgow will not be allowed. Many men who are entitled to this benefit live in remote areas of Scotland, in the Highlands and Islands, and many of them are miles from social security offices. They should be given some sympathy.
  Mr. Frank Field: I should like to add my weight to what my hon. Friend said, because there are about 2,000 applications in the Birkenhead offices for this benefit. I was alarmed to find that although the commissioner's decision was made in September, processing of claims in the Birkenhead offices did not start until 19 January. Does my hon. Friend agree that the processing of claims and the sending out of decisions is one way to spread by word of mouth the knowledge that people may be entitled to claim? Given that the officers have sat on the applications, it is crucial that the message goes out clearly from the debate that people have a few more days in which to make applications. As my hon. Friend says, applications posted on Monday should be accepted.
  Dr. Godman: I am grateful for that fine intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). The concept of justifiable ignorance can still be applied to many people. A Mrs. McLoughlin telephoned me from Edinburgh today. She had heard about what we in Scotland call the take-up campaign and went to the Causewayside office of the DSS to make an application, but was turned away by the official at the counter.
  It is lamentable that in Scotland the Department has failed to publicise the implications of the test case in Sunderland in August last year. In the case of Belfast, any publicity urging people to make such claims has come from the conveners of the shop stewards' committee of Harland and Wolff. In Sunderland, it has come from the unemployed workers' offices, and in my constituency I paid for a big advertisement in my local paper urging people to make such applications. The Fees Office will pick up the bill for that advertisement.
  One of my major criticisms of the DSS is its deliberate failure to advertise the implications of test cases for claimants and would-be claimants. We have the vibration white finger take-up campaign in Scotland. I am talking about ex-forestry workers in our remote communities and construction workers living in the islands who will get to know about this benefit when, perhaps, it is too late for them to claim. There has been a failure to reach those people and meet their legitimate claims.
  I look forward to the day when the English electorate puts out these Ministers. I say English electorate because Scottish Ministers are doomed. When a Labour Minister is in charge of the Department of Social Security, I should like to see him sort out the senior officials in that
  972
  Department, because they have badly let down many of my constituents and many other people throughout Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
  9.23 pm
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: This is my second opportunity to make a brief contribution today. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) for referring, albeit in passing, in his short and useful contribution to the fact that the changes in regulation 13 affect not just shipyard and industrial workers in heavier industries—the people that will be mainly affected—but such people as forestry workers. The Government must bear that in mind when they are considering the implications of this change.
  As I represent a constituency that does not have a heavy industry base providing part of its employment prospects, perhaps it is useful that I should support the able case that was made by the hon. Members for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay) and for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) on the question of the proposed change in regulation 13. It is a very shabby change. Ministers should have had the courage of their convictions. They should have told their officials quite clearly that they, the officials, cannot always seek to redress unacceptable decisions—unacceptable as the officials see them—taken by tribunals in the adjudication process, that they cannot simply use secondary legislation changes like the change to regulation 13 simply to redress the balance.
  The important effects of vibration white finger are felt throughout the length and breadth of the land. However, the cost of retaining the provisions of regulation 13 must be finite, and it is quite wrong to move the goal posts in this way.
  I want to refer now to the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations 1989. Ministers' decision to make this change has my unequivocal support. They must have been under an inordinate amount of pressure from their officials to have no truck with any changes, to avoid tinkering with transitional support. I understand that it is a difficult benefit—for a reason to which, if I get a chance, I shall refer later. I recognise that this step must have taken courage, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
  Having said that, I have to point to the fact that about 200,000 people on transitional support will still feel the effect this April. If there have been problems in advertising the proposed changes in regulation 13, there will certainly be worries this April because of the changes in transitional support, and people will be unaware of these, too. The Department is not doing nearly enough to make clear to people, by advertising, the difficulties that they will have when the uprating advantages come through.
  Some people who are falling out and are being floated off transitional protection will find that they are getting no actual cash increases. It is my experience, and my submission, that a vast proportion of those 200,000 people will, in ignorance, look forward to operating in the normal way. They will get a shock. They will find themselves in severely straitened financial circumstances in the 12 months following April 1990.
  The Government must recognise that, for example, there have been significant changes in the financial circumstances of some poorer families and pensioners, particularly as a result of the poll tax changes. The poll tax

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  provisions that are about to be visited on people south of the Border have been in operation north of the border for nearly a year. There will he a great need and a great demand for the full protection that the uprating orders afford, but, because of the erosion of transitional protection that has been built in since 1988, that will simply not be available to people who are currently expecting it. The Government must pay some attention to this matter.
  The changes relating to severe weather payments, in so far as they go, are welcome. I want to repeat and to reinforce a point that was made earlier: that the flat-rate £5 payment, which was set originally in, I think, 1986, must be a candidate for uprating in some way, either on an occasional, ad hoc basis—every few years—or as part of the price protection available with other benefits. Ministers should look carefully at the level of flat rate benefit for the severe weather payment and find ways to increase it in the immediate future.
  Secondly, many DSS offices fall within the ambit of weather stations that are near the coast. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow cited an example of this. The weather stations near the coast regularly reflect warmer temperatures.
  The best case to illustrate my point is that experienced by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) who, in 1987, found the temperature at Aviemore was minus 16 deg C but his constituents did not receive any severe weather payments because the weather station was linked to Kinloss, which never experienced temperatures below zero. Only Eskdalemuir, which is in my constituency, regularly triggers payments, and that is the most inland weather station in Scotland.
  The ambient ground temperature can often be significantly reduced by the wind chill factor, and my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) has made strong representations to the Department about that. There are easy and simple methods to establish temperature that include the wind chill factor, so that the Government cannot argue that it is too complicated to do so. The need for the severe weather payment, although luckily not felt this year, is as great as it was, and unless the Government find ways to improve the system, the benefit will be eroded and, like child benefit, will wither on the vine.
  9.31 pm
  Mr. Paul Flynn: The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) accused the Labour party of not giving credit where credit is due. I hope that we shall have the pleasure of thanking the Minister and giving him full credit for it when he withdraws the regulation altering the law on vibration white finger. My hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay), for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden), for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) have ably destroyed any case for this change. One of the reasons we feel so passionately about this is our personal experience of heavy industry and our knowledge of how one of the bonuses of working is underpaid degrading jobs is often a crippling disease. It was clear from the speeches of Tory Members and the difficulty that one of them had in pronouncing "pneumoconiosis" how unfamiliar they are with this experience.
  974
  This regulation is cruel and unjust and should be withdrawn. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will do that. I cannot think of any answer that they could possibly give to justify the regulation. However, my hon. Friends are grateful for the intervention by the Minister of State, which was wholly justified, to allow so many others to come forward. If only 1,000 or 2,000 are left who have not met that claim, their rights should be protected.
  The hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) criticised us for not making practical suggestions. However, we have some practical suggestions for the severe weather payments scheme, which is miserly, paltry and unworkable. If it ever has to be operated again, if the greenhouse effect is abated, the scheme will collapse under the weight of its own absurdities, as it did in 1986–87. As hon. Members have said, the payment is only £5 when we know that, on average, pensioners spend over the year £9 a week on heating, and over the winter that is substantially increased. Therefore, £5 is fairly meaningless. The hon. Member for Fylde valuably drew attention to how badly the scheme operated when it was tested. He gave an example of 3,000 people applying and only 500 being successful.
  That is precisely what happened. Large numbers applied and, although 1·4 million were entitled to claim under the scheme, 500,000 were not successful, let alone the many people—the one to six who applied—who were not entitled to participate in it. The cost of advertising the scheme in the winter of 1987 represented the price of making 82,000 severe weather payments at that rate.
  We suggest that the Government pay out under a scheme that is automatic. It could be done, because the system as it exists provides full details of all those entitled to severe weather payments. The only additional information needed, the Minister informed me some time ago, is how many claimants would be eliminated because they have capital—what was then £500 but is now £1,000. The simple answer is to increase the capital limit—the funeral money—from £1,000 to the usual £3,000. In other words, the information is already in the hands of the Department.
  That would end the farce of local temperature triggers. The pay-out could be made on a national basis the moment bitter weather arrived and we would achieve a worthwhile gain for only a modest increase in the number of people receiving benefit. The administrative cost would be slashed to nothing, and the take-up would rise to 100 per cent. Such a system would be simple and cheap and would reach those in greatest peril.
  We are well aware of the seriousness of the situation in view of the excessive number of winter deaths. We should send out a signal from the House that does not say, as it was once suggested from the Government Benches, that the elderly should dress up like Mother Hubbard or, as a predecessor of the Under-Secretary suggested, that they should go to jumble sales and deck themselves out for the winter.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mrs. Gillian Shephard): When the hon. Gentleman says that the scheme should operate nationally, does he mean that, although it is freezing in Aberdeen and boiling in Brighton, the scheme should nevertheless apply all over the country?
  Mr. Flynn: I am shocked and outraged at the hon. Lady's suggestion that Aberdeen is in the same country as Brighton. I am sure that there would be similar objection if she suggested that Cardiff was in the same country. For this purpose, I am suggesting that the nations within this kingdom are the nations of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales.
  At present, the real value of the scheme is being drowned in administrative costs. It is a ludicrously wasteful arrangement. If it were changed, the nations could be divided into north and south—as many people think they should be divided in England—and in Wales and Scotland the system could work. I think I see Conservative Members shaking their heads in dissent, but that is what happened last time. The scheme was thought to be so ludicrous that hon. Members on both sides were up in arms, saying that it was crazy to wait for triggers that were miles from where the people lived. Finally, the Government decided under pressure to declare a national trigger. Why should they not do that again?
  The important message that should go out from the House to the elderly who are at severe risk—and thousands of deaths are involved in this issue—is: "When the cold weather strikes, put up your heating. Keep warm and the costs will be met." That is not the message that is reaching them now. The message coming from the Government is, "We do not care. We are not bothered with what you do." All hon. Members are aware of cases where there is central heating in homes but the elderly do not use it; it is rarely, if ever, switched on. That is a terrible waste.
  When discussing the recoupment regulations, the Minister gave an interesting account—it was something fresh for those of us who were on the Standing Committee which considered the enabling legislation—when he said that there would be a saving to the Government of £55 million. Perhaps he should have called it a cut. Either way, where will it come from? We were assured, if I understood the Minister aright, that it would not be a cut in benefits, that it would not be benefit confiscation.
  In fact, that is precisely what it is, for while those on benefit will receive their benefits—there is a long list of essential benefits—they will not receive the compensation due to them. It is another Government cut. The Government have suddenly discovered an opportunity to save money and they are doing it in the teeth of universal opposition.
  The Minister of State announced in a press release that he had listened to the Association of British Insurers. I accept that he had listened to them, but he had not done what they asked him to do, which was to set the limit at £5,000. I say with some certainty that, in the years ahead, Conservative Members will encounter in their surgeries cases that are so complex and unjust that they will ask themselves, "How on earth did we ever pass that legislation?"
  The Government's action is laudable in many ways, and that there is courage behind it is something for which we give them credit. However, there is also in it some recklessness. The Government are trying to achieve an impossible objective in trying to mix compensation paid for injury, suffering or pain with social security funds paid out for very different reasons to maintain a standard of living under certain circumstances. Parts of the scheme are crude legislative lunacy, as will become apparent when cases involving contributory negligence come to the fore.
  976
  The Government are taking from claimants not the value of the benefits themselves but the value of compensation that will now never be received. That is the simple truth of the matter. Under the Government's scheme, sometimes the guilty will be rewarded and the innocent will suffer. Many right hon. and hon. Members will find cases coming before them that will be difficult to believe. The great flaw in the scheme is the Government's attempt to mix oil with water, in trying to exchange benefits for compensation.
  A number of hon. Members have referred to the Lawson embarrassment bonus, and at least one hon. Member read from a brief that related to the previous debate. If we are to reach some kind of agreement and save unnecessary disputes between both sides of the House, it may be as well if the briefings given to Conservative Members are circulated among right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House. The much-lauded Lawson embarrassment bonus seems to be giving great comfort to Government Members. The story needs repeating.
  The sum involved is only £90 million for the first year and £200 million for the second. Right hon. and hon. Members will remember the remarkable series of events. There was the Autumn Statement and an uprating statement, yet there was no mention of the Lawson embarrassment bonus in either of them. Suddenly a remarkable event occurred. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer held a press conference in the company of 12 untruthful, lying journalists and one silent tape recorder, as a consequence of which it was inaccurately reported that the Chancellor intended to means-test pensions.
  A matter of weeks passed, and the then lamented Secretary of State for Social Security pulled out of the hat a marvellous new measure—but one involving only a tiny amount of money.
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell: Do not the Opposition welcome that improvement?
  Mr. Flynn: I say to the hon. Member for Gelding that of course we welcome it, but it is means-tested and will be received by less than half of the pensioners on income support.
  Mr. Mitchell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As in so many other respects, the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) is wrong about the name of my constituency, which is Gedling, not Gelding.
  Mr. Flynn: I am sure that there was a Freudian reason for my mistake, but I would not be so indelicate as to explore it.
  We entirely share the Government's view that a group of elderly pensioners need special help. However, the new benefit will be means tested and will assist only those aged over 75 who are already receiving income support, or those aged over 60 who are receiving disablement benefits. Half the pensioners on income support will not enjoy that new benefit. The amount payable is only £2·50 to a single person and £3·50 to a married couple, which compensates in only tiny measure for the great cuts that pensioners have suffered because of the breaching of the link between prices and earnings.
  In reality, life today is very different from the fantasy world portrayed by Conservative Members. This very day, a report has revealed that 250,000 households in Britain

  977
  are in serious financial trouble because of debt. The report, published by the Church of England Children's Society, is part of a great confetti of reports. They come out weekly and they all make the same points. They are issued by bodies which are not Left-wing but are genuinely independent and involved in the care of children and the elderly. The message is repeated on every page of this report. It says that social security cuts have savagely divided Britain.
  I see that the Secretary of State has the report with him, and I am sure that he will be able to see a condemnation on every page. It says that the YTS rates are too low; that loans are not working; that making a claim is so difficult that only the desperate succeed; that the system absurdly discourages young people from going to work; that the social fund is inadequate; that the system is hostile to pregnant young women—the list goes on and on.
  Each year that the Government have been in office they have produced one major piece of legislation that has cut an important benefit. We have become a divided and unhappy nation. The rich have had tax cuts lavished on them, and the poor have been cruelly robbed. In a mockery of their poverty the ex-Chancellor—the great architect of divided Britain—today flaunts his new wealth. Moonlighting from his parliamentary job, he now brings in a gross salary greater than the earnings of 100 pensioners.
  Finally, I quote early-day motion 105, which I commend to Conservative Members:
  "That this House notes that at times of growing international tension the Government's policy is to increase spending on weapons, in times of stability the Government's policy is to increase spending on weapons and in times of lessening tension the Government policy is to increase spending on weapons; and calls on the Government to answer a changing world situation with a flexible response."
  There must be a flexible response, and we look for a peace dividend as a result of that. Hon. Members on both sides of the House who wish to use that peace dividend constructively for social service will unite to say that a rich slice of it must be spent on social security.
  9.46 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mrs. Gillian Shephard): This has been a wide-ranging and interesting debate—as it is usual to say. The measures have been described variously as squalid and sensible, as cuts and beneficial. There seems to be general agreement on their complexity, and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson), who reminded the Government of the need to produce simpler regulations, should remember that the Department has received the plain English award for the simplicity of its forms.
  There have been balanced contributions from a number of hon. Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) and for Fylde (Mr. Jack). There have been passionate contributions from Opposition Members on the understandably difficult issue of industrial injury.
  I shall attempt to deal with as many of the issues as possible, which is more than I can say for some of the contributions that have been made.
  The draft Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Regular Employment) Regulations 1990 are, as my right hon.
  978
  Friend the Secretary of State said, wholly beneficial. I am glad that those regulations at least commend themselves to all Members of the House.
  I listened with interest to the points raised by the right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition in connection with the proposal to repeal regulation 13 of the Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions Regulations 1986, and in particular, of course, to their concern about that condition known as vibration white finger. There were strong contributions from, among others, the hon. Members for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay), for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden), for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) and for Preston (Mrs. Wise).
  I remind the House that the original decision to revoke the regulation was made as long ago as December 1988. Almost a year and a quarter will have passed before the regulation ceases to have effect. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, the transitional regulation has been in operation for nearly three and a half years and there is no justifiable reason now why it should continue. Those for whom this regulation was originally intended have been provided with an opportunity to claim and those who also might benefit from the wider interpretation put upon the regulation by the tribunal of Commissioners in August 1989 have also had ample time to make a claim for benefit.
  We have, following representations from Opposition Members, allowed regulation 13 to continue for a further three months. Claims received after the regulation ceases to have effect—this should be remembered—will still be accepted and considered under the current rules. Transitional regulations, especially those of a quite exceptional nature, cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. The regulation was never intended to cover justifiable ignorance, but circumstances in which a person was mentally or physically incapable of putting in a claim on time. It is a transitional regulation which has been in place more than three years. The time is now right to amend it.
  A question was asked about the number of claims that have been received under regulation 13. The answer is 26,000.
  Mr. Clay: I hear what the hon. Lady says, but will she give one small undertaking as a gesture of sincerity from the Government? Will she undertake that offices will be asked to locate those claims that were made between vibration white finger becoming a prescribed industrial disease and the Kenneth Potts case? Where, until the commissioner's decision, DSS officers told people that they did not have good cause to claim, will the DSS write, inviting them to resubmit a claim without a time limit?
  Mrs. Shephard: I shall look at the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, but I cannot give any undertaking now.
  Although claims received at local offices on Monday 12 February will have to be dealt with under the new amendments, I shall ensure that any claims lodged at local offices before that date, including the weekend, will be endorsed accordingly. The adjudication officer will then be able to deal with the claims under the current provisions.
  The social fund cold weather payments scheme is one of a range of measures that the Government have taken to help those most at risk during periods of cold weather. It

  979
  has a number of merits. It is simple to understand. It provides £5 for particularly vulnerable groups for any seven-day period of cold weather—when the average temperature is 0 deg C or below. The use of that clear, fixed trigger point avoids confusion about eligibility, which is more than can be said for the half-baked suggestions emanating from the Opposition Front Bench.
  Our scheme is sensitive to differences in local conditions and although windchill is always a matter for debate we reviewed the effectiveness of the weather stations this autumn and are satisfied that each one is reasonably representative of the main centres of population in the local office's area. The scheme also targets help on those particularly at risk. Payment can be made to the elderly, sick, disabled and very young.
  In the past year to October 1989, gas prices fell in real terms by 16 per cent. It now costs less than in 1970. The price of domestic electricity fell by 8 per cent. in the same five years.
  The regulations widen access to the scheme further by raising the savings limit for elderly people from £500 to £1,000. As announced by my right hon. Friend, that increased limit for elderly people will be used for the rest of the social fund from April. In order to make it possible for more elderly people to receive cold weather payments this winter, the regulations bring forward the effective date of the change for the cold weather scheme to 1 January. That should be welcomed by the House.
  Mr. Winnick: Does the hon. Lady realise how miserly those arrangements are? Unless it is freezing, not a penny will be paid and then, as she said, it has to freeze for seven consecutive days. Does she not have constituents like mine, who have the smallest possible income and simply cannot afford to pay their fuel bills even when it is not freezing?
  Mrs. Shephard: The hon. Gentleman knows that allowance is already made in income support for heating costs. The £5 payment is intended to provide additional help in very cold weather.
  As for the Income Support (Transitional) Amendment No. 2 Regulations that relate to children returning home from local authority care, we have attempted to help the particularly vulnerable groups. The amendment regulations further reflect our concern about exceptional cases. The regulations will help the tiny minority of families who still have transitional protection and whose children are in local authority care.
  We provide such families with additional benefit when their children come home temporarily from care. We wish to encourage children to take advantage of home leave. We do not want the additional benefit of leave to reduce the financial protection for parents. We have therefore legislated accordingly. I remind the House that special arrangements were incorporated in the transitional protection for the severely disabled and also for those who require respite care in residential homes or nursing homes.
  As for recoupment, the Opposition have misunderstood the position, despite the fact that the matter was fully debated last year in Committee. The division of damages into special damages and general damages is almost academic. The distinctions apply only to cases that are heard in court—1 per cent. of all cases. In all the other
  980
  cases—99 per cent.—compensation for total damages is already sought. The aim of the legislation and regulations is to accept the realities.
  In general terms, the legislation is based on two fundamental principles: that the compensator should fully compensate a person for injuries caused to him and that his liability should not be subsidised by the social security services. Such a scheme operates in most EC countries. I do not know why the Opposition fail to understand that it is the compensator's liability that is dealt with in the legislation.
  The second principle is that the injured person should not receive more from two sources than he might receive in compensation or social security alone. However, the savings to which Opposition Members referred come from the compensators. We have been grateful for the co-operation of a number of outside organisations in working out the details of the scheme in such a way as to reduce the burdens on them. We are well aware of the calls for a higher small payment limit, but we believe that £2,500 is a reasonable figure.
  It has been an interesting debate, with good contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House. On the whole, the regulations provide a package of measures that are designed to improve and refine the way that the social security system operates. They deserve to be supported. I recommend their approval.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the draft Social Security (Industrial Injuries) (Regular Employment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 18th January, be approved.
  That the draft Social Security (Recoupment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 25th January, be approved.—[Mr. Newton.]
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Social Security (Industrial Injuries and Diseases) Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Regulations 1990 (S.I., 1990, No. 73) dated 22nd January 1990, a copy of which was laid before this House on 23rd January, be annulled.—[Mr. Meacher.]
  The House proceeded to a Division, and Mr. Speaker having directed that the doors be locked—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I understand that there has been a miscalculation and that I called for the doors to be locked one minute early. I shall have the doors opened for one minute.
  Whereupon the doors were unlocked.
  The House having divided: Ayes 218, Noes 270.

  Division No. 69]

  [10 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Allen, Graham

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Alton, David

  Blair, Tony

  Anderson, Donald

  Blunkett, David

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Boateng, Paul

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Boyes, Roland

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Bradley, Keith

  Ashton, Joe

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Barron, Kevin

  Buchan, Norman

  Battle, John

  Buckley, George J.

  Beckett, Margaret

  Caborn, Richard

  Beggs, Roy

  Callaghan, Jim

  Beith, A. J.

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Bell, Stuart

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

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

  Canavan, Dennis

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Forth, Eric

  Alexander, Richard

  Franks, Cecil

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Freeman, Roger

  Allason, Rupert

  French, Douglas

  Amess, David

  Fry, Peter

  Amos, Alan

  Gale, Roger

  Arbuthnot, James

  Gardiner, George

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Gill, Christopher

  Ashby, David

  Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

  Atkins, Robert

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Atkinson, David

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Baldry, Tony

  Gorst, John

  Batiste, Spencer

  Gow, Ian

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Bellingham, Henry

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Benyon, W.

  Gregory, Conal

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Grist, Ian

  Body, Sir Richard

  Ground, Patrick

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Hague, William

  Boswell, Tim

  Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

  Bottomley, Peter

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Hannam, John

  Bowis, John

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

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Harris, David

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Hayes, Jerry

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

  Hayward, Robert

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Burt, Alistair

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Butcher, John

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Hill, James

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hind, Kenneth

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Holt, Richard

  Colvin, Michael

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Cormack, Patrick

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

  Couchman, James

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Cran, James

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

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

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Devlin, Tim

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Dunn, Bob

  Irvine, Michael

  Durant, Tony

  Irving, Sir Charles

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Jack, Michael

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Janman, Tim

  Evennett, David

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Fallon, Michael

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Favell, Tony

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Key, Robert

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Fishburn, John Dudley

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Fookes, Dame Janet

  Knapman, Roger

  Forman, Nigel

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Lamond, James

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Leighton, Ron

  Clay, Bob

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Clelland, David

  Lewis, Terry

  Cohen, Harry

  Litherland, Robert

  Coleman, Donald

  Livingstone, Ken

  Corbett, Robin

  Livsey, Richard

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Cousins, Jim

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Cox, Tom

  Loyden, Eddie

  Crowther, Stan

  McAllion, John

  Cryer, Bob

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Cummings, John

  McCartney, Ian

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  McFall, John

  Dalyell, Tarn

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Darling, Alistair

  McKelvey, William

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  McLeish, Henry

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

  McWilliam, John

  Dewar, Donald

  Madden, Max

  Dixon, Don

  Maginnis, Ken

  Dobson, Frank

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Doran, Frank

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Douglas, Dick

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Martlew, Eric

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Maxton, John

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Meacher, Michael

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Meale, Alan

  Fatchett, Derek

  Michael, Alun

  Faulds, Andrew

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Fearn, Ronald

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

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

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Fisher, Mark

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Flannery, Martin

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Flynn, Paul

  Morley, Elliot

  Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Foster, Derek

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Fraser, John

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Fyfe, Maria

  Mullin, Chris

  Galloway, George

  Murphy, Paul

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Nellist, Dave

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  George, Bruce

  O'Brien, William

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  O'Neill, Martin

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Gordon, Mildred

  Parry, Robert

  Gould, Bryan

  Patchett, Terry

  Graham, Thomas

  Pendry, Tom

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Pike, Peter L.

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Grocott, Bruce

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Hardy, Peter

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Randall, Stuart

  Haynes, Frank

  Redmond, Martin

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Henderson, Doug

  Richardson, Jo

  Hinchliffe, David

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Hoey, Ms Kate (Vauxhall)

  Rooker, Jeff

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Home Robertson, John

  Ross, William (Londonderry E)

  Hood, Jimmy

  Rowlands, Ted

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Ruddock, Joan

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Howells, Geraint

  Sheerman, Barry

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Hoyle, Doug

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Short, Clare

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Sillars, Jim

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Illsley, Eric

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

  Ingram, Adam

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Janner, Greville

  Snape, Peter

  Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

  Soley, Clive

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  Kilfedder, James

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Stott, Roger

  Lambie, David

  Strang, Gavin

  Straw, Jack

  Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Wilson, Brian

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Winnick, David

  Turner, Dennis

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Wall, Pat

  Worthington, Tony

  Wallace, James

  Wray, Jimmy

  Wai ley, Joan

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

  Mrs. Llin Golding and

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Mr. Ken Eastham.

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Knowles, Michael

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Knox, David

  Rost, Peter

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Rowe, Andrew

  Lang, Ian

  Ryder, Richard

  Latham, Michael

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb'j

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Shelton, Sir William

  Lilley, Peter

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Lloyd, Peter (Farehamj

  Shersby, Michael

  Lord, Michael

  Sims, Roger

  Luce, Rt Hon Richard

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Speller, Tony

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Maclean, David

  Squire, Robin

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Steen, Anthony

  Madel, David

  Stern, Michael

  Malins, Humfrey

  Stevens, Lewis

  Maples, John

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Marland, Paul

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Stewart, Rt Hon Ian (Herts N)

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Stokes, Sir John

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Sumberg, David

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Summerson, Hugo

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Mitchell, Sir David

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Moate, Roger

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Thorne, Neil

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Thurnham, Peter

  Moss, Malcolm

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Tracey, Richard

  Mudd, David

  Tredinnick, David

  Neale, Gerrard

  Trippier, David

  Needham, Richard

  Trotter, Neville

  Nelson, Anthony

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Viggers, Peter

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Norris, Steve

  Walden, George

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Waller, Gary

  Page, Richard

  Ward, John

  Paice, James

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Patnick, Irvine

  Warren, Kenneth

  Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

  Watts, John

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Wells, Bowen

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoftrey

  Wheeler, Sir John

  Pawsey, James

  Whitney, Ray

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Portillo, Michael

  Wilkinson, John

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Wilshire, David

  Price, Sir David

  Wolfson, Mark

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Woodcock, Dr. Mike

  Redwood, John

  Yeo, Tim

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Mr. Nicholas Baker and

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Mr. Tom Sackville.

  Question accordingly negatived.

  East Hertfordshire Health Authority
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  10.13 pm
  Mr. David Evans: I thank—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Member wait a moment please? Will hon. Members who are not remaining for the Adjournment debate please leave quietly?
  Mr. Evans: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for granting me this Adjournment debate. I welcome the opportunity to raise in full the funding of East Hertfordshire health authority. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is only too well aware of the strong feelings on this subject held by myself and my hon. Friends whose constituencies have the misfortune to fall within the ambit of North West Thames regional health authority. We have run out of patience and we want to see some action that will put an end to the cycle of incompetence, mismanagement of public funds and generally deceitful behaviour of the regional health authority, which has dogged patient care in our area for so long. Promises made by the region no longer have any credibility, and that has undermined staff morale.
  To appreciate the specific problems faced by East Hertfordshire health authority, it is necessary first to see them within the wider context of the general position of the six shire authorities in the North West Thames region. In particular, it is necessary to examine the methods and formulae used by the regional health authority to allocate funds to the 13 district health authorities in the region.
  For many years, the shire authorities have argued—rightly—for a formula that would result in a more equitable distribution of funds and for one that would take into account the distance from target and over target. Instead, the regional health authority has persisted with its practice of distributing funds on a pro rata to cash limits basis. In other words, the message that it has been sending out to its Left-wing friends in the inner London health authorities is clear—"The more you spend, the more we'll give you"—and that is precisely what it has done. The result is a regional health authority in which the inner London authorities can go grossly over budget without fear and where many of the shire authorities are forced to make cuts to help pay for that extravagant spending.
  Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, an inspection of the underlying position in 1989–90 of the 14 regional health authorities in England on the basis of income to expenditure reveals that only three are in deficit and one, of course, is the North West Thames regional health authority with a deficit of approximately £13 million, which is the largest and more than twice the size of the other two deficits put together.
  The shocking practice of punishing well-managed and prudent authorities for the irresponsible and spendthrift policies of their neighbours is a problem that the Government have addressed in relation to local authorities. It is time that regional health authorities had to succumb to greater financial discipline—otherwise the incompetence of authorities such as North West Thames will continue to prevail.
  That financial incompetence has manifested itself most recently in the expenditure on the Westminster and

  985
  Chelsea hospital scheme. During the nine months between July 1988 and March 1989, the cost of the scheme rose from an estimated £78 million to a staggering £173 million. My hon. Friends who represent shire seats in the region agreed to support the scheme on the basis of the original estimate and on the understanding that it would not have a detrimental effect on capital projects in the shire authorities. It is difficult to see how it can do anything but, given the vast increase in spending that is involved.
  More recently, we have learnt that the authority has had to go back on a promise that it made to fund a CT scanner, which would have cost £100,000 in revenue to support. That promise has been broken not once, but twice.
  Luton and Dunstable hospital needs £12 million for capital needs, which is a mere 15 per cent. of the overspend at Riverside. I repeat to my hon. Friend the Minister that we are not asking for more money, we are pointing out the consistent misuse of public funds, which results in some people in the region having as much as 25 per cent. more spent on their health than is spent on others.
  Putting it another way, why should a person living in Welwyn Hatfield have 75p spent on him when for someone living in Brent the amount increases to £1? Where is the fairness in that? Why do shire authorities receive only 31 per cent. of the region's funding when, on the basis of population, they should rightfully receive 43 per cent.? Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us on that and not give the standard answer that next year we shall get 33 per cent., and the year after 35 per cent. I am afraid that we do not believe him any more. Only if the chairman and his administrators are changed, and only if the funds are reallocated, will we believe the promises that have been made over the years.
  Frustration, bordering on contempt, for North West Thames regional health authority is not confined to my hon. Friends whose constituencies are within the region. Last month South Bedfordshire community health council passed unanimously a motion of no confidence in the ability of the regional health authority to manage the financial and planning affairs of the National Health Service in North West Thames region. The motion was supported by the chairmen of the other five shire community health councils in the region. It is worth reminding the House that those are independent bodies that represent local opinion on Health Service matters.
  The South Bedfordshire motion encapsulated neatly the problems encountered in North West Thames. It was passed in view of the health authority's failure to take the necessary financial and planning measures to achieve the substantial strategic redeployment of resources from London to shire districts; to prevent the development of chronic overspending in the major strategically losing districts during the 1980s; to exercise the necessary measures to monitor, control and re-evaluate the cost escalation of capital projects, particularly in central London, one of which has risen by 220 per cent. of its June 1988 cost; and to recognise and fund the desperate and immediate capital needs of the district. That is a damaging indictment, but one that is entirely justified.
  The problems for East Hertfordshire, however, have their origin as far back as 1974. There is not time to dwell on the background to the whole sorry affair. Suffice it to say that East Hertfordshire has traditionally suffered from under-funding and has been consistently under pressure to make economies of scale. There is a feeling of desperation
  986
  because we want to give service to the people, but starvation of money eventually weakens one's resolve. Yet money could easily have been found.
  Let us take, for example, the staffing ratios of East Hertfordshire compared with the Riverside authority, an authority with a similar population but located in central London. Why has that authority funds for 120 occupational therapists compared to East Hertfordshire's measly 19, 119 physiotherapists compared to 18, and 179 district nurses compared to 17? So it goes on, with health visitors, speech therapists, psychiatric nurses and chiropodists. If measures had been taken to reduce the overstaffing in Riverside, money could have been diverted to assist the under-funded shire health authorities that are struggling to produce a basic service.
  The real scandal involves nurses' regrading. The Prime Minister herself stood at the Dispatch Box and told the House that the Government would refund in full the cost of clinical regrading. However, the process of regrading has left us in East Hertfordshire with a shortfall estimated to be £400,000, excluding the cost of appeals. Despite earlier statements to the contrary, the regional health authority claims that it is not now in a position to fund the shortfall. Yet it is responsible. The money was there. It was its formula for distributing the money which led to a shortfall in East Bedfordshire and also in South West Hertfordshire.
  The chairman of East Hertfordshire health authority is convinced, as I am, that had the exercise been conducted on the basis of actual cost there would have been enough resources to go round. The irony is that East Hertfordshire undertook the task more effectively than virtually anyone else, completing the exercise back in May last year, several months ahead of other authorities, some of which are still hearing appeals today.
  The success and efficiency of the regrading process in East Hertfordshire has been recognised and acknowledged by the chairman of the regional health authority, yet it is his actions that have helped to bring about this shortfall, a shortfall that could have disastrous implications for an already overstretched authority such as East Hertfordshire. The effect of years of incompetence and mismanagement is being felt every day in East Hertfordshire.
  Mr. Robert B. Jones: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I apologise for interrupting his catalogue of the iniquities of North West Thames region, but it is true not only of East Hertfordshire but of the other shire districts. In North West Hertfordshire, such projects as the Marnham ward as part of the waiting list initiative are having to be cut back because the inefficiency of the region in distributing money to the districts. I hope that my hon. Friend will press this home to the Minister and make sure that action is taken soon.
  Mr. Evans: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—it only underlines what I am saying about East Hertfordshire.
  We have a loss of new out-patient appointments, fewer operations, a reduction in the number of respite beds, the suspension of some sessions and a freeze on many current vacancies throughout the district. How long will this go on? I repeat: it is not more money that is sought, but rather a more equitable distribution of available funds based on capitation. Why should £1 in Brent be worth only 75p in

  987
  Hatfield, Watford, Hemel Hempstead, St. Albans, Stevenage, Broxbourne, Hertford, South West Hertfordshire, or East Bedfordshire? The list is endless.
  The Health Service in East Hertfordshire can no longer survive. What is needed is a solution. One was proposed by the National Health Service management board to North West Thames in July 1988, when the situation in East Hertfordshire was analysed. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us whether these recommendations were pursued by the management board and whether they have been acted upon by North West Thames, because we see precious little evidence of it in East Hertfordshire.
  The South Bedfordshire community health council concluded its motion of no confidence by calling upon the Secretary of State
  "to review the activities of the North West Thames regional health authority and to take the measures necessary to remedy the situation".
  I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will tell me that that is exactly what he intends to do. If not, why not? I call on him to instruct the Audit Commission to investigate this serious matter. Does he not realise that the National Health Service in the North West Thames health authority area will never have enough money while financial incompetence prevails?
  10.28 pm
  Mr. Bowen Wells: I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) and to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for allowing me just two minutes to speak on this very important issue. The Minister will realise how angry are the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield and I and other hon. Members representing constituencies in the region and here tonight.
  This has been going on not just for the past three years; we have been battling with the problem for the 10 years that I have been connected with it, and longer.
  When Riverside was designed, it was said that, once it was built, money could be put into the districts. Instead, less money has come to them. East Hertfordshire has been closing beds, hospitals and family planning clinics for the past three or four months, while the North West Thames regional health authority indulges itself with another expensive scheme called Parkside. There, the number of nurses attending each patient will be four times, and the community nursing will be 10 times, that provided in East Hertfordshire—and that is just an estimate.
  We are angry at the way that the Department of Health treats us. Ministers say, "Go back to the regional health authority and the district health authorities." When we complain to the regional health authority it says, "Go back to the Ministers." That leaves my hon. Friends and me in an impossible position in trying to get anything done.
  Unless my hon. Friend the Minister can sort out the regional health authority in the way suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield, he must take out the whole of the shire county districts from the London regional health authorities. Let them be funded separately so that our areas can obtain a proper allocation to take care of patients in our hospitals, near their homes. That is the only solution unless my hon. Friend the Minister agrees to undertake a proper inquiry and to ensure that the chaos, inefficiency, stupidity and lack of care by the North
  988
  West Thames regional health authority—which, unfortunately, is supported by some of the most senior medical consultants in the London hospitals—is sorted out. I hope that he will make a robust reply.
  10.31 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and I are left in no doubt about the strong feelings of my hon. Friends the Members for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), for Hertfordshire, West (Mr. Jones) and for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells). They and their colleagues met my right hon and learned Friend and me on 16 and 17 January and expressed their strong feelings in forthright and trenchant terms. There is no doubt in Richmond house about the strength of feeling in the shire districts of North West Thames about the relative allocation of funds.
  My right hon. and learned Friend and I have total confidence in the integrity and competence of the chairman and the regional general manager of the North West Thames regional health authority. They work extremely hard for the benefit of patients in the region. They, my right hon. and learned Friend and I recognise that there are very sharp differences of opinion on the issue, and in the 10 minutes available I shall try to deal with some of the points raised.
  I welcome the acceptance by my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield that the present level of funding in the National Health Service is adequate. Indeed, he recognised the substantial advances made in recent years in funding the NHS, and I am grateful to him for his remarks. The case is not often put so trenchantly and clearly. Health Service funding for the hospital and community health services stands at £15 billion, and substantial and real rates of growth have been enjoyed in recent years.
  My hon. Friend is quarrelling not about the total funding, but about the basis of allocation. The record shows that there has been a shift from the London districts to the shire districts of North West Thames during the past few years. I accept that it is not enough for my hon. Friend. However, it is important to put on the record the fact that between 1982–83 and 1988–89 the region enjoyed a cash increase in revenue resources of 48 per cent.; the outer London districts enjoyed a cash increase of 44 per cent.; the inner London districts had an increase of 42 per cent.; and East Hertfordshire health authority had an increase of 60 per cent. I do not have the figures for the other districts.
  Mr. Wells: What about population?
  Mr. Freeman: I shall deal with population in a moment. There has been a relative shift over that six-year period. We calculate that, at 1988–89 prices, about £20 million has been moved out of London to the shire districts. I take the point that, although there has been a shift, my hon. Friends are not satisfied with its extent.
  I shall now deal with what my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield said in connection with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's statement on nurse regrading. We should be clear that the Prime Minister's statement related to full funding on what the estimated cost was said to be of the nurse regrading exercise. She made that statement before the exercise was launched. Her statement

  989
  stands. No Prime Minister or Minister could give a blank cheque offering to pay the full cost of the nurse regrading exercise. That exercise is under way. She gave the undertaking that the full estimated cost based upon the estimates for the districts and regions would be paid.
  There are two points in our White Paper about weighted capitation which I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield will welcome. We have started for the regions the process of allocating funds in a more equitable way, which is weighted capitation. We have started for 1990–91 and in the two subsequent years we shall fund all the regions on the basis of capitation. that means that the number of residents in each region will be weighted for demography and morbidity. In the Thames regions there is an addition to that to take account of the relatively higher cost of providing services.
  I now come to the vital point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield. We are saying to all 14 regions in England and Wales that they must make a positive start in 1991–92, the first year of our reforms, to allocate resources within each region on the basis of weighted capitation. That will take some years. I understand that the North West Thames region has started that process, albeit in a modest way. No doubt that is the result of pressure by my hon. Friends. I understand that, for 1990–91, some £3·5 million out of a total increase of resources to the region of £27 million is being allocated essentially on the basis of weighted capitation.
  I could quite understand my hon. Friends saying that that is only £3·5 million and what about the rest of the funds allocated, as my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield rightly said, on the basis of inflation. North West Thames has begun the process and, like all the other regions, it will have to continue the process next year. I am told that the East Hertfordshire region will enjoy an increase of 9·91 per cent. next year, compared with the figure for the regions of 7 per cent.
  My second point about the White Paper is perhaps more significant in terms of 1991–92, the financial year that begins in about 12 months. We have said that all districts, including East Hertfordshire, will be funded on the number of residents in each district, and not upon historic activity. I do not think that many hon. Members have yet appreciated the significant basis of funding that will occur in that year. For the first time, the health authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield will have under its control sums related to the residents in the district.
  I suspect that my hon. Friend's district is an exporter of services, possibly to the London teaching hospitals and to
  990
  surrounding hospitals. Through the process of negotiating and agreeing contracts between itself and other hospitals, the district health authority will be able to control the flow of resources to outside hospitals and districts. Candidly, we expect that, in the first year, the district health authority will broadly validate the existing flow of patients because we do not want a great disturbance in the pattern of patient care. However, it will, for the first time, be possible for the district health authority to control its own destiny and the flow of patients.
  Mr. Robert B. Jones: My hon. Friend must not pretend that people go for treatment in London because that is what they choose. They go because the waiting lists are shorter there. They would much prefer to be treated in the hospitals in the shire district, and if we had our share of the money we could treat more patients there because it is cheaper to do so.
  Mr. Freeman: My hon. Friend is right, and that is why we must all agree that our proposals for weighted capitation in the White Paper will benefit all shire districts. He must also accept that, with our concept of money following the patients, if we give the district health authority the funds, although the patients may be going to the London teaching hospitals, it will be able to decide whether those resources should be spent within the district. That will enable patients, perhaps for elective surgery, to get those services performed locally and as quickly. That is a major change in the basis of funding, and we believe that it will be welcomed by my hon. Friends.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield also mentioned the Riverside and Parkside district health authorities. I am disturbed by the figures of the increased costs of the new hospital that he quoted tonight. I shall look into that, and he is right to remind me of them. However, as a result of the Riverside reorganisation, we anticipate revenue savings of £15 million per annum by 1993–94. The Parkside proposals look like releasing some £7 million of revenue savings, and they will be available for reallocation.
  I share the aim in whose direction my hon. Friends have pointed me. It is of a fairer, more equitable distribution of funds within the region. Our proposals in the White Paper, and our understanding of the strength of feeling of my hon. Friends, will ultimately lead to that goal.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  Civil Legal Aid
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Attorney-General (1) how many applications for civil legal aid certificates were(a) granted and (b) refused; and what percentage this was of the whole in 1987, 1988 and 1989;

  (2) how many applications were received for civil legal aid certificates in 1987, 1988 and 1989

  The Attorney-General
  All information about civil legal aid is contained in the legal aid annual reports which are laid before Parliament each year and are available in the Library. The most recent report provides information to 31 March 1989.

  Mr.Sheerman
  To ask the Attorney-General how many prosecutions have taken place in each of the last five years for fraudulent completion of legal aid certificate applications.

  The Attorney-General
  The legal aid board took over responsibility from the Law Society on 1 April 1989. Since that date there has been one prosecution for fraudulent completion of a legal aid certificate application, mounted by the legal aid board. There were no prosecutions in the preceding four years. The legal aid authorities do not maintain records of police prosecutions.

  Mr.Sheerman
  To ask the Attorney-Genera l (1) how many complaints his Department has received regarding erroneous or fraudulent applications for assessments of grant for legal aid;

  (2) how many revocations of civil legal aid certificates there were during (a) 1987, (b) 1988 and (c) 1989 as a result of reassessment following information or complaints received.

  The Attorney-General
  Complaints regarding erroneous or fraudulent applications for assessment of grant for legal aid are dealt with either by the legal aid board or by the legal aid assessment office, Department of Social Security, Preston. Any allegation will lead to a re-examination of the application. Statistics about complaints and any consequent revocations of civil legal aid certificates are not at present maintained, but the legal aid board is introducing new management information and computer systems.

  Judges
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Attorney-General how many judges have been removed from office for each year since 1980 for(a) incapacity,(b) misconduct and (c) any other reason.

  The Attorney-General
  One circuit judge was removed from office in 1983 for misconduct under the powers given to the Lord Chancellor in section 17(4) of the Courts Act 1971.

  Criminal Cases
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Attorney-General if, pursuant to his answer of 29 January, he will give the nature of the charge before the court in relation to each of the criminal cases in the Crown court, to the legal aid costs of which he refers.

  The Attorney-General
  The highest payments, referred to in the answer of 29 January, to a solicitor and counsel were in respect of offences of fraud.

PRIME MINISTER

  Germany (Unification)
  Sir Michael McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Prime Minister what steps are required to be taken by the Governments of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, France and the United Kingdom in drawing up a peace treaty with Germany in the event of reunification; and if she will list the treaty or other provisions governing the changes which may take place in the status of the Federal and Democratic Republics of Germany in advance of a peace treaty.

  The Prime Minister
  A number of agreements and treaties would need to be amended or abolished in the event of unification of the two German states. The precise details would need to be discussed with our partners and allies.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Audit Policy
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he has any proposals for investigating the validity of audit opinions, in the light of the Ferranti, Barlow Clowes, Johnson Matthey and de Lorean affairs.

  Mr. Redwood
  No.

  Inward Investment
  Mr. Hayward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will identify the amount of inward investment announced to all areas of the United Kingdom by economic region in each of the last three years for which he has figures available.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) on 1 February at column 290, which contains the information sought.

  Manufactured Exports
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will show by volume and value British manufactured exports in the last available quarter going to(a) the European Economic Community, (b) West Germany, (c) the United States of America, (d) the European Free Trade Association, (e) France and (f) council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

  Mr. Redwood
  Information on exports of manufactures from the United Kingdom is published in table V of
  629
  Business Monitor M M20 "Overseas Trade Statistics of the United Kingdom" held in the House of Commons Library.

  Manufacturing Imports
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what was the share of British manufacturing imports in the last available quarter of 1989 coming from(a) the European Economic Community, (b) West Germany, (c) the United States of America, (d) the European Free Trade Association, (e) France and (f) the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

  Mr. Redwood
  Information on imports of manufactures by the United Kingdom is published in table II of Business Monitor MM20 "Overseas Trade Statistics of the United Kingdom" held in the House of Commons Library.

  Regional Policy
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when his review of regional policy will be completed; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Regional policy is kept under continuing review. As already announced a consultant's study is currently looking at various aspects of English Estates' activities. The House will be kept informed.

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps his Department has taken, and is taking, to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  My Department follows CCTA advice on analysis of security risks and requirements using structured methods such as CCTA's risk analysis and management and methodology (CRAMM) which has also been made commercially available. A departmental IT security steering group was established in 1988 to assess requirements and determine policy. For unclassified but sensitive systems a review was carried out recently and the results are now being implemented. More stringent conditions apply to classified systems.

  Textiles
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what is the current balance of trade in the textile industry.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Latest available figures show that imports of textiles (SITC division 65) exceeded exports by £1,576 million in the 12 months to November 1989.

  Mr. Henderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he has any plans to meet other European Community Ministers to discuss the textile industry.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  [holding answer 5 February 1990]: The textile industry is often covered in the frequent meetings my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have with our Community colleagues. It was last discussed at the Industry Council meeting on 14 November, which I attended. I anticipate that the subject will be discussed again at the next meeting scheduled for 13 March.

  Preventable Loss
  Mr. Norris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will list the number of professionally qualified loss-prevention staff employed by his Department and the qualifications held by such staff, excluding qualifications obtained during police or military service.

  Mr. Forth
  All departmental staff have a duty to prevent loss. There are 14 professionally qualified staff in the Department's internal audit branch.

  Small Companies (Audit)
  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he has any plans to remove the audit requirement from small companies.

  Mr. Redwood
  No.

  Renaval Programme
  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a further statement on the operation of the European Economic Community's Renaval programme in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  [holding answer 5 February 1990]: I refer the hon. Member to the answers I gave to my hon. Friends the Members for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) and for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) on 2 February in regard to applications for Tyne and Wear and Middlesbrough and Langbaurgh districts. The Government are considering what other applications might be made.

  DTI Structure
  Mr. Ron Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has for the future structure of his Department.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has for the future structure of his Department.

  Mr. Ridley
  I am reviewing various aspects of the work of my Department, but have no changes to announce at present.

ENVIRONMENT

  Toxic Waste
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make further representations to the United States of America concerning the export of toxic or hazardous waste to the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Trippier
  I have discussed the problem of the waste at Wath with the United States deputy chief of mission in London and made clear my concern over the continued presence of this waste in the United Kingdom. I understand that he will be raising the matter with the appropriate authorities in the United States. Future discussions on the resolution of this issue will cover the wider implications for arrangements for the movement of waste between our two countries.
  631

  Inner Urban Aid
  Mr. Fraser
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what has been the allocation of inner urban aid for Lambeth council of(a) 1988-89, (b) 1989–90 and (c) 1990–91.

  Mr. Moynihan
  The provisional urban programme allocations for Lambeth council for the years 1988-89 to 1990-91 are as follows:

  1988–89(£m)

  1989–90(£m)

  1990–91(£m)

  Lambeth

  11·75

  9·932

  9·280

  1(8·2)

  1Final outturn.

  Hertfordshire County Council
  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will set out a table showing(a) the number of full-time employees and (b) the number of part-time employees of Hertfordshire county council in (i) June 1981, (ii) June 1985 and (iii) June 1989.

  Mr. Chope
  The information is as follows:

  Hertfordshire County Council: All Services (at June)

  1981

  1985

  1989

  Full-time

  21,724

  20,374

  1

  Part-time

  18,569

  15,365

  1

  Total

  40,293

  35,739

  1

  1Data not available.

  Special Education
  Mr. Wilshire
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will set out the formula used for calculating the financial needs of each education authority for the provision of special education and list by authority the sum included in the total standard spending assessment for 1990–91 for the provision of special education and for giving special help to children statemented as being in special need.

  Mr. Chope
  The formula for calculating the standard spending assessment for education is set out in the Revenue Support Grant Distribution Report (England) which is in the Library. The assessment takes account of special needs by means of an index of additional educational needs which reflects additional needs of various kinds and is used to distribute 24 per cent. of the total SSA element for education. This covers both additional costs arising from special education and special support in ordinary schools. It is not possible to identify within this a separate element for statemented children.

  Local Government Expenditure
  Sir Peter Hordern
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish a table showing the increase in local government expenditure in each of the last five years; and if he will express the cost of teachers' salaries as a proportion of the whole in each of these years.

  Mr. David Hunt
  The available information is as follows:632

  Percentage increase in total expenditure over previous year

  Cost of teachers' salaries as percentage of total expenditure

  1985–861

  1·8

  24·2

  1986–87

  9·5

  24·3

  1987–88

  8·2

  24·6

  1988–89

  8·4

  n/a

  1989–902

  6·2

  n/a

  1London Regional Transport was transferred from local authority sector in 1985–86·

  2Polytechnics were transferred from the local authority sector in April 1989.

  n/a = not available.

  Total local authority spending covers rate fund revenue account net current expenditure on services plus net loan charges, contributions to other funds and accounts (eg. special funds and HRA) and net non-relevant expenditure (eg. net spending on housing benefit), less specific and supplementary grants.

  The cost of teachers' salaries covers spending on school teaching staff, including national insurance and superannuation.

  Rents and Rates
  Sir Peter Hordern
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish a table showing the total and annual increase in local authority rents and domestic rates in each of the last five years.

  Mr. David Hunt
  Information for England is as follows:

  Local authority rents

  Average unrebated rent £ per week

  Increase over previous year per cent.

  Culmulative increase since 1984–85 per cent.

  1985-86

  15·63

  6

  6

  1986-87

  16·48

  5

  11

  1987-88

  17·40

  6

  18

  1988-89

  19·01

  9

  29

  1989-90

  120·83

  10

  41

  1Provisional figure

  Domestic rates

  Average domestic rate poundage 1pence

  Increase over previous year per cent.

  Cumulative increase since1984–85 per cent.

  173

  8

  8

  197

  14

  23

  210

  7

  31

  229

  9

  43

  250

  9

  56

  1Domestic rate poundage is the average rate (in pence) per £ of rateable value levied on domestic properties.

  Community Charge
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what guidance he has given community charge registration officers on the status as students for the purposes of poll tax of members of Her Majesty's forces undergoing courses of training.

  Mr. Chope
  There has been no specific guidance from this Department on this issue. General guidance on determining eligibility for the student relief is contained in
  633
  "The Community Charge": Students and the Community Charge" (Community Charge Practice Note No. 23) which has been sent to all community charge registration officers. A copy is in the Library.

  Opencast Mines
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many appeals against refusal of planning permission for opencast mines in county Durham are outstanding.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Three.

  Bellwin Scheme
  Miss Emma Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether, in his review of the Bellwin scheme, he will consider giving direct funding from central Government in the form of severe weather payments to local authorities.

  Mr. Chope
  The purpose of the review will be to consider how to adapt the Bellwin scheme given the new local government finance system.

  The principles underlying the scheme have been that the primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies lies with local authorities, but central Government assistance may be given exceptionally where otherwise an excessive burden would fall on ratepayers or chargepayers. These principles will remain.

  Council

  GRE

  Reported total expenditure

  Percent difference (column 1–2

  Reported total expenditure per head

  £ million 1

  £ million 2

  percentage 3

  £ 4

  Shepway

  6·029

  8·119

  34·7

  93

  Dartford

  4·935

  6·218

  26·0

  79

  Tunbridge Wells

  5·548

  6·954

  25·3

  70

  Tonbridge and Mailing

  5·059

  6·295

  24·4

  62

  Ashford

  5·266

  6·270

  19·1

  66

  Gravesham

  5·701

  6·640

  16·5

  74

  Canterbury

  8·219

  9·284

  13·0

  70

  Swale

  6·394

  7·114

  11·3

  62

  Thanet

  9·862

  10·878

  10·3

  84

  Sevenoaks

  5·400

  5·719

  5·9

  53

  Dover

  6·387

  6·743

  5·6

  63

  Maidstone

  7·382

  7·654

  3·7

  56

  Gillingham

  6·311

  5·914

  -6·3

  62

  Rochester upon Medway

  10·021

  7·769

  -22·5

  53

  Sir John Stanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the 1990–91 revenue support grant entitlement per head of population, before safety net adjustments and after reduction of the amount of revenue support grant, attributable to Kent county council for each borough and district council in Kent in descending order of magnitude.

  Mr. David Hunt
  It is not possible to calculate the figures requested. Although revenue support grant is paid to district councils in support of services provided by both the district and county councils, there is no amount separately identified as being attributable to the county council.

  Bathing Waters
  Mr. John Garrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment which United Kingdom bathing waters failed to meet European Community standards for salmonella bacteria in the 1989 bathing waters survey.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  My hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Environment announced on 25 January, (Official Report, 25 January 1990, column 785) the results of the 1989 survey of bathing waters for England and Wales, and stated that a detailed summary of the results would be placed in the Library. Detailed results for individual waters, including numbers of samples taken for particular parameters and the number of these which failed to meet the directive's mandatory standards, are given in this report, copies of which have now been placed in the Library.

  Local Government Finance
  Sir John Stanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will show for each district and borough council in Kent(a) by what percentage in descending order of magnitude, its 1989–90 reported budgeted total expenditure is greater or less than its grant-related expenditure assessment, (b) its 1989–90 reported budgeted total expenditure and (c) its 1989–90 reported budgeted total expenditure per head of population.

  Mr. David Hunt
  The information requested is set out in the table. For the purpose of this reply, the population figures used are estimates produced by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys of the population of each authority at mid-1988.

  Shell UK (Planning Appeal)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to complete his urgent consideration of the application for costs in the planning appeal by Shell UK Oil Limited at South Brent as communicated to solicitors acting for the South Brent and Lower Glaze group on Dartmoor on 13 October 1989.

  Mr. Moynihan
  Unless unforeseen difficulities arise, my right hon. Friend's substantive reply will be given before the end of this month.

  Environmental Protection Bill
  Mrs. Ann Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what individuals and organisations have been consulted in relation to environmental assessment regulations under the Environmental Protection Bill;

  (2) when he will publish draft environmental assessment regulations under the Environmental Protection Bill.

  Mr. Trippier
  Regulations made under schedule 1 to the Environmental Protection Bill will prescribe details of the application procedure for an authorisation under part I of the Bill. I propose that those regulations should require applications to include information about the environmental effects of the proposed process. I will consult on the draft regulations in the next few months.

  Residential Housing, London
  Mr. Wilkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement giving his estimate of the proportion of residential housing in the outer London boroughs, i.e. not in the old London county council area, which is in conservation areas.

  Mr. Chope
  By 1 January 1990 there were 285 designated conservation areas in outer London, of which 253 include residential properties. It is not possible to estimate the proportion of residential property included in these areas from the information held centrally by English Heritage.

  Environmental Protection
  Mr. Tredinnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what studies he has made of practice in other countries regarding the use of economic instruments as a means to deliver policies to protect the environment; and what plans he has to make use of such measures in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  I have had placed in the Library of the House the report of a recent study by Environmental Resources Ltd. which examines the uses which 10 selected countries make of charges and subsidies as means of pollution control. Seven EC countries (United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain), two Scandinavian countries outside the European Community (Norway and Sweden) and Japan were chosen for study. The report considers both the effectiveness of such schemes in improving environmental conditions and the trends emerging over the past five years. The study shows that there has been a notable shift away from subsidies as a means of pollution control—in line with increasing emphasis on the "polluter pays" principle. At the same time, much greater attention is being paid to possibilities for using charges.

  In the United Kingdom, little use has until now been made of charges as a means of pollution control. However, charges covering the costs of operating a number of pollution regulation systems, including integrated pollution control, are proposed in the Environmental Protection Bill. Moreover, the Government recognise that in appropriate circumstances it is possible that environmental policies could be delivered more efficiently by market-based instruments.

  Planning
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the outcome of his review of the procedures in the Town and Country Planning General Regulations 1976.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State for Wales have today issued a consultation paper seeking views on proposals to amend the Town and Country Planning General Regulations 1976. The proposals would also entail amending the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 and Local Government Act 1972.

  The proposed changes are: councils should in future be required to apply for planning permission like any other applicant for any development where they are not the responsible development control authority; where local authorities determine their own planning applications, the decision should be taken in public; all self-applications should be determined either by the planning committee or by the council and not by a committee, sub-committee or officer responsible for the management or disposal of land or buildings owned by the authority; to direct that all self-applications should be advertised and to issue guidance on public consultation; all self-applications should be brought to the Secretary of State's attention so that where they conflict with the development plan or give rise to unresolved or substantial objections, the Secretary of State can consider whether to determine the application himself.

  These proposed changes are intended to ensure fuller and more open debate about local authorities' own development proposals and to increase confidence in the accountability of local planning authorities.

  Derelict Land
  Mr. Leigh
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what resources are being made available under the derelict land programme in 1990–91; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Spicer
  The resources available in 1990–91 for derelict land reclamation under the derelict land programme will be £71.512 million.

  Derelict land reclamation is one of the most effective ways in which the environment can be improved. Since 1979 the derelict land programme has funded the reclamation of more than 13,000 hectares of derelict land. I expect that, in the course of 1990–91, about 400 schemes producing an additional 1,200 hectares of reclaimed land will be completed. The resources available for 1990–91 should be sufficient to enable about 1,500 hectares of land to be reclaimed. The programme is thus continuing to make a real contribution to the reclamation process.

  As in previous years, more than 90 per cent. of derelict land grant resources will be allocated to the north and midlands. I have given priority to the north-west and Yorkshire and Humberside where some of the most extensive and persistent dereliction is found; and to the west midlands where there is a need to fund continued investigative and remedial work on old limestone workings in the black country.

  Overall my allocations include more than £12 million for treating dereliction arising from coal mining, thus maintaining the level of support given in last year's allocation.
  637
  I am approving new rolling programmes of reclamation for the joint local authority initiatives in east Manchester and Tameside, and north Staffordshire. I am also approving programmes for Oldham, Wakefield and Kerrier.

  Following the first round of triennial rolling programme reviews carried out last year, I have decided to discontinue rolling programme status for north-east Lancashire but to transfer Hyndburn, where much remains to be done, to the existing Leeds and Liverpool canal corridor rolling programme. The other programmes or major projects reviewed; Wigan, Normanby Park, the black country, Wirral and Corby will continue. The rolling programmes at Barrow (Project Furness) and Liverpool will be reviewed in the course of 1990.

  The total provision made for the 16 rolling programmes approved for 1990–91 will be nearly £23 million.

  At present the priorities for derelict land reclamation are set out in circular 28/85 "Reclamation and Reuse of Derelict Land". These stress the importance of schemes designed to reclaim urban, especially inner city, land for housing and industrial and commercial uses.

  However, when choosing new schemes to support in 1990–91, the Department will take into account the changes to the existing priorities proposed by the Government following the review of derelict land policy published in September 1989. We want to ensure that, through these changes, the derelict land programme can play an even more effective part in reclaiming sites to improve the environment.

  We are considering the responses to our proposals for change, and guidance setting out new objectives and priorities will be issued later this year.

  Property Services Agency
  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what savings the Government expect to make from the privatisation of the Property Services Agency and Crown Suppliers.

  Mr. Chope
  A reduction in annual Government expenditure as a result of increased efficiency within the Property Services Agency and the Crown Suppliers.

  Oil Pollution
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the total number of reported cases of oil pollution in United Kingdom coastal and estuarial waters in(a) 1988, (b) 1989 and (c)

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  [holding answer 5 February 1990]The Department of Transport's marine pollution control unit funds a complete annual survey of oil pollution around the coasts of the United Kingdom. This is carried out by the advisory committee on pollution of the sea which draws its information from a number of sources including the Department of Transport and local authorities.

  A total of 559 incidents were reported during 1988. Survey results for 1989 are expected to be published in June.

  The Department of Transport's own provisional figure for incidents at sea in 1989 is 246 with a further 14 incidents reported so far this year.

  Government Buildings (Clearing)
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much is spent annually in cleaning Government buildings; and what is the major cause of environmental damage to them.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer 6 February 1990]It is not possible to say how much is spent annually in cleaning Government buildings.

  There is no single identifiable major cause of environmental damage to Government buildings. This can be incurred as a result of accident or by airborne or waterborne chemicals and pollutants or through weather conditions, particularly those involving extremes of heat, cold, wind, rain or tide. Records of such damage are not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Water Charges
  Mr. Knapman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he can now announce the charges limits for statutory water companies for the next 10 years.

  Mr. Trippier
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has now determined the charges limits for six English companies and has made firm proposals to a further 20. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has determined the charges limits for the two companies based in Wales. I have placed in the Library of the House copies of a table showing the figures for each company. Proposals will be put to Mid Sussex shortly. Our proposals will allow charges to rise by 6·5 per cent. a year on average in real terms over the next five years and by less than 2 per cent. a year on average in the following five years. Over the 10 years as a whole this represents average increases each year of only 23p (in current prices) on the monthly bill. Where determinations have not yet been made, companies have 28 days within which to make further representations. Once determined charges limits may only be adjusted or reviewed by the Director General of Water Services.

  In determining these limits we have considered with each company its future programmes, operating costs and financing needs to the end of this century. We have had particular regard to the improvements in drinking water quality required to secure or facilitate compliance with the requirements of the Drinking Water Quality Regulations (which incorporates the standards of the EC drinking water directive), and to the investment required to renew aging infrastructure assets and to augment water resources so as to overcome the kind of shortages experienced during recent droughts. The proposed limits provide for total investment by the 29 companies of £1·7 billion (in current prices) over the decade to the year 2000.

  My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Wales have also determined the infrastructure charges limits for 27 of the statutory water companies and made revised proposals for one other. Copies of a table showing these have also been placed in the Library. The average charge will be £593, at 1990–91 prices.

ENERGY

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what steps his Department has and is taking to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mr. Wakeham
  My Department has clear security policies and procedures for safeguarding its unclassified but sensitive computer systems but is currently tightening its procedures in consultation with the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency. Classified systems are already protected by more stringent controls.

  Petroleum Licences
  Mr. Caborn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy, pursuant to the answer of 17 January to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central,Official Report, column 275, which two South African owned companies hold small interests in the United Kingdom offshore petroleum production licences.

  Mr. Peter Morrison
  The companies are Baytrust Oil Explorations Limited and Unilon Oil Explorations Limited.

  Cross-Channel Electricity Interconnectors
  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if a new pricing contract for the exchange of electricity via the cross-Channel interconnectors will be completed before the end of the current financial year.

  Mr. Baldry
  Electricité de France has been invited to be a party to the pooling and settlement agreement. This will permit EdF to buy and sell electricity on a day-to-day basis. Negotiations are also taking place on longer-term contracts.

  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he has any plans to facilitate the construction of additional cross-Channel electricity interconnectors.

  Mr. Baldry
  The construction of additional cross-Channel electricity interconnectors will be a wholly commercial matter for the parties concerned, subject to their obtaining the necessary planning permission.

THE ARTS

  English National Ballet
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts what discussions he had with the chairman of English National Ballet prior to the termination of the contracts of Mr. Peter Shanfriss and Mr. Steven Scott.

  Mr. Luce
  I have had no such discussions. This is entirely a matter for the board of governors of the English National Ballet.

  UPSTART Theatre Company
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts (1) what information he has on(a) the number of productions of, (b) the number of performances of, (c) the number of seats sold by, (d) the box office income of and (e) the size of the investment of the Arts Council in the UPSTART theatre company;
  640
  (2) what information he has on who the auditors approved to audit the accounts of the UPSTART theatre company are; and whether any such accounts have been lodged with Companies House.

  Mr. Luce
  The UPSTART theatre company was established in 1988 with the support of the Arts Council and others to generate new touring productions. I have asked the chairman of the Arts Council to write to the hon. Member with the information he requires.

  Mummified Heads
  Mr. Fisher
  To ask the Minister for the Arts (1) what discussions he has had with the Governments of Australia and New Zealand about the future of mummified aboriginal and Maori heads in British museums;

  (2) what information he has on the (a) number and (b) location of mummified aboriginal and Maori heads and other human relics in British museums.

  Mr. Luce
  [holding answer 5 February 1990]I have received no representations from the Governments of Australia and New Zealand about the future of mummified aboriginal and Maori heads in British museums. I understand that of the national museums and galleries for which I am responsible, the British Museum's museum of mankind has seven Maori heads in its Oceanic collection, and the natural history museum has one mummified Maori head and one mummified aboriginal head in its keeping.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  European Monetary Scheme
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the percentage of deviation quarter by quarter of the pound sterling from the central trend of the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS from 1985 to date.

  Mr. Ryder
  The sterling/ecu exchange rate is published in the Central Statistical Office's "Financial Statistics", table 13.1. Sterling's notional central rates against the European currency unit (ECU) up to and including 12 January 1987 are given in the Commission's booklet "The EMS: Ten Years of Progress in European Monetary Co-operation". Both publications are available in the Library of the House. Sterling's notional central rate following the reweighting of the ecu on 21 September 1989 was set at 0·728627. It was subsequently set at 0·728615 after the realignment of 8 January 1990.

  Income Tax
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many people pay income tax; and how many fill in income tax returns.

  Mr. Lilley
  It is estimated that about 21·4 million single people and married couples (25 million individuals) will be liable to income tax in 1989–90. These estimates are based on a projection of the 1987–88 survey of personal incomes and are provisional. Approximately 8 million income tax returns were sent out for the most recent year.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much total revenue the poll tax is expected to raise in 1990–91; and what increase in income tax would raise an equivalent sum.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  Total revenue from community charges in 1990–91 will depend on the level of charges set by individual charging authorities.

  Money Supply
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was(a) the forecast and (b) the outturn for (i) M0 and (ii) M4 for 1988 and 1989; what was the cause of the differences between forecasts and outturns; and what assessment he has made of the effects on inflation of both.

  Mr. Ryder
  Official forecasts for M0 and M4 are not published, but target ranges for M0 growth are set out each year in the medium-term financial strategy published in the Financial Statement and Budget Report. The target range for both 1988–89 and 1989–90 was 1 to 5 per cent. M0 growth has fallen gradually since September 1988 as a result of the progressive tightening of monetary policy. M0 is a reliable indicator of monetary conditions; movements in broad money require careful interpretation but are also taken into account in assessing monetary conditions.

  Interest Rates
  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he expects to announce a reduction in interest rates.

  Mr. Ryder
  There will be no early relaxation of monetary policy. Interest rates will remain high for some time to come.

  Stamp Duty
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the yield and cost of collection of the stamp duty on(a) the sale of domestic housing and (b) any other categories where the information is available for the latest year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Lilley
  The latest available forecast of receipts from stamp duties in 1989–90, split between the major transactions from which it is derived, was given in the reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) on 30 November 1989,Official Report, columns 431–32. About £950 million of the stamp duty on land and property is attributable to residential property.

  The cost of collection is expected to be around 0·3 per cent. of total stamp duties; a separate figure for the cost of collecting duty on residential property is not available.

  Mortgage Interest Rates
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the total savings for domestic mortgage payers from a 1 per cent. drop in mortgage interest rates.

  Mr. Lilley
  A reduction of one percentage point in the current level of mortgage interest rates would reduce total mortgage interest payments net of tax relief by about £170 million per month for the estimated 9·3 million domestic mortgage payers. This represents an average monthly saving of about £18 per mortgagor.

  Ambulance Workers (Notice Staff)
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the cost of production and distribution of the notice to the Treasury staff entitled, "Industrial Action in Support of Ambulance Workers" dated 23 January, Ref.: EO6L. AM/Allan/Ambulance issued by B.Fox (EOG).

  Mr. Ryder
  The estimated production and distribution costs were £13.

  Building Societies Association
  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he next expects to meet representatives from the Building Societies Association; and what matters he proposes to discuss.

  Mr. Wareing
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he next expects to meet representatives from the Building Societies Association; and what matters he proposes to discuss.

  Mr. Ryder
  My right hon. Friend the Chancellor does not expect to meet representatives from the Building Societies Association in the near future.

  Skilball
  Mr. Burns
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received concerning the revenue implications of the introduction of a spot-the-ball game to be called Skilball; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lilley
  None.

  Japan (Trade)
  Mr. Dunn
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish in the Official Report the extent in cash terms of export trade from the United Kingdom to the empire of Japan and the extent in cash terms of import trade from the empire of Japan to the United Kingdom; and if he will publish figures for both for each year since 1979.

  Mr. Norman Lamont
  The information may be found in the "Monthly Review of External Trade Statistics" and its mid-year supplement, available from the Library of the House, or on the Central Statistical Office databank which may be accessed through the Library.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Animal Maltreatment
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce legislation which will strengthen bans on ownership against persons who have maltreated dogs; and if he will extend such bans to protect other animals.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The power already exists. As a result of section 1 of the Protection of Animals (Amendment) Act 1988, where a person has been convicted under the Protection of Animals Act 1911 of an offence of cruelty to any animal, the court by which he is convicted may order him to be disqualified from having custody of any animal.

  Skilball
  Mr. Burns
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received from the Gaming Board and others concerning the introduction of a gambling activity to be called Skilball; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  We understand that the promoters of "Skilball" intend it to be a prize competition in which success will depend to a substantial degree on the exercise of skill, so that it will not fall to be regulated or prohibited under the laws of gambling. Only a court could determine this question authoritatively.

  The Gaming Board for Great Britain has expressed to us its concern that, in the event that "Skilball" is promoted or perceived as a form of gambling, it could have serious implications for policy on lotteries and for the general principle that demand for gambling should not be stimulated. We have also received letters from two hon. Members about "Skilball", one in his capacity as a consultant to its promoters, the other asking about its relationship to the law on lotteries.

  We are at present considering the implications of the proposed competition. We have no current plan to amend the law on prize competitions such as "Skilball" is claimed to be. The position is being kept under review, and no assurance can be given that legislation may not at some stage be proposed which might affect the legality or viability of such competitions.

  Hong Kong
  Mr. Ashdown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what criteria for settlement in Britain will be required for the Asian spouses of British expatriates living in Hong Kong; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Paragraph 50 of the Immigration Rules (HC. 388) sets out the criteria for admission for settlement as the spouse of a British citizen or other person who is present and settled in the United Kingdom or who is at the same time being admitted for settlement.

  Summer Time (Green Paper)
  Mr. Thornton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many requests have been received for a copy of the Government's Green Paper on summer time, consultative document Cm 722, since June 1989; and how many responses he has received as a result.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Her Majesty's Stationery Office has sold 1,082 copies. A total of 30,867 responses have been received.

  Young Offenders
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list, in respect of each young offender institution and remand centre, the 644
  numbers of (a) convicted and (b) unconvicted prisoners under the age of 16 years who are receiving fewer than 15 hours of education each week.

  Mr. Mellor
  During the most recent week for which figures are available, all inmates under 16 years of age in young offender institutions received at least 15 hours education. The number of inmates under 16 years in remand centres who did not receive 15 hours education was as follows:

  Inmates under 16 years

  Remand centre

  Convicted

  Unconvicted

  Brockhill

  2

  4

  Cardiff

  1

  Feltham

  18

  7

  Glen Parva

  1

  Manchester

  1

  Sentenced Prisoners
  Mr. Bermingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many of those persons sentenced to a gaol by a Crown court in England and Wales during 1988 had committed an offence involving(a) violence, (b) sex, (c) robbery and (d) supply of drugs; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) what proportion of (a) 17 to 20-year-olds and (b) adults were sentenced to immediate custody for (i) violence against the person, (ii) burglary, (iii) theft and handling, (iv) fraud and forgery, (v) criminal damage and (vi) drug offences in each of the Crown court centres in England and Wales during 1988; and if he will make a statement;

  (3) what was the average sentence length in England and Wales for (a) Crown courts, (b) magistrates courts and (c) all courts during 1988; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. John Patten
  [holding answer 25 January 1990] Information on the average sentence lengths by the Crown court and magistrates courts in England and Wales is given in "Criminal Statistics England and Wales 1988" (Tables 7.16 to 7.20), a copy of which is in the Library.

  Information that relates to the number of persons sentenced to immediate custody by the Crown court for certain offences; and the proportion of persons aged 17 to 20 and 21 and over who were sentenced to immediate custody by certain offences in each Crown court centre in England and Wales in 1988 is given in the tables:

  Table 1 Persons sentenced to immediate custody by the Crown Court 1988 England and Wales

  Offence

  Total immediate custody

  Violence against the person

  7,697

  Sexual offences

  2,262

  Robbery

  3,092

  Supplying drugs (Trafficking)

  2,594

  645

  Table 2: Proportion of persons aged 17 and under 21 and 21 and over sentenced to immediate custody for certain offences by each Crown Court centre

  England and Wales 1988

  Percentages

  Crown Court centres

  Violence against the person

  Burglary

  Theft and handling

  Fraud and forgery

  Criminal damage

  Drug offences

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  Midland and Oxford Circuit

  Birmingham

  54

  53

  50

  58

  43

  41

  115

  37

  54

  44

  17

  51

  Coventry

  61

  54

  72

  70

  52

  56

  1—

  57

  155

  150

  1—

  173

  Derby

  47

  44

  59

  74

  45

  45

  142

  53

  165

  42

  1—

  70

  Dudley

  69

  52

  54

  67

  46

  44

  117

  48

  175

  118

  167

  53

  Great Grimsby

  140

  60

  58

  47

  21

  28

  150

  123

  140

  —

  —

  136

  Hereford

  170

  53

  46

  66

  130

  59

  133

  150

  1100

  157

  —

  143

  Leicester

  48

  45

  59

  66

  45

  43

  130

  46

  142

  58

  1—

  55

  Lincoln

  44

  39

  51

  62

  38

  44

  169

  44

  157

  135

  150

  165

  Northampton

  58

  57

  69

  67

  31

  41

  114

  46

  138

  33

  —

  69

  Nottingham

  51

  42

  70

  70

  41

  39

  121

  32

  68

  41

  150

  51

  Oxford

  66

  71

  59

  62

  38

  48

  125

  56

  150

  147

  133

  67

  Peterborough

  145

  62

  65

  65

  141

  46

  1—

  58

  1100

  169

  1100

  160

  Shrewsbury

  47

  42

  71

  59

  32

  46

  1100

  36

  122

  136

  167

  147

  Stafford

  53

  55

  64

  66

  43

  32

  129

  43

  155

  33

  160

  155

  Stoke-on-Trent

  39

  39

  42

  54

  36

  38

  127

  143

  133

  135

  1—

  147

  Walsall

  —

  1—

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Warwick

  57

  52

  74

  70

  54

  41

  1—

  43

  169

  130

  150

  75

  Worcester

  65

  51

  64

  75

  47

  43

  1—

  39

  167

  150

  125

  40

  Wolverhampton

  57

  56

  62

  58

  45

  42

  150

  51

  130

  153

  1—

  167

  North Eastern Circuit

  Beverley

  42

  38

  63

  60

  34

  33

  1—

  43

  1100

  120

  1100

  70

  Doncaster

  43

  40

  56

  48

  33

  31

  133

  44

  138

  133

  1—

  138

  Durham

  52

  42

  57

  52

  29

  28

  1—

  42

  125

  120

  —

  141

  Huddersfield

  53

  45

  60

  55

  17

  36

  1—

  132

  —

  175

  —

  150

  Kingston-upon-Hull

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1—

  1100

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Leeds

  49

  43

  54

  55

  33

  31

  136

  35

  32

  35

  143

  53

  Newcastle-upon-Tyne

  45

  50

  155

  58

  25

  33

  120

  25

  133

  32

  125

  52

  Sheffield

  41

  41

  48

  54

  31

  30

  117

  35

  48

  26

  133

  61

  Teesside

  48

  39

  64

  61

  34

  30

  133

  41

  161

  44

  167

  54

  Wakefield

  76

  34

  59

  52

  34

  27

  1—

  52

  1100

  143

  —

  175

  York

  51

  40

  66

  59

  28

  33

  117

  44

  1—

  45

  —

  140

  Northern Circuit

  Barrow-in-Furness

  175

  123

  167

  174

  140

  136

  —

  1100

  1100

  —

  1—

  150

  Bolton

  37

  48

  63

  51

  32

  40

  110

  36

  153

  136

  1—

  46

  Burnley

  147

  52

  72

  52

  138

  25

  1—

  32

  150

  167

  1100

  133

  Carlisle

  60

  63

  63

  68

  122

  39

  133

  150

  1100

  140

  1—

  165

  Kendal

  —

  1—

  150

  1100

  133

  120

  —

  1—

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Lancaster

  140

  38

  69

  72

  150

  56

  1—

  167

  1100

  140

  1100

  140

  Liverpool

  40

  46

  63

  71

  34

  42

  138

  46

  26

  41

  63

  68

  Manchester

  59

  50

  62

  62

  44

  42

  124

  53

  31

  35

  42

  65

  Preston

  48

  41

  66

  65

  50

  36

  120

  38

  167

  42

  133

  41

  South Eastern Circuit

  Acton

  44

  41

  55

  58

  21

  29

  111

  37

  143

  33

  133

  62

  Aylesbury

  69

  61

  152

  67

  30

  45

  120

  49

  133

  143

  160

  73

  Bury St. Edmunds

  153

  56

  69

  181

  142

  30

  1—

  145

  150

  140

  1—

  160

  Cambridge

  65

  61

  60

  59

  47

  51

  1100

  165

  150

  122

  1100

  164

  Chelmsford

  57

  47

  74

  82

  46

  49

  133

  48

  153

  32

  150

  65

  Chichester

  153

  38

  35

  46

  31

  33

  125

  29

  133

  113

  —

  1100

  Croydon

  21

  40

  68

  67

  22

  30

  115

  36

  122

  26

  143

  81

  Guildford

  35

  33

  47

  66

  34

  37

  125

  41

  136

  25

  120

  50

  Ipswich

  158

  59

  55

  68

  36

  46

  125

  32

  1100

  117

  175

  169

  Isleworth

  46

  50

  66

  61

  33

  40

  133

  55

  122

  119

  58

  88

  Kings Lynn

  150

  1100

  180

  168

  171

  41

  —

  180

  150

  —

  —

  175

  Kingston Upon Thames

  40

  41

  56

  62

  25

  33

  1

  33

  113

  13

  150

  44

  Knightsbridge

  54

  44

  51

  62

  24

  38

  111

  51

  19

  23

  150

  51

  Lewes

  46

  56

  51

  60

  36

  40

  150

  42

  167

  40

  1—

  46

  Maidstone

  55

  45

  58

  65

  32

  35

  140

  41

  142

  38

  125

  64

  Middlesex Guildhall

  1—

  139

  1100

  150

  125

  32

  —

  140

  1—

  120

  —

  150

  Newington Causeway

  60

  42

  59

  62

  38

  41

  126

  51

  126

  13

  48

  56

  Norwich

  72

  69

  67

  62

  45

  48

  133

  31

  150

  158

  160

  52

  Old Bailey

  55

  67

  63

  84

  39

  52

  150

  63

  133

  38

  167

  89

  Reading

  58

  47

  60

  66

  34

  31

  133

  26

  125

  146

  150

  72

  St. Albans

  46

  46

  72

  68

  38

  34

  135

  45

  133

  26

  133

  55

  Snaresbrook

  36

  38

  55

  56

  34

  38

  125

  42

  129

  25

  150

  54

  Southend

  64

  50

  77

  88

  51

  35

  150

  155

  1100

  133

  —

  175

  Southwark

  45

  52

  49

  58

  32

  48

  113

  50

  155

  43

  31

  62

  Wood Green

  40

  38

  47

  53

  32

  33

  130

  17

  133

  117

  127

  42

  Wales and Chester Circuit

  646

  647

  Crown Court centres

  Violence against the person

  Burglary

  Theft and handling

  Fraud and forgery

  Criminal damage

  Drug offences

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  17–20

  21+

  Caernarvon

  133

  56

  65

  85

  133

  53

  1100

  150

  1100

  125

  1—

  167

  Cardiff

  46

  46

  60

  75

  44

  40

  146

  42

  173

  48

  175

  49

  Carmarthen

  133

  25

  1100

  153

  150

  42

  —

  146

  1—

  1—

  —

  129

  Chester

  81

  59

  64

  81

  40

  54

  130

  46

  145

  139

  1—

  165

  Dolgelau

  1100

  150

  150

  1100

  150

  160

  —

  —

  1100

  1—

  —

  Haverfordwest

  1—

  117

  1100

  125

  1—

  1—

  —

  125

  1

  1

  1—

  1—

  Knutsford

  50

  55

  83

  90

  27

  38

  1—

  171

  1100

  188

  1100

  175

  Merthyr Tydfil

  152

  35

  57

  56

  128

  48

  140

  1—

  1—

  —

  163

  Mold

  74

  71

  77

  79

  60

  56

  167

  39

  178

  150

  150

  170

  Newport

  37

  38

  60

  61

  35

  32

  133

  43

  167

  135

  1100

  62

  Swansea

  44

  36

  56

  52

  34

  35

  157

  30

  167

  163

  1—

  162

  Warrington

  160

  48

  73

  68

  30

  42

  —

  173

  —

  150

  1—

  157

  Welshpool

  —

  1—

  1—

  1100

  133

  114

  1—

  1—

  —

  —

  1100

  Western Circuit

  Barnstaple

  114

  138

  186

  153

  170

  26

  150

  113

  1100

  150

  —

  1—

  Bodmin

  157

  22

  68

  74

  36

  26

  125

  31

  150

  1100

  1—

  138

  Bournemouth

  54

  34

  53

  63

  42

  35

  150

  43

  120

  133

  1—

  147

  Bristol

  59

  44

  71

  58

  29

  34

  1—

  35

  1—

  18

  145

  50

  Dorchester

  167

  154

  143

  164

  167

  125

  —

  150

  1100

  1—

  —

  145

  Exeter

  44

  50

  66

  58

  26

  40

  1100

  53

  133

  147

  1100

  40

  Gloucester

  148

  34

  63

  40

  29

  36

  140

  40

  19

  125

  1—

  155

  Newport (Isle of Wight)

  133

  126

  167

  144

  1—

  14

  —

  138

  —

  133

  133

  8

  Plymouth

  169

  54

  56

  55

  24

  31

  1—

  49

  1—

  150

  1100

  69

  Portsmouth

  47

  40

  38

  47

  21

  17

  1—

  25

  1—

  1—

  1—

  69

  Salisbury

  113

  117

  167

  178

  140

  130

  —

  175

  —

  —

  —

  Southampton

  33

  39

  27

  48

  29

  25

  125

  22

  150

  120

  150

  175

  Swindon

  50

  40

  71

  64

  32

  22

  1—

  143

  1100

  130

  ——

  140

  Taunton

  61

  42

  63

  54

  29

  28

  150

  137

  1—

  133

  1—

  122

  Winchester

  182

  60

  55

  73

  31

  36

  1—

  39

  125

  32

  150

  144

  England and Wales

  50

  46

  60

  62

  35

  37

  27

  42

  44

  35

  44

  60

  1denotes fewer than 25 persons sentenced in each age group.

  Mr. Messam Ali Khan
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he asked the post in Islamabad to issue entry clearance to Messam Ali Khan (References: TH/28527/87; K223746; IMM/31449); when Mr. Khan will be issued with entry clearance; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  [holding answer 23 January 1990]: After the appeal of Messam Ali Khan against refusal of entry clearance was allowed by an adjudicator on 11 October 1989, an application for leave to appeal to the immigration appeal tribunal was made on behalf of the entry clearance officer. That application has now been withdrawn and the entry clearance officer was notified on 1 February that entry clearance should be issued.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Live Births
  Mr. Doran
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the latest information he has on live births and survival at low gestational age, and on live births with estimated gestation less than 28 weeks, in Northern Ireland.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 1 February 1990]: In 1986 there were 106 live births with an estimated gestational age of less than 28 weeks. The remaining information is not available.

  Child Benefit
  Mr. Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on behalf of how many children are parents receiving child benefit and what is the cost of paying it.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 1 February 1990]: The number of children for whom child benefit is currently being paid in Northern Ireland is 456,000. The total amount of benefit paid for the year ended 31 March 1989 was £172,969,000. The administrative cost of paying the benefit in that year was £3,456,000.

TRANSPORT

  London Assessment Studies
  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make it his policy, after selecting the preferred option in stage 2B of the London assessment studies, to provide the resources necessary to implement all components of the proposals, including the public transport and traffic calming and management elements.

  Mr. Atkins
  I cannot anticipate decisions on what schemes will be taken forward or what priority they will have.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if his Department will undertake a programme of publicity and public meetings on the proposals contained in stage 2B of the London assessment studies and its document, "Traffic in London"; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  A full public consultation programme is already under way. Some 2,900 copies of the London
  649
  assessment studies reports, and 180,000 copies of summaries of the consultants work, with leaflets giving the Department's initial views, have been printed; 4,500 copies of the "Traffic in London" discussion document have been issued.

  Displays of the assessment studies options have been mounted in public libraries and at other locations throughout the study areas. Arrangements have been made for Department of Transport officials to attend over 20 public meetings arranged by boroughs to explain the study options and the Department's initial views. The officials will answer questions about the "Traffic in London" initiatives.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps his Department took to ensure consistency in the level and detail of information its consultants have released on the proposals contained in stage 2B of the London assessment studies.

  Mr. Atkins
  The Department has sought to ensure consistency by arranging for discussions between the consultants.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he will make it his policy that, before reaching a final decision on stage 2B of the London assessment studies and the introduction of the priority route network proposals, their combined impact on traffic and movement in the capital will be assessed using the LTS model and that the results will be published.

  Mr. Atkins
  We are proposing a pilot scheme which will assess the effectiveness of priority routes. We are also consulting local authorities and others on the composition of the network. It will not be possible to estimate the overall effects of the network until this work is completed. Any schemes adopted following the assessment studies will be subject to further detailed appraisal.

  Ms. Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) whether he will undertake and publish a detailed analysis of the environmental impact of the proposals contained in stage 2B of the London assessment studies and his Department's document "Traffic in London";

  (2) whether, before reaching a final decision on stage 2B of the London assessment studies, and the introduction of the priority route network proposals outlined in "Traffic in London", they will be assessed in the context of the Pearce report on sustainable development.

  Mr. Atkins
  A full and detailed analysis of the environmental impact of the assessment study options is contained in the consultants' stage 2 reports published on 14 December. The Pearce report findings will be taken into account along with all relevant factors when decisions are taken on what proposals, if any, should be taken forward.

  Rail Electrification
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what recent discussions he has now had with the chairman of British Rail on the time scale of the electrification of the Edinburgh-Linlithgow-Falkirk-Glasgow and Edinburgh-Dundee-Aberdeen lines.

  Mr. Portillo
  It is for British Rail to bring forward any worthwhile proposals for electrification.

  Airmiss (Tranent)
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many passengers and crew were on the BAC1-11 flight which was involved in an airmiss with a Tornado aircraft over Tranent on 2 August 1989; what airline it belonged to; what was its flight number; and from which airport it was flying.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Anonymity in airmiss investigation is preserved in the interest of full and frank reporting of incidents. This does not inhibit thorough investigation or follow-up action to remedy any failings which are uncovered. There is no reason to change this practice over the incident at Tranent on 2 August 1989.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will amend the air traffic regulations to establish the responsibility of an air traffic controller for vectoring aircraft in controlled or special rules airspace in respect of both the vertical and horizontal planes, in line with the recommendation of the joint airmiss working group following the incident over Tranent on 2 August 1989.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  I understand that amendments to the manual of air traffic services in line with the joint airmiss working group recommendations have already been agreed and are included in the next amendment list to the regulations.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will amend the air traffic regulations to establish the responsibility of an air traffic controller to instruct and advise pilots in order to ensure that they remain in regulated airspace even when such pilots accept a visual approach or other relaxation from full control, as recommended by the joint airmiss working group following the incident over Tranent on 2 August 1989.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  I understand that amendments to the manual of air traffic services requiring controllers to ensure that the clearances they issue do not allow aircraft inadvertently to leave regulated airspace have already been agreed and are included in the next amendment list to the regulations. Regulations allow captains of aircraft to make a conscious decision to leave regulated airspace should they so require.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will take steps to ensure that civil pilots have readily available information as to the vertical limits of regulated airspace as recommended by the joint airmiss working group following the incident over Tranent on 2 August 1989.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The Civil Aviation Authority has the statutory responsibility for the safety regulation of civil aviation. I understand that it is the CAA's view that the publication of the vertical limits of regulated airspace in the United Kingdom aeronautical information publication, on the CAA topographical maps and on commercially available approach charts and en route maps meets all reasonable requirements for the availability of this information.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if, in the light of the deliberations of the joint airmiss working group into an incident over Tranent on 2 August 1989, he will now extend the area of controlled airspace around Edinburgh airport.
  651
  Mr. McLoughlin
  The joint airmiss working group made no recommendation to change the dimensions of controlled airspace around Edinburgh airport. All regulated airspace in the United Kingdom is reviewed regularly to ensure that it remains appropriate to the traffic density. There are no plans to change the dimensions of the Edinburgh CTR/SRZ or those areas of the Scottish TMA associated with Edinburgh procedures.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if, in view of the deliberations of the joint airmiss working group into an incident over Tranent on 2 August 1989, he will direct the Civil Aviation Authority to provide secondary surveillance radar at Edinburgh.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  As part of a national programme instituted before the Tranent airmiss secondary surveillance radar is being installed at Edinburgh airport and is expected to be operational before the end of May 1990.

  Barton-le-Clay Bypass
  Mr. John Carlisle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport on what evidence and information he based his decision to decline the provision of a footbridge over the newly constructed A6 Barton-le-Clay bypass.

  Mr. Atkins
  The joint decision of the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Transport was based on evidence given at the public inquiries about forecast traffic flows, known pedestrian-cyclist movements and the estimated cost of a footbridge.

  Mr. John Carlisle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he has received regarding the provision of a footbridge over the newly constructed A6 Barton-le-Clay bypass.

  Mr. Atkins
  Requests that a bridge be provided have been received from my hon. Friend, Barton-le-Clay parish council, South Bedfordshire district council and a small number of private individuals.

  Mr. John Carlisle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he will reconsider his decision to refuse the provision of a footbridge over the newly constructed A6 Barton-le-Clay bypass.

  Mr. Atkins
  I have undertaken to review the position once the bypass is open to traffic.

  Pensioners (Bus Passes)
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish in the Official Report the estimated cost of providing free bus travel for pensioners in England and Wales.

  Mr. Portillo
  Total local authority expenditure on all travel concessions for pensioners, disabled persons and children in 1989–90 is estimated at £350 million. No information is available on how much of this expenditure is on free bus travel for pensioners.

  Lorries
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has recently taken any initiatives to combat the environmental problems caused by lorries in residential areas and town centres.
  652
  Mr. Atkins
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced on 23 January the publication of two documents that address the environmental problem lorries can cause in residential areas and town centres. "Lorries in the Community" and the "Lorries and Traffic Management" manual were published following a lorry management study co-sponsored by my Department, the Civic Trust and the County Surveyors Society. Copies of these documents are in the House Libraries.

  One of the aims of the trunk road programme is to improve the environment by removing through traffic from unsuitable roads in towns and villages. Since 1979, over 100 bypasses and relief roads have been completed. There are over 150 bypasses and relief roads in the current programme. Other roads also have a bypassing effect.

  New limits on the harmful gases which can be emitted by all kinds of vehicles have now been agreed in Europe. They are being introduced during the early 1990s. A second stage of limits is going to be discussed later this year. Limits will be set on particulates as well as on gaseous emissions. This means that in the future we can look forward to lorries and cars which are much cleaner.

  New rules will mean that the noise from the heaviest lorries will almost have been halved during the last decade. The European Commission is now working on further proposals for tighter vehicle noise limits. The Quite Heavy Vehicle 90 project has also been undertaken. This has been a collaborative partnership between industry, Government and research organisations to develop techniques to reduce noise from heavy lorries. The project included research into developing quieter engines, exhaust system panels and the enclosures around engines.

  London Underground
  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what proposals he has received for investment in improving the conditions for passengers in the rush hours on the London Underground.

  Mr. Portillo
  The Government have already approved a major programme of investment, which includes the modernisation of the Central line, improvements to Liverpool Street and Angel stations, and the purchase of new trains. We have made financial provision for the extension of the Jubilee line, for congestion-relief measures at the most overcrowded stations, for a substantial programme of train-refurbishment, and for the modernisation of the Northern line. We expect to take a decision later this year on the introduction of a Bill for a new line to relieve congestion in the central area of London. Such investments will benefit all passengers, but will be particularly welcome to those who travel at the busiest peak periods.

  Birmingham Cross-city Line
  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has now considered British Rail's formal investment case for the electrification of the Birmingham cross-city line; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Parkinson
  I received British Rail's initial evaluation of tenders for electric rolling stock on 29 January 1990, and have now considered it in the light of earlier proposals for fixed works. The case for electrification is now fully established. I welcome the proposal. Passengers have had to put up with old and
  653
  worn-out trains for some time. The modernisation of this line will greatly improve the quality and reliability of the service for the people of the west midlands. The new rolling stock will offer a more comfortable ride, better lighting, sliding doors and faster journey times. The benefits will go wider than the cross-city line, as the stock will also be used on Coventry-Wolverhampton services in off-peak periods.

  I have given approval to the whole scheme in principle and for works to electrify the line at a cost of about £18 million which will be completed by 1992. The scheme will be jointly funded by British Rail and the West Midlands passenger transport executive.

  British Rail will select the type of electric rolling stock that it wishes to purchase later in the year when it has decided which of the offers it has had from manufacturers will give best value for money.

  Planning Application (Redbridge)
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will set out the extent to which the proposal in the planning application No. 322/88, LRO(T) Reference GLRT 41 35027/3/0287, which the Department of Transport on 25 April 1988 directed the London borough of Redbridge to refuse, would have required modifications to the Made Line and Side Roads Order 1986.

  Mr. Atkins
  [holding answer 2 February 1990]: The need to maintain minimum clearance of underground structures at Wanstead LT station would have required the centre line of the developers' wider tunnel to run about 1·5m north of that established for the Department's tunnel by the made London-Great Yarmouth Trunk Road (Al2) (Eastway to Eastern Avenue) and (Slip Roads at Wanstead) Order 1986. The developers' tunnel needed to be wider to accommodate mechnical ventilation equipment made necessary by its extra length.

  That would have required republication of the line order. The planning application would also have affected slip roads at the Green Man interchange and in turn related made side road orders.

  Made Line and Side Roads Order 1986
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what modifications have been made since the date of Made Line and Side Roads Order 1986 by the Department of Transport to the intended line of the proposed London-Great Yarmouth trunk road (Al2) in order to take account of sight restrictions or for any other reason; and whether such alteration will require modifications to the Made Line and Side Roads Order 1986.

  Mr. Atkins
  [holding answer 2 February 1990]: The main line of the route is fixed by the London-Great Yarmouth Trunk Road (Al2) (Eastway to Eastern Avenue and Slip Roads at Wanstead) Order 1986, made following the inquiry in 1983. The proposed line of the dual carriageway has remained unchanged since that date.

EMPLOYMENT

  Employment and Training (Lancashire)
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what programmes designed to boost employment and training are available to employers in Lancashire; and what they will cost during the financial year 1990–91.

  Mr. Nicholls
  All my Department's employment, enterprise and training measures are available to boost employment and training in Lancashire, as elsewhere. Measures available to employers and the self-employed include the jobcentre service, business growth training and the enterprise allowance scheme; many employers also participate in programmes designed to equip the unemployed and young people for employment, such as employment training and YTS. My Department's expenditure plans for 1990–91 are contained in chapter 6 of the public expenditure White Paper, published last month.

  Training Grants
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he has any plans to increase a trainee's choice of skills he may acquire by paying training grants direct to young people.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Trainee choice will be widened under the new arrangements for youth training, to be run by training and enterprise councils from spring 1990 onwards. These arrangements will in themselves widen the range of training opportunities and offer higher level qualifications. The Government have no plans at present to give training grants directly to young people.

  YTS
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many young people are currently involved in YTS.

  Mr. Nicholls
  At 31 December 1989, a total of 386,000 young people were in training on YTS schemes in Great Britain.

  Labour Statistics
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many people are currently unemployed.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The information is available in the Library. In December 1989 the level of unemployment, seasonally adjusted, in the United Kingdom was 1,635,000.

  Training Costs
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is his estimate of total Government spending on skills and competence for work and youth training programmes for 1989–90 and for 1992–93; and what is the cost(a) per capita of total population and (b) per trainee; what is his estimate of spending for these purposes on the same basis in (i) Holland, (ii) West Germany and (iii) France for the latest available year.

  Mr. Eggar
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the public expenditure White Paper published on 30 January 1990.
  655
  The total spend on skills and competence for work is forecast at £2,481 million for 1989–90 and planned at £2,392 million for 1992–93. The cost per capita of the total population is £44·60 for 1989–90 and £42·62 for 1992–93. It is not possible to provide a cost per trainee, as some of the expenditure is on programmes not directed towards individual trainees. Comparable information is not available for Holland, West Germany or France.

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what steps his Department has and is taking to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mr. Eggar
  It is not the policy of the Employment Department to make public details of computer security systems, as such information would be of assistance to potential attackers. During the development phase of all computer systems, the Employment Department undertakes a structured analysis of security risks and requirements. The adequacy of the installed counter-measures is periodically reviewed throughout the lifetime of such projects. All security analysis draws on central guidance, the applications of which is kept under continuous review and has been tightened recently.

  Ethnic Minorities
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what response he proposes to make to the Commission for Racial Equality report, "Ethnic Minorities and the Graduate Labour Market"; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The CRE report "Ethnic Minorities and the Graduate Labour Market" makes a number of useful recommendations on action that could be taken to help improve the employment opportunities of graduates from the ethnic minorities. The recommendations are directed to institutions of higher education and employers, who, it is hoped, will note them and, where necessary, take appropriate action. Unnecessarily restricting access to employment and higher education opportunities for ethnic minority graduates, or potential graduates, is not only morally wrong but makes bad business sense, particularly in the face of the recent tightening of the graduate labour market.

  Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
  Mr. Skinner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many times the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service has been used to settle industrial disputes since 1979; and if he will publish a list of all references made and the outcome in each case.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Information on the overall number of disputes that ACAS has helped to settle is published in the ACAS annual reports, copies of which are held in the Library. The names of individual parties to such disputes, and the outcomes, are not comprehensively listed and this information is not available.

  Small Business
  Mr. Jack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what evaluation his Department has made of the potential gains to small business through the formation of consorzi; and if he will make a statement.
  656
  Mr. Tim Eggar
  Italian consorzi are based on the principle of small firms combining to undertake marketing, distribution and other activities together. This has clear potential benefits for the firms involved. It is, however, a matter for firms themselves to decide whether to opt for this way of organising their activities.

  Wages (North-West)
  Mr. Callaghan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what measures he proposes to introduce to increase wage rates in the north-west region.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Pay in the north-west, as elsewhere, is generally a matter for employers and employees to decide for themselves in the light of all the relevant circumstances. Any unnecessary intervention by the Government could only be harmful to business and to prospects for jobs.

  Explosives Act
  Mr. Alison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the requirements in section 6 of the Explosives Act 1875, which relate to an applicant's submission for a draft licence for a new factory or magazine, for consideration by the Health and Safety Executive of the environmental and social repercussions which might follow from the approval of the draft licence.

  Mr. Nicholls
  Section 6 of the Explosives Act 1875 requires that a new explosives factory or magazine shall not be established on a site except in a manner specified in the licence issued by the Health and Safety Executive. The terms of the licence usually specify matters entirely concerned with the safety and security of the explosives at the proposed site.

  Section 7 of the Act requires that the local authority grants assent to such a factory or magazine and must hear the applicant and any persons objecting. At such a hearing environmental and social considerations in addition to safety and security matters may be discussed. In addition, a proposed development for an explosives factory is subject to the normal requirements of the planning legislation.

  Mr. Alison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what draft licence under the Explosives Act 1875 has been received, approved, or rejected by the Health and Safety Executive in relation to a new factory or magazine at Steeton Hall farm, South Milford, near Leeds.

  Mr. Nicholls
  No draft licence has been received by the Health and Safety Executive in connection with Steeton Hall farm, South Milford, Leeds.

  Trade Unions
  Mr. Stern
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list those industries, professions and services in which more than 75 per cent. of the employees are represented by trade unions.

  Mr. Nicholls
  There are no data available on trade unions that enable a full answer to be given. However, there is information relating to the divisions of the standard industrial classification. The most recent data come from a specially commissioned survey of employees conducted for the Department in February and March 1989.
  657
  Regarding trade union membership, the survey showed that only in one division of the standard industrial classification—energy and water supply—does the level of trade union membership among employees exceed 75 per cent.

  The survey also showed that in two divisions, over 75 per cent. of employees worked in establishments that recognised trade unions for purposes of collective bargaining. These are energy and water supply, and transport and communication.

  Earnings
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what were the total earnings before tax, now and in 1979, for those on half and three quarters average earnings, both in cash terms and inflation adjusted terms.

  Mr. Nicholls
  The information requested is provided in the following table:

  Weekly earnings in 1979 and 1989, in cash and real terms.

  1979 in cash terms£

  1979 in cash terms£

  1989 in cash terms£

  Half average earnings

  44·6

  93·8

  119·9

  Three quarters average earnings

  66·8

  140·7

  179·8

  Notes

  1. Gross weekly earnings of all full-time adult employees. Figures as at April of each year.

  2. 1979 real terms figures are the cash figures revalued to April 1989 prices using the RPI (all items) index.

  Source: New Earnings Survey.

  State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment, after how long a delay and under what conditions those opting out of SERPS and claiming incentive payments to do so can rejoin the scheme later.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  There are no restrictions on an individual who is a member of an occupational or personal pension scheme rejoining SERPS at any time.

WALES

  Benefit Rules
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he proposes to review housing benefit rules in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Grist
  Decisions on housing benefit policy are made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security.

  Environmental Health Officers
  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the present number of environmental health officers presently employed by Welsh local authorities, listed by district area for the past five years; and what is the present number of environmental health officer vacancies throughout Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  The number of local authority non-manual staff employed in environmental health in Wales for each 658
  of the last five years is given in the table. It is not possible to identify separately the number of environmental health officers included in this number. Figures by authority are not available centrally, neither is information on vacancies.

  Number of non-manual staff employed in environmental health1

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  21989

  Districts

  833

  824

  815

  843

  862

  Counties

  14

  12

  12

  9

  11

  Total

  847

  836

  827

  852

  873

  1 Full-time equivalents as at September for each year.

  2 Figures for September 1989 are provisional.

  Doctors and Nurses
  Mr. Hayward
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will identify the number of doctors and nurses employed in Wales(a) now and (b) in June 1979.

  Mr. Grist
  The available information is shown in the tables:

  Medical and dental staff (whole-time equivalents) in post at 30 September1

  Number

  1979

  2,181

  1988

  2,545

  General medical practitioners2 (number) as at 1 October

  Number

  1979

  1,339

  1988

  1,599

  Nursing and midwifery staff (whole-time equivalents) in post at 30 September1 3

  Number

  1979

  23,031

  1989

  28,037

  1 Employed in the hospital and community service.

  2 Unrestricted principals.

  3 No adjustment has been made to take account of the change in working hours in 1980 from 40 to 37·5 hours a week.

  Sewage Outlets
  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the number and location of untreated sewage outlets into the rivers and coastal waters of Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) on 8 November 1989.

  Anthrax (Llay)
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will grant money to Clwyd county council as compensation for its unforeseen outlay consequent upon the anthrax outbreak at Llay; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  Expenditure associated with local government's animal health responsibilities has been allowed for in the 1989–90 rate support grant settlement
  659
  and reflected in Clwyd county council's grant-related expenditure assessment for the rate support grant purposes.

  Local authorities have discretionary powers to incur expenditure on unforeseen incidents such as the anthrax outbreak and would normally include an amount in their budgets for such contingencies.

  The Government recognise that it would be unreasonable for substantial extra expenditure incurred in exceptional circumstances to fall wholly upon ratepayers. Consequently, the Bellwin scheme, which is designed to deal with extraordinary costs arising from emergencies, allows for the provision of special financial assistance to local authorities in certain circumstances. We are ready to consider a detailed and fully costed application. But, on the information available to the Department we do not believe that the scale of additional expenditure in this instance would justify use of the scheme.

  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will meet members of Clwyd county council and officials to discuss the financial impact of the 1989 anthrax outbreak.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  No.

  Queensferry High School
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will meet members of staff of Queensferry high school concerning the future of the high school;

  (2) if he will meet the Parent-Teachers Association of the Queensferry high school to discuss their concerns regarding the future of the high school;

  (3) if he will visit the Queensferry high school.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  No. This is a matter initially for the local education authority which has a duty to consult interested persons before publishing statutory notices.

  Cancer Treatment
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when he proposes to make a statement on cancer treatment services for north Wales patients.

  Mr. Grist
  A comprehensive study of cancer treatment services in north Wales, commissioned by the Welsh Office, is presently the subject of wide consultation and responses have been invited by 31 March 1990. We do not propose to make any announcement until responses to consultation have been carefully considered.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Livsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what were the costs of collecting and administering the present rating system in Wales for the last five years; and what is the expected cost of collecting and administering the poll tax.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The costs of collecting and administering the present rating system in Wales for each of the last five years are shown in the table:

  Net current expenditure

  Year

  £ million

  1985–86

  7·89

  1986–87

  8·41

  1987–88

  8·90

  660

  Year

  £ million

  1988–89

  9·76

  1989–90

  19·80

  1 As recorded in local authority budgets for 1989–90.

  The 1989 report of the expenditure sub-group to the settlement working group estimated that the cost of collection and administration of the community charge in Wales in 1990–91 would be £25·6 million.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, the community charge for 1990–91 for each of the county councils in Wales and his own assessment;

  (2) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, the community charge for 1990–91 for each of the district councils in Wales and his own assessment.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  We have received no information from local authorities in Wales on 1990–91 community charge levels. Charging authorities are being asked to return this information in April. Details of my assessments of the county and district components of community charges for spending in line with the 1990–91 revenue support grant settlement are given in the following tables:

  District component of community charge1

  For standard spending£

  Assuming present spending patterns£

  Alyn and Deeside

  26·97

  29

  Colwyn

  26·97

  31

  Delyn

  26·97

  45

  Glyndwr

  26·97

  26

  Rhuddlan

  26·97

  43

  Wrexham Maelor

  26·97

  29

  Carmarthen

  26·97

  10

  Ceredigion

  26·97

  21

  Dinefwr

  26·97

  8

  Llanelli

  29·23

  42

  Preseli Pembrokeshire

  26·97

  12

  South Pembrokeshire

  26·97

  10

  Blaenau Gwent

  26·97

  42

  Islwyn

  26·97

  28

  Monmouth

  26·97

  32

  Newport

  29·23

  34

  Torfaen

  26·97

  26

  Aberconwy

  26·97

  38

  Arfon

  26·97

  23

  Dwyfor

  26·97

  19

  Meirionnydd

  26·97

  44

  Ynys Mon

  26·97

  38

  Cynon Valley

  29·23

  23

  Merthyr Tydfil

  29·23

  27

  Ogwr

  26·97

  33

  Rhondda

  29·23

  12

  Rhymney Valley

  26·97

  38

  Taff Ely

  26·97

  8

  Brecknock

  26·97

  25

  Montgomeryshire

  26·97

  11

  Radnorshire

  26·97

  21

  Cardiff

  26·97

  29

  Vale of Glamorgan

  26·97

  19

  Port Talbot

  26·97

  23

  Lliw Valley

  26·97

  16

  Neath

  26·97

  26

  Swansea

  26·97

  31

  Clwyd

  145·55

  155

  Dyfed

  145·12

  142

  Gwent

  144·91

  141

  Gwynedd

  145·55

  130

  Mid Glamorgan

  144·81

  145

  661

  For standard spending

  Assuming present spending patterns

  £

  £

  Powys

  145·5

  108

  South Glamorgan

  145·5

  128

  West Glamorgan

  145·5

  184

  1 Includes community councils.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, by how much in cash and percentage terms each of the district councils in Wales are planning to increase their spending in 1990–91;

  (2) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, the planned spending in 1990–91 of all district councils in Wales and the consequent percentage of his standard spending assessment;

  (3) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, by how much in cash and percentage terms each of the county councils in Wales are planning to increase their spending in 1990–91;

  (4) if he will list in appropriate order, according to the latest available information, the planned spending in 1990–91 of all county councils in Wales and the consequent percentage of his standard spending assessment.

  Mr. Grist
  We have received no information from Welsh local authorities on their planned spending in 1990–91. Authorities are being asked to return budget details in March.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales pursuant to his statement on 24 January,Official Report, columns 993-94, what proposals he has received from South Glamorgan, Powys, Gwynedd, Newport and Cardiff councils for lower community charges for the forthcoming financial year.

  Mr. Grist
  My right hon. Friend has received no such proposals.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) what analysis he has made of Cardiff city council's planned spending for 1990–91; and what is his assessment of how much of that planned spending will be expended in the financial year;

  (2) what analysis he has made of South Glamorgan council's planned spending for 1990–91; and what is his assessment of how much of that planned spending will be expended in the financial year.

  Mr. Grist
  My right hon. Friend has made no such assessments.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what assessment he has made of the estimates published by the Council of Welsh District Councils on 20 December 1989 with regard to the average community charge for Wales in 1990–91 and the 1990–91 total community charge for Cardiff and South Glamorgan councils.

  Mr. Grist
  The estimates published by the Council of Welsh Districts on 20 December 1989 were of an average community charge in Wales of £209 and a community charge in Cardiff (including South Glamorgan county council's precept) of £193. It appears that these estimates were based on levels of spending 4 per cent. in excess of the 1990–91 local authority revenue settlement.
  662
  Our assessment is that such increases are too high. The 1990–91 settlement for Wales allows for an increase of 7·1 per cent. in local authority expenditure—entirely adequate to maintain and where appropriate develop council services. On this basis the average community charge in Wales would be £173. However, if Cardiff city council and South Glamorgan county council were to increase their spending line with the settlement the community charge in Cardiff need be only £157.

  Press reports indicate that on the basis of the expenditure plans apparently under consideration by the two councils the community charge in Cardiff could be as high as £235. We have urged both councils to exercise restraints over their spending in order to contain it to levels nearer the Department's plans. Such action would bring very significant benefits for chargepayers in Cardiff whilst allowing services to be maintained and developed.

  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total budget of each county and district council in Gwynedd and Clwyd in(a) 1988–89 and (b) 1989–90.

  Mr. Grist
  The information requested is published in table 8.5 of "Welsh Local Government Financial Statistics" No. 13, 1989.

  Abattoirs
  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many abattoirs there are in each county in Wales; how many of them are up to EEC standards; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Walker
  The number of abattoirs by county is as follows:

  Number

  Clwyd

  17

  Dyfed

  12

  Gwent

  3

  Gwynedd

  9

  Mid Glamorgan

  6

  Powys

  12

  South Glamorgan

  —

  West Glamorgan

  6

  These include three establishments which are EEC approved.

  Airfield (Mid-Wales)
  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he has any plans to build an airfield in mid-Wales during the next five years; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  We have no plans to do so. The provision of an airfield would be a commercial decision more appropriate for the private sector.

  Hill Livestock Allowance
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total amount of hill livestock compensatory allowance contributions to the Meirionnydd Nant Conwy constituency in(a) 1988 and (b)

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  Hill livestock compensatory allowance (HLCA) statistics are not held on a constituency basis. However, the figures for Gwynedd for the two calendar years were:
  663

  (a) 1988—£5·82 million.

  (b) 1989—£5·96 million.

  Tourism
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total budget of the Wales tourist board in 1988–89 and 1989–90; and how much money was allocated to its north Wales office during both years.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The WTB's gross budget was £11,381,000 for 1988–89, and £13,692,000 for 1989–90. The board operates three regional offices in Swansea, Machynlleth and Colwyn Bay. The 1988–89 provision for the Colwyn Bay office was £471,260 and the corresponding figure for 1989£90 is £516,500. These funds are primarily for salaries and general administration. Much of the board's other expenditure, although administered from Cardiff, is of direct benefit to north Wales.

  Radiation Hotspots
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what action his Department has undertaken following the discovery of three radiation hotspots at Talycafn, Llanfairfechan and Trawsfynydd in Gwynedd.

  Mr. Grist
  A report that radiation hotspots had been discovered at Talycafn, Llanfairfechan and Trawsfynydd was investigated by Government scientists who found no evidence to support the claims.

  Development Board for Rural Wales
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total budget of(a) the Development Board for Rural Wales and (b) Mid Wales Development in (i) 1988–89 and (ii) 1989–90.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  Mid Wales Development was the former marketing title of the Development Board for Rural Wales, which the board no longer uses to promote its activities. It had no separate budget. The further information requested on the DBRW budget is as follows:

  1988–89 Gross provision £

  1989–90 Gross provision £

  18,183,000

  19,384,000

  Land Authority
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total budget of the Land Authority in Wales in(a) 1988–89 and (b) 1989–90; and what proportion of these moneys were spent in Gwynedd and Clwyd.

  Mr. Grist
  Expenditure on land purchases by the Land Authority for Wales in 1988–89 was £9·5 million. I have asked the chairman of the authority if he would write to the hon. Gentleman to give an estimate of the authority's expenditure in the current financial year and details of the amounts spent in Gwynedd and Clwyd.

  Tai Cymru
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total budget of Tai Cymru in(a) 1988–89 and (b) 1989–90; and what proportion of this money was spent in north Wales.
  664
  Mr. Grist
  In 1988–89, the Housing Corporation in Wales' gross outturn was £72·89 million. Of this, 13·7 per cent. was spent in Gwynedd and Clwyd. The figures for 1989–90 are not yet available.

  Sheltered Placement
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many employment opportunities the sheltered placement scheme currently offers in Wales; and how many places have been offered in total in Wales since the scheme started in 1985.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  The number of sheltered placements offered in Wales has increased from 29 in 1985 to 395 as at 31 December 1989, the latest date for which information is available.

  Disabled Employees
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales under the present disabled employee quota system, how many Welsh companies have been prosecuted since 1960; and what has been the average fine resulting from prosecutions.

  Mr. Wyn Roberts
  There has been one prosecution in Wales since 1960 under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944. The case was dismissed.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what percentage of registered disabled adults are in(a) full-time, (b) part-time and (c) home-based employment in Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  The information is not held centrally.

  Earnings
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what are the latest figures for average gross earnings per week of(a) disabled adult men, (b) disabled adult women, (c) the male working population in general and (d) the female working population in general in Wales.

  Mr. Grist
  Figures for earnings of disabled persons in full-time employment in Great Britain are contained in table 3.1 of report 2 of the OPCS surveys of disability in Great Britain—"The financial circumstances of disabled adults living in private households"—published in November 1988 by HMSO and available in the House of Commons Library.

  Corresponding statistics for the disabled in Wales are not available, but figures for average gross weekly earnings obtained from the new earnings surveys were £238·6 and £168 for all full-time adult males and females respectively in April 1989.

  Disabled People
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the total number of registered disabled people in Wales in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Grist
  The numbers of people in Wales on local authority registers for the disabled in each year since 1979 were as shown in the following table:
  665

  Persons with a mental handicap

  Others1

  1979

  n/a

  70,043

  1980

  n/a

  75,096

  1981

  n/a

  84,291

  1982

  n/a

  91,435

  1983

  n/a

  100,037

  1984

  n/a

  109,729

  1985

  n/a

  119,091

  1986

  n/a

  130,872

  1987

  n/a

  138,302

  1988

  9,470

  144,770

  1989

  9,726

  149,612

  1Includes the blind, deaf and persons with other classes of physicalhandicap.

  River Quality Standards
  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales which rivers in Wales do not comply with European Community river quality standards; and what steps are being taken to improve them.

  Mr. Grist
  There is no EC legislation setting general quality standards for rivers. However, the United Kingdom has designated some 50,000 km of waterways for the purposes of the EC directive "Quality of freshwater needing protection or improvement in order to support fish life" (78/659/EEC). In 1984, a survey which formed the basis of a report to the European Commission and which was undertaken in England and Wales by the former water authorities showed that well over 90 per cent. of these waterways met all the directive's mandatory standards and in Wales only one length of designated river, a tributary of the Rhymney, failed. Another survey which is being conducted in England and Wales by the National Rivers Authority is currently under way and the results will be placed in the Library as soon as they are available. The NRA is now responsible for the control of water pollution in England and Wales and has wide powers to seek improvements in river quality when they may be needed.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  St. John the Baptist School, Dartmouth
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he hopes to make a substantive reply to the letter from the hon. Member for South Hams concerning the specific points made by the head teacher of St. John the Baptist primary school, Mildon lane, Dartmouth, in his letter of 3 November 1989 to the Secretary of State which were not covered in his letter to the head teacher of 6 December 1989.

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  A reply will be sent as soon as possible.

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps his Department has and is taking to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  For unclassified but sensitive systems, Departments are expected to follow CCTA guidance covering all aspects of IT security and the application of 666
  this guidance has been tightened recently. CCTA advice is kept under continuous review and is based on analysis of security risks and requirements using structured methods such as CCTA's risk analysis and management methodology (CRAMM) which has also been made commercially available. More stringent conditions apply to classified systems.

  Further Education (Grants)
  Mr. Janner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what information he has as to how much each local education authority in England and Wales has allocated for discretionary grants to students undertaking full-time and sandwich further education courses for each of the last five years.

  Mr. Jackson
  The available data is listed in the table.

  Discretionary awards made under section 2 of the 1962 Education Act for further education courses at polytechnics and colleges.

  1986–87 £000s

  1987–88 £000s

  Barking1

  217·0

  238·1

  Barnet

  203·3

  191·5

  Bexley

  345·9

  240·1

  Brent

  2,869·2

  2,675·6

  Bromley1

  106·3

  173·5

  Croydon

  251·6

  315·2

  Ealing1

  220·6

  297·3

  Enfield1

  239·6

  321·8

  Haringey1

  346·1

  326·5

  Harrow

  74·3

  47·6

  Havering1

  183·1

  256·1

  Hillingdon

  367·1

  297·0

  Hounslow

  188·4

  127·2

  Kingston upon Thames

  35·7

  33·0

  Merton1

  119·5

  55·6

  Newham

  329·4

  386·5

  Redbridge

  43·2

  68·2

  Richmond upon Thames1

  55·9

  43·6

  Sutton

  152·0

  186·2

  Waltham Forest

  407·6

  535·2

  Inner London1

  1,498·7

  1,854·0

  Birmingham1

  399·0

  444·5

  Coventry

  314·4

  360·6

  Dudley

  201·4

  335·1

  Sandwell1

  201·7

  385·6

  Solihull1

  4·7

  3·4

  Walsall

  625·5

  553·4

  Wolverhampton

  0·0

  0·0

  Knowsley

  1,079·1

  1,265·5

  Liverpool1

  1,886·4

  2,158·1

  St.Helens1

  439·6

  476·6

  Sefton1

  105·4

  98·2

  Wirral1

  223·3

  1,169·4

  Bolton

  779·0

  750·9

  Bury1

  425·8

  560·6

  Manchester1

  1,346·1

  1,393·1

  Oldham

  338·3

  343·2

  Rochdale

  293·7

  267·9

  Salford1

  407·0

  419·0

  Stockport1

  358·0

  370·3

  Tameside1

  193·8

  187·0

  Trafford

  208·5

  176·4

  Wigan1

  655·0

  595·6

  Barnsley

  508·4

  716·0

  Doncaster1

  132·1

  400·2

  Rotherham

  452·1

  587·8

  Sheffield2

  1,139·6

  1,383·7

  Bradford

  1,306·5

  2,068·4

  Calderdale

  123·5

  210·1

  Kirklees1

  877·2

  944·4

  Leeds

  984·8

  1,584·6

  667

  1986–87

  1987–88

  £000s

  £000s

  Wakefield

  595·5

  758·6

  Gateshead 1

  163·1

  180·2

  Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1

  300·6

  368·6

  North Tyneside 1

  585·8

  730·8

  South Tyneside 1

  170·5

  223·8

  Sunderland

  1,024·0

  909·7

  Isles of Scilly 1

  73·6

  82·9

  Avon 1

  1,330·3

  1,375·4

  Bedfordshire

  742·8

  1,155·1

  Berkshire 1

  120·8

  610·2

  Buckinghamshire 1

  159·8

  261·2

  Cambridgeshire

  434·9

  511·6

  Cheshire

  2,337·7

  2,491·6

  Cleveland

  640·3

  701·6

  Cornwall

  1,082·2

  921·1

  Cumbria 1

  594·6

  2,068·3

  Derbyshire 1

  2,186·2

  2,048·9

  Devon

  2,874·9

  2,662·0

  Dorset

  1,192·2

  1,305·1

  Durham 1

  500·2

  403·7

  East Sussex

  874·4

  840·4

  Essex

  3,439·7

  3,237·4

  Gloucestershire

  1,685·7

  1,466·0

  Hampshire 1

  3,737·6

  3,917·8

  Hereford and Worcester

  0·0

  0·0

  Hertfordshire

  319·2

  369·2

  Humberside

  1,761·3

  1,968·5

  Isle of Wight

  171·2

  199·4

  Kent

  4,073·4

  3,610·2

  Lancashire

  3,026·5

  2,862·8

  Leicestershire

  2,887·5

  3,310·3

  Lincolnshire

  1,329·3

  1,337·5

  Norfolk 1

  825·0

  811·7

  North Yorkshire

  3,675·3

  4,234·9

  Northamptonshire

  253·1

  216·1

  Northumberland 1

  988·6

  970·0

  Nottinghamshire 1

  1,499·1

  1,749·8

  Oxfordshire

  553·5

  384·2

  Shropshire

  429·4

  703·2

  Somerset

  463·2

  703·2

  Staffordshire 1

  350·5

  862·1

  Suffolk

  1,294·4

  1,378·0

  Surrey 1

  473·7

  559·5

  Warwickshire

  390·5

  775·8

  West Sussex 1

  307·5

  299·4

  Wiltshire

  973·7

  1,012·1

  Clwyd

  966·8

  1,049·3

  Dyfed 1

  1,002·7

  879·7

  Gwent

  1,530·4

  1,543·5

  Gwynedd 1

  790·6

  803·2

  Mid-Glamorgan 1

  160·5

  96·7

  Powys

  473·5

  455·8

  South Glamorgan

  403·6

  428·7

  West Glamorgan 1

  111·8

  76·2

  England and Wales

  82,597·4

  91,762·5

  1 Some authorities are unable to distinguish awards made to all students attending courses of further education, and include some such payments in their returns for higher education. The figures given here are therefore under-estimates of the total amounts.

  Preventable Loss
  Mr. Norris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what assessment he has made of the extent of preventable loss arising from theft or misappropriation in his Department.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  There is no assessment as such, as known preventable losses are prevented. The Department takes all reasonable steps to ensure that loss arising from theft or misappropriation is prevented. Financial controls operate to this end and the Department's internal audit 668
  unit provides assurance on their adequacy, effectiveness and application. The annual internal risk assessment and plan of work takes account of potential exposure. The Department's annual report of fraud to Her Majesty's Treasury for the financial year 1988–89 contained no cases of fraud perpetrated within the Department. Reassessment would occur in the light of evidence of losses from theft or misappropriation in the Department.

  Mr. Norris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will list the number of professionally qualified loss prevention staff employed by his Department and the qualifications held by such staff, excluding qualifications obtained during police or military service.

  Mrs. Rumbold
  The Department does not employ any professionally qualified loss prevention staff. Physical security is provided by private security companies and the Property Services Agency.

DEFENCE

  Community Charge
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what are the rates of pay of the 411 Royal Air Force apprentices and technicians classified as students for community charge purposes and referred to in his answer to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr of 29 January,Official Report, column 62.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  These personnel are paid at various rates ranging from £3,708 per annum to £9,399 per annum.

  Mr. Colin Wallace
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall) of 30 January,Official Report, columns 110–13, if he will establish an internal inquiry into the reasons why certain relevant records were not made available to Ministers; and what steps he is taking to ensure that there is no recurrence of such circumstances.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the House on 1 February, an inquiry is in hand within the MOD into how papers were overlooked and the outcome will be reported to the House.

  Airmiss (Tranent)
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will identify the unit and base of the Tornado aircraft which was involved in an airmiss with a civil BAC1-11 flight over Tranent on 2 August 1989.

  Mr. Neubert
  It is our policy to preserve the anonymity in airmiss publications in order to encourage full and frank reporting of airmisses and thus ensure that flight safety is not compromised.

  DROPS Vehicles
  Sir Ian Gilmour
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on incidents of a Leyland DROPS trials vehicle overturning, since the last
  669
  such incidents reported to the House, indicating whether the incidents occurred while being driven by Leyland-employed personnel or Ministry of Defence test drivers; and whether he is satisfied with the stability of these vehicles.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  While undergoing tests on 23 November 1989, a DROPS medium mobility vehicle was involved in an incident in which it fell on its side when negotiating a bend on the snake section of the track at RARDE Chertsey. The vehicle, owned by Leyland DAF, was being driven by a company employee. A subsequent inquiry established that excessive speed was the cause of the incident; the inherent stability of the vehicle is not in doubt.

  Sir Ian Gilmour
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessments he has made of the safety of DROPS vehicles on the public roads; and on what grounds the decision was taken to use vehicles which exceed normal legal limits on size.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  As part of trials at RARDE Chertsey, all military vehicles have to be approved as suitable for road use before they are allowed on to public roads. It is MOD policy to keep within Department of Transport construction and use regulations wherever operational circumstances permit. However, because of the mobility necessary to meet its operational role, exceptionally it was necessary in the case of the DROPS improved medium mobility vehicle to invoke Crown exemption to exceed the limit laid down for axle widths by 0·4 m.

  Sir Ian Gilmour
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what progress has been achieved towards achieving the last revised in-service date for DROPS and to state(a) which components of the complete DROPS supply system have been accepted for service, (b) which components of the complete DROPS supply system have now been ordered in production quantities and (c) when these individual components of the system will be in service.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  The DROPS medium-mobility vehicles, including the load handling system, and the standard flatracks, have been accepted for service and production quantities have been ordered. They will enter service some four to five months beyond the due date. The improved medium-mobility vehicles have been accepted for service subject to the reliability requirements being satisfied; their date of entry into service will depend upon the outcome of further trials. The rail transfer equipments have been accepted and ordered; deliveries are being made on schedule. The simple rail transfer equipments have yet to complete reliability trials and it is expected that these will enter service about a year late.

  Production options for the DROPS long wheel-base trailers are expected to be exercised in the very near future and these should enter service about 12 months later than intended. It is anticipated that the MLRS trailers and flatracks, which are required in a later time scale, will enter service on schedule.

  Sir Ian Gilmour
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether the driver of the DROPS trials vehicle, 42 KC 12, was advised by his Department to plead guilty to a charge of driving without due care and attention; whether he was advised to enter or not to enter a plea of 670
  mitigation to the effect that, due to the size or design of the vehicle, he was unable to see the car he crushed; and whether the fine and costs imposed by Basingstoke magistrates court in December 1989 have been, or will be, reimbursed to the driver.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  The driver of the vehicle was given no advice and pleaded guilty of his own volition. He has considerable experience of driving this type of vehicle and freely admitted that the cause of the accident was driver error; a plea of mitigation was not made. He has not been and will not be reimbursed for the fine or the costs he incurred as a result.

  Western European Union
  Mr. Wilkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what response he has had from the Belgian Defence Minister, now president of the WEU, to his letter of early December 1989 suggesting closer ties between the independent European programme group and the WEU; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Alan Clark
  It is assumed that my hon. Friend is referring to the letter sent last November by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Defence, to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg), the leader of the United Kingdom delegation to the WEU assembly. That letter expressed merit in a closer association between the Independent European Programme Group (IEPG) and the WEU. A detailed information letter on the IEPG was subsequently sent to the WEU presidency by the IEPG chair. As yet there has been no response from the WEU.

  Hunts
  Mr. Meale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many hunts have licences to hunt on Ministry of Defence land; and if he will provide details of the hunts, the areas they are permitted to hunt on and the conditions of the licences.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces will write to the hon. Member.

  Military Research and Development
  Mr. Soames
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what progress has been made in exploiting military research and development for civilian purposes.

  Mr. Neubert
  Where technology developed for defence purposes also has civil applications, the Government are committed to maximising the benefit to the wider economy through spin-off to, and collaboration with, the civil sector. Some 70 technological transfer agreements with industry, mainly in the form of licences, have now been signed by Defence Technology Enterprises for the exploitation of innovative technology, and more are under negotiation. The civil industrial access scheme (CIAS), launched in February 1988, is designed to give commercial firms improved access to the facilities and expertise of the defence research establishments. They also undertake work funded by civil Departments, mainly in the fields of aerospace and electronics and participate in a range of collaborative initiatives with commercial firms.
  671

SCOTLAND

  Fishing Quotas
  Mr. John Townend
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he intends to take to ensure that Scottish FPOs will not in the future exceed their quotas.

  Mr. Lang
  Fisheries Departments will closely monitor the uptake of United Kingdom quotas by all groups in 1990. As in previous years, Fisheries Departments will close a fishery to any FPO if it appears, on the basis of available catch statistics, that the organisation is near to taking its allocation. Under current management arrangements, any group exceeding its quota to the detriment of others must compensate those who have been disadvantaged in the following year. Latest catch statistics show that various groups, both English and Scottish, exceeded their quotas in 1989 to the detriment of other Scottish and English fishermen.

  Incoming Firms
  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much incoming firms, established since the formation of Locate in Scotland have contributed to(a) the Exchequer, (b) exports and (c) imports.

  Mr. Lang
  This information is not available.

  Investment
  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) if he will list the instances of inward investment into Scotland made since the formation of Locate in Scotland; and what was(a) the total number of permanent new jobs created and (b) the number of companies created which had a research and development facility;

  (2) if he will state the number of new jobs forecasted at the time of announcement of new inward investment projects by Locate in Scotland for each year of Locate in Scotland's operation, listing each project, the number of new jobs forecasted in the SDA/Scottish Office news release at the time of the announcement, and the actual number of jobs today.

  Mr. Lang
  It is not possible to provide details of individual projects, as much of the information concerned is supplied on a commercial in confidence basis; and information is not available on the numbers of inward investing companies which established a research and development facility.

  However, the table shows the total number of new jobs forecast by companies at the time their plans were made.

  Year

  New jobs

  1981–82

  4,500

  1982–83

  4,200

  1983–84

  3,500

  1984–85

  8,169

  1985–86

  4,663

  1986–87

  4,106

  1987–88

  6,363

  1988–89

  4,846

  For a variety of reasons, job achievement has varied as plans have changed; and many of the projects concerned have yet to be completed. Experience suggests, however, that on average the final direct employment outturn may
  672
  be about two thirds of the planned level, although a significant number of additional jobs are also created indirectly in supply and service industries.

  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what percentage of industrial investment, inward investment has represented for each year since Locate in Scotland was formed.

  Mr. Lang
  The information requested is not readily available in the form required. The table shows manufacturing investment by foreign-owned enterprises as a percentage of total manufacturing investment from 1983 to the latest available figures for 1987.

  Manufacturing investment by foreign-owned enterprises as a percentage of total manufacturing investment

  Year

  Percentage

  1983

  29·2

  1984

  25·9

  1985

  31·4

  1986

  29·1

  1987

  26·0

  Note Information is not available for 1982.

  Source: Annual Census of Production.

  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what percentage of total employment in Scotland inward investment has represented for each year since Locate in Scotland was formed.

  Mr. Lang
  The information requested is not readily available in the form required. The table gives the information on employment in overseas-owned plants for the period 1982, when Locate in Scotland was formed, to 1988. Figures for 1988 should be regarded as provisional.

  Manufacturing employment in overseas-owned plants ( thousands)

  Total manufacturing employment in Scotland ( thousands)

  Percentage of total manufacturing employment attributable to overseas-owned plants

  1982

  80·2

  421·7

  19·0

  1983

  71·1

  398·8

  17·9

  1984

  70·9

  382·0

  18·5

  1985

  72·9

  375·5

  19·4

  1986

  70·2

  368·6

  19·0

  1987

  70·9

  358·0

  19·8

  1988

  70·0

  351·0

  20·0

  Source Industry Department for Scotland Regional Data System.

  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will outline the monitoring procedures for ensuring that inward investors use public money for spending on new jobs; how many breaches of the rules there have teen; and how much money has been involved in such breaches.

  Mr. Lang
  Following the restructuring of regional assistance in 1984, all offers of grant, whether to foreign or United Kingdom-owned companies, have contained specific provisions for withholding grant payments, or securing recovery of grant already paid if, among other conditions, jobs are not created or safeguarded according to the conditions of the offer. Officials make periodic inspections to monitor progress of projects both before and after completion. Between April 1987 and January 1990, a total of about £1 million of regional assistance was recovered in Scotland because of failure to meet one or
  673
  more conditions of offer. Separate information for inward investors, and on grant recovered or withheld specifically because of failure to meet job targets, could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Investors and Companies (Financial Assistance)
  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) if he will list under each category of public sector financial assistance available to both inward investors and established companies in Scotland between 1979 and the latest available figures the total amount granted to incoming companies and the total amount granted to established companies and the average grant per company in each category by size;

  (2) what has been the total amount of public sector and central Government financial assistance made available to incoming firms since the formation of Locate in Scotland.

  Mr. Lang
  Comprehensive information in the form requested is not available. Between January 1979 and December 1989, a total of £321 million of regional selective assistance under section 7 of the Industrial Development Act 1982 was offered in Scotland to companies whose ultimate ownership lay outside the United Kingdom, and £297 million was offered to domestically owned companies. The average size of offer made to foreign owned companies was £0·81 million and to domestically owned companies £0·17 million, reflecting the fact that inward investors tend to set up larger projects. Not all of these offers were taken up. A total of £284 million of this assistance was offered to foreign owned companies since the formation of Locate in Scotland in 1981.

  Corresponding information for other types of assistance and data by size of company are not available, or could be provided only at disproportionate costs.

  Locate in Scotland
  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the total running cost of Locate in Scotland.

  Mr. Lang
  The total running cost of Locate in Scotland in the most recently completed year, 1988–89, was approximately £4 million.

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps his Department has taken, and is taking to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mr. Rifkind
  For unclassified but sensitive systems my Department follows Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) guidance covering all aspects of information technology security and the application of this has recently been tightened up. CCTA advice is kept under continuous review and is based on analysis of security risks and requirements using structured methods such as CCTA's risk analysis and

  Name

  Function

  Date of appointment

  Barclays de Zoete Wedd Ltd.

  Financial advisers

  August 1987

  The British Linen Bank

  Financial advisers

  August 1987

  Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte

  Regulation, accounting, contracts, tax advisers

  October 1987

  674
  management methodology (CRAMM) which has also been made commercially available. More stringent conditions apply to classified systems.

  Pensioners (Bus Passes)
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the estimated cost (a) to community charge payers and (b) to business rate payers of providing free bus travel for pensioners in each of the regional councils in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  While community charge payers and business rate payers contribute to local authorities' income, from which the cost of services are met, it is not possible to attribute the cost of a service to a particular source of income.

  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the estimated cost of providing free bus travel to pensioners in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Local authorities have estimated the cost of providing concessionary travel on public transport for pensioners and disabled persons in 1989–90 at £42· million. The cost for pensioners only is not available centrally.

  "Ethnically-Based Statistics on School Pupils"
  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on his circular No. 8, "Ethnically-Based Statistics on School Pupils", with specific reference to(a) how widely he anticipates the circulation of the document to be, with specific reference to the preparation of individual schools within education authorities which he expects to receive it, (b) whether the onus of responsibility for circulation falls primarily upon the education authority or upon individual schools; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lang
  These are matters for education authorities, to whom the circular is addressed. The circular invites authorities to issue appropriate guidance to schools and/or to offer training to staff involved in the collection of data.

  Electricity Privatisation
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list all the organisations, firms and individual advisers which have advised or are now advising his Department on any aspect of the privatisation of electricity, including any jointly instructed for this purpose with the Department of Energy, giving in each case the dates of their involvement and the aspect on which they advise.

  Mr. Rifkind
  The information requested is set out in the table. Each of the advisers' involvement is continuing. No appointments have been made jointly with the Department of Energy.
  675

  Name

  Function

  Date of appointment

  McGrigor Donald

  Legal advisers

  October 1987

  Merz and McLellan

  Technical advisers

  October 1987

  Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte (formerly Deloitte Haskins and Sells)

  Reporting accountants2

  September 1988

  KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock

  Reporting accountants3

  September 1988

  de Zoete and Bevan

  Stock broking advisers

  January 1989

  Bell Lawrie Ltd.

  Stock broking advisers

  January 1989

  Citigate Communications Ltd.

  PR and marketing advisers1

  February 1989

  PR Consultants Scotland

  PR and marketing advisers1

  February 1989

  British Market Research Bureau

  Market research advisers1

  February 1989

  Salomon Brothers International

  Overseas financial advisers1

  June 1989

  Jones Lang Wootton

  Property advisers

  August 1989

  Ernst and Young

  Nuclear advisers

  August 1989

  James Barr and Son

  Valuers2

  November 1989

  Ryden

  Valuers2

  November 1989

  Knight Frank and Rutley

  Valuers2

  November 1989

  Richard Ellis

  Valuers2

  November 1989

  Lickley Procter and Burnett

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  Finlayson Hughes

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  Bidwells and King

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  Strutt and Parker

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  N. J. Coward

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  David A. Adamson and Partners

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  West Highland Estates Office

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  Webster and Co.

  Valuers3

  November 1989

  National Westminster Bank plc

  Lead receiving bank

  January 1990

  Willis Wrightson Scotland Ltd.

  Insurance advisers1

  January 1990

  1Jointly with SSEB and NSHEB.

  2Jointly with SSEB.

  3Jointly with NSHEB.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current estimate of the total fees which will be paid by his Department in connection with the privatisation of the Scottish electricity industry to the end of March 1989, for the current year, and in total.

  Mr. Rifkind
  Expenditure to the end of March 1989 amounted to £2· million and the revised provision for the current year is £4-·95 million. Latest forecasts of requirements for 1990–91 will be published as part of the Supply Estimates in March. The overall costs of privatisation will be made available once flotation has been completed.

  Contract details

  Total price of successful bid£

  Projected annual savings £

  Unsuccessful in-house tender£

  Estimated redundancy payments£

  Number of redundancies

  Redundancies (whole-time equivalent)

  Belvidere Group

  Domestic

  432,399

  231,806

  —

  241,740

  113

  72

  Portering

  372,206

  192,851

  442,335

  179,394

  46

  44

  Belvidere/Lightburn Catering

  422,300

  62,365

  —

  83,499

  15

  13

  Canniesburn/Drumchapel

  Catering

  449,260

  119,046

  —

  143,999

  34

  23

  Domestic

  249,060

  154,369

  274,493

  65,884

  86

  54

  Portering

  302,306

  97,106

  —

  86,871

  19

  18

  Community East Domestictic

  60,646

  114,063

  72,191

  30,696

  31

  n/a

  SE and SW Domestic

  70,291

  99,548

  16

  16

  N and W Domestic

  139,198

  81,802

  147,512

  18,044

  57

  n/a

  Gartloch Catering

  447,943

  35,464

  —

  31,155

  8

  n/a

  676

  Greater Glasgow Health Board
  Mr. Allan Stewart
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will provide detailed information on the contracts awarded by the Greater Glasgow health board in connection with the Government's competitive tendering initiative; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  As at 31 December 1989, Greater Glasgow health board had let 54 contracts—32 in-house and 22 to private contractors. Costs, savings and other relevant details are set out in the table:
  677

  Contract details

  Total price of successful bid£

  Projected annuals avings £

  Unsuccessful in-house tender£

  Estimated redundancy payments£

  Number of redundancies

  Redundancies (whole-time equivalent)

  Gartoch/Parkhead

  Domestic

  459,978

  45,275

  —

  24,001

  45

  n/a

  Portering

  205,638

  80,404

  —

  8,883

  5

  5

  Gartnavel

  Catering

  1,376,117

  266,765

  —

  16,434

  7

  n/a

  Portering

  314,687

  315,168

  371,256

  63,761

  73

  70

  Garnavel General Domestic

  312,045

  337,520

  400,757

  96,098

  157

  95

  Garnavel Royal

  Domestic

  360,118

  59,448

  390,220

  135,786

  102

  54

  Portering

  161,400

  84,991

  181,272

  60,660

  21

  18

  Glasgow Royal

  Catering

  1,545,364

  406,949

  1,884,700

  203,016

  161

  n/a

  Domestic

  953,971

  472,241

  1,022,020

  173,221

  338

  205

  Portering

  510,783

  734,491

  1,057,300

  368,985

  126

  126

  Knightswood Group

  Catering

  331,189

  93,758

  —

  74,937

  31

  n/a

  Domestic

  189,164

  110,408

  —

  154,878

  52

  33

  Portering

  87,870

  46,525

  —

  12,948

  2

  2

  Lennox Castle Hotel

  1,597,642

  332,952

  —

  175,014

  102

  66

  Leverndale

  Domestic

  502,245

  92,559

  —

  162,721

  73

  n/a

  Portering

  172,860

  85,622

  194,319

  39,465

  23

  22

  Leverndale/Cowglen Catering

  774,603

  459,276

  —

  123,576

  61

  48

  Mearnskirk/Phillipshill

  Catering

  417,936

  72,968

  —

  98,902

  22

  20

  Domestic

  291,432

  97,915

  —

  53,016

  53

  41

  Portering

  139,926

  66,081

  —

  16,344

  5

  5

  Parkhead/Duke Street Catering

  325,802

  104,486

  —

  13,320

  8

  7

  Queen Mother/Royal

  Hospital for Sick Children Portering

  253,469

  171,429

  283,400

  122,349

  37

  35

  Royal Maternity/Rutherglen

  Catering

  308,250

  107,428

  —

  88,511

  27

  20

  Domestic

  265,917

  123,683

  301,494

  156,354

  87

  52

  Portering

  181,885

  104,887

  207,842

  89,808

  24

  23

  Ruchill Group

  Catering

  653,391

  58,345

  —

  57,702

  17

  13

  Domestic

  416,000

  172,203

  —

  166,634

  76

  n/a

  Portering

  249,482

  93,634

  294,582

  150,795

  40

  40

  Southern General/Cowglen Portering

  698,444

  234,700

  783,792

  332,919

  87

  87

  Southern General/Darnley Catering

  1,302,850

  154,093

  —

  135,570

  77

  48

  Southern Group Domestic

  856,893

  537,108

  —

  297,337

  106

  n/a

  Stobhill

  Catering

  1,203,700

  73,147

  —

  106,340

  46

  34

  Domestic

  820,381

  531,211

  1,033,300

  190,497

  333

  n/a

  Portering

  518,944

  462,995

  610,658

  408,120

  93

  91

  Victoria Group

  Catering

  841,201

  402,143

  —

  150,012

  44

  n/a

  Domestic

  582,302

  144,733

  755,900

  93,233

  145

  n/a

  Portering

  333,539

  144,481

  —

  86,367

  17

  17

  678 679

  Contract details

  Total price ofsuccessful bid£

  Projected annual savings£

  Unsuccessfulin-house tender£

  Estimated redundancy payments£

  Number of redundancies

  Redundancies(whole-time equivalent)

  Western Infirmary

  Domestic

  548,099

  276,172

  —

  92,620

  97

  76

  Portering

  477,100

  300,199

  —

  190,956

  44

  43

  Woodilee/Stoneyetts

  Catering

  536,393

  49,504

  —

  63,450

  38

  n/a

  Domestic

  331,506

  268,079

  412,350

  56,027

  139

  79

  Portering

  147,976

  126,244

  —

  22,593

  28

  27

  Yorkhill/Queen Mothers

  Catering

  468,100

  233,697

  —

  87,207

  25

  21

  Domestic

  425,550

  173,094

  —

  174,117

  91

  n/a

  n/a = Not available.

  Education Expenditure
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the capital expenditure on local authority schools in each of the past 10 years in cash and constant price terms.

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 5 February 1990]: The information is given in the following table, which has been compiled from local authority financial returns. The reduction in expenditure in real terms during the period reflects a substantial and progressive decline in pupil numbers which in turn reduced the requirement for new school building.

  Capital expenditure by local authorities on schools ( £ million)

  Year

  At outturn prices

  At 1988–89 prices

  1979–80

  47·598

  89·625

  1980–81

  52·301

  83·214

  1981–82

  60·404

  87·534

  1982–83

  52·378

  70·793

  1983–84

  45·098

  58·235

  1984–85

  46·099

  56·711

  1985–86

  51·276

  59·864

  1986–87

  46·506

  52·524

  1987–88

  48·260

  51·761

  11988–89

  59·392

  59·392

  1Provisional·

  The figures include expenditure on nursery, primary, secondary and special schools. Outturn figures have been converted to 1988–89 prices using the GDP deflator.

  Cochlear Implants
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much additional finance he has made available(a) in total to health boards in Scotland and (b) to each health board in Scotland, to enable a programme of cochlear implants to be established; and when he expects such programmes to commence.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  [holding answer 6 February 1990]: With effect from 1 April 1990, a total of £200,000 will be made available each year for the next three years to support the programme of cochlear implants in Scotland which I announced on 11 January. Of that amount, £150,000 per annum will be allocated to Ayrshire and Arran health board which already has an established programme and has built up considerable expertise in this procedure.
  680
  A number of surgeons elsewhere in Scotland have expressed interest in developing this exciting new technique which greatly enhances the quality of life for some deaf people. Accordingly, bids will be invited from other health boards for the remaining £50,000 per annum to facilitate the development of a second centre.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  SERPS
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his estimate of the cost of( a) contribution rebates and ( b ) greater payments to those withdrawing from SERPS in (i) 1987–88, (ii) 1988–89 and (iii) 1989–90.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  I refer the hon. Member to appendix 7 of the report by the Government Actuary on the Drafts of the Social Security Benefits Uprating Order 1990 and the Social Security (Contributions, Re-Rating) Order 1990 (Cm 948), a copy of which is in the Library.

  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his estimate of the total number of contributors leaving SERPS by the end of this financial year; what has been the total cost of incentive payments to them; and what was the total loss of contributions to the fund in the financial year.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  It is not possible to give an estimate of the number of people who will have left SERPS in this financial year to become members of an occupational or personal pension scheme, but it is anticipated that the vast majority of those taking out a personal pension will previously have been in SERPS.

  The Government Actuary's estimate of revenue forgone by the national insurance fund in 1990–91 through payment of the incentive for personal pensions and new contracted-out schemes in respect of 1989–90 is £615 million. His estimate of total revenue forgone in 1990–91 in respect of the incentive and the standard rebates is £2,115 million.

  Community Charge
  Mr. Butterfill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what are his present estimates of(a) expenditure on community charge benefit, (b) the average number of

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  benefit cases and (c) the number of charge payers that will Mrs. Gillian Shephard: The information is in the table. be helped by community charge benefit in England, Scotland and Wales in 1990–91.

  Community Charge Benefit 1990–91

  England

  Scotland

  Wales

  Great Britain

  Central Government grant to localauthorities: (£ billion)

  £1·45

  £0·22

  £0·07

  £1·75

  Average number of benefit cases(million)

  6·5

  0·9

  0·4

  7·9

  Average number of chargepayers helped by Community Charge Benefit: (millions)

  8·1

  1·15

  0·5

  9·75

  In addition, adjustments were made in April 1989 to the income-related benefits, to help claimants pay their minimum contribution to the community charge, at a cost of more than £500 million in Great Britain (£400 million in England).

  Attendance Allowance
  Mr. Norman Hogg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many persons in each of the past five years died before their claim for attendance allowance had been processed.

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

  Child Benefit
  Mr. Raison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what percentage uprating of child benefit is allowed for in the Government's latest expenditure plans for 1991–92 and 1992–93.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  I refer my right hon. Friend to paragraph 62 and table 14.1 of the public expenditure White Paper (Cm. 1014) published last month.

  National Insurance
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people in Scotland paid the appropriate national insurance contributions for self-employed status in every year since 1979.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  I regret that the information requested is not available.

  Pensioners (Australia, New Zealand and Canada)
  Sir John Farr
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what plans he has to make pension increases when paid at home available to British pensioners living in(a) Australia and (b) New Zealand;
  (2) whether he now has any plans to make pension increases when paid at home available to British pensioners living in Canada.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  We have no plans at present to pay annual increases in retirement pensions to United Kingdom pensioners living in Australia, New Zealand or Canada.
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  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  The information is in the table.

  Disability Allowance
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will ensure that existing beneficiaries of attendance allowance have their level of benefits protected and increased once the new disability allowance is introduced;

  Mr. Scott
  The introduction of the disability allowance will not affect the level of benefit paid to existing recipients of attendance allowance. We will continue to review the level of the benefit annually. The same procedure will apply to the new disability allowance when it is introduced.

  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will ensure that existing beneficiaries of mobility allowance have their level of benefits protected and increased once the new disability allowance is introduced.

  Mr. Scott
  The introduction of the disability allowance will not affect the level of benefit paid to existing recipients of mobility allowance. We will continue to review the level of the benefit annually. The same procedure will apply to the new disability allowance when introduced.

  Disabled People
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people who are in receipt of severe disablement allowance are(a) in receipt of income support and (b) in receipt of another means-tested benefit.

  Mr. Scott
  I refer the right hon. Member to my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) on 7 February 1990 at columns 577–78.

  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people who are in receipt of severe disablement allowance will gain an increase in their real disposable income as a result of the new proposed age-related additions to severe disablement allowance.

  Mr. Scott
  I refer the right hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) on 19 January at columns 483–84.

  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his Department's estimate of the number of disabled people who have extra costs above the existing rates of attendance and mobility allowance.

  Mr. Scott
  The most up-to-date information available is contained in the 1985 Office of Population Censuses and Surveys' surveys of disabled adults and disabled children
  683
  in private households and shows that about 95,000 recipients of attendance allowance or mobility allowance reported additional disability-related expenditure in excess of the amounts of those benefits which they were receiving. That takes no account of any additional help with disability-related costs which they may have been receiving through other benefits, including supplementary benefit. About 700,000 recipients of attendance allowance and mobility allowance reported additional disability-related expenditure that was less than the amounts of benefit received. The 1988 social security reforms have since introduced extra help specifically for disabled people on the lowest incomes.

  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to increase the level of severe disablement allowance to the level of basic invalidity benefit in line with the Social Security Advisory Committee's recommendation.

  Mr. Scott
  The Social Security Bill currently before the House introduces age-related additions to severe disablement allowance. We have no present plans to bring the rate of the allowance up to the level of invalidity benefit.

  Hospital Visits
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, for each month since January 1989, what was the total number of grants awarded by the Caernarfon social security office to assist those visiting patients in hospitals.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, for each month since January 1989, what was the total amount of grants allowed by the Llangefni social security office to assist those visiting patients in hospitals.

  Mr. Scott
  I regret that this information is not collected.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Guatemala
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will seek to raise human rights violations in Guatemala at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

  Mr. Maude
  There is currently a UN special adviser on human rights in Guatemala. His report is likely to be discussed at the 46th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

  Helsinki Agreement
  Mr. Allen McKay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement regarding the USSR's fulfilment of its outstanding human rights obligations following on from the Helsinki agreement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Despite substantial progress in Soviet human rights performance under Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviet Union is still some way from meeting its international obligations in full. In particular there are still a considerable number of unresolved refusenik cases, on which we continue to press the Soviet authorities.
  684

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

  Mr. Waldegrave
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs hopes to be able to visit Romania in the next few months.

  Iraq
  Mr. Sillars
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has received about the position of Kurdish people in Iraq.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We receive regular representations from individuals and organisations about the position of the Kurdish minorities in Iraq. We take every opportunity to make clear to the Iraqi Government at all levels our continuing disquiet at Iraq's human rights record and their treatment of its Kurdish population.

  Mr. Tim Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about the United Kingdom's relations with Iraq.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We attach importance to our bilateral relationship with Iraq and have regular contact with Iraqi Ministers. This allows us to discuss regional issues and to make clear our concerns on such matters as the continuing detention in Iraq of British subjects and reports of Iraqi human rights abuses. We also have important trading links: United Kingdom exports to Iraq in 1989 rose by over 9 per cent. compared with 1988.

  Palestinian Self-Determination
  Mr. Marlow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will launch an initiative to encourage moves towards Palestinian self-determination.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We support Palestinian self-determination and are closely involved in current efforts to promote a dialogue between Israel and representative Palestinians, as an important step towards a settlement.

  South Africa
  Mr. Anderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a further statement on United Kingdom policy towards the latest developments in South Africa.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The moves President de Klerk announced on 2 February are an historic landmark on the road to a new South Africa. We urge opposition groups such as the ANC, PAC and others, to respond positively and join in negotiations to achieve a peaceful transition to a non-racial South Africa.

  Mr Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent communications he has had with the Government of South Africa; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We maintain regular contact with the South African authorities on a wide range of issues, both here and via Her Majesty's ambassador.
  685
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action Her Majesty's Government have undertaken to secure the implementation of UNSCR 432 on Walvis bay.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  As we and other members of the contact group made clear when UNSCR 432 was adopted, we are prepared to offer diplomatic support to achieve a successful negotiation on the issue of Walvis bay between the Governments of an independent Namibia and South Africa.

  Mr. Clay
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the implications for the United Nations arms embargo against South Africa of proposed changes in the COCOM system of controls of military and strategic exports.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  There are no implications for the United Nations arms embargo.

  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what contact he has had recently with the Foreign Minister of South Africa.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has not yet met Mr. Botha but has contact through normal diplomatic channels.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations Her Majesty's Government have made to the Republic of South Africa regarding the release of all political detainees.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have made frequent representations on behalf of detainees in South Africa. We will continue to urge the South African Government either to charge or release unconditionally all those so detained.

  Mr. Meale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the implications for stability in southern Africa of South Africa's expansion of military facilities in Walvis bay.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have no evidence of such expansion. On 19 January the South African Government announced that the naval base at Walvis bay would be scaled down as part of a wide-ranging package of defence cuts.

  CSCE
  Mr. Tredinnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether, in the light of the recent changes in eastern Europe, he is in favour of reconvening the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe; to what extent he sees the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe as a vehicle for increased East-West European co-operation; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  On 20 January, in Dublin, EC Foreign Ministers agreed in principle to a CSCE summit meeting in 1990. We view this as an opportune proposal. The CSCE process has a valuable role to play in overcoming East-West barriers. We should use it imaginatively in the months ahead.
  686
  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with his European Community counterparts regarding the creation of a forum other than the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss European co-operation and security matters.

  Mr. Maude
  None. At the European Council in Strasbourg on 8-9 December 1989, EC Heads of State and Government pointed to the vitality of the CSCE process, describing it as a means of establishing new relations among European countries in the areas of security, economic and technical co-operation and of human rights.

  Inter-governmental Conference
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will set out his objectives for the forthcoming European Community intergovernmental conference.

  Mr. Maude
  Our objective is practical progress towards a robust and realistic form of economic and monetary union, with full regard to democratic accountability and the doctrine of subsidiarity.

  Mr. Dykes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is satisfied with the progress being made in the EEC Council of Ministers on preparations for the December 1990 intergovernmental conference of the Community; and if he will make a statement on current proposals to augment the terms of reference and scope of the conference.

  Mr. Maude
  The Strasbourg Council noted the Commission's intention to submit, before April, a composite paper on economic and monetary union. The ECOFIN Council on 18 December 1989 asked the Monetary Committee to undertake further work and report in March. Our EC colleagues and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs briefly discussed the work programme at the Foreign Affairs Council on 5 February. The Strasbourg Council decided that the intergovernmental conference would set its own agenda.

  African National Congress
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has any plans to meet senior members of the African National Congress.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no current plans to do so. However, he has made it clear that if Mr. Walter Sisulu visits this country he would be happy to meet him.

  Israel
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on relations between Britain and Israel.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Relations with Israel are good.

  Mr. David Young
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action he
  687
  intends taking as a signatory to the fourth Geneva convention on the recent report by Amnesty International on the Israeli Government's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action he intends taking as a signatory to the fourth Geneva convention on the recent report by Amnesty International on the Israeli Government's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The Israelis are well aware that we deplore their repressive policies in the occupied territories. We have already raised with them some of the cases cited by Amnesty.

  Mr. Day
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met a representative of the Israeli Government.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs looks forward to maintaining the close working relationship which his predecessors enjoyed with Israeli Ministers. I saw the Israeli ambassador on 30 January and 1 February.

  Mr. Pawsey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Israeli Government about the intifada and the way in which Israeli troops are being used.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have repeatedly urged the Israeli authorities to administer the occupied territories in accordance with international law and human rights obligations, pending their withdrawal in the context of a negotiated settlement of the Arab/Israel dispute.

  Mr. Galloway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make it his policy to support the decision of the European Parliament to suspend scientific co-operation with Israel; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  No.

  Cricket Tour, South Africa
  Mr. Callaghan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the South African authorities concerning the action of the South African police at Jan Smuts airport on 19 January against those objecting to the rebel cricket tour of South Africa and against British journalists covering the protests.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We deplore the use of violence from whatever quarter in South Africa. We have expressed our concern to the South African authorities over recent incidents. We note that the South African Government are committed to allowing peaceful demonstrations provided proper authority is sought.

  Hong Kong
  Mr. Sumberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet Chinese leaders to discuss elections to the Hong Kong Legislative Council.
  688
  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no present plans to meet Chinese leaders.

  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what communications he has received from the committee meeting held on the weekend of 20 and 21 January to discuss a basic law for Hong Kong post-1997.

  Mr. Maude
  None. The drafting of the basic law is a matter for the Chinese Government. However. we are following the drafting process extremely closely and, where necessary, seek clarification from and make representations to the Chinese Government. The content of those exchanges is confidential.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations there have been between his Department and the Chinese Government about the percentage of Hong Kong legislature positions to be directly elected post-1997.

  Mr. Maude
  The Chinese Government are currently finalising the drafting of the political structure provisions of the basic law. We have made clear to the Chinese Government, on a number of occasions, the importance of a basic law which fully reflects Hong Kong people's views, especially in this important area.

  Sir David Steel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the current emigration situation in Hong Kong.

  Mr. Maude
  Some 42,000 people emigrated from Hong Kong in 1989, of whom about 20,000 were part of the working population. Of these, about 50 per cent. were professional, technical, administrative and management personnel.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what training the immigration officers, currently involved in the screening process of the Vietnam refugees in Hong Kong, have undertaken.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: Immigration officers assigned to screening duties have attended training courses conducted by the immigration department and the UNHCR's legal officers from the department of law and doctrine. In addition, there are frequent formal and informal in-service training sessions designed to ensure that the screening procedures are being carried out in accordance with UNHCR guidelines.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether the refugee status review board in Hong Kong is obliged to give reason for a negative decision.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: The refugee status review board is not obliged to state its reasons for upholding a decision for the director of immigration.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether Vietnamese asylum seekers, their representatives or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are allowed to be present at the meeting, where the refugee status review board considers individual cases.
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  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: No. But the representatives of the asylum seekers and the UNHCR have an opportunity to put all the relevant information to the board before their cases are considered. The board may also interview asylum seekers if it requires clarification of any matter of fact.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many punishment cells there are at present in the Hong Kong camps; what are the dimensions of such cells; what is the average stay of each individual in the cells; and how widespread is their use.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: Of the 10 Vietnamese boat people detention centres in Hong Kong, four have segregation sections, containing a combined total of 133 cubicles. The dimensions of these varies from 3 ·5 sq m to 7 ·5 sq m. The average length of stay is 14 days. They are used only for persons who seriously and repeatedly breach detention centre rules.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will commission a fully independent and impartial inquiry into the methods used by the correctional services department and the tactical response squad in the Hong Kong camps.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: No. We are fully satisfied with the work of correctional services department (CSD) staff and the tactical response squad.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the number of disturbances that have taken place in the closed camps in Hong Kong since June 1988 and the number of detainees involved.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: Most disturbances in the detention centres since June 1988 have been caused by clashes between rival groups of boat people. There were 25 such incidents during the period June 1988 to January 1990 involving groups of between 50 and 400 people. In addition, there were three serious disturbances directed against police or correctional services department officers. These were:

  Place

  Time

  Numbers involved

  Sek Kong

  July 1989

  2,000

  Tai a Chau

  August 1989

  1,000

  Chi Ma Wan

  December 1989

  3,000

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what processes the detainees in the Hong Kong camps have open to them to complain about alleged attacks and ill-treatment at the hands of the police and correctional services department.

  Mr. Maude
  [holding answer 24 January 1990]: Complaints may be made to visiting justices of the peace, to the UNHCR protection and field officers who work in all camps or, in the case of the police, to the complaints against the police office. All such complaints are thoroughly investigated.

  Somalia
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the progress of international efforts to achieve peace in Somalia.
  690
  Mr. Waldegrave
  The achievement of peace in Somalia must be primarily a matter for the Somali people. We continue to support all constructive efforts to promote this process. Regrettably there is little sign of progress so far.

  European Single Market
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what implications the 1992 changes will have for international relations between Britain and(a) other European Community member states and (b) developing or undeveloped countries.

  Mr. Maude
  The single market programme will integrate the economies of the EC member states more closely. By removing barriers to trade, and increasing the size of the market, it should provide new opportunities for those of our trading partners who are outside the Community.

  Immigration
  Mr. David Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the operation of immigration controls overseas is made more effective.

  Mr. Maude
  Applications made overseas for entry clearance to come to the United Kingdom are dealt with in accordance with the immigration rules (HC 388). The entry clearance operation is kept under continual review and we are satisfied that it operates effectively.

  Nelson Mandela
  Mr. Orme
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the impending release of Nelson Mandela.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have been at the forefront of those calling for Mr. Mandela's early and unconditional release. We warmly welcome the decision announced by President de Klerk on 2 February that Mr. Mandela will shortly be released.

  Eastern Europe
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further steps his Department will take to help support the political and economic reforms taking place among the countries of eastern Europe.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have said that we will extend the know-how fund to other eastern European countries once they are fully committed to reform. Meanwhile we will also support the reforms through an expanded programme of ministerial contacts, visits, seminars and training schemes. We will continue to play a major role in international efforts to support the reform process.

  Mr. Batiste
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what Her Majesty's Government are doing to ensure that European Community aid to eastern Europe is properly utilised in projects that will enable successful market economies to emerge.

  Mr. Maude
  EC Heads of Government agreed at the Strasbourg European Council that a major objective in
  691
  responding to developments in eastern Europe should be consolidation of democratic reform and promotion of market-based economies. British Ministers and officials consult closely the European Commission, EC partners and other members of the Western Group of 24 on the best means of achieving this objective. Commission proposals for EC aid made against this background are considered fully in the Council and in the management committee which oversees expenditure of the EC's aid budget for eastern Europe. Member states' agreement is required before aid projects are implemented.

  Mr. Macdonald
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further assessment he has made of the impact on future Government policy of recent events in eastern Europe.

  Mr. Maude
  We warmly welcome the recent historic changes in eastern Europe and we shall continue to support the political and economic reforms which are now occurring. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was glad to announce on 22 January that our know-how funds for Poland and Hungary will now be expanded to include the remaining countries of the region, as they move decisively toward democracy and the adoption of market-based economic systems.

  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the desirability of institutional changes in the European Community following the developments in eastern Europe.

  Mr. Maude
  We welcome the process of economic and political reform which has swept eastern Europe. We agree the Community must continue to develop, and want faster integration. The immediate priority is for pressing ahead with completing the single market programme on which the United Kingdom has taken a leading role. Proposals for institutional change should be considered on their merits.

  Sir Anthony Meyer
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with other EC Ministers about future relations with the states of eastern Europe.

  Mr. Maude
  Eastern Europe was the focus of the Dublin meeting of EC Foreign Ministers on 20 January. Those discussions resumed at the Foreign Affairs Council on 5 February. The Community intends to complete the network of agreements covering trade and commercial and economic co-operation with the emerging democracies of eastern Europe. As their economic and political reforms progress, the Council will consider wider forms of association and the criteria that are appropriate.

  European Commission
  Mr. Norman Hogg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet the President of the European Commission; and what will be discussed.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs next expects to meet the President of the European Commission at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting on 5 March, when a range of EC issues will be discussed.
  692
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors; and what was discussed.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs met Mr. Delors at the Foreign Affairs Council on 5 February at which a range of European Community issues were discussed.

  Middle East
  Mr. Cyril D. Townsend
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Britain's contribution towards finding a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict acceptable to the international community.

  Sir Dennis Walters
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on progress towards peace in the middle east.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We support the current efforts to promote a dialogue between Israel and representative Palestinians as an important step towards a settlement.

  China
  Mr. Adley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet the Chinese Foreign Minister; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no plans to do so.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on relations between Britain and the People's Republic of China.

  Mr. Maude
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) on 20 October, column 267.

  Mr. Viggers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will comment on his most recent discussions with the Government of the People's Republic of China.

  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met the Chinese ambassador; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is in touch with the Chinese Government on a number of issues, including the future of Hong Kong, on which he reported to the House on 17 January.

  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Her Majesty's Government policy on human rights violations in China.

  Mr. Maude
  We have been unequivocal in our condemnation of the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Peking last year. We and our partners will continue to take suitable opportunities to register our concerns.
  693

  Palestinian Liberation Organisation
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government will desist from any further contacts with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as long as it is its policy that Arab countries should open their borders to Palestinian Fedayeen action.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Through its renunciation of terrorism and its recognition of Israel, the PLO has earned the right to participate in the peace process. Our dialogue with it is conducted on that basis.

  Ethiopia
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about the prospects for peace in Ethiopia.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The respective talks between the Ethiopian Government and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front have not yet got beyond procedural matters. We urge all involved to persevere since negotiations offer the only prospect of a lasting peace.

  Nicaragua
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on plans by EEC countries to observe the Nicaraguan elections.

  Mr. Maude
  The United Kingdom is sending an official observer, Dr. David Browning. No other EC Government will be sending official observers to the Nicaraguan elections. However, we understand that a number of parliamentarians from EC countries will observe the election, some as members of the UN observer mission. A group of Members of the European Parliament will also observe the elections.

  Yugoslavia
  Mr. Bowis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Government of Yugoslavia about human rights in Kosovo.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have frequently raised human rights matters with the Yugoslav authorities. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs discussed the question of Kosovo with the Yugoslav ambassor, Mr. Rikonovic, on 22 November.

  British Hostages
  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has made about the fate of Terry Waite and other British hostages; and to whom.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have raised the matter with a wide range of Governments and organisations which might have influence on the hostage holders, but we do not make public confidential exchanges between Governments.
  694

  Know-how Funds
  Miss Emma Nicholson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what aid his Department is channelling to Romania; and if he has considered the extension of the know-how fund beyond Poland and Hungary.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  As well as the initial consignment of medical supplies sent to Romania on 24 December, we have given medical equipment and literature. Five victims of the December fighting arrived in the United Kingdom for urgent treatment on 31 January. We made a major contribution to the £7·5 million of emergency medical and food supplies sent by the EC between 22 and 31 December, and shall also do so in relation to the further £27 million food aid package which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs agreed with EC colleagues on 20 January. Furthermore, my right hon. Friend announced on 22 January that the know-how fund will be expanded to include other countries of eastern Europe, as well as Poland and Hungary, once they are firmly committed to reform.

  Drugs
  Mr. Rathbone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what particular initiative he is hoping to take at the forthcoming special United Nations session on drug misuse and trafficking.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will be going to the special session. The United Kingdom will be working for a commitment to improving the effectiveness of the United Nations effort against drugs, and for agreement on a practical programme of international and national action—including ratification of relevant United Nations conventions, measures to strengthen the monitoring of precursor chemical movements, and undertakings to develop a network of agreements to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of drug trafficking.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will next meet heads of state of the Andean group of countries to discuss drug trafficking.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs expects to meet President Barco of Colombia when he attends the London drugs summit conference in April. He hopes then also to meet the representatives of the other Andean countries to the conference.

  Vietnamese Boat People
  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what are the latest figures for numbers of Vietnamese boat people repatriated forcibly and voluntarily from Hong Kong.

  Mr. Maude
  Eleven hundred and one Vietnamese have returned voluntarily from Hong Kong to Vietnam. Fifty-one Vietnamese, who had not volunteered to return, were repatriated on 12 December 1989. No force was used.

  Cyprus
  Mr. Holt
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met the Greek Cypriot leader to discuss the future of Cyprus.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs last met President Vassiliou of Cyprus on 28 November 1989.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last discussed with the Secretary-General of the United Nations the present position in Cyprus; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has not yet discussed the Cyprus question with the United Nations Secretary-General. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did so on 8 November. Officials are in frequent touch with the Secretary-General in connection with the Cyprus good offices mission, which we fully support.

  Baltic States
  Mr. Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to discuss the future of the Baltic states with his Soviet counterpart.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  No. The Soviet Union is well aware of our policy towards the Baltic states.

  Amazon Rain Forest
  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he will next meet the Peruvian ambassador to discuss the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no plans to meet the Peruvian ambassador for this purpose.

  George Belitsky
  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will raise with the Soviet authorities the case of George Belitsky who is unable to apply for an exit visa until 2010.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have raised the case of George Belitsky on numerous occasions, most recently when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs met Mr. Shevardnadze in London on 19 December. The case was also raised at senior official level during Anglo-Soviet talks on human rights held in Moscow on 9 January. We shall continue to press the Soviet authorities until there is a satisfactory outcome.

  Cambodia
  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the progress of international efforts to secure an urgent peaceful settlement in the Cambodian conflict.

  Mr. Maude
  Asia directors of the five permanent members of the Security Council met on 15–16 January in Paris to discuss the problem of Cambodia. They agreed a696
  set of principles to guide them in working for a resolution of the Cambodia problem, including an enhanced role for the United Nations. A further meeting is planned in New York in the first half of February.

  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last discussed Cambodia or Vietnam with the American Secretary of State.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs last discussed Cambodia with Secretary of State Baker on 1 1 December 1989. They discussed the problem of Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong on 29 January 1990.

  Third World
  Mr. Skinner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent meetings he has had with other European Economic Community Foreign Ministers to discuss relations with Third world countries; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  Relations with developing countries and regions are regularly discussed both within the Council and in political co-operation. The European Council of 8–9 December issued statements on the middle east, Lebanon, the Euro-Arab conference, Southern Africa, Ethiopia, Chile and Central America. A new Lomè convention providing for comprehensive trade, aid and co-operation was agreed in December between the EC and 68 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific.

  Diplomatic Links
  Mr. Ron Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs which countries do not have full diplomatic links with Britain; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 14 November 1989 by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry).

  Falkland Islands
  Mr. Summerson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the population of the Falkland Islands was in 1982; and what it is at the present time.

  Mr. Maude
  According to the December 1980 census the population of the Falkland Islands was then 1,813. The figure for the next census, in December 1986, was 1,947. We do not know precisely what the population was in 1982, but local estimates place it at around 1,700. The estimated current population is about 2,050.

  Sri Lanka
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has made to the Government of Sri Lanka.
  697
  Mr. Maude
  We have a regular dialogue with the Government of Sri Lanka on a wide range of matters. These have in the last few months included a number of representations on human rights issues.

  EC Policies
  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further proposals he intends to place before his European Community partners for the development of Community policies.

  Mr. Maude
  We shall continue to play a full and leading part in the development of the Community.

  Vietnam (Emigration)
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations have been made by his Department since December to the Vietnamese Government concerning the potential of further emigration from north Vietnam to Hong Kong when the South China sea sailing season commences.

  Mr. Maude
  Her Majesty's embassy in Hanoi is in regular contact with the Vietnamese Government over aspects of the boat people problem, in particular the possibility of further large-scale emigration during the forthcoming sailing season. Under the terms of the comprehensive plan of action agreed in Geneva last June, the Vietnamese authorities are obliged to take measures to deter people from leaving clandestinely and to encourage those who wish to leave to do so through the orderly departure programme.

  Warsaw Pact
  Mr. Cartwright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps the Government are taking to encourage the moves towards democracy amongst the member nations of the Warsaw pact.

  Mr. Maude
  We are actively considering ways in which we can help the countries of eastern Europe in this field. Groups of Hungarian and Polish politicians have already participated in successful seminars on the United Kingdom parliamentary system organised by the Great Britain/East Europe Centre. Budding politicians from Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the GDR will attend similar seminars in the coming months to look at our political and parliamentary system in order to help them organise their parties and electoral campaigns.

  In addition, the IPU is sending factfinding missions to these four countries to determine how the IPU could be of assistance in the parliamentary field.

  Lithuania
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to establish diplomatic relations with Lithuania.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We cannot establish diplomatic relations with Lithuania, which is not a sovereign independent state. It was unlawfully incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940.
  698

  East Germany
  Mr. Madel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what matters were discussed during his visit to East Germany in January; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) on 1 February.

  Mr. Franks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on his recent visit to Germany.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs visited Bonn on 6 February to give a speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He met Chancellor Kohl, Herr Genscher and Herr Rühe, for a broad range of discussions on topics of current interest. He visited East Berlin and the GDR from 22–24 January, and I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) on 1 February.

  Lorrain Osman
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will now make a statement on the future of Lorrain Osman.

  Mr. John Patten
  I have been asked to reply.

  Mr. Osman is the subject of an extradition request from Hong Kong and has been committed for return there. The delay in his return reflects both the complexity of the case and the series of appeals which Mr. Osman has made against his extradition, since the law provides that a fugitive cannot be surrendered while proceedings on such appeals are pending. The sequence of events demonstrates how it is Mr. Osman's own use of the appeal channels open to him which has led to his substantial period in prison:

  6 December 1985

  Mr. Osman arrested on provisional extradition warrant.

  7 December 1985

  Mr. Osman remanded in custody.

  24 January 1986

  Home Office issued authority to Bow street magistrates to proceed with extradition case under Fugitive Offenders Act 1967, in respect of an arrest warrant issued in Hong Kong on 20 January 1986.

  25 April 1986

  Further warrant of arrest issued in Hong Kong in respect of 43 offences.

  13 May 1986

  Second authority to proceed issued superseding the authority to proceed of 24 January 1986.

  27 May 1986

  Committal proceedings began at Bow street.

  1 June 1987

  Bow street magistrates committed Mr. Osman to await the Home Secretary's order for surrender to Hong Kong.

  9 June 1987

  Application by Mr. Osman for writ of habeas corpus to have the magistrate's decision set aside.

  30 June 1987

  Complaint to European Commission of Human Rights.

  30 March 1988

  After four weeks hearing Divisional Court dismissed application for writ of habeas corpus.

  29 April 1988

  Divisional Court refused leave to appeal to House of Lords.

  699
  13 May 1988

  Mr. Osman petitioned House of Lords direct for leave to appeal and made second application for writ of habeas corpus on grounds of diplomatic immunity.

  14 July 1988

  Petition to House of Lords rejected.

  21 October 1988

  Divisional Court hearing of second application for writ of habeas corpus.

  21 December 1988

  Divisional Court dismissed second application for writ of habeas corpus.

  14 February 1989

  Divisional Court refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords.

  24 February 1989

  Mr. Osman petitioned House of Lords direct for leave to appeal.

  13 March 1989

  European Commission declared inadmissible Mr. Osman's complaint under the European Convention on Human Rights.

  4 May 1989

  Court of Appeal, Hong Kong, quashed the arrest warrant issued in Hong Kong on 30 November 1985, on the ground that it had been vitiated by bias.

  9 May 1989

  Mr. Osman's solicitors sought adjournment of their petition for leave to appeal to the House of Lords and gave notice of their intention to make a third application for habeas corpus because of the quashing in Hong Kong of the warrant of 30 November 1985. and the issue of a diplomatic note by the Liberian Ambassador relating to Mr. Osman's claim of diplomatic immunity.

  6 June 1989

  The High Court granted leave to apply for a third writ of habeas corpus.

  26 July 1989

  The Divisional Court refused Mr. Osman's application for bail.

  26 September 1989

  Application for judicial review deferred to start of habeas corpus proceedings which were due in the Divisional Court on 3 October.

  4 October 1989

  Judicial review proceedings began, to be followed by habeas corpus proceedings on the question of what constituted "relevant offences" for the purposes of Mr. Osman's extradition.

  5 October 1989

  Application for independent inquiry refused. Application for bail refused. Case adjourned to 19 October.

  26 October 1989

  The Divisional Court adjourned for judgment on both judicial review and habeas corpus proceedings.

  17 November 1989

  The Divisional Court dismissed Mr. Osman's applications for judicial review and habeas corpus. The Court decided that Mr. Osman had been lawfully arrested and there had been no dishonesty or abuse of process. It also decided that all of the charges faced by Mr. Osman were relevant offences for the purposes of extradition, although it was agreed that a phrase objected to in the wording of one charge would be deleted.

  5 December 1989

  The Divisional Court refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords.

  15 December 1989

  Mr. Osman lodged a further petition for leave to appeal to the House of Lords direct, against the Divisional Court's judgment on the third habeas corpus application.

  1 February 1990

  Mr. Osman's outstanding petitions for leave to appeal to the House of Lords were refused by the House of Lords Appeal Committee.

  2 February 1990

  Mr. Osman lodged his fourth habeas corpus application.

  Mr. Osman cannot be surrendered to the Hong Kong authorities until this further application has been heard.
  700

  Women Diplomats
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement concerning his Department's policies to encourage the appointment of more women to senior diplomatic posts.

  Mr. Maude
  The FCO makes all appointments on the basis of merit. The FCO is fully committed to being an equal opportunities employer.

  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Leicester, East of 12 January,Official Report, column 794, where the five women ambassadors and high commissioners are posted; and how long they have been in post.

  Mr. Maude
  Four women are currently serving as ambassadors to Ivory Coast (June 1987), Luxembourg (February 1988), Mozambique (September 1989) and Chad (non-Resident, September 1989). A fifth woman is the leader of the United Kingdom delegation to the conference in Geneva and has been in post since October 1987.

  Kashmir
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Indian Government about its suppression of the nationalist uprising in Kashmir.

  Mr. Maude
  We have made clear in our regular contacts with the Indian and Pakistan Governments that we believe the status of Kashmir can be settled only by agreement between the two sides. We have also made clear that we have no sympathy with those who espouse violence for political ends.

  Computer Security
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps his Department has taken and is taking to improve the security of its computer systems.

  Mr. Maude
  For unclassified but sensitive systems Departments are expected to follow CCTA guidance covering all aspects of IT security and the application of this has been tightened recently. CCTA advice is kept under continuous review and is based on analysis of security risks and requirements using structured methods such as CCTA's risk analysis and management methodology (CRAMM) which has also been made commercially available.

  More stringent conditions apply to classified systems.

  Germany
  Mr. Wareing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last had meetings with the ambassadors of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic; what subjects were discussed; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maude
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs last met the ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany on 6
  701
  February during his visit to Bonn, when he discussed a wide range of issues. He last met the ambassador of the German Democratic Republic when he visited East Berlin and the GDR on 22–24 January, about which I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham), on 1 February, Vol. 166, column 307.

HEALTH

  Cervical Cancer
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent reports and evidence he has received about the incidence of cervical cancer among over-65-year-olds; whether he has any plans to alter his Department's guidelines to include regular provision of regular cervical smears for women over 65 years; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Information about the incidence of cervical cancer is regularly published by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. Guidance issued by the Department of Health to health authorities, family practitioner committees and general practitioners in January 1988, a copy of which is in the Library, stated:"women aged 65 and over who have not had two consecutive negative smears in the last ten years should also be screened."
  GPs are well placed to carry this out. Our most recent figures show that women over the age of 65 already consult their doctor more than six times a year on average. Under the GPs' new contract much greater emphasis is being placed on health promotion and the prevention of ill health, including the requirement to offer health checks in specific circumstances (for example annually to patients aged 75 and over) and encouraging doctors to hold more health promotion clinics. This will mean that GPs will have even more opportunities to advise women patients over 65 of the wisdom of accepting these effective preventive measures.

  National Health Service (Cost)
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the contribution is for an average family of four, on a weekly basis, towards the cost of the National Health Service(a) at the latest available date, (b) in 1979 and (c) at constant prices.

  Mr. Freeman
  It is not possible to provide the information requested. The greatest part of National Health Service funding comes from the Consolidated Fund and it is not possible to distinguish between the proportion contributed by private taxpayers and taxation raised from other sources. However it is possible to calculate figures for National Health Service expenditure per notional family of four and these are as follows:

  £ per week

  1989–90

  35

  1979–80

  13

  11979–80

  27

  1 At current (ie. 1989–90) prices.

  702

  Consultants
  Mr. Meale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the criterion under which whole-time consultants employed in the National Health Service are allowed to earn a percentage of their gross income from private practice without losing their status and payment qualifications as full-time National Health Service consultants.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The terms and conditions of service for hospital medical and dental staff provide that a whole-time consultant can earn up to 10 per cent. of his gross whole-time salary, including the value of any distinction award held, from private practice.

  Mr. Meale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the Government have any plans to end the practice of paying whole-time medical consultants higher salaries to partly compensate them for their dedication to the National Health Service.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  No.

  Durham Health Authority
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list all capital spending projects and their costs to Durham district health authority since 1974.

  Mr. Freeman
  Information on building schemes held centrally does not include small schemes or schemes carried out before 1980. The hon. Member may like to contact the chairman of the Northern regional health authority for a full list from the regional records.

  Student Nurses
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many student nurses will qualify as students for community charge purposes.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Students on undergraduate nursing courses and those undertaking Project 2000 training will be eligible for student relief for the purpose of the personal community charge. No precise estimate can be made of the numbers likely to be involved. Thirteen Project 2000 schemes will be in operation by 1 April 1990, and it is planned to start further schemes during 1990–91.

  Case Managers
  Mr. Hannam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps he is taking to ensure that case managers are trained to take full account of the views of the disabled person, authorised representative and carer when assessing their community care needs.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  A key objective of the White Paper "Caring for People" is to ensure that assessment of needs for social care services takes full account of the views of the client and his or her carer. The Department will be issuing guidance to local authorities on assessment and case management. Training in the skills required by case managers will be addressed in improved qualifying training programmes, in new post qualifying training programmes, and in enhanced vocational training.

  Community Care
  Mr. Hannam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps he is taking to ensure that the new arrangements for community care take full account of the needs of young disabled people.

  Mr. Roger Freeman
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Mr. Shaw) and for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) on 12 December at column 605. Our proposals are intended to benefit all people in need of community care.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to ensure joint planning by health and local authorities prior to the implementation of the proposed changes in community care.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 6 February 1990]: A key component of the Government's policy on community care, set out in the White Paper "Caring for People" is the production by local authorities of community care plans. Health authorities will also be expected to produce community health care plans. The two should be prepared collaboratively. The Department will bring forward guidance in support of the requirement to produce these plans. The precise form of collaboration over the production of plans is for local decision and agreement.

  Medical Advances
  Mr. Martyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department takes to keep doctors informed of the latest medical advances.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Every medical practitioner has the responsibility of keeping up to date with medical knowledge appropriate to his or her chosen specialty. To assist in this, the Department and health authorities allocate funds for the provision of courses and other educational activities and for the expenses of attending such activities. The content of educational activities is largely determined by the profession itself. In addition, from 1 April 1990, a new postgraduate education allowance will be payable to family doctors who maintain regular programmes of approved education and training.

  Applied Microbiology
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the future of the centre for applied microbiology and research.

  Mr. Freeman
  I am carefully considering the way ahead for CAMR in the light of advice from scientific and financial advisers. It is clear that the essential public health work must remain under the responsibility of the public health laboratory service. As one of the options for the future of the non-public health work at CAMR, we are considering an approach to acquire CAMR by Porton International plc. We will be advised by Hambros plc. I am not persuaded that these non-public health functions of the centre are of a nature that need necessarily be carried out within the public sector. When we have considered Porton's approach we will make a further statement, taking into account the interests of staff and public health.
  704

  Disabled People
  Mr. Ashley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to monitor the implementation of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  The Department's social services inspectorate has carried out a number of exercises to monitor the implementation of the Act. The results of an inspection of the operation of all sections of the Act in force were published on 6 February under the title "Developing Services for Disabled People". The findings of a more specific study of the progress of six authorities towards implementation of sections 5 and 6 are due to be published shortly. Copies of both reports will be placed in the Library.

  Maternity Hospitals
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress his Department is making with implementing the maternity hospital episode system; how many districts are unable to provide all the items of information in the minimum data sets; and whether all National Health Service hospital trusts and private hospitals in England will be required to provide this information in the future.

  Mr. Freeman
  The collection of Korner maternity data commenced in September 1988. It is not possible to give a precise figure for the number of districts providing all items of the data set but approximately 70 per cent. have supplied all or most of the data required. The shortfall has been caused by technical difficulties between local maternity information systems and district information systems. Recommendations for changes to information systems consequent to the White Paper "Working for Patients" are currently the subject of consultation with the NHS. For maternity data the recommendation is that all providers to the district of residence will produce a minimum data set for hospital episodes of care. Those "contract" minimum data sets will include the data required under current maternity systems.

  Eye Tests
  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if, pursuant to his reply of 15 January to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes),Official Report, column 87, he will now place in the Library full details of the questions and sample questionnaires being circulated for the purposes of drawing up a survey of the level of eye tests for the first quarter of 1990; if he will indicate to whom such details are being circulated; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  A sight test volume survey is being conducted by NOP Market Research Limited as part of its regular omnibus survey. The field work will be carried out between mid-March and mid-April. It will involve a random sample of 10,000 adults being asked the following questions:

  "i. Have you had your sight tested at an opticians—not at a hospital or at your doctors—since Christmas? and if yes,

  ii. Was it an NHS sight test or did you pay for a private sight test?"

  Abortions
  Miss Widdecombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many abortions have been carried out since the passing of the 1967 Act for minor facial deformities.

  Mr. Freeman
  The information requested is not available.

  Cardiac Unit, North Western RHA
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will seek to expedite a reply to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe's letter of 16 January to the chairman of the North Western regional health authority about urgent problems facing the regional cardiac unit, raised with the right hon. Member by all the consultant cardiologists and cardiac surgeons at Wythenshawe hospital.

  Mr. Freeman
  I have been assured that the chairman of the North Western regional health authority will reply shortly to the letter of 16 January from the right hon. Member.

  Nursing Staff
  Mr. Kennedy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether his Department has conducted any exercises in computer modelling in relation to the supply of nursing staff, similar to those conducted by the Institute of Manpower Studies in relation to the supply of teaching staff in its study, "The Supply of Teachers 1989".

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  In 1988 the Department initiated, on a national basis, a computer model which looks at the impact of Project 2000 (the new system of nurse education), together with demographic change and the changing patterns of nurse recruitment and retention, on the supply of trained nurses up to and beyond the year 2000. The model was made available to the NHS in 1989.

  Deaths (South Yorkshire)
  Mr. Caborn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many deaths on arrival were delivered by the police, armed services and voluntary organisations in December 1989 for each of the health authorities operating in south Yorkshire; and what was the cause of death;

  (2) how many deaths on arrival were delivered to the health authorities operating in south Yorkshire in December 1987 and December 1988.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 15 January 1990]: The number of deaths on arrival recorded at south Yorkshire hospitals during December 1987, 1988 and 1989 were as follows:
  1987, 1988 and 1989 were as follows:

  1987

  1988

  1989

  Barnsley health authority1

  32

  30

  34

  Doncaster health authority

  54

  53

  74

  Rotherham health authority

  15

  28

  26

  Sheffield health authority

  49

  33

  67

  1The figures do not distinguish between deaths on arrival at the accident and emergency department and bodies delivered to the public mortuary at the Barnsley district general hospital.

  Details of cause of death could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
  706
  These figures do not provide any sensible statistical basis for drawing any conclusions at all about the effect of the industrial action by the ambulance trades unions upon patients. The number of deaths on arrival at a hospital can fluctuate widely in normal circumstances depending on the range of cases in a particular month and if there has been any temporary increase in illness locally, for example, as a result of a flu epidemic. As further illustration there were 60 cases of deaths on arrival at Sheffield hospitals and 21 at Rotherham hospitals in December 1985.

  Welfare Wilk
  Mr. Bermingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the total number of welfare milk scheme beneficiaries for each year since 1979 in England and Wales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  [holding answer 16 January 1990]: I regret that the information is not available in the form requested. The information that is available is in the table.

  Estimate of the weekly number of welfare milk recipientsin Great Britain 1979 to 1989

  Year1

  Number

  November 1979

  339,000

  December 1980

  449,000

  December 1981

  646,000

  December 1982

  809,000

  December 1983

  884,000

  December 1984

  976,000

  February 1986

  1,068,000

  May 1987

  1,096,000

  June 1987 to May 19882

  932,000

  May 1988 to December 1989

  741,000

  1 Information to May 1987 is from the Annual Statistical Enquiry carried out in Social Security local offices. No information is available for 1985.

  2 From June 1987 it is an average based on the number of milk tokens surrendered for reimbursement by suppliers of liquid milk. Tokens used to obtain dried baby-milk are not included.

  Social Workers
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many statutory child care cases are not currently supervised by local authority social workers because of staff shortages.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 6 February 1990]: The information requested is not collected centrally.

  Spiramycin
  Mr. Terry Davis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he is satisfied that there are adequate supplies of the drug spiramycim in syrup for babies suffering from toxoplasmosis.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  [holding answer 6 February 1990]: No product licence has been applied for in respect of spiramycin. Without a licence, the drug could not be imported on a commercial basis, though a doctor might arrange with the manufacturing company to supply it to him on a named-patient basis.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Arable Sector
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the current state of the arable sector.

  Mr. Curry
  In 1989–90, United Kingdom beet sugar production was just over 1·25 million tonnes. Devaluation of the green pound more than offset the 2 per cent. reduction in the EC sugar price.

  Rapeseed production in the United Kingdom is estimated at 953,000 tonnes in 1989–90. Under the EC stabiliser mechanism, the target price has been reduced by 3.· per cent. because Community production has exceeded the maximum guaranteed quantity. This amounts to a price increase of nearly 5 per cent. over 1988–89, when the price was reduced by 7·65 per cent. Taking account of the green pound changes, the support price increase in sterling is over 12 per cent. Market prices in 1989–90 have been considerably higher than in the previous year. Production of protein crops in the United Kingdom in 1989–90 is estimated at 703,000 tonnes. Institutional prices have been reduced by around 10 per cent. under the stabiliser mechanism as they were in the previous year. In sterling terms this has resulted in a price rise of over 7 per cent. taking account of green pound changes. Market prices have been higher in 1989–90 than in the previous year
  For potatoes, estimated United Kingdom production in the current July-June crop year was 6,221,000 tonnes compared with 6,899,000 tonnes in 1987–88, but the shortfall has been partially offset by lower wastage. Weekly average producer prices are running at over £90 per tonne compared with less than £60 at this time last year.

  Grain
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many days' supply of grain are currently in store in the United Kingdom(a) in intervention storage and (b) in all storage; and what were the figures for each of the past three years.

  Mr. Curry
  United Kingdom intervention stocks of cereals at the end of January 1990 represented around 11 days' supply compared with 21 days, 20 days and 52 days at the end of January 1989, 1988 and 1987 respectively.

  The latest available information on the quantity of grain in commercial storage is in the form of estimates of stocks of wheat, barley and oats at 31 December 1989. Adding these estimates to the intervention stocks at the time gives total storage figures representing about 267, 282, 281 and 324 days' supply for December 1989, 1988, 1987 and 1986 respectively.

  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the latest estimate of the stocks of grain which will be in store at the end of June 1990(a) in Britain, (b) in the European Economic Community and (c) in the world, expressed in tonnes and days' supply; and what is the latest estimate of the stocks of grain at the present time in (a) Britain (b) the European Economic Community and (c) in the world expressed in tonnes and days' supply.
  708
  Mr. Curry
  Current estimates of cereals likely to be in store in the United Kingdom and the European Community as a whole at the end of the 1989–90 marketing year on 30 June 1990 are as follows:

  Million tonnes

  Days' supply

  United Kingdom

  3

  55

  EC

  26

  70

  These figures are based on the Commission of the European Communities' balance sheet for cereals.

  The International Wheat Council's estimate of world stocks of grain is an aggregate of national figures based on different definitions of marketing years and therefore does not relate to a particular date. However, the council's latest estimate for world stocks for the end of the 1989–90 crop year is 225 million tonnes or around 60 days' supply.

  The latest estimate of current stocks of grain in the United Kingdom is for 31 December 1989 when the total was 15 million tonnes, representing about 267 days' supply. Estimates for the European Community and the world are not available.

  Cereals
  Mr. Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the level of imports into the United Kingdom of(a) cereals and (b) cereals substitutes in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Curry
  The information is as follows:

  Calendar year

  Imports of cereals(000 tonnes)

  Imports of cereal substitutes tonnes)2

  1979

  6,216

  432

  1980

  5,333

  519

  1981

  4,197

  1,382

  1982

  3,728

  1,928

  1983

  3,225

  1,439

  1984

  2,744

  1,048

  1985

  3,286

  1,038

  1986

  3,490

  1,035

  1987

  3,484

  1,091

  1988

  3,341

  1,108

  11989

  2,398

  796

  1 To end November.

  2 As listed in Annex D to Council Regulation (EEC) No. 2727/75.

  Source: HM Customs and Excise.

  Meat and Bonemeal Exports
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has issued any notice to countries which import meat and bonemeal from the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Maclean
  Countries determine whether or not to import meat and bonemeal from the United Kingdom and the conditions which apply to such trade on the basis of this country's health status, about which they are kept fully informed.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what advice he has given to other European Community member states on the risks to their livestock posed by the feeding of British meat and bonemeal.
  709
  Mr. Maclean
  Other member states of the European Community have been kept fully informed about BSE since it was identified as a new cattle disease, including its likely cause.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what information he has on restrictions in other European Community member states on the incorporation of meat and bonemeal into ruminant feeds.

  Mr. Maclean
  The Netherlands have imposed a ban on the feeding of ruminant-based meat and bonemeal to ruminants.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he has imposed any restrictions on the importation of meat and bonemeal into the United Kingdom; and what regulations exist governing the incorporation of imported meat and bonemeal into United Kingdom livestock feed.

  Mr. Maclean
  On 1 May 1989 new measures were introduced under the Importation of Processed Animal Protein 1981 and the Importation of Animal Protein and Poultry Products 1980 (as amended) Orders which stengthened safeguards against the importation of animal disease, including salmonella. These included the provision of veterinary certification confirming treatment to destroy salmonellae where consignments have come from countries that have previously shown the presence of salmonellae. On arrival at British ports, consignments may be sampled and tested for salmonellae. Subsequent action is appropriate to the results obtained.

  Ruminant-based meat and bonemeal whether domestically produced or imported, is banned from use in ruminant rations.

  Environmentally Sensitive Areas
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the different types of grant aid available under the environmentally sensitive area system; and what is the average size of farms awarded grant aid when an environmentally sensitive area is developed.

  Mr. Curry
  Under the environmentally sensitive areas scheme farmers receive annual payments for following agricultural practices beneficial to the environment. Each scheme focuses on the environmental features characteristic of the area concerned. Since individual management agreements do not generally relate to the whole farm, it is not possible to state the average size of the farms involved.

  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the total annual cost to public funds of the environmentally sensitive areas system; and what is the total annual budget for each environmentally sensitive area.

  Mr. Curry
  United Kingdom expenditure under the environmentally sensitive area schemes (ESAs) for the current financial year is forecast to be £12·6 million. The level of expenditure is determined by the number of agreements made with individual farmers. Budgets are not fixed for each separate ESA.
  710

  Agricultural Development Advisory Service
  Dr. Thomas
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the total budget of the Agricultural Development Advisory Service in Wales in(a) 1988–89 and (b) 1989–90; and what proportion of this money was allocated to Gwynedd and Clwyd.

  Mr. Curry
  The budget of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service in Wales for 1988–89 was £7·42 million, of which £1·18 million was allocated to Gwynedd and Clwyd. The budget for 1989–90 is £7·68 million, of which £1·19 million is allocated to Gwynedd and Clwyd.

  Farm Animals
  Mr. Colin Shepherd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what initiatives he proposes to take to improve the welfare of farm animals.

  Mr. Gummer
  I am determined that the special concern which the United Kingdom has shown towards animal welfare is carried across to our partners in the European Community. The protection of farm animals is now inevitably a European issue and Britain will have to play an active part in getting higher standards of animal welfare throughout the Community.

  Animal welfare is an issue which transcends national boundaries and has to be tackled on a Community basis. While in some circumstances we have to reserve the right to maintain national controls, we must avoid encouraging imports from countries where standards are lower than our own. The way forward therefore is to seek the fullest degree of harmonisation so that all countries of the Community operate to the same high standards.

  The Community has already taken some action in this area but much remains to be done. We will in particular press for action in the Community in the following areas:
  Protection of animals in transit. There must be proper standards for transport including requirements for feeding, resting and adequate ventilation. Community rules must allow for surveillance during journeys particularly at key points such as sea and air ports.
  Protection of horses. The Government recognise the concern about this issue. We will press for controls to be maintained on exports of horses for slaughter and for legislation to ensure proper welfare safeguards whenever horses are transported or slaughtered.
  Welfare of pigs and calves. The Commission has made proposals but these need to be revised to take more account of the very real concern about certain farming systems such as veal crates (which have already been banned in the United Kingdom) and stall and tether systems for dry sows.
  Poultry. When the battery hens directive was under negotiation the United Kingdom maintained that the minimum space allowance of 450 sq cm per bird (as finally agreed) was inadequate. This continues to be our view and in the review of the directive, which the Commission is required to complete by the end of 1992, we will press for an allowance of at least 600 sq cm. The review should also address improvements to the design of cages, and the welfare problems which can arise in alternative systems. For broilers Community rules are required to establish proper standards for husbandry, collection and transport.
  Other species. Common standards are needed for the keeping of all farm livestock. These should cover specific issues such as the use of electric goads and rules on stocking densities, ventilation of buildings etc.
  Slaughter. Common standards must be introduced as part of the completion of the single market. Community rules will have to have proper regard to the religious beliefs of citizens.
  Enforcement. There are claims that observation of welfare
  legislation is not uniform throughout the Community. The

  711
  legislation must be rigorously enforced and there must be a Commission inspectorate to ensure uniform application by the authorities in all the member states.
  712
  The United Kingdom will press for action in these areas in order to achieve the improvements in farm animal welfare which are urgently needed in the Community.

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

National Curriculum: Consultations
Lord Bottomley Lord Bottomley asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied with the consultation procedures for implementing the national curriculum.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, perhaps I may start by wishing the noble Lord a very happy birthday.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the answer to the Question is yes. In order to implement the national curriculum in a reasonable timescale, it has been necessary to conduct the consultations so far at a brisk pace. Nevertheless, there has been a considerable volume of responses. However, in future we intend to allow more time for comments on national curriculum proposals wherever necessary.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for her kind remarks and noble Lords for the way in which they supported her. I am obliged to all your Lordships.
Is the Minister aware that the Secretary of State has set up a working group to advise him on history? Bearing in mind that the 1939–45 war was the greatest event in world history this century, ought not that subject to be included as a compulsory subject in the national curriculum?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Education Reform Act makes it clear why history, and geography, are compulsory subjects within the national curriculum. The group referred to by the noble Lord is an independent body set up to make recommendations to the Secretary of State. There has been no question of dictating what those recommendations should be. However, it will be perfectly right and proper for the Secretary of State to respond to the group's provisional proposals when they are made known to him.
Baroness David: My Lords, when will the report of the history working group be published? It seems to have been delayed for a considerable time.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I do not know the answer to that question. If I can obtain the answer, I shall write to the noble Baroness.
Lord Peston: My Lords, will the noble Baroness clarify her reply? We want the curriculum council to be as independent as possible. However, some of the things it is up to seem a trifle bizarre. As my noble
834
friend Lord Bottomley pointed out, it is odd that children in our country might well be taught history but know nothing about the Second World War. That applies to other subjects. The teaching of geography may go to one of two extremes: either children will know only where things are or they will know where nothing is. There does not seem to be much balance. Does the Secretary of state not feel that, without excessively interfering in the independence of the bodies, he should take a more positive interest?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, it is important to note the concern of the noble Lord about this rather vexed subject. It is also worth noting that there was widespread concern before the Education Reform Bill came before the House about the subject and how it was taught. Therefore, I hope that he will agree with me that to have a proper framework within which to teach the subject and for the Secretary of State to be properly advised about the content of the subject is a positive way forward.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, referring to the Question which my noble friend answered yesterday when the actions of the Secretary of State were mentioned I should like to ask this. Does not what we heard yesterday indicate that it is true that the Secretary of State consults widely, listens carefully and, I trust, responds suitably?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful for that remark. It is true that the Secretary of State listens to the anxieties of teachers. All the points are being noted, particularly those raised at Question time. We have a Secretary of State who is responding to the anxieties of teachers.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I was not anxious to denigrate the Secretary of State today. I can do that on many other occasions. Rather, I was anxious to be constructive. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness again whether she is confident that the anxieties will be taken on board. I shall concentrate on history because it is a subject which interests us a great deal. We do not want to tell history teachers what they must do; but does the noble Baroness agree that one could raise an eyebrow or two occasionally by asking them what they think they are up to?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I always raise my eyebrows when the noble Lord, Lord Peston, rises to speak. I know what an authority he is on the subject of education. One of the anxieties that existed before the Education Reform Bill became an Act was the degree to which British history formed part of the syllabus. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley, will agree that that was dealt with in the interim report. It has been established that there should be a balance of 60 per cent. British history and 40 per cent. World history in any new curriculum.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give an assurance that British history in Wales includes Welsh history?
Baroness Blatch: Point noted, my Lords.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, is my noble friend also aware that there has been criticism of developments in the teaching of design and technology? Will my right honourable friend the Secretary of State equally take note of those comments and ensure that a rigorous curriculum is provided?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I entirely take the point of my noble friend, and I shall convey her remarks to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the honourable Lady — — the noble Lady — —
Noble Lords: The noble Baroness!
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the noble Baroness ensure that one of the subjects to be taught to young people today is the rise and fall of communism, and particularly its fall?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I hope that I am honourable and noble. The point raised by the noble Lord is very interesting, and I am certain that it will form part of the content of any history syllabus.

One-Parent Families: Benefit Payments
2.43 p.m.
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard asked Her Majesty's Government:
How many one-parent families are currently receiving social security benefit.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, virtually all lone-parent families receive child benefit, but many also receive other benefits. I shall arrange for a table showing the most recent information for the main income-related benefits and for one-parent benefit to be inserted in the Official Report.
Following is the table referred to:

NUMBERS RECEIVING SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS

Number

Date

Income Support(3)

722,000

May 1988

Family Credit

120,000

September 1989

Housing Benefit

650,000

May 1988

One Parent Benefit

696,000

January 1990

Notes:
1. Number of lone parent families: OPCS estimates that in 1986 there were 1,010,000 lone parent families in Great Britain.
2. Claimants can be entitled to more than one benefit.
3. Income Support: Figure does not include prisoners' partners.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I am grateful for that constructive reply, but is the noble Baroness aware that among those families are to be found some of our most challenging social, educational and housing problems? Does she accept that a firm government commitment to a package of measures is needed to support such families, not just a Treasury directive aimed at making absent fathers fulfil their legal responsibilities?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, it is fair to say that the Government's record in addressing multiple problems concerned with lone parents is good. Certainly, the range of benefits available to lone-parent families who do not work and to those lone-parent families involved in part-time or full-time work takes into account the housing needs and the numbers and ages of children. The pursuit of the absent parent who does not meet his financial responsibility is probably a measure welcomed by Members on all sides of the House.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the take-up rate among families or mothers who earn low wages is extraordinarily low? The take-up of family credit is, I believe, as low as 32 per cent. according to the latest figures, whereas the target was 60 per cent.? Can she give any reason for that state of affairs?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Government certainly take seriously the issue of take-up rates. All noble Lords will be aware of the high-profile campaign to increase awareness of rights to benefit. It is a pity that some Members of the party opposite in another place were critical of the campaign. However, the evidence shows that a much higher number of people are claiming benefit. The take-up of family credit is a good example: take-up today far exceeds that of its predecessor benefit, family income supplement.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the income of lone-parent families is only about 37 per cent. of the income of two-parent families which must mean that there are some poor and deprived children within those families? What do the Government intend to do to remedy that situation?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, in relative terms one person will always be poorer than another, but I must reiterate some points that I made in my original Answer. There are a range of benefits to meet the different and varied needs of lone parents according to, for example, the numbers and ages of children and the amount of interest paid on mortgages. I would mention housing benefit, community charge benefit, income support and family credit. The Government's response and the way in which they address the problems have been good. They continue to pursue all ways of making it possible for lone-parent families out of work to exist and to encourage lone-parent mothers who wish to return to work to benefit financially from doing so.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, in view of the increasing trend towards equality of parents and those children born in or out of wedlock, does it not follow that the responsibility of maintenance should increasingly fall on the father, whether married or not?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, my noble friend will notice that I referred to lone parents without distinguishing between men or women. However, it is true to say that the absent parent is predominantly

837
the father. There should therefore be a responsibility and any way of increasing that obligation to meet the financial needs of the parent who cares for the child or children is important.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is it not true that many mothers do not want the father to come anywhere near them, would prefer that he kept away, and in fact would opt to accept nothing rather than have him back?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I imagine that that is true. However, we are talking about the financial obligation. There is no requirement for the father to have physical contact with the parent, but there is a financial responsibility. It must be noted that there is a considerable burden on taxpayers who meet that bill exclusively. There must therefore be a balance between the cost to the taxpayer of meeting that bill and the proper obligation of the absent parent to meet responsibilities.
Lord Carter: My Lords, we all agree that parents who default on maintenance payments should not be able to hide behind the social security system. However, does the Minister agree that the most important consideration in question is the welfare of the 1.6 million children in lone-parent families? Does she agree that by far the easiest, cheapest and most effective way of keeping all children in lone-parent families would be to uprate child benefit annually in line with inflation?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am well aware that there is general concern in the House about the uprating of child benefit. However, it is not relevant in the context of helping single-parent families because the application of income support and family credit compensates for whatever the level of child benefit happens to be at any given time.
Lord Carter: My Lords, how does that help the 600,000 children in families which are not receiving income support?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, if they are not receiving income support, they must be above the level to qualify for it.
Lord Carter: But, my Lords, they would still get the child benefit.
Lord Blease: My Lords, in the information that the noble Baroness proposes to provide in the Official Report, will she indicate the regional United Kingdom figures rather than give that information on a national basis?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, if that is at all possible I shall certainly make sure that it happens.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, the noble Baroness dislikes the criticism from this side of the House. Is she aware that our criticism is aimed at the constant nil-cost approach to social security benefits taken by this Government? Is it not that single minded, non-caring, nil-cost approach that has worsened the
838
problems for many of the most vulnerable members of our society?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the particular criticism to which I referred was criticism of the high profile campaign to increase awareness of people's rights to benefit. I believe that it has been a good campaign that is increasingly shown to be effective. Benefit is therefore reaching more people who are entitled to it.

Vehicle Clamping
2.51 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have yet reached conclusions about the clamping of improperly parked vehicles as a result of the scheme being carried out in selected areas of London.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, successive surveys carried out by the Tranport and Road Research Laboratory have shown that wheelclamping has proved to be an effective deterrent against illegal parking in central areas of London. Benefits from clamping are improved traffic flow, more free parking spaces, less abuse of residents' parking bays and increased parking revenues.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, which will be widely welcomed because it shows that improvements have been achieved. As this scheme has been in operation for three or four years, gradually expanding over an area in central London, can he confirm whether other areas in or outside London will now be considered?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the clamping zone was made permanent in 1986 and was extended to further parts of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, the City of London and the southern part of Camden. In October 1989 approval was given to clamping in a large part of Hammersmith and Fulham. Tower Hamlets and Hackney wish to introduce clamping in parts of their boroughs and Camden wishes to extend its approved clamping areas. Following consultations with the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, the department will consider their requests.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that clamping is not always and necessarily the wisest policy? There may be instances in which clamping can be dangerous and the vehicle ought to be removed. Are criteria laid down for that situation? Do I understand from his previous reply that it is left to a local authority to decide whether it shall extend clamping to its area and then obtain approval? My own local authority has six very busy shopping areas which hardly see a warden at all and there is constant illegal parking on very busy roads.
Viscount Davidson: Yes, my Lords, I can confirm that it is up to the local boroughs to ask for

839
permission for the clamping areas to be approved. So far as concerns the difference between those vehicles that are clamped and those towed away, in the clamping zone any illegally parked vehicle may be clamped but those which are parked dangerously or obstructively are more likely to be towed away.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that one of the difficulties of clamping is that, when a car that is obstructing traffic is clamped, that ensures that it will continue to obstruct the traffic for a considerable time?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, that is true but, as I said, where the car is in fact obstructing traffic the tendency is to have it towed away.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I welcome the obviously deterrent effect of clamping. Following from some of the earlier questions, does the noble Viscount agree that it is foolish to clamp cars that have overstayed on parking meters, thus removing from use that parking place until the clamp is removed?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, that is a point of view, but I can tell the noble Lord that clamping a vehicle on a parking space when it has overstayed its welcome will make sure that the driver of that car does not offend again.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, would it be possible in the case of parking meters or, alternatively, residents' car parking spaces to ensure that, following the clamping, the car is removed? I have very often seen as many as eight clamped cars in one street, half of them occupying residents' parking spaces. In those cases could the cars be removed after clamping?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall certainly draw the exchanges that we have had today to the attention of the Metropolitan Police. I can tell the House that the average declamping time is two hours.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, may I make the noble Viscount aware that certainly I, and no doubt others, have been treated with great courtesy by the police at Marble Arch? Recovery was not as expensive as I expected and I was back on the road in time to get to your Lordships' House.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will be delighted to hear that.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, why should London alone be privileged to enjoy this marvellous new invention?
Viscount Davidson: Because, my Lords, no one else has asked for it.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that the real problem is the lack of enforcement of virtually every traffic restriction? Is it not about time that we in this country decided to have a separate traffic police
840
force which would have all the authority needed and leave our present police force to deal with criminal offences?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I suggest that that question is wide of the Question on the Order Paper. My noble friend who sits next to me will no doubt have heard it.
Lord Ironside: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that owners of private car parks are now able to use clamps on cars which are illegally parked in those places? It is now legal for clamps to be used on the roads, but can he say whether it is legal to use them in private places?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I understand that in certain instances that is the case. I believe that British Rail are considering using them in some of their private car parks. However, I cannot give any firm details. I shall write to my noble friend.

Information Technology: Trade Balance
2.56 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the United Kingdom's balance of payments in information technology, with special reference to the silicon chip industry.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, in 1988 the United Kingdom had a trade deficit of £2·5 billion in the manufactured products of the electronics and information technology industry; £409 million of that deficit was accounted for by semiconductors and integrated circuits.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the figure of £2·5 billion that he quoted is a five-fold increase in that deficit since this Government took office? Bearing in mind that only a few years ago this field of activity was described as a "sunrise industry", can he tell us whether the Government have any plans, or are contemplating any further action, to reduce the present trend (I say "trend" because it is getting worse all the time), arrest it and finally reverse it? Otherwise, we shall be in serious difficulty in the future.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I should perhaps say that total exports in this sector from United Kingdom manufacturers are very substantial. I believe that the figure is of the order of £13 billion or £14 billion per annum. Although, clearly, the imports are even greater, those imports are also contributing very significantly to the efficiency of the business sector which uses so many of those products.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, has the Minister had an opportunity to glance at the figures produced by his department with regard to these matters and high technology goods? Exports in 1988 (which

841
include that category but also other categories) came to £11·4 billion, rather than the figure that the noble Lord has just mentioned; imports came to £15·3 billion. That makes a deficit which in fact is worsening and is shown as about £4·9 billion in the figures that his department produced up to the end of November 1989. Do the Government have any view on that or do they simply not care about high technology deficits?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, what is important is to look at the balance of payments overall and not to be mesmerised by particular sectors. Overall, our exports are doing very well. The gap between exports and imports is narrowing, as the noble Lord will have seen from recent figures. In some cases it is important and indeed quite acceptable to import products which the United Kingdom is not particularly well placed to manufacture. In this area and in relation to the products to which I referred there is a substantial British export industry. The figures are further confused, if I may so describe it, by the so-called entrepôt activities of some firms in this area. They are perfectly respectable but are not separately identified in the figures to which I have referred.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, is the noble Lord therefore confirming my view that the Government do not care about this sector and are perfectly happy that it should be made up with other exports in other sectors?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, on the contrary, we care about all sectors of British industry. We look to the overall figures that are published on a regular basis, as the noble Lord will be aware. We have been supporting this industry, for example, with assistance in research and development both on a United Kingdom basis and on a multilateral European basis.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in my home there is a cartoon dated about 1906 called "A very modern Moses", depicting the late Joseph Chamberlain as a Moses shooing away the quails from the desert? In future I shall be putting a picture of the head of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, in place of that of Joseph Chamberlain.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am interested to hear about the cartoons on the wall of my noble and leanrned friend's home. However, I was not responsible for the trade policy of 1906.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, will the noble Lord be good enough to clarify to the House what on earth his noble and learned friend is talking about?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I think that my noble and learned friend was pointing to the shortcomings of the policies of noble Lords opposite.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Hear, hear!
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, the second part of the Minister's answer indicated that the section of industry widely known as the silicon chip industry shows a deficit of nearly £500 million at present, if I understand the figure correctly. Does the Minister accept that a large slice of the blame for that situation is due to the Government's political stupidity in privatising Inmos by selling it off to EMI Thorn which then sold it off to one of our competitors on the Continent, thus exacerbating a situation that was already deteriorating?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, no, I accept no such thing. A number of these products are imported into this country because they are not manufactured here. They are subsequently incorporated in major products being exported again to other countries. For example, the aerospace industry acquires some of its electronic components from overseas. These are now forming a major part of our export success.

Business
3.2 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to say a few words about the length of speeches in today's debate standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Boardman to which your Lordships have agreed to apply a five-hour limit. On the principle that the mover is allowed 20 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 25 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, all other speeches should not exceed 12 minutes.

Greater Manchester (Light Rapid Transit System) Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

The Free Market Economy
3.4 p.m.
Lord Boardman Lord Boardman rose to call attention to the role of a free market economy in creating wealth and thus providing prosperity, jobs and better public services for the nation; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, before moving the Motion that stands in my name, perhaps I may say that I look forward, as I am sure do all noble Lords, to hearing the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord De La Warr.
My Motion calls attention,
"to the role of a free market economy in creating wealth and thus providing prosperity, jobs and better public services for the nation".
We tend in this House on such debates to spend much of our time in talking about social problems such as housing, transport, national health and so on. These are all extremely important and very useful. We usually reach the conclusion that we could

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provide much better services if only we had more resources. The question is this. Are we as a nation creating enough wealth to provide all that we desire? I suggest that quite clearly we are not; nor shall we ever do so. It is therefore timely to consider what has been achieved in recent years due to the creation of greater wealth, how it has been accomplished and what are the lessons for the future.
I begin by listing a few of the important achievements of recent years. I hope that I do not do so complacently because I recognise that there is much still to be done. The record over the past 10 years is extremely impressive. In the growth of our economy, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s we were at the bottom of the league for major European countries, we are now growing faster than any other European Community country. Our living standards are now at record levels. The take-home pay in real terms for the average family man is up by one-third since 1979. There have been significant increases to all family groups.
Our unemployment numbers are falling faster than in any industrialised country. Since 1983 over 3 million new jobs have been created. More people are in work than ever in the history of this nation. If we consider investment, in the 1980s our investment has grown faster than any other European country. Previously we were at the bottom of the league.
On productivity —a very important figure —the average employee today in manufacturing industry is now producing 50 per cent. more than he or she did in 1980. For the whole of the United Kingdom economy, output per hour is 50 per cent. higher than in Japan and only 5 per cent. lower than in West Germany. That figure is not generally known. I believe that it is one in which we can take considerable pride.
Enterprise as a whole is thriving. There are as many British companies as there are German in the top 100 companies in Europe. Small businesses now starting exceed the number that cease by over 1,200 a week. These are the seed corn. They are the businesses that will be carrying the nation through for decades to come. Under the previous Labour Administration small businesses were closing down at the rate of 100 a week. That is the change. I could go on, but I hope that I have said enough to remind the House of what is being done in providing prosperity and jobs, two of the items that are listed in the Motion.
What about public services? First, there has been a cut-back or transfer out of public expenditure of those jobs than can be more effectively done in the private sector. The savings by contracting out are substantial. I am told that in local government alone there is a saving of £300 million by contracting out services.
The second element of cut-back has been privatisation, where 20 major formerly nationalised industries have been returned to the private sector. There have been great successes on that return. One illustration which I am sure is well known to all noble Lords is British Airways. In 1982 when it was nationalised it was losing £500 million a year and
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was rated one of the world's worst airlines. I understand that it rated below Aeroflot and Nigeria Airways. In 1989 British Airways made a profit of over £250 million and is now considered to be the world's most popular airline. What a transition, my Lords!
The Government removed from the public sector a number of the activities which could more effectively be carried out in the private sector and thereby they have been able to concentrate more of their resources on priority areas. Again, the results are most impressive. The figure showing the amount of help given to the disabled has more than doubled in real terms. The whole range of family benefits has risen by more than a quarter across the board. They are the benefits which the last Labour administration cut.
In the National Health Service spending in real terms has increased by almost 40 per cent. A more meaningful indication is the translation of those figures into people. There are 70,000 more nurses and 14,000 more doctors. The achievement of the improvement in the public services is most remarkable. Of course, much remains to be done.
As regards law and order, there are 14,000 more policemen. There are still rising crime trends, but the provision of extra police in order to try to deal with them is impressive. I am sure that noble Lords opposite can and will try to identify areas where there are shortcomings or mistakes; we all could do so. From today's personal experience I would put transport high on my list. However, if we look at the trend over the past 10 years, the change from depressing decline to confident growth is remarkably impressive.
How was it all done? How was the wealth created? How were the resources provided to enable those changes to be secured? It was not only luck; there was of course luck —some good and some bad. It was not only administrative skill; that is largely the role of civil servants who, in accordance with their proud tradition, serve governments of all parties with equal dedication. It was not only the quality of the Ministers, although they are and were very good. Certainly, they are the league players in the production and the performance.
I suggest that the key lies in the Government adopting and pursuing free market economic policies. It should surprise no one; the examples are crystal clear. Noble Lords may recall that Aneurin Bevan said, "Why look at the crystal ball when you can read the book?". When one reads the economic book, one can see clearly the lessons that can be learnt of the benefits that come from a free market economy.
Noble Lords can look back to the period between the wars. The history books make clear the fact that during those years domestic and international markets were dominated by widespread protectionism, cartels and restrictive practices. The result was a massive reduction in trade and investment and there was also the great depression.
After the war there was a dismantling of trade barriers and quotas and reductions in tariffs. The progress has been patchy and a great deal remains

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to be done. However, it is clear that the greater the freedom that was given, the greater then flowed the growth in world trade and the greater was the general prosperity.
I suggest that the lesson most clearly visible today is in Eastern Europe. Those countries which for decades have been deprived of freedom, whether communist or socialist economies, have had ever-decreasing standards of living. The cause of that was not due to the citizens of those countries; individually, they are no less competent or creative than the people of the West. That has been shown by those who have escaped from their countries and made their careers in the West. The economic chaos, deprivation and hardship was due to the political economic regime that they endured. That is why, as one by one they shake off their oppressors, they seek to set up free market economies. They yearn for the miracles of Thatcherism.
The Motion refers to the role of a free market economy in creating wealth. I do not suggest that that means a market free from all guidance and regulations. Of course there must be disciplines and rules just as there must be speed limits and police to enforce them. The distinction that I make is between the rules that are designed to improve the effectiveness and safeguards of the market, and thus add to the wealth creation, and, in stark contrast, the controls that substitute the judgment and ambition of the state for that of the market and the individual. That is the contrast: the former produces the greater prosperity of which I have given examples from the past 10 years; the latter, in the extreme, produces the hardship and poverty of Eastern Europe or, albeit in a much diluted form, the relatively declining standards resulting from Labour administrations.
To noble Lords opposite I must say that there is no convenient middle ground between the two extremes. There is no middle ground where socialist policies can be pursued but concealed beneath a free market camouflage net. I say that because recently I read the Labour policy review document, Meet the challenge—Make the change. I say to my noble friends that to get through it is fairly heavy going, but it is not without interest. In the policy review document some lip service is paid to the free market. However, where that occurs it is quickly neutralised by the threat or promise—depending on which way one looks at it —of government intervention and control if the market does not respond to the party's requirements.
Renationalisation and strategic intervention occur in order to ensure that the free market is kept on a Labour leash. That is sad. I had hoped that at last the parties opposite had learn the lesson that is so plain. It is so clear from the history not only of the past 10 years but of that going back much further. The lesson is that in order to provide the prosperity, jobs and better public services which we all seek for the nation, we must have a free market economy which can create the essential wealth. I beg to move for papers.
3.18 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, it must be an occasion of regret that the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, used the debate not 10 reach any constructive conclusion nor to make any constructive suggestion but merely to act in a wholly partisan capacity. His was a partisan speech which, as some of my noble friends may indicate later, contained a number of statistical inaccuracies.
The Motion gives the House the opportunity to discuss the role of the free market economy within the United Kingdom. I was pleased that for once the noble Lord used the phrase "whole nation" and I shall return to that matter later. It also gives the House the opportunity of determining what the role of the Government, and, indeed, of all our citizens, ought to be within the free market economy. Therefore, we are very grateful to him.
Let it be said immediately that the operation of the free market economy in this country and in the West has during the past 150 years brought untold benefits not only to the people of Europe but also to the people of the United Kingdom. Today as a result of the operation of free market capitalism we are enjoying, or at any rate some of us are enjoying, a standard of living which could not have been dreamed of some 150 years ago. I trust that the noble Lords opposite will not regard that as too partisan a statement.
Indeed, the free market has many advantages. It gives a far wider range of consumer choice than can possibly be produced by any centrally directed economy on the Soviet style. Mind you, it produces certain idiosyncrasies, one of which was mentioned by the Prime Minister the other clay when she referred to the level of extremely high transfer fees in football as compared with the standard of accommodation for spectators. There have been other rather idiosyncratic levels of salaries, not by any means confined to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer but enjoyed by pop stars and people of that kind. That is the operation of consumer choice and is rather odd in view of what are generally accepted values. I am talking now of human values and not necessarily bank values which are generally accepted. For example, it is rather odd that a very highly skilled scientist should be paid one-tenth of what is earned annually by a pop star. However, that is one idiosyncrasy which for some time we have had to bear.
We should bear in mind that for the very poor—for at least 20 per cent. of the adult population—consumer choice is very restricted indeed. It not only restricts people as to the goods which they can buy or the services which they can command but it also restricts their sense of freedom because at present for large numbers of our population freedom is only that freedom which can be obtained by the possession of the wherewithal to purchase goods and services. So, indeed, there are imperfections.
We have had a long recitation from the noble Lord. He doubtless wished to mollify the Prime Minister's recently reported "fizzing with rage" by, as a banker, speaking almost as though he was on

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the Government Front Bench. I hope that, as a banker, he has now made his peace with the Prime Minister.
After all those benefits of which the noble Lord has spoken —the 10 years of progress to which he has referred and the "prosperity" in his Motion, which is almost an obscentiy when we consider the situation of millions of our people in this country—where are we now? Well, we have over 2 million people unemployed and that is before the fiddles were carried out. We have an adverse balance of payments deficit of £20 billion. We have the highest inflation rate among the leading manufacturing countries of the world. We have the highest rate of interest. We have 250,000 homeless people and we have 7 million people living below the poverty line. I do not wish to put it too controversially, as is my wont, but I suggest to your Lordships that those are not particularly impressive results, not by any objective standard.
I respectfully suggest to your Lordships with due diffidence that something has gone wrong. I believe that one thing which has gone wrong is the whole concept in the noble Lord's mind, and I believe in the Government's mind in so far as they have articulated any sentiments which are intelligible on the subject, of wealth creation. I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that real wealth creation means the production of goods and usable services within the Government concept of value for money which they are so prone to raise.
The noble Lord is a banker. How do the profits generated from the pirate acquisition of companies, very often with the aid of the banks and often with vast sums passing and considerable profits made, add to the real wealth of the country? The answer is that they do not. They increase the claims to wealth by a very limited section of the population indeed.
In this House I suggest that we are concerned with taking steps to ensure that the real wealth of our country is progressively increased. That is the end to which all parliaments and governments should address themselves. Quite clearly at present we are not fully using the human resources in our country; otherwise, there would not be 2 million unemployed and probably more —2,300,000, if you count those unemployed as distinct from those eligible for benefit. How can we use those resources to better effect? How can we draw them into the wealth-producing machine, whether it is in the industries which are run by the state or in the private sector? For that purpose that is quite immaterial. Just how can we do that?
Surely one of the first things we have to do is to start treating those who work in industry —I include management as well as those who work on the factory floor or wherever they may work —as ordinary human individuals with sensibilities, dreams, hopes and fears very much akin to those which we ourselves have but which are possibly more intense on their part. We have to make better use of people who are already at work producing and we have to make use of those people who are not in employment. We must use every effort possible to assist the manufacturing
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industry of this country. I say "manufacturing" because, as has already been pointed out by the Select Committee of your Lordships' House on the question of overseas trade, manufacturing industry is vital to the future of this country.
One of the first things we have to do, therefore, is try, if we can, to offset the Government's often expressed hostility and contempt for the organised working-class movement. We have to substitute for that a spirit of far greater co-operation. We have to project a sense of national purpose, and for that I turn to the Government. We have to draw together all strands of the populations that are involved in the production of goods and services instead of, as has been done over the last few years, the grading down of NEDC.
All those things we must do. Furthermore, as soon as we can we must have an organised and properly projected transport policy because, as the CBI will confirm, a very great cost upon British industry is traffic congestion, which it estimates amounts to some £15 billion a year —a wholly unnecessary charge. It is those matters, together with the training of the people who are there, including the proper education of our children, to which we should be attending. We should seek —I say this as an openly avowed politician with convictions —so far as we can in the United Kingdom to further the aspects upon which we agree rather than expatiate too much on what divides us.
3.32 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I begin by asking your Lordships' pardon in that genuinely owing to an engagement that I entered into before I knew this debate was taking place I shall not be here at the wind-up of the debate.
As I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, I must say that I felt that the noble Lord did protest too much. He would have done his case a great deal of good if he had admitted, before the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, took advantage of the silence and pointed it out to him, the many aspects which are not as good as he would have us believe. There is a long, well known list, including high inflation and the overseas balance of trade. I will not repeat the items; they will no doubt be repeated many times this afternoon. Those things somewhat scar the picture that the noble Lord endeavoured to paint —that everything has gone so well since 1979. In addition there are the people sleeping in cardboard boxes, the rotten state of the roads, the need for much better development on the railways and indeed a high degree of private affluence in public squalor.
That said, we on these Benches need no lessons from any part of your Lordships' House on the value of the free market. We have not fallen for the fallacy of collectivism and central planning. I also remind the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, and your Lordships' House that we were free marketeers in the days when members of the Conservative Party were devout protectionists, very much the developers of cartels and supporters of monopolies. Let me say that one of the benefits of recent years,

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for which we owe something to the leadership of the Government, is that those false gods have been deserted. All that time —it might perhaps be said because we did not have the opportunity to put it into practice, which was not our fault —we have supported the free market.
However, while recognising the virtues of the free market, we also recognise that the market is an extremely valuable servant but it is not the master. For ordinary commercial purposes most of the time the market is probably the best way of distributing resources. That is a very important lesson that everybody ought always to bear in mind. However, it has to be a genuine market and so often that has not been the case.
As the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, pointed out, we are not talking about a jungle. We are talking about a market with regulations and appropriate controls, having a regard to obtaining the best kind of economy that we can, which is a market economy operating effectively under certain rules, and bearing in mind always that the object of the exercise is to serve the best needs of the consumer.
That implies that there must be genuine competition operating if the market is to be an effective, genuine and valuable market. First and foremost, that means that there must be full information about what is happening in the market. If that is not so, that competition, which is the true benefit of the market, is not there. It must be a market in which there is even weighting between the people who are negotiating, who are bargaining. That is why we have always opposed monopoly in any shape or form. That is why we have fought the Government when they have privatised public monopolies only in order to create private monopolies.
We are totally unconvinced that the introduction of a regulator, be it for gas or electricity, is any substitute for proper competition and proper operation of the market. It is a mockery for the free market to create private monopolies and pretend they are a substitute for the market by introducing a regulator. The idea that some benefit is created by privatising water —which of all things cannot possibly be regarded as a matter for which there can be competition unless we are all to drink Perrier for ever and bath in it —is very difficult to see.
The idea that that is always the best way to do things and that we just have to find out what the market says, whatever kind of market it is, we as genuine free marketeers totally reject. It is not only that many of the so-called markets are not really markets at all and have not created the conditions of competition which are the alleged benefit—and the genuine benefit when you get it —of the free market. It is also true that the market is not always the right instrument to use. The consequences of the operation of the market are not always the final decisive factor to be taken into account in determining what ought to be done.
I remind your Lordships that it was the great high priest of the market economy, Adam Smith, who made it quite clear that there were circumstances in which market forces had to be sacrificed because
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there was some other policy objective which was more important; that with our eyes open we would say that we would not allow the market to operate in order to achieve some policy objective of even greater importance. In his case, as may be remembered, it was the maintenance of the merchant fleet because of its importance to defence. I do not know what he would have said if he had seen the merchant fleet today, but that is another issue.
So we say that you have to examine and take into account that there are many policy decisions for which the market is not appropriate and many so-called markets which are not really markets at all. Not long ago in your Lordships' House we were discussing training. I argued that it was inappropriate not to apply training to youngsters between the ages of 16 and 18 and to leave it exclusively to the employer to decide what training they should have. I was astounded to be told that the young school-leaver would bargain with the employer to obtain the training that he ought to have; that if the employer did not offer that training, then market forces would operate and the young man or woman would go elsewhere and bargain with another employer to obtain the kind of training he or she ought to have.
Leaving on one side the extreme improbability that the great majority of youngsters would be clamouring for training, what kind of a bargain is it between a young school-leaver and an employer? It is a mockery of the whole idea to suggest that market forces can operate under circumstances of that kind. Another linked example of the way that the market is quite inappropriate is in education and training. In his long list of the great triumphs of the past 10 years the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, did not mention the report that came out only yesterday about the deplorable state of our schools. If it was the market at work there, it does not necessarily take a long view. One of the characteristics of the present Government has been their short-term approach and their failure to take a long-term view. It may be because they have taken too much notice of the signals from the market, which is short-term in its view and not long term.
If a long-term view were being taken we would not be getting reports of the kind to which I have just referred. The long-term economic survival of this country depends on a level of education which cannot be achieved by allowing market forces to operate in that vastly important field. An informed long-term view of economic benefit will not come from the market.
Such a view would say that nothing can be more important than real government investment in education and training. But the Government have done neither because, I suppose, the market has not told them to do so.
I am sure that the noble Lord is saying to his neighbour that the Government have put money into training, and so they have, and more than Labour ever did. I give the Government credit for that. However, the results are still woefully inadequate in comparison with what our competitors have done. The market economy is an extremely

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useful instrument but it is a servant and not a master. Policy considerations should be worked out on their merits and interventions by government into the operation of the market should be undertaken in the interest of long-term policy objectives.
3.41 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, many of your Lordships may know that a new report has been produced from within the Church of England called Living Faith in the City a copy of which is to be found in your Lordships' Library. It is a follow-up to the report called Faith in the City made five years ago. To some extent the new report is an update of what has happened since then. As with the original report, the press has at once shown interest in the extent to which it is another example of the Church of England slamming the Government. Noble Lords may have seen a rather delightful cartoon in one of the Church papers which showed a young reporter on the telephone to the bishop who chaired the committee responsible for the report and saying "Look bishop, I do not want to know what the report says; please, just give me the page numbers where it slams the Government".
I wish to make it clear that there is much more in the report than that. It is undoubtedly critical of certain government policies; that is not surprising. In the original report, Faith in the City, there were 17 recommendations to central government and four to local government. Of those recommendations hardly a single one has been acted on. As regards some of them, matters have gone the other way; for example, concerning child benefit. The report concludes that there are still "grave and fundamental" injustices in British society.
So the report is not uncritical of Government, and that is to be expected. Having said that, it is very positive on the role of a free market economy. It gives credit where credit is due in respect of what has happened in recent years —the reduction of unemployment and the bringing of great affluence to many people. Efficiency, productivity, wealth creation and factors of that kind do matter. I know that from time to time the Church of England and its leaders have perhaps been open to the criticism of giving too much attention to the division of the cake and ignoring the production of it which is necessary if our society is to have what it needs. So Living Faith in the City welcomes some of the changes that have occurred.
With the permission of your Lordships I quote from the report:
"We warmly welcome the major public commitment made by the Government to the problems of the inner cities, and the special attention being given to these issues by local authorities and their associations, the Confederation of British Industry, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Trades Union Congress, the National Council of Voluntary Organisations, and others. The Church of England has been glad to be associated with them".
It is important to say that because all too often the impression is given that the Church of England is negative about some aspects of what has been happening. The report quotes with approval the
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conclusion of the Audit Commission a couple of years ago that private sector-led growth is the main long-term answer to urban regeneration in some of these areas.
But Living Faith in the City goes on to point out that there is a debate within the Churches as to how far the free market economy can really meet the needs of our older industrial areas. I quote again:
"There is a debate within the Church as well as outside it as to whether a basically market-orientated approach will ultimately be sufficient, acceptable or indeed successful as a means towards the agreed end of removing poverty and dependence".
The report points out that it is not good enough simply to point to a future of increasing growth, at the expense of those who are caught up in a cycle of deprivation. The present quality of their lives must not be sacrificed for the achievement of long-term objectives or the good of the rest of society.
I can see something of the effects of this debate in the area from which I come, within my own diocese. Some very good things have been happening. I refer to the remarkable development in Salford Quays, a renovated area which was once in crumbling decline. That is splendid to see. The Trafford Urban Development Corporation and others are bringing new life back into the cities. Your Lordships may remember what Trafford Park was like in the 1930s when it was a great powerhouse of industry and commerce in our part of the world.
In the centre of Manchester and our Lancashire towns and cities I can see things going on which are admirable. On the other hand, side by side with these developments, one can also see the negative situation. Living Faith in the City says:
"We are disturbed that the situation found in many UPAs today is in reality a tale of two (inner) cities. On the one hand are to be seen shining new workshop units sprouting on sites which until recently were derelict eye-sores constituting the remains of once-thriving industrial plant. On the other hand still exist decaying terraces or council estates where a large proportion of the residents are unemployed, lacking decent health care, educational facilities and other amenities which most of us take for granted. Four years after the publication of the report the verdict of those trapped in such areas is that the situation has not improved and not infrequently is worse than before".
I am afraid that people living in those areas would not have recognised the picture that the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, painted. There are regional and class differences. I have only to go into inner city schools to see something of what the effects are on some of the children growing up today.
The wording of the Motion speaks about the creation of prosperity, jobs and better public services for the whole nation and not just parts of it. When we face that issue, to speak of a free market economy without guidance, constraints or restrictions simply will not do. Unless the provision of wealth is encouraged to go in the right direction, the free market can have a negative rather than a positive effect.
I was glad to hear the noble Lord say at the start of his speech that he believed that the market needs guidance and restraint. I believe that those were his words. He sounded as though that was simply to make the free market function more efficiently and not in order to do justice to the people who may be at the receiving end of the negative side of social

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change. I suggest to your Lordships that in that sense the last thing we want in this country is a free market economy. Certainly, we want a market economy and it has an important part to play. Other noble Lords who have spoken, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, have also made that point. Unless there are restraints, the market can almost destroy us.
I wish to point to three areas where this factor is important; namely, the environment; protection for workers and communities; and the danger of too much concentration on competition and profit. As regards the environment, I believe that we are all now largely agreed in your Lordships' House that there are tremendous environmental dangers facing our society and our world. Of course, controlled demand economies have done enormous damage to the environment —one has only to look at Romania or the Soviet Union itself to see what has happened there —but so has the ruthless and greedy search for profit on the part of capitalist economies. That also has done immense damage to the environment in the past, particularly in the 19th century. We are sometimes urged to return to Victorian values but we should think how in the older industrial areas we are still dealing with the negative side of that philosophy.
The same is true of the present. After all, what is the source of the threat to the survival of that noble animal, the African elephant, if it is not the search for uncontrolled profit? How deplorable to see our own Government giving way on the destruction of ivory stocks instead of taking a lead in this matter. Who is responsible for cutting down the forests of Brazil if not free market forces working to obtain profit where they can? While one can point to many examples of controlled demand economies, such as those in Eastern Europe, which have produced devastingly negative results for their peoples, one can also point to the same in uncontrolled capitalist economies, in El Salvador or wherever one wishes to mention. I suggest that the environmental damage that can be done by a free market economy is very considerable and that there is a constant need for constraints.
I turn to the matter of protection for workers and communities. This is absolutely essential today. It is sad that at the moment such protection is being seriously eroded, for example, by the weakening of wages councils. The noble Lord, Lord Boardman, mentioned as a splendid and positive point the privatisation of services related to, for instance, the National Health Service. That can have negative results too. How are these savings being made? Are they being made by saving on the wages paid to workers in already low-paid industries? There is strong evidence that that is happening.
I turn now to the European Social Charter and to your Lordships' Select Committeee report on the subject. There is at present a general debate on what constraints should be applied in the interests of protecting workers. It is sad that we are the one country which has not been able to accept the proposals of the European Social Charter. They are not radical proposals. They argue for a social dimension. If ordinary people are to have a sense of participation in 1992, the gains in efficiency and
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competition should be balanced by tangible benefits which can be felt by citizens throughout the Community. In Greater Manchester, Church leaders have come together and have studied what has been said about the social charter. We have written to our European Members of Parliament asking them to give it their support. We believe this to be fundamental both in the interests of fair trading with the Community and also for the protection of workers and communities.
The last point for which I have time concerns the question of competition and profit. The trouble with the free market economy is that it is based on self-interest and the search for profit. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We have to recognise the need for self-interest. It was William Temple who said years ago:
"A statesman who supposes that a mass of citizens can be governed without appeal to their self-interest is living in dreamland and is a public menace. The art of government in fact is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands".
Perhaps those on the Left have sometimes remembered too much the dangers of self-interest and the need for idealism; but those on the Right sometimes think too much of self-interest and too little of what justice really demands.
It is significant that in these days the higher values of community and co-operation are more than ever needed in our society. That is one reason why many young people —some of the best of our young people —are not all that enthusiastic about industry. When they look at what is happening in the City and see the enormous salaries being offered and the kind of competitive world that the City represents, that does not give them the sense of values and the sense of idealism they need.
3.56 p.m.
Earl De La Warr: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Boardman for introducing this debate and for giving me an opportunity to address the House for the first time. I must tell the House that I have just enjoyed an excellent lunch in your Lordships' Refreshment Room, where I was mistaken for a waiter. I am in fact a stockbroker. But having just seen the level of the Financial Times index on the tape before entering the Chamber, I am tempted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, for a job in his excellent department. I have in fact worked in the City for more than 15 years and I hope that in some small way I may be able to contribute to this and future economic debates.
I should like to begin by saying a few words on how some of us in the City view recent events in Eastern Europe and in that way broaden the subject of this debate. As we observe the apparent collapse of the old order in Eastern Europe it is easy to think that those countries are learning a lesson from us. But equally we should be learning a lesson from them, the emerging democracies. Surely Marxism got it wrong, for capitalism has not destroyed itself by over-production; instead communism has destroyed itself by under-production, a direct result of centralised planning. The communist world is quite

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clearly bankrupt. It has proved incapable of supplying even the minimum requirements of civilised society —that is, enough to eat and the hope of something better in the future.
Yet even now, as these realities are demonstrated daily before our eyes, some in the West still argue that our system requires more, not less, regulation. To listen to them one would think that we were in the business of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, at just the moment that the free market economy has demonstrated its superiority. Some say that it is a time to backtrack and to put tighter controls on the system which has brought us our prosperity. To me this confuses two subjects —how wealth is created, and how it is then distributed, for want of a better description. History has proved that it is dangerous to confuse the two. One is the means and the other the end. We cannot provide the prosperity, jobs and better public services that we all desire without the free market economy, which has proved itself to be the most efficient creator of wealth.
The history of the past 50 years has taught us that without a market economy we cannot create the necessary surplus. With a market economy we can fulfil public needs, but without it we cannot. Let us consider the past 10 years. The Government, by the fuller implementation of market economics—the reform of taxation, both business and personal, and the transfer of the nationalised industries back to the private sector—have surely vastly increased the resources available to the public services. Spending on the health service and on the infrastructure, to name but two areas of legitimate public concern, have both been increased. That would not have been possible without the freeing up of market forces which has increased efficiency.
Talk of more regulation misses the point: a reversal of the thrust forwards towards a free market would only limit the resources available. The City, the bastion of free markets, has a key role to play. It is emerging from its own reform, the Big Bang, designed to give a freer rein to market forces. It has not been a painless process, but it has, I believe, resulted in a strengthening of the Stock Exchange, improving the efficiency of the allocation of capital: without that, the free market cannot operate.
As your Lordships are no doubt aware, Stock Exchange activity is almost unheard of in present day Eastern Europe, but as the economies strengthen we can look forward to the development of national exchanges. It is worth noting that the Budapest Exchange meets once a week for a few hours. I hasten to add that that is a lifestyle which some of us in the City might envy. However, I return to my main theme. I suggest that it would be ironic if, just when Eastern Europe is reforming in our direction, we ourselves began to backtrack. I can do no better than borrow the words of Mr. Vaclav Klaus, the Czechoslovakian Finance Minister, who recently said:
"We believe in a market economy with no qualifying adjectives".
4.2 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I am sure that I express the view of all your Lordships when I convey my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, on a really very remarkable and highly impressive maiden speech. The noble Earl comes from a family which has some centuries of highly honourable public service behind it. He is clearly in a position to contribute to your Lordships' debates up-to-date knowledge of the workings of our financial system, and to address most interesting and stimulating arguments arising out of that knowledge.
I was glad to hear the noble Earl say that he hoped to be able to contribute to economic debates in this House in the future. I am sure that if he does so, he will be listened to with very great interest and attention. In the meantime, we all wish to say how well he acquitted himself with what is, let us all face the fact, the ordeal of a maiden speech. We all hope that we shall hear from him many times more in the future.
However, I cannot speak in precisely the same terms about the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, when he opened the debate from the Opposition Front Bench. The noble Lord attacked my noble friend Lord Boardman rather fiercely and suggested that his speech lacked constructive proposals. I do not think that we can have been listening to the same speech. In my view, my noble friend put forward a clear and constructive series of ideas and proposals. Moreover, if the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, does not agree with him, that seems to me to be more of a reflection upon him than it is upon my noble friend. He also attacked my noble friend for indulging in political controversy. Surely that is a subject upon which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, speaks with immense authority. I am sure that that splendid example of Satan rebuking what he believed to be sin will have given a great deal of pleasure to your Lordships.
I say that because the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, went on to distort the unemployment figures and cast a wholly unjustifiable reflection upon the devoted officials who provide the official figures. I am sorry, but I must insist on what I say. I even jotted down some of the words he used. He said that the figures had been fiddled. If he does not regard that as a reflection upon the people who produce them, then I would be very surprised indeed to know what are his standards.
We have thus far had a splendid debate, splendidly introduced by my noble friend Lord Boardman. He has the dual qualifications of having been both Chief Secretary to the Treasury and chairman of our largest national bank. Therefore he speaks with very peculiar authority on such matters. He presented to your Lordships the very interesting clash between political philosophies which exists in this country today. It is a clash which manifests itself in the approach to taxation and public expenditure and in all those vital questions related to such matters.
There are two philosophies. There is the one which believes that the first object of policy should be the creation of wealth so that there may be enough

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wealth available, without imposing upon it restrictions which will inhibit its future growth, to go on improving the benefits which government are able, through the proceeds of taxation, to give to the least fortunate members of our population; and to provide for all the other national needs of which national defence is far from the least. That approach says that unless and until you have produced enough wealth, you cannot do even a fraction of the good things which you want to do and which all social reformers or social workers wish to do.
The rival philosophy is that you should do the good things which you want to do —for example, for the relief of poverty and hardship and for the provision of the necessary services of government, and so on —regardless of whether you are affecting the means of producing the wealth to do so. That is a philosophy which has been tried out. It was tried out in the late 1970s. However, we ended up by having to bring in the IMF to bail us out. It is an approach which is perfectly understandable, but it is one which ignores the fact that unless and until you produce the means, you cannot do all the good things which all of us in all parties in this House wish to see carried out. That is the clash which this debate embodies.
Your Lordships may remember the words of the late and very much lamented lain Macleod. He said:
"Money has been described as the root of all evil. It is also the root of everything else".
Of course that is true. Therefore the concentration which is needed on the production of wealth is the vital key to all the problems that affect us.
Many noble Lords, myself included, have often spoken in this House and said that more money should be spent on one cause or another about which we have felt strongly —and, perhaps justifiably. However, we come back to the fact that there is no rule of nature which says that, because of his nice blue eyes and fair hair, the Englishman should be entitled to one of the highest standards of living in the world. It is only if that standard of living is earned that Englishmen will enjoy it.
If your Lordships want an example of the practical working of the free market system on the one hand and of state management of the economy on the other, your Lordships have only to look at the contrast between the standards of life in the United States and the Soviet Union and the enormous difference in the amount of wealth which is earned and which therefore is available to sustain standards of life. There is a certain irony in the Labour movement. I have never known a more absurd phrase than "the Labour movement", because the Labour Party is the most static organisation in the world; it lives in a perpetual intellectual traffic-jam into which I think it has been clamped by some of its leaders. Let us contrast that with the communist world which is fed, almost literally, to the teeth by the absence of material for its teeth —the shortage of food —and is moving towards the market economy.
It is the curious reflection that at the time when the whole of Eastern Europe is coming to the conclusion that the poverty and hardship which it
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has endured over the years is due to a system of state control and state management, and that it can hope for improved standards of life by moving to a free market, noble Lords opposite, and the party they represent outside, should solemnly feel that the free market should be inhibited, and that we should return to state management and all the rest of it.
The noble Lord may say, "We do not really oppose the free market, we want a mixed economy".
Lord Bruce of Donington: Hear, hear!
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord says that because I was about to add that experience has shown that a mixed economy is a mixed-up economy. That is exactly what happens, because it is the areas of state control and government-controlled industry, and all the rest of it, which inhibit the working of the free market side of the economy and lessen its effectiveness.
I can recall the experience that I had when chairman of a major cement making company. We discovered that the only way in which we could obtain coal for our works at a reasonable price was by indicating to the Coal Board that if it did not cut its prices to us, we would import coal from halfway across the world at a much lower price. It is a serious reflection of our public ownership system that it was cheaper—it still is I believe—to import coal from halfway across the world than to buy it from our mines because of the state regulatory system. It is clear that the mixed-up economy is not the answer.
I do not disagree in certain respects with some of the things that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester said about the necessity for the Government to regulate certain activities. If we want to give to all our people the highest possible standards of life, we need to widen considerably the free market economy not for any doctrinal reason but because that is the only way that it can be earned.
Anyone who can look at the facts can see how over the past 10 years that has been demonstrated. When the history of those 10 years comes to be written, it will be found that they were a great 10 years in this country's history. Thanks to the leadership of a great Prime Minister, we have built up an enormously improved standard of life and art enormously stronger economy. It has been by following those doctrines, which my noble friend Lord Boardman outlined in his opening speech, that that has been done and that achievement has been effected. I am sure that it will be regarded as a triumph for my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and for the theories and policies for which she stands.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, I am happy to begin by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, on an excellently argued speech. We look forward to many more contributions from him. He does not need reminding that he comes from a family with a tradition of considerable political independence. We also look forward to that. Perhaps I may give him a little advice as a fellow member of the Stock Exchange. One of the delights of coming to this place

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is that one has no need to look at the FT share index and its depressing effects. I recommend him to look just at the opinion polls, which are much more encouraging. I should like to be as generous to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, but not today. He was unfair to my noble friend Lord Bruce over the unemployment figures. I am sure that he was not reflecting upon the great band of civil servants. Speaking as a patron of the London Symphony Orchestra, I know that if there is any disharmony the blame lies not with the fiddlers but with the conductor.
The debate comes at an opportune time and we thank the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, for raising the issue. It is opportune because, as others have noted, we see every day before our eyes the discrediting of extreme ideologies. The collapse of East European centralised state Communism will give great comfort to the people who have suffered under it and those who have opposed it from within and without.
It is not only Soviet dogmatism and extremism which is in disrepute; and here the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, who I am sure was hoping to assist the Government, may find that he has not wholly succeeded, because the debate will also expose the ways in which the Government are increasingly boxed in by their own free market dogmatism, extremism and rhetoric.
As others have said, it has become a tradition for everyone to bow to the free market. I happily do the same because we welcome the advantages which open markets bring in terms of disciplines and incentives. No one has yet invented a substitute for the markets in terms of allocating resources and determining prices. The sad experience of monopoly industries and services, whether public or private, illustrates how managements deteriorate and the customer always comes last when the market disciplines are absent.
Some of the problems of the 1960s and 1970s—problems often exaggerated as the rate of growth over that period was higher than in the past decade—under both Conservative and Labour Governments, were made more acute by the absence of those disciplines and incentives. There have been benefits in the past decade. There is no point in arguing that one side is totally right and the other side is totally wrong. There have been benefits from the attempts to introduce competition into areas where previously cosy cartels of producers exploited the public. Some of the nationalised industries and local government services needed stirring up. For that same general reason, I broadly support the approach of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to the legal profession. However, the additional benefits to be secured from that process of injecting free market stimulants are now virtually exhausted. The Government appear addicted to the drug, and the patient's health is suffering from an overdose because the most pressing problems in Britain today are not curable by free market economics. Go out into London, my Lords, and ask any man or woman what are the problems. What is irritating, frustrating and hurting him or her? That
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is not hypothetical. Opinion pollsters ask those questions regularly, and there is no debate about the answers. The answers are clear.
The problems are these. The first is transport. The noble Lord, Lord Boardman, quite rightly brought that matter up. The Underground, commuter railways, gridlocked roads, crowded airports, all these are involved. On health, there are terrible waiting lists for hospital treatment, the shortage of GPs in inner city areas, the disastrous lack of facilities for treatment in areas such as those to do with psychiatric and demented people. Housing has been referred to. The number of homeless people is a record and the cardboard cities are a symbol of rampant free markets. For myself, as for the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, the most important area is education. There is the disgraceful inadequacy of schooling, as illustrated in the report this week by the inspectorate, and the inadequacy of training for young people. In other areas such as the arts, free markets never have provided and never can provide a healthy cultural climate. The environment has been referred to and is currently a fashionable topic. I mention even areas of social behaviour and law and order where there is no partisan view, but extreme free market philosophy does not necessarily always set the right example.
These are the problems which daunt our citizens. None of them can be solved by the free market philosophy. Some may be helped; some may be made worse. Even when we look at those areas where the free markets are most appropriate, we should be wary of accepting the Government's propaganda of success as set out by the noble Lord in his opening speech. He quoted some of the league tables. We hear tables in debate after debate and noble Lords know that it depends which league tables one chooses. I am sure that all noble Lords here are pleased at those league tables showing Britain doing better. The productivity table is a particularly good example.
But by most benchmarks Britain is now languishing at or near the bottom of those league tables. Noble Lords shake their heads, but perhaps we may look at the Datastream International indicators. The dozen leading nations of the world are clearly published and the indicators are quite independent. Britain is bottom in terms of inflation, production and current account deficit. That current account deficit, at nearly 4 per cent. of GDP, is not only the worst in history—much worse than when the IMF came in—in total it is more than the cumulative deficits of the entire Labour Governments of 1974 to 1979. So the noble Lord should not mention the IMF too often or it may hear him and come here. Those are short-run failures with which we bore the Government again, only because they bore us with their successes.
Lord Joseph: My Lords, in his speech the noble Lord makes so many relevant points that I ask him to withdraw one point which he made. The deficits under the Labour Government reflected massive government overspending. It is totally different now where we are running a massive government repayment of debt.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, we are running a government surplus but the noble Lord refers to a time when we did not have the benefit of £80 billion of North Sea oil.
Matters of more concern are the longer term World Bank tables, for instance, on the proportion of young people in tertiary education. There we come bottom. In spending per household on education we come bottom. The latter area is the most critical. These tables change and we can pick and choose among the many economic tables, but they are the future of our country. If we are not performing well there now, we shall not perform well at all in the future.
Not only is capital investment currently collapsing but investment in human resources, industrial training and research and development are all cut in real terms in the latest Autumn Statement. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, noticed that it was the economic adviser to his National Westminster Bank who told the recent conference of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a distinguished institution and one which is not particularly Left-wing, that the Government's record on education and training was "appalling" and "execrable".
The noble Lord referred to privatisation—and the Government always talk about it—as a contribution to the better working of our economy. I shall not attempt to defend all the public corporations which have been or may be privatised. I accept that the performance of British Airways is commendable, notably in an atmosphere of international competition. But I argue that in many cases privatisation is not a solution. It is often a red herring, a dogmatic spasm. In many cases ownership is irrelevant, whether public or private. I have felt this about many of the previous nationalisation proposals and I feel it about the many privatisation proposals.
The problems of many industries are not solved by changing the ownership, especially not into a private monopoly, and certainly not in the cases of water and electricity. What matters is efficient provision for public and social need. Competitive markets can contribute to that, but they are only a device. They are a means, not an end. They should be part of a properly balanced economy which also gives a priority to the social infrastructure and which has as its end a better quality of life for all.
4.27 p.m.
The Earl of Limerick: My Lords, it is helpful that my noble friend Lord Boardman has given us a chance to address this wide subject this afternoon. I wish to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord De La Warr on an interesting and thoughtful speech. We look forward to hearing his future contributions.
It is always a pleasure to follow my former colleague the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, but I shall resist the temptation to follow him down his broad, macro-economic avenues. I shall use my time rather to take up that part of the speech of my noble friend Lord Boardman which dealt with smaller companies.
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Others have ranged and will range later widely across the whole broad breadth of the macro-political and economic spectrums. By contrast, I should like to look at the Motion through micro-spectacles from two points of view. The first is the proliferation of public-private development initiatives which have recently been growing, built upon an enlarging confidence in the enterprise culture. In this enterprise agencies play a key role but they in turn are dependent upon the partnership of private funds flow, especially as the role of private contributions moves from start-up to include development financing.
The new and entirely welcome development is the TECs, the training and enterprise councils. In that the "E", enterprise, is the key element. That was stressed in the December 1988 White Paper Employment in the 1990s. The government input into the partnership in terms of administrative support for vetting, monitoring and aftercare is the indispensable element. But the private institutions will participate only in the commercial sense, not regarding this as charity but substantially in a commercial sense through such initiatives as task forces, training agencies and now under the umbrella of the TECs.
Let us see what has been happening in recent years. In the 10-year span from 1979 to 1989 there has been a net increase of some 300,000 in the number of VAT registrations. The rate of new company formations is growing: in 1986 it was 500 a week; in 1988 it was 1,200 week. It has to be high, because inevitably with this form of small enterprise there is also a high fallout rate. Indeed a survey conducted in 1987 showed that only 50 per cent. of the companies then responding with VAT registrations were more than five years old. so there is a big fallout, but people are learning a great deal about business culture.
Secondly, as regards the impact on employment, between 1985 and 1987 there was a net addition of 290,000 to the employment register from firms employing from five to 19 people —small firms by any definition. At the same time, the increase in companies employing more than 20 people was a mere 20,000. Those figures, surprising as they are, come from the Department of Employment's Small Firms in Britain.
The number of self-employed people was 2 million in 1979 and 3 million in 1988. In the latter year they accounted for some 15 per cent. of the workforce. So the emergence of these TECs is a feature entirely to be welcomed. There are some 55 currently in the development funding stage and the first few should come on stream from 1st April. This is a new area of real hope.
Alongside this there are private initiatives conducted by those such as Business in the Community which has an admirable programme into which feed the individual efforts of many companies, including the bank of which I speak. A small programme of projects exists in Tower Hamlets. There are 20 initiatives to date which we monitor. We advise prople, mostly Asian who are starting up. I am happy to say that to date there have

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been no defaults. So there we see a small growth in an enterprise culture.
My second perspective on this topic is from even further down the micro-scale. I make my point in relation to what is happening at the border between education and the local community, particularly by reference to the Outreach work of the City of London Polytechnic, of which I am chairman, into the east London boroughs. It is an instructive and sometimes inspiring lesson in what can be achieved by the skilful and often dedicated use of tiny resources.
Since 1976, the polytechnic has been exploiting its strategic location to research, design and mount programmes aimed at meeting the convergent economic and educational requirements of the City and of east London—it was one of the first polytechnics nationally so to do—and to refine its education and training provision on behalf of its employer and student clients.
Recent reports from NEDO, CBI, IMS and the like confirm what we now accept almost as commonplace—the projected skill shortage faced by employers seeking to take people in the younger age groups. They also confirm the required counter-measures, which include planned recruitment from non-traditional groups—ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities and the older age groups—backed, as they must be, by quality training and retraining programmes for new and higher level skills. So far, although we may appreciate this, too few employers have grasped the problem and the remedy to it, which has to lie with a training programme.
In referring to the City Poly, of course, one speaks of a certain advantaged location. First, there are the rising school rolls, in contrast to most of the country, resulting from a rising birth rate in the adjacent boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney which buck the national trend. Then there is a large local pool of under-employed labour, which is suitable, after training, to join the City workforce and which is well motivated to do so given the availability of employment close to home.
The implications, from a public policy point of view, are for a programme targeted on groups currently under-represented in employment, sponsored jointly by the local education authority, now the City Corporation, and the polytechnic, to meet the Government's aims in respect of access and equal opportunities, as expressed in the Education Reform Act, and to act as a measureable performance indicator to such bodies as the Audit Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission and so on.
The programme has been running for almost 14 years and is regularly reviewed and refined in response to changing needs and experience. Significant numbers of local residents are coming forward, contacting the polytechnic and using courses and services provided also through the community liaison programme.
I shall mention briefly, because that is all that time permits, some of the programmes of which I am speaking. There is the setting up of a special
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education advice service for Bengali speakers with interpreter support. Within almost hundreds of yards of the heart of the City of London one is talking about a problem not only of language but also of dialect. Then there is the institution of a pilot "schools links" scheme in four local schools, the aim being to establish a close, reciprocal relationship between the polytechnic and pupils in the third form with mutual visits and project work, which it is intended will raise motivation and awareness of opportunities, and lead to improved participation in education and training in the post-16 age group.
My last example is the small business management skills training programme for ethnic minorities which covers both women —that is sponsored partly by the Financial Times—and Bengali speakers. These courses have to be run on the doorstep of where the clients live. Some of your Lordships may yesterday have seen the programme on BBC 2 dealing with Brick Lane. We saw one side of Brick Lane, the development side and the many shops, but not so much the other side where the community is living in extremely cramped conditions and looking for some means of reaching out to a better future.
There are, of course, resource implications. Funding comes partly from the Home Office under Section 11 for staff costs, partly from the DES education and support branch, and in the past we have enjoyed strong support from the ILEA. That is now being taken on under discussion with the City Corporation. But we have to charge for these courses; otherwise we should not be able to provide them.
I should like to give your Lordships one or two examples of the many courses that are available. There are two courses, both of 15 hours in the evenings, called Starting in Business and Computer Skills for Small Businesses, each with a fee of around £100. There are two more full-time three-day courses on basic book-keeping and company accounts for non-financial managers, each costing £250. At the other end of the scale, and kept deliberately at an affordable rate, are courses run by the ethnic minority business development unit. These are Small Business Management Skills, consisting of 10 weeks of two or three hours per week in the evenings, at a total cost of £20 and Computer Applications for Small Businesses, a course run especially for Bangladeshis, costing £20 for one day a week for 10 weeks. So that is what one institution is trying to do.
I conclude very quickly by saying that the educational aspects are obviously for another debate on another day. The lesson I learn is that very few people want to rely on state handouts and still fewer want to be unemployed. There is a vast reservoir of would-be entrepreneurs on a micro-scale whose involvement in gainful activities has as much social as economic benefit. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them within five miles of where we sit, lack only a helping hand to get them started. There is an untapped resource of real importance, the key to which need not be expensive. Let us recognise and encourage the many good initiatives which are increasingly to be seen, and let us argue for more resources to expand that good work.
4.40 p.m.
Lord Joseph: My Lords, I agree warmly with much that has been said by every speaker. I congratulate my noble friend Lord De La Warr upon surviving so effectively the ordeal of his maiden speech.
We see in the newspapers every day a recognition by many people in Eastern Europe of the old saying that free enterprise is the necessary, though not the sufficient, condition of freedom. I should go a shade further even than the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, and say that capitalism, subject to the law and competition, is the least bad system yet evolved for increasing jobs, raising prosperity, providing decent public and social services and preserving freedom.
In this country we have seen much progress over the past decade. Not the least part of that progress is the recognition by the Labour Party, Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, that there is something in the market. Whether their policies will so qualify their acceptance of the market that they wreck its dynamism, no doubt we shall explore in debates over time. At least they no longer tie themselves to old panaceas that have proved unworkable. I am sure that this country will do much better if most of the voters do not believe in magic wands. That is why I believe that common ground in diagnosis between Her Majesty's Government and Her Majesty's loyal Opposition is very good in every way. There will be plenty to disagree upon.
I have said that there has been much progress over the past 10 years, but there is still much to do. I am constantly mortified by how much more prosperous our neighbours in North-West Europe appear to be than we are. I am even more mortified to find that they have achieved that apparently higher level of prosperity —coupled with decent public services, decent social services and political freedom —under governments which have sometimes had the at least nominal word "socialist" in their title. Even the socialist governments of those countries appear to have been able to provide greater benefits for their people than we have achieved here under various governments.
We need to consider why we lag behind. Your Lordships may often have thought about it, but it needs to be considered again. I believe that one of the reasons —perhaps the main one —is that for generations, under governments of all parties, we in this country have countenanced a culture which is hostile to the imperatives of prosperity, job creation and the private affluence which is necessary, as one noble Lord has already said, if there is to be public affluence. One cannot have public affluence and private misery. Those neighbours of ours, in Scandinavia, in North-West Europe and increasingly in Southern Europe as well, seem to have achieved the trick better than we have. It is enormously to the credit of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to have recognised the need to create in this country a framework that will encourage business to benefit all the people of this country. I was glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, paid brief tribute to that recognition.
In this debate I should like briefly to identify four or five issues that are relevant. In general those issues
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embody both cultural attitudes and policy making. Therefore, in as much as they contain cultural elements, they are particularly intractable for any government, however well intentioned, to grasp.
The first issue is the extraordinary business of productivity. There is no doubt that, as my noble friend Lord Boardman said, we have made a leap in the last 10 years. However, so have our competitors. Businesses in North-West Europe, let alone in other countries, have increased their productivity from a far higher base than we had, so that the gap remains enormous.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, will the noble Lord permit me to intervene to seek clarification? Does he accept —and I hope that he does, as it is a matter of statistical fact —that, as he said our manufacturing productivity has gone up very greatly but total economy productivity has not progressed at the same rate?
Lord Joseph: That is probably true, my Lords, but it is very difficult to measure the productivity of hairdressers, for example. There are statistical difficulties in measuring service productivity. Nevertheless, our neighbours have the same problem. In terms of the gap that is reflected between our own and overseas markets and of the impact of overseas manufactures coming into our shops, it is manufacturing productivity as well as service productivity that matters.
I must point out to the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, as I am sure he knows, that we are only superior to the Japanese in productivity because they keep their unemployed on the farm and in the high street. In manufacturing terms, they are far ahead of us. They overman their shops and their farms, partly to keep their unemployment figures low.
It should be obvious to management and trade unions that unless one is internationally competitive and profitable one will lose markets. That is why higher productivity should be second nature to management and to trade unions. I for one am very glad to see that some trade unions—notably the electricians and perhaps some others—seem to have adopted that truth. Many managements have raised markedly the productivity of their manufacturing operations. However, we still lag behind.
The second economic point that I want to make is that when we debate employment we seldom ask where jobs come from. The House may have heard me say before that I believe that jobs come ultimately from a person for whom we do not even have a word in our language —namely, the entrepreneur. I do not believe that that is generally perceived. I do not believe that even our intellectuals or many of our journalists understand that the risk-taker is imperative for the market economy. That is why we have to accept discrepancies in earnings and in wealth, just as people who take risks accept the sharp precipices in their way when they take risks. They are wealth creators and we need them. We need them for jobs and for the earnings that will sustain decent public and social services and decent pensions.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me for intervening. Is he suggesting that there should be no limits to the differentials beteween the salaries necessary to attract entrepreneurs and poverty? Can they rise as high as entrepreneurs like?
Lord Joseph: My Lords, I believe that entrepreneurship —which is not a gift that I have —is motivated to some extent by money. However, I believe that it is also motivated by a search for fulfilment, for satisfaction or for power. In answer to the right reverend Prelate, I should say that no limit should be laid down in law. Taxation has an effect upon different earning levels. Competition, the satisfaction of markets and the law are the disciplines upon entrepreneurs. The answer to that question, in my view, is no.
How do we encourage people to be entrepreneurs? All that I can say in this debate is that it would be a great help if the intellectuals, the journalists, the school teachers and the university dons did not disparage business as easy, contemptible or grubby. I believe that attitudes are changing, but there is a great deal further to go before we achieve the level of respect for businessmen —subject to the law and competition —that exists in North-West Europe.
The third point is very banal, but nevertheless difficult. That is the difficulty that we have in this country in achieving monetary continence. We have to accept that that is partly cultural and partly the result of policy. As one of those who so eagerly espoused the phrase "monetarism" all those years ago, I wish that I had persuaded my colleagues to use the phrase "monetary continence", because not even Her Majesty's Opposition at that time could have been in favour of monetary incontinence.
I move on to a subject that is even more difficult than the foregoing; namely, standards of education. One of the saddest things that has happened in this country has been the trahison des clercs which has led the intellectuals of this country and those concerned to ignore for so many years the raw deal that this country has given to half its children in offering them such low standards of education. How we shall put that right, who knows? I hope that the Government's present proposals —Her Majesty's Opposition have put no different proposals on the table —will make a great difference to those who have done least well out of our present education system. We all recognise that we have given a rough deal to many of our children.
Perhaps I may now turn to my final point. On the borderline of culture and policy making is our treatment of poverty. Every person in this House is, I imagine, in favour of helping as much as we can those people who cannot help themselves —the disabled and many other groups. However, in the design of safety nets we must be careful not to encourage dependency. Most of us have read Charles Murray's impressive books on what has happened with the best will in the world in America, where massive expenditure has led to an increase in the poverty that it was intended to curtail. I am not saying that we have reached that point, but there is a danger of ill-conceived, well-intentioned safety
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nets hurting people in this country and taking away money that could go to those people who cannot help themselves.
In a restricted debate one must necessarily pick out a few points. Before I sit down perhaps I may reiterate one message. The market, subject to the law and to competition, is the least bad system yet evolved to serve human needs, including jobs, prosperity, decent public and social services and freedom. Above all, it is improvable. We constantly strive to find ways to create a better framework within which the market can do its benign work. The alternative frameworks to the market, as seems to be generally agreed in the House today, are worse.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Roll of Ipsden: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, on his maiden speech. As a denizen of the City, I naturally look forward to his future contributions, particularly on financial matters.
How to improve the performance of our economy and secure the social advance which should be its concomitant is a subject of which the House will rightly never tire. We must therefore be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, for having given us yet another opportunity to debate it. I confess that I was made slightly uneasy by the terms of the Motion. I thought that we might be invited to make one of those ritual genuflections before the free market and that that would produce, as it were, an equally ritualistic antagonism. On the whole the debate has been fairly free from that. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the noble Lords, Lord Donoughue and Lord Joseph, have from three different points of the political compass taken an extremely balanced view of this fundamental question of the market.
The market is a most remarkable social phenomenon. It arises partly from what Adam Smith called over 200 years ago the natural propensity of mankind,
"to truck, barter and exchange".
In part it arises as a piece of organisation, sometimes a highly specialised piece of organisation such as the Chicago Board of Trade for commodities or the international Stock Exchange in London for securities.
As such, it is often an effective and suitable instrument for determining prices and allocating scarce resources. However, I find it rather odd that it should sometimes be treated with a reverence which makes even the slightest doubt of its ubiquitous and permanent beneficence almost akin to being, as our American friends would say, "against motherhood". We should remember the good English and Scottish principle of utilitarianism. These human arrangements must surely be judged by their usefulness. We occasionally have a habit in these matters to become almost doctrinal fundamentalists and as Cartesian as we often wrongly accuse our French friends of being.
That arises particularly when the word "free" is almost indissolubly linked with the word "market" and when, in addition, it is implied that the

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operations of markets are always rational. Keynes, who knew a thing or two about markets, particularly how to operate them profitably to his own benefit and to that of his colleagues and his insurance company, had this to say on the subject. If noble Lords will bear with me, it is worth quoting:
"Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be".
Those words were written over 50 years ago, and who is to say that they are not still to some degree true? Although we know that the art of forecasting in markets has become highly sophisticated —I have nothing against forecasting; some of my best friends are forecasters —a rational connection between events, forecasts of market reactions to them and what then happens in markets is often extremely difficult to find. I see that the latest fashion in the fraternity is to abandon the search altogether and to adopt what has come to be known as the theory of chaos.
When we speak of free markets we must distinguish between freedom of access to the market and conduct within it. In neither can it be seriously maintained that freedom is, or perhaps even can be, absolute and universal.
So far as concerns the former, many markets for goods and services are encrusted with the barnacles of history and convention, the financial requirements of conglomerates, the power of advertising, and so on. The prices that emerge from them are far from being the result of uninhibited bargaining. That is as true of the price of a permanent secretary as of a naval rating. Certainly, we can hardly say that the price of money is a matter of indifference to the wishes and actions of authority. We have certainly seen that in recent times. Even the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, in what was more or less a swan-song lecture that he gave last September and which was naturally a hymn of praise for the free market, had to admit that foreign exchanges could not be left to their own devices.
There are many labour markets which are perhaps never likely to become totally free. I suspect that if—and I know only too well what an enormous if that is —an effective system of wage restraint could be devised, some of the doctrinal attachment to total freedom of wage bargaining would quickly disappear. That is a big if and I do not know whether it will ever happen.
In trade, in the broadest sense and particularly in international trade, the removal of deliberate barriers has made enormous progress since Adam Smith's classic attack on the mercantile system. Our record in recent years has on the whole been good and often considerably better than that of our
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industrialised competitors. We are eminently right in fighting for a liberal European Community.
In the financial area, we have practised an open door policy in the City of London. That has certainly been an example of how successful enlightened self-interest can be for it has undoubtedly helped to make London a foremost financial centre. However, it would be wrong to suppose that access is entirely free. Traditionally, as well as through recent legislation in which the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, took such a notable part, we have rightly imposed many conditions on entry into various aspects of the financial industry. Much hard work and negotiation still lies ahead to ensure that both statutory and conventional Community-wide practices create a reasonable and level playing field. An important example in that regard, as many noble Lords may well be aware, is the rules which are now being debated for capital adequacy for different parts of the financial industry.
Legislation has also affected conduct within various markets designed, like so much economic legislation over the past two centuries, to make the operation of markets admittedly less free but more effective in order to protect the weak or unwary. Here too, as in so much social and indeed criminal legislation, freedom cannot be an absolute. It must have regard to the needs of society as a whole, needs which for a dynamic society obviously change.
This then is a very difficult balancing act, as is that of finding the right mixture of reliance on self-regulation and statute, which is so noticeable a feature in the financial area. I am not sure that in our very understandable desire to give as much scope as possible to the former—namely, to self-regulation —and to avoid making the City the kind of lawyers' paradise that Wall Street has probably become, we have yet found the right balance. In these matters it is easy to end up with the worst of all possible worlds rather than the best. I believe that we must be prepared to do some rethinking in these matters.
But whatever may be one's final judgment on these transcendental questions of the nature of markets, and even if we accept, as I am certainly willing to do, that a broadly free market economy is a necessary condition of economic advance, as the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, rightly pointed out, I do not think that, as he has admitted, in practical day to day terms it is a sufficient condition. There are innumerable others but perhaps I may briefly refer to four which seem to me to be particularly relevant to our present circumstances. They have relatively little —only by an enormous gearing process —to do with the fundamental question of free markets, and so on.
First, exclusive reliance on monetary policy to repress inflation while promoting growth is highly precarious. In theory it may operate more quickly than fiscal policy, although the history of the past few years shows if anything the opposite; but its effectiveness in the end cannot be ensured without the serious risk of side effects on business confidence, growth and employment. At the same time, I think that we must remember that errors made in fiscal policy, which subsequently political no less than

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economic factors make it extremely difficult to correct quickly, cannot quickly or easily be remedied by action in the monetary field.
My second point relates to the role of manufacturing industry. Reference has already been made in the debate today to the report prepared by a Select Committee of this House nearly five years ago under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Aldington. To put it mildly, the Government were pretty cavalier in their reaction to that report. On the whole the history of the past few years has testified in favour of the report rather than the Government. Perhaps Ministers can be persuaded to take another look at it and take the opportunity to have a debate in this House before the end of the month in order to show a more understanding attitude.
Thirdly, there is Europe. We have debated many times our attitude to current developments in the Community. I do not propose again to go over that ground other than to make one observation. Now that the tragi-comedy of the "ripe time" has at last left the stage, let us at least join as soon as possible the exchange rate mechanism.
Finally, if in the terms of the noble Lord's Motion we are to have an economy which creates wealth and provides prosperity, jobs and better public services for the nation, we must not ignore the vital role of education and training, to which the noble Lord, Lord Peston, and many other noble Lords from all sides of the House referred in a notable debate last week. However much we cherish the free market economy, it will be of no avail, as many of our competitors have shown, if we neglect investment in our human capital.
5.4 p.m.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Boardman for initiating this debate and demonstrating so amply and well how my noble friends in this House and my right honourable friends in another place have captured the high ground of political and economic thinking and held it for so long. I admire the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, who, like the best of British terriers, seeks to dislodge us from those starry heights and again and again raises these same issues. I am also most grateful to my noble friend and impressed by his remarkable speech. He demonstrates once more that we have admirable talent on these Benches.
I wondered today what were the factors that gave me some concern. It appears that everything is well and that the debate is one which centres more on philosophy than on practical economics. Two developments came to mind: the unprecedented growth that we have enjoyed and the unprecedented high real interest rates. I am not sure how the one can be equated with the other. The growth is a matter of fact. The high interest rates are not a matter of the free market economy but more a matter of government. I wonder how and why they came about and how and why they might go away.
It seems as though we have suffered over many years from either too little too late or too much too
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soon in our economic thinking and planning. My right honourable friend the former Chancellor of the Exchequer perhaps unwisely did too much too soon in relation to taxation. He probably did it for many sound reasons, including that he, like many of us, feared a major recession following the crash of 1987. However, recovery is difficult when one has had an unprecedented rate of consumer credit which is now coming to an end probably more quickly than the Government themselves realise. I am not sure how one sustains growth and encourages enterprise with interest rates at such a level. They have remained high for a long time.
The Government seem to have boxed themselves in so that they cannot relax fiscal policies and cut taxation. They cannot cut spending. All of us probably agree that more spending should be undertaken, particularly with a sizeable budget surplus. In their attempt to take action the Government have left themselves only one element of manoeuvre; namely, interest rates. The noble Lord, Lord Roll, mentioned the ERM. In an amateur way I tried to calculate what could happen to interest rates if we joined the ERM, not now but in the autumn. It seemed to me that it would be right for the Government to look for interest rates to fall to 12 per cent. or even less. I feel that that could be possible as the economy progresses over the next few months. Things are not bad.
We always produce historical statistics. Governments choose the date from which to start reckoning which suits them best. By starting at a time of 10 years or so ago, my noble friends on this side of the House demonstrate that the Government have achieved terrific growth. However, this morning I found that I had been a Member of your Lordships' House for 27 years. I wondered what had in fact happened over that period of time and whether the impact of our political thinking had been successful in relative terms. I asked myself what had happened to inflation. It has gone up by 704 per cent.
I am hesitant to talk about matches or pounds in pockets but I am prepared to talk about meals, having been a waiter at one time. When I first came to your Lordships' House, one could get a very good meal for a river. Now one can have the same meal for £35—in fact, it is a better one. The prices in your Lordships' House have not risen by that percentage.
We have to compare our 700 per cent. inflation with that in other countries. Let us look toward our major competitors. The United States figure is 265 per cent. The figure for Japan is 296 per cent. For France the figure is 466 per cent. and Germany has had 139 per cent. inflation. There is no doubt that the Government have been right in concentrating on inflation above all else. However, one must consider the impact of that inflation. It seems to me that if I had to choose one measure of how an economy performs it would be exchange rates over time, whether controlled partly or not controlled. The pound has fallen by 75 per cent. in that period against the yen and the deutschmark; it has fallen by 40 per cent. against the dollar and 30 per cent. against the French franc. whether we look at industrial production, standards of living, or

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whatever, our relative performance is almost irrelevant: it has been bad.
Can one see a chance of it improving? What are the assets to which we can add added value? I had the privilege of being a member of the Select Committee on Overseas Trade. In the way that we used the words "cataclysmic" and "disastrous" our report became a best-selling document. It is now outdated but it served a very useful purpose in drawing attention to a situation in which people still believed that manufacturing industry was the base upon which we should build an economy. The base upon which we build an economy must surely be that to which the greatest added value can be given at the most effective cost. In the early days it was raw materials. Later it has become services. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, pointed out how difficult it was to quantify that.
We are not an unsuccessful nation. The question is whether we can reverse the downward trend; and how. That leads me to worry because at the moment we believe that we can do something without the resources of the human being: training and qualifications. I chair one of the Engineering Industry Association bodies. We have 2,500 small firms. Most have fairly full order books. Their biggest worry is not that orders go up and down, but from where they obtain the people. Their other worry—and I suggest that the Government consider it—concerns the way that the small business now wishes to invest and expand, but the level of taxation bites too low so that it cannot afford to reinvest in plant and machinery. Often the owner will have to pay corporation tax and tax on his own income and will be taking as little as he possibly can out of the business. Those businesses that have begun with the encouragement that they should borrow are suffering. There is an unprecedented level of bankruptcies.
However, those that are more soundly based are doing quite well and could expand. Many are pointing out that they can no longer buy the plant and machinery that they want in this country, and they buy it abroad. But that was the basis on which our industry was historically based. We chose the best equipment. We did not do what the East European countries did —insist on buying internally —because the quality was not good enough.
I hear that the Government employ over 300 economists. It is amazing how many of those people are of East European background or origin. Perhaps they came here because their philosophy of free market economies could not be adequately applied in Eastern Europe. It makes me wonder when I consider that there are exactly the same number of countries in Eastern Europe as there are in Western Europe and exactly the same population. Countries come and go; and new names and new countries emerge about which many of us had forgotten. The same people —half of Europe, as Macmillan once said —have already gone but half may well be willing to come back again.
Before Christmas I had the privilege of being in Moscow and meeting some of those gentlemen in the
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military and (perhaps I dare say it) covert industries. They were all looking to expand. They realised that they were in a declining business. One pointed out to me that when defence spending falls there will be a form of deflation. Historically, if one considers the inflation trends since the 17th century, they always increased after a really good war.
We may ask: what of East Europe? It provides us with a remarkable opportunity now and a problem for manufacturing industry. The consumer or individual in the West has borrowed heavily. He has not borrowed so heavily as his friends in the United States. But a consumer in East Europe has not borrowed because he cannot borrow. The consumer in Eastern Europe has savings because he has nothing to spend them on. He has been quite well trained compared with some of the training in this country, but has not had the resources to be productive. The problem is that he does not have a convertible currency.
It is odd that when we had fixed exchange rates the creditworthiness of East European countries was very strong indeed. As we moved to floating rates they could not cope with the vagaries and shifts in exchange and interest rates, and those countries lost their credit rating. The time will come when people will say to you again, "The raw materials for industry in Europe came from Eastern Europe, not from South Africa". I believe that at the moment 65 per cent. of all our raw materials come from that area. However, it is not the situation that counts today. It is what we can do to create the quality of people with the skills to generate the added value that we have always had in the past. I do not differ from noble Lords on any side of the House on this point. We have too few young, too badly trained.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Jay: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, opened the debate with a somewhat political speech which we all enjoyed. I make no apology for confining myself to economics. Of course a free market, as almost everyone has agreed today, and freely moving prices are desirable over a major area of any economy, in particular over the production and distribution of a large variety of goods and services and the activities of small firms.
I give one example. In the UK I believe that nothing would revitalise our economy so much as if we were allowed to import food at world prices with the abolition of the common agricultural policy. There is great scope for free markets there. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Roll, that one cannot leave foreign exchanges entirely to a free market. On the other hand, I believe that freely moving prices have a very considerable part to play in foreign exchanges. A permanently fixed foreign exchange rate would probably do more harm than the flexibility that we have had recently. Nevertheless, I should like to add a brief footnote to the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Boardman.
First, the absence of government intervention does not ensure competition, as some people appear to be assuming. On the contrary, the natural drive of market forces in a great many cases is to create cartels, mergers, quasi-monopolies and indeed real

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monopolies in one sphere after another, especially in highly developed economies. That is why so many countries, led by the United States, have had to introduce anti-trust laws, monopoly Commissions and so forth.
I give an example. In this country we would have had fewer than four major clearing banks today if the British Government of the day had not intervened to stop further mergers some years ago when the old Westminster Bank merged with the National Provincial Bank. Similarly, it is beginning to look as though the much advertised 1992 EC single market, about which there has been so much propaganda, far from encouraging competition, as it was supposed to do, will be heralded by one of the great rushes for cover on an EC-wide scale known for years by great firms seeking to protect themselves with mergers, takeovers and joint ventures. Those are now the fashionable names, but the reality is much the same. Indeed, the aircraft, armaments, chemicals and pharmaceutical industries, to mention only a few, are busy greeting 1992 with every device for avoiding too much free competition. The truth is that only state intervention will preserve competition in these circumstances.
Secondly, free market forces cannot ensure the full use of productive resources in a modern economy. Some speakers have already accepted that. Unfortunately there is no hidden hand that brings the total money demand in the economy into harmony with the total money cost of all the factors of production, including labour and capital, that have to be employed if one is to have the highest possible use of capacity. After all, that is why the industrial economies swung repeatedly between high and low unemployment for nearly a century before 1939. That is why between 1929 and 1933 uncontrolled market forces generated headlong deflation, unemployment and poverty throughout the world. Those consequences were checked in the end only by intervention by the new Roosevelt Government. Indeed, again in the early stages of the 1980s, deregulation policies caused increased unemployment which we still have not fully cured. It is only fiscal and monetary policy set in motion by the state which can conceive consistently full or even high employment of labour and capital.
Thirdly, unregulated market forces, particularly in the financial sphere and during boom periods, are all too apt to lead to disasters and scandals. I remember the late 1920s, a period of glorious deregulation in the capital markets, when we in this country had the Hatry era and when there were scandals on Wall Street in the United States. During the early 1970s, after Mr. Heath's competition credit control policy, we had what was then known as the secondary banking crisis. Lifeboats were sent out to rescue from drowning a number of previously well-known financial firms. Finally, in the post Big Bang glorious deregulation of the late 1980s we have had the Guinness and Barlow-Clowes era, and various others, which has greeted this final liberation of market forces. That may not be a major feature in the modern economy but it is one example of what happens if deregulation is carried too far.
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Fourthly, any system of unrestrained or nearly unrestrained market forces generates an even more serious and more fundamental evil. It has not yet been mentioned today that unlimited market forces generate ever-growing inequality of incomes and later of property. The richer the country the greater the inequality is likely to be. I could quote many figures to illustrate that point but there is no time to do so this afternoon. That is one reason why in Latin America, where redistribution of incomes by the state is so inadequate, inequality is so glaring and persistent. It is also likely to be one of the reasons why democratic stability is so rare in those countries.
Lastly, that evil brings with it an even more basic flaw in the theory of the free market. The market is supposed to work through the money demand of the consumer making his wants and needs effective. However, it is unfortunate that the want or need represented by the average rich man's pound is much less essential and less intense than that exerted by the poor man's pound. Yet each pound exerts the same effect on the whole productive machine. That fault underlies all our discussions this afternoon. It is a case not of one man, one vote but of one pound, one vote. Indeed, it is as though in the political sphere we had a vote for, say, every £100 of income.
For that reason the market system is heavily biased throughout towards satisfying too many less essential needs before it satisfies the more essential needs. That is unless the system is corrected by substantial redistribution of incomes through the state's fiscal machine. Surely that is why glaring inequalities of property and poverty subsist today even in the richest countries —even in the United States. That point seemed to puzzle the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, who has now left the Chamber. It is an obvious fact that no country in the world has decently housed the whole of its population by market forces alone, even North America.
I suggest that it is also the reason why these countries which have achieved major redistribution by the democratic state —for example, Sweden, Norway, West Germany and Austria —have achieved not merely a high level of social justice but also the highest level of real output and living standards of any country in the world. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that they have maintained a stable democratic system.
I believe that the moral is this: The less inequality of incomes you can achieve the stronger is the case for a free market system in our economic world.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, I too wish to thank my noble friend Lord Boardman for bringing this subject to our attention today. I greatly enjoyed the contribution of my noble friend Lord De La Warr. I have known him for many years and I hope to see him in your Lordships' House on many more occasions.
I also enjoyed the effusive support of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for the benefits produced by a free market economy during the past few decades. As I have said to him on many occasions

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outside the Chamber, I always enjoy listening to him and today he did not disappoint me one bit. However, some of his senior colleagues in another place take a different approach to the subject. The noble Lord alleged that the Government have no regard for what he called the "working classes". That is nonsense. The votes of the so-called "working classes" have ensured substantial victories for the Conservative Party in the three general elections.
Wealth creation is a pointless exercise unless we create the climate for wealth retention. My noble friend Lord Selsdon has reminded us how during the past 27 years inflation has eroded the assets of everyone in this country. It is the strict containment of inflation that dictates our success in holding on to the value of what we have fought for. That is a major problem in this country.
With the leave of your Lordships I should like to quote from the noble Lord, Lord Peston —who is not now in his place —when writing in The House Magazine dated 15th January. He said:
"If we start with inflation, it is apparent that when the economy gets anywhere near to full employment, a problem of prices emerges … In our country, more than most, it continues to be the case that once markets are buoyant and profitable, wages and prices rise rapidly … Something and preferably not permanent unemployment, has to be introduced to eradicate our inflation proneness".
I was surprised to read the noble Lord's remarks. I believe that we must introduce a change of attitude by both management and workforce.
In the mid-1980s it looked as though shop-floor militancy was out. But now we are beginning to see the return of what our international competitors loudly acclaim as the "British disease". Unemployment is down, job security is up but militancy returns as more managements cave in, as happened in the 1970s.
I should like to compare this country with America. I should explain to your Lordships that my business interests are in the United States so I see a little of what happens there. We employ nearly 3,000 people. Our wage negotiations, which are at least two years apart, are quite different in approach. Our employees want a part of a bigger cake, whereas in this country wage claims amount to a bigger slice of the same cake. In the US management will typically start negotiations at 0 per cent. or even minus. Workers and unions start at around the rate of inflation. In the company for which I work we have always settled somewhere in the middle and, incidentally, on a rate per working hour, so eliminating inflationary rises thinly disguised by shortening the working week.
In this country we see management begin by offering rises at the rate of inflation and often settling eventually at a higher percentage increase. Until that attitude changes on both sides, and until terms such as the "going rate", the "norm" and the "cost of living increase" disappear from the lips of managers and workers we cannot sustain an improvement in our international competitiveness. Without competing better, wealth creation will inevitably be followed by wealth diminution.
One glowing success of the past 10 years has been the growth in small business in this country. That
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has happened because this Government believe in people as individuals and it is people who make business happen. Do not let us ever get it the other way round and believe that it is business which makes people perform. It is the British entrepreneur who has been motivated, inspired and rewarded. Let us look at the success. There is record tax revenue and unprecedented resources are now spent on health, on social security and on education without running the nation hopelessly into debt.
I say to the party opposite that if their proposals on taxation, nationalisation and centralisation are ever realised, which I doubt, it will be goodbye to the commercial climate that now generates the income that pays the tax that pays for current government expenditure, let alone the billions more the Labour Party has already pledged to dole out if it ever returns to power.
There is no alternative to this Government's policies—those of curtailing inflation, controlling the money supply and the prudent management of our nation's financial resources. Letting up on any of those will surely lead to economic stagnation, rising unemployment and unsustainable public sector borrowing.
5.31 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I am privileged to take part in this debate and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Boardman for choosing a subject which seems to me particularly appropriate. I wish to speak in the debate partly because we read so much about gloom and doom. Bad news receives publicity almost every day but the good news seldom sees the light of day. We do not see that on our televisions or read about it in our newspapers. My second reason is that this week happens to be the 40th anniversary of my entry into Parliament. I started to serve in February 1950 and it has been nicely divided into 20 years in the other place and 20 years here. I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed the service and friendship.
It is strange that we are just over half-way through this Parliament. On 17th December last the second half of the five years of this Parliament began so this is a very appropriate time, for personal and other reasons, to have a debate of this quality. I think we should congratulate ourselves on both sides for some very constructive and thoughtful speeches.
I should like to mention two matters. I think that we should take some pride in our job creation. Of course, one has to sow the seeds and that has been enormously effective. We have done very much better than many nations although, when we visit them, they seem to be palpably better off than we are. In France over the past 10 years only about 35,000 new jobs have been created; in Italy 250,000; in West Germany 2·3 million; and in Britain we have created 2·7 million jobs. Therefore, we have created new jobs and, as my noble friend Lord Limerick said, the growth in small businesses has been quite remarkable.
Of course, there is still unemployment. However, I believe that it is encouraging that our figure for unemployment is only half the average figure in Western Europe. That average figure is 9·1 per cent.

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and our figure is 5·3 per cent., so our figures are markedly better as regards unemployment.
Increased productivity in manufacturing appears to be good, but, as my noble friend Lord Joseph said, we started from rather a bad base. We have improved by some 50 per cent. However, wage costs are disturbing. If one looks at that figure in manufacturing industry for the Netherlands, costs have gone down by 4 per cent. In France they have gone down by 3 per cent. and in Japan by 1 per cent. Those costs for West Germany are up by 1 per cent. and for the United States by 2 per cent., but our figures are up by 6 per cent. It is the inflation rate pressures which cause anxiety and, of course, the knock-on effect is considerable. I only wish that we had more of the Opposition with us in our efforts to settle wage costs at not too much above the going rate of inflation.
It is because of the tremendous upturn in wealth creation that the Government have been able to make some huge increases. A Question in this House only two weeks ago showed that expenditure on the National Health Service will be £22 billion per year. As was said at the time, that service employs 1 million people. That is an enormous growth. I remember that it was only six months ago that Mr. Kinnock was asking for at least another £2 billion for the National Health Service. We have given another £3 billion but it still has many problems. When the figures for social benefits were given, £60 million per year is to be spent in this field. Those increases are only possible because of improved wealth creation.
I should like to turn to another subject on which I hope I shall have support from all sides of the House. One cannot help but be affected by the huge number of charity letters which one receives, the causes of which seem to be equally deserving. Many of those cannot possibly be allocated from government funds. It is not possible for any government to meet the needs of everyone. Who will do that? I suggest that we should ameliorate our taxation arrangements in order further to encourage people to give to charities.
Nowadays, that is very big business. Currently the business is valued at £15 billion per year, which is a lot of money. I suggest that we need more for research. We each have our special hobbies and interests. I should like to see more for medical research. We all believe that the arts should be encouraged to make a rounded life for our children and grandchildren. We think of the opera, ballet, museums and galleries. On cathedrals, I read the other day that one cathedral alone needed tens of millions for restoration purposes. We cannot let those great monuments decay and die. We must find more money for recreation, particularly for the young, and for our universities and for educational needs.
The United States seems to do very much better. I have some friends who have sent children there to universities or schools. The moment the child arrives, he receives begging letters asking to give money for this or for that. As a result, on average
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four times as much per person is raised in that country. It cannot be said that they are more generous than we are because I am sure we are just as generous, but there is the very strong encouragement that all their donations are tax deductible. I feel that we should move further in that direction if we are to meet some of the country's needs.
I have tried to get accurate figures on this and the most accurate came from our Library. I must say that we receive a very thorough and prompt service from our Library. In 1987 the National Audit for England and Wales showed that in a single year charities collected £10 billion. More recently, in May 1989, a government paper (Cmnd. 694) showed that the annual turnover was £13 billion. The latest figure I have from Harvest Information Services —and I was not able to afford the publication because it cost £150 and not even the Library could afford that for a single book —which was reported in the Guardian on 16th June is a figure of £15 billion a year collected. I believe that it is generally recognised in this House that many social needs can be met from the voluntary sector more quickly and flexibly than they could through central or local government.
It is good news that whereas 23 per cent. of the population 10 years ago gave some of their working time to voluntary purposes, that has now risen to 44 per cent. I believe we can go further than that if we are more generous in our tax arrangements.
It is interesting to look at the big fund-raisers for charity. Oxfam raises £41 million a year and the National Trust raises £40 million a year. There are various others such as the Imperial Cancer fund, which raised £32 million; and there are other cancer charities. Considerable funds are raised from sponsorship. Many of our sports, and the arts, are sponsored. The Football League alone receives £25 million in sponsorship —I believe £9 million of that comes from Barclays. Cricket receives £2·4 million and tennis £3·2 million. That is small beer compared to the figures we were looking at before.
With regard to company donations, BT is top with nearly £12 million a year —some of which goes to the community. Strangely enough, NatWest, of which the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, was chairman for so long —I am sure he played a part in this because with donations the buck stops always with the chairman of a company —was second with £11 million a year; Barclays gave £9·5 million and BP £9 million. These companies are giving, but why are we not encouraging individuals to give in similar fashion?
The top British companies have increased their charity donations in the past year by 25 per cent. That is pleasing. It is sometimes in the form of cash handouts and sometimes in community contributions. But we are still far short of what could be given. If we look at company giving, 750 US companies each guaranteed 2 per cent. of their profits to be given to charities. In the UK, 120 companies —that is one-sixth —gave not 2 per cent. but one-half of 1 per cent. That is again a quarter of the US contribution.
In 1987 Nigel Lawson introduced a system of payroll giving to charity. That enables anyone now

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to subtract from his salary up to £480 a year —£40 a month —and have it sent direct to the charity. Last year £3 million pounds was collected from this source. I did not know that that system even existed. I wonder why we keep it so quiet. The number of people contributing is 162,000, which, compared with the number of people working, is tiny. We could well give much more publicity to that admirable scheme.
Lastly —it is a good time to make a last appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I hope it has support elsewhere —can we please look at the way we collect for charities, not only from companies but from individual people? There are people with money to spare. Why not make it tax deductible? I know the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Exchequer itself, may first say they cannot enlarge this facility. If they do enlarge it they will raise very much more money. If they do not enlarge it then the quality of life for our children and grandchildren will not be so good.
5.43 p.m.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, who carries his 40 years in Parliament with such sprightliness that it can only encourage those of us who have just arrived at the starting gate of senior citizenship. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, on tabling the Motion, which has evoked so many excellent speeches including, I thought, some unexpectedly decorous professions of faith in the market from the Labour Benches and even further afield.
Whatever disputes we may have about statistics, it is surely common knowledge that the past decade has proved to be a remarkable period of sustained growth in productivity which has been reflected in rising earnings and spending power. I begin by affirming that the Government deserve unstinted praise for that central achievement. However, I have to go on to say that it is marred by two acknowledged failures, to which I shall add a third.
The first is the resurgence of inflation which is increasingly widely attributed to the neglect of monetary policy. In this respect noble Lords on the Opposition Benches, and least of all the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, are hardly entitled to criticise the Government because until recently both Labour and, it must be said, Liberal Democrats never ceased mocking what they usually called the "theology of monetarism" and urging resort to the old bad ways of trying to spend our way out of unemployment which was largely caused by other factors including social benefits, high taxation of low earnings, immobility of labour and the failure of education and training to which other noble Lords have referred. When the Treasury has again blotted its copybook, I think we should ponder the recent suggestion that a more independent Bank of England might do a better job in tackling inflation.
The second well-known weakness referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, is that improved productivity in manufacturing industry is still often below the best achieved by leading competitors. Far
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from causing me to modify my support for what the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, extols as the free market economy, the need to do better convinces me that we still suffer from an insufficiency of market forces and an excess of government.
In its latest lucubrations on urban social policy entitled Living Faith in the City, to which the right reverend Prelate has referred, the Archbishop of Canterbury's advisory group made much of its favourite contrast between market forces and interventionist solutions. As Mr. Ronald Butt observed in The Times last week, to pose the dichotomy in that way confuses councils by ignoring the present extent of state intervention, especially in social provision.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester announced, I thought with a flourish, that the free market is not enough. Whoever said it was? As the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, reminded us, 200 years ago Adam Smith acknowledged an important role for government, but by no stretch of the imagination would his agenda require governments and politicians to spend on the present scale.
One general measure is the bloated total of government spending which is to be financed by what is left of the market economy. The latest CSO blue book on national accounts shows that between 1979 and 1988 total government spending almost exactly doubled from £86 billion to £177 billion. Since the same source records that prices over that period again almost doubled, we can say that in real terms government spending in 1988 was no less than the level in 1979. It is true that as a proportion of national income the state's share fell from 25 per cent. to 43 per cent., but that was simply due to the great increase in national income through the market forces described by the noble Lord, Lord Boardman.
If we turn to state welfare we find that spending on health, education and social security rose massively over the decade from £40 billion to £100 billion, which allowing for inflation is an increase of 50 per cent. in real terms. The neglected twin truths to which I wish to draw attention are, first, that all this expenditure is a charge —I would say a burden —on the wealth created by the market economy and secondly, that the social services are almost completely insulated from the invigorating market forces which make such wealth creation possible in the private sector.
We now come to my third anxiety.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, but before he leaves that point can he tell the House whether he has the figure for the increase owing to unemployment benefit for the increased number of those unemployed?
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I do not have the breakdown of the figure though it is no doubt available from the blue book. An increase in social provision of 25 per cent. in real terms cannot conceivably be waved aside as just reflecting the increase in unemployment. Expenditure on health and social security separately has increased well

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beyond the rate of increase in prices. My anxiety is that public dissatisfaction with state provision of health, education and local government services will continue to haunt us into the 1990s as it has in the 1970s and 1980s.
Since more lavish spending has failed to rescue those services, where do we turn for a solution? In the past I have unavailingly cast the pearls of Adam Smith, Friedman and Hayek before the variegated Opposition Benches. Today I come armed with quotations from a most unusual expert witness and one of a dying breed of economists who would not strike you, much less sue you, for calling him a socialist or even a communist. Indeed I am following the advice of our excellent maiden speaker in trying to learn from Eastern Europe.
The name of my authority is Abel Aganbegyan who is the economic adviser to Mr. Gorbachev and author of what I believe is an epoch-making personal testament vividly entitled Moving the Mountain. It has displaced the revelations of life under Labour by the noble Lords, Lord Barnett and Lord Donoughue, as my favourite reading. Mr. Aganbegyan describes the aim of the perestroika revolution as purging what he calls the "administrative system of management" which he himself pillories as the cause of,
"backwardness in productivity, in efficiency and in quality of output, as compared to the developed capitalist countries".
He diagnoses the key weakness as,
"the problems of motivation, care about one's work, incentives and individual responsibility which have become central to theoretical economics and practical economy".
He candidly admits:
"We have not found the mechanism to ensure that people will be highly motivated in socialist conditions".
This modern Samuel Smiles goes on to offer impressive examples of the transformation in productivity wherever central direction has given way to small-scale co-operatives, private enterprise, family leaseholdings and self-employment, and wherever the rewards can be closely related to market results, including bankruptcy for the unprofitable enterprises.
The target of the radical pricing and structural reforms now in prospect Mr. Aganbeyan describes graphically as nothing less than,
"the abolition of the dictatorship of the producer and a move towards demand-led production which will satisfy social needs".
How is that for Thatcherism with a Russian accent!
My conclusion is that the "administrative system of management" which Mr. Aganbegyan denounces as the cause of backwardness and lack of individual responsibility in Russia is precisely the dreary, discontented, politicised administration that gives us in Britain such poor value for increased spending on health, education and local government. It is exactly the failing system that would be perpetuated, for example, in the ambulance service by Mr. Roger Poole as the latest exponent of what we should henceforth describe as the "dictatorship of the producer", which remains in Britain, as in Russia, the main obstacle to the market aims of the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, of,
"prosperity, jobs and better public services for the nation".
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I am indebted to my noble friend who has raised this important subject in our House. I have listened to the variety of speeches with great interest and especially to the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lord De La Warr.
We take for granted the privilege of living in one of the oldest democracies in the world with all the freedoms that go with it. That includes many precious democratic freedoms which are not the subject of this debate, such as the freedom to vote and the freedom of speech. The dramatic events of the past few months in eastern Europe have unfolded before our astonished eyes as a modern miracle. Five years ago nobody could have predicted the upsurge of the human spirit in its quest for freedom in all those countries of the Eastern bloc. They are now in a position to work steadily towards democratic free market societies. That will be an uphill struggle for them all in a situation of a shortage of skills and experience in demographic government, a lack of entrepreneurs capable of setting up businesses to supply the basis of a free economy, and a desperate scarcity of the goods that people need but whose severely controlled economies, over the past decades, have clearly failed to provide. One hopes that courage, patience and persistence will create the free economies and achieve the democracy and prosperity for which those people crave.
Over the past decade we in this country have seen an upsurge of the entreprenurial spirit under the Government of Mrs. Thatcher which I am sure has been an inspiration to many of these countries and which has helped to give them the courage to work for change. In our own country inefficient practices have been worked at and in many ways eradicated, so that efficiency and productivity have increased. People's wages have increased without increasing the price of the goods they produce and thereby undermining our country's success in competitive markets of the world.
As John Banham, the director general of the CBI said recently, since 1980 manufacturing productivity in Britain has risen by some 60 per cent. overall. He believes that there will be, and needs to be, further improvement. Obviously, as well as increased personal productivity, improvement also depends on industrial and commercial investment in order to harness the many applications of the new technologies which in themselves can improve productivity tremendously. I hope that we shall see provision made in the forthcoming Budget to encourage that kind of investment, especially in manufacturing industry.
I was deeply involved with the Industry Year initiative of the Royal Society of Arts in 1986 which led to the "Industry Matters" campaign which has just ended. We were fortunate in receiving nationwide support from many influential bodies including the Government, so that a powerful network of people has been set up at local level to continue that campaign.
A clear example of the benefit of living in a free market economy is that it allows and indeed

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encourages individual and collective effort on a voluntary basis to work for the improved prosperity of our country. It works with the grain of the way people feel. People are therefore prepared to put heart and soul into voluntary work to the considerable benefit of our country and their fellow citizens.
I believe that the aims of Industry Year are vital to our survival as a prosperous nation. John Garnett, of the Industrial Society, said at the time of Industry Year:
"In industry and commerce we create the goods and services; we are the greatest providers of jobs, of the self respect that people get from a job, of their pay and of the friendships which are a vital part of a worthwhile life. We also create the incomes which set people free. We also create the exports which pay for the many necessities from overseas. Lastly we create the tax through pay as you earn and paid direct which finances the schools and their teachers, the hospitals and their medical staff, roads, homes for the elderly and the handicapped —the list is endless".
I believe that is true. It is what "Industry Matters" was about, demonstrating, among other things, the benefits of a free market economy. I sincerely hope that as a result of that campaign our national and anti-industrial culture is turned upside down once and for all and rejected forever more. Meanwhile the free market economy encouraged by the Government over the past decade has produced a considerable increase in living standards. As my noble friend Lord Boardman said, average real terms take-home pay has risen considerably during that decade. By lowering taxation, people have been enabled to keep more of their incomes to spend in the way that they want. One has only to walk down the high street on a Saturday to see many families spending their money in ways they would not have imagined a decade ago. Old people, the middle aged and the young are looking prosperous, well fed and healthy.
Ownership of homes, shares and consumer durables has risen considerably. Home ownership has risen by 3 million since 1979, with all the pride in a home and the sense of security in old age that that brings. As my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing emphasised, during that same period charitable giving has doubled in real terms to more than £750 million. So there is not just selfish enjoyment of this new found prosperity. People are helping others on a voluntary basis too. I see that clearly in my own community, including, I am glad to say, considerable giving to the Bishop's Urban Fund in Chelmsford.
Because of increased prosperity, public expenditure has been able to rise in real terms during the decade. So, too, as a proportion, have social security payments. Expenditure on the long-term sick and disabled will have doubled in real terms by 1990–91. More money is being spent on a whole range of benefits for the family. There has been an increase of 27 per cent. in real terms since 1979. As is well known, I should still like to see child benefit upgraded yearly in line with inflation, but one cannot have everything one wants, and one needs to go on working for that.
At the same time conditions have much improved for pensioners, with an increase in their average total income between 1979 and 1986 of nearly a quarter in real terms. As well as their pensions as senior
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citizens, 70 per cent. have an income from savings, 50 per cent. have an occupational pension and 40 per cent. have both. This shows just that independent spirit which enabled them during their working lifetime to accrue benefit from a free market economy in the way we are talking about.
The lifeblood of the development of prosperous industry depends on good transport. People need good roads and railways to travel to work. The fact that capital investment on roads has risen by nearly 60 per cent. in real terms since 1979 and that £3 billion has been spent on the railways will be very much to the advantage of our country's prosperity and would not have been possible without the wealth creation of the past decade. And of course more is planned in the future.
I could catalogue other improvements but that would take too long. I am aware that we still have many investments to make, and many more are planned, on roads, railways, education, training, the health service, the elderly and the homeless. Different sections of the community will view priorities in different ways, and locally and nationally we can expect dialogue and dissension, with pressure groups making their needs known very strongly. That is healthy in a democracy, and the freely elected government will have to take decisions which by their very nature can never please all of the people all of the time. However, the fact that we live in a free wealth-creating market economy gives us the prosperity and jobs, and the choice to spend our money on the services that people want and need.
6.4 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I should like to return to a subject raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, the Church of England's new report Living Faith in the City. The right reverend Prelate confessed himself not to be too keen on the free market economy. But he pointed out, and I agree with him, that this report is very much more balanced that its predecessor. I pay tribute to the Church of England for that because I find it very much more useful and helpful. I commend it to noble Lords for what it has to say on the subject of this debate.
It poses a number of questions about public policy and particularly about the free market economy. It talks about the extent to which the benefits of that economy do or do not radiate out to the least well off in our country, particularly to those in the inner cities. The right reverend Prelate quoted a paragraph from the report which, as noble Lords will see when they read his speech, contains the nub of what the report has to say. In paragraph 15.16 the report refers back to its predecessor, which asserted:
"At present too much emphasis is being given to individualism and not enough to collective obligation".
Elsewhere the suggestion is made that a key factor in the present Government's strategy is the promotion of private charity in place of public expenditure.
To what extent are the anxieties expressed in the report justified? We owe it to the Church to think about this. Can a free market economy reduce

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poverty and dependence? Can an economy remove poverty and dependence altogether? Are our current policies really not aimed at the inner cities? Is it justified to hint, as the report does, that the growing prosperity of the many is deliberately built on the backs of the poor? Are we really not taking collective action as a country to assist the least well off?
Many members of the Church of England and of other organisations too, and indeed a rapidly increasing number of the British public at large, now understand very well the crucial link between a free market enterprise culture and the spreading outwards of rising prosperity and an improved quality of life. My noble friend Lord Boardman and others explained this link and gave us convincing illustrations of the effects. I believe too that most people agree that the move towards the new enterprise culture must involve a move at the same time towards allocating a proportion of the wealth produced by the enterprise economy to the construction and operation of a safety net geared for the circumstances not of yesterday but of today. Those arrangements must help those who at any given time find themselves left out of the enterprise scene, with their income and quality of life falling below acceptable levels.
In today's context the kind of safety net arrangements we used to have —the blanket all-inclusive approach whereby broad categories of people received benefit and in the name of equality received some of it whether they wanted it or not —are simply no longer appropriate. Most people in this country know that the old way no longer works and that to have continued with it would have been counter-productive. They know that what is needed now is a different kind of safety net; one that supplements incomes when they become intolerably low, one that alleviates basic need as and when that arises and one that helps people back into mainstream living, but, most importantly, one that does so without removing the incentive for those who can in fact help themselves. That is the sort of safety net which people want. Moreover, that is precisely what the Government are trying to construct.
With a freer labour market, the changing nature of jobs, improved medicine, greater longevity, changing patterns in family life and more women wanting to work, many individuals and families who would normally be able to cope may need help only, say, at one stage in their lives. For example, many may need help for a week or two, a month or two or perhaps a year. Further, the help required may not be money; it may be literacy help, help with training, medical help, help to find a job or, quite simply, advice.
As the free market economy spreads prosperity wider —and it is spreading —there will nevertheless continue to be the need for a flexible safety net which is constantly updated and fine tuned. Hence we have the Social Fund, new forms of family credit, literacy help and many other new schemes about which we have argued and which we have discussed. However, many of us fear that some people will fall through the net and miss the benefits of such assistance.
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It seems to me that we must hope that the safety net will be less used. However, we should remind ourselves that a free market economy does not involve designing such benefits and opportunities to match the economy as it develops. To suggest that there is no public commitment to do so is widely misleading. At present the taxpayer is contributing towards social security at the rate of £20 for every man, woman and child in the country. Moreover, by 1992, according to spending plans, that figure will have risen to £28 per week. Of course that does not take into account what is spent through social work and education via the taxpayer and the community charge.
I shall not go into any more detail because the relevant figures are all in the report to which I referred. It would be an excellent idea for noble Lords to study the document. I simply say that that sort of money is now possible because of the free market economy. So long as we can achieve this without damaging the incentives which enable the enterprise economy to continue, we should do so to the utmost of our ability.
6.12 p.m
Lord Benson: My Lords, the wording of the Motion before the House implies that "a free market economy" will provide the Utopian world in which we all want to live. I am sure that it may help to do so but it does not go very far along that road. We need a great deal else besides if we want to keep the word "great" in Great Britain.
By what standards do we judge ourselves? Forty-five years ago Germany and Japan were defeated nations, ravaged by war and merciless bombing. Both those countries are now very much stronger than we are economically and they carry much more influence in world affairs. Moreover, their currencies are strong while ours is weak and their balance of payments is favourable while ours is in dreadful deficit.
As noble Lords will know, only last year a Select Committee examined the industrial output of Japan and compared it with the position prevailing in this country. During the debate which took place on 15th November 1989, it was pointed out that we lagged behind in every aspect of industrial activity. In 1988 the gross domestic product of Japan expressed in thousands of dollars per capita was 23.3 while in Britain it was 14.1. In the years from 1980 to 1986 the average increase each year in GDP in Japan was 6.6 but in Britain it was 2.3. I have no doubt that if a Select Committee made a similar inquiry into the position in Germany it would arrive at much the same answers.
What is the reason for this dismal record? I believe that it is due to two factors: first there is the lack of determination and, secondly, a lack of sustained long-term leadership in the three elements which compose our industrial process—government, management and the unions.
In the past 45 years we have indulged in the luxury of nationalisation of industry, denationalisation, renationalisation and privatisation. Expenditure on new capital enterprise has been woefully deficient.

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Our expenditure on research and development compared with our competitors has been very low. The selection and training of our workforce has been indifferent. Every two or three years we run into a patch of strikes and industrial action which brings a large part of our industry to a halt. If one reads the press reports every day one sees that we are about to enter a similar patch again. By common consent over the past 45 years the average education and early training given to the children of this country have been pitifully bad. In that period the Government have sometimes been interventionist and sometimes non-interventionist. In the past 25 years there have been 23 different Secretaries of State responsible for trade and industry in this country.
When I was working in the Bank of England a few years ago one of our major industries was in serious difficulty. I was asked by the governor to go to the Department of Trade and Industry to obtain some information. In the course of dialogue with the deputy secretary I asked him what the Secretary of State's policy was. He said "The Secretary of State has no policy". I thought that he was being facetious but he was not. The Secretary of State's policy was no policy. Moreover, many of the other 22 Secretaries of State were not in office long enough even to formulate a policy, still less to carry a coherent policy to fruition.
We are propping up the pound by high interest rates, but to speak in metaphor, we are doing no more than feeding the patient with aspirin to stop the pain; but that is not curing the disease. We shall never have a firm and strong currency until we get our balance of trade into equilibrium, which will require a huge expansion of our industrial output, not only in volume but also in quality.
There is one bright star in the whole of this dismal record. The evidence given to the Select Committee about which I have spoken showed that the best in Britain is equal to the best in Japan, or indeed anywhere else in the world. However, that layer is small and thin. In the huge mass of activity below the level of the best we are second and third rate. Noble Lords may think that I exaggerate or that I speak in extravagant language. That is not true. I speak in moderate terms. I ask noble Lords only to read four pages in the Aldington Report which was completed less than five years ago. I refer to pages 82 to 85. All that I have said is set out in those pages with great strength, great clarity and in much more detail than I could possibly deal with tonight.
In the debate on 15th November 1989 I put two questions to the Government. I asked, first, whether they would be willing to expose to the country the reasons for our slipping back as compared with our competitors. I received no answer. I also asked them what their policies were to restore our position and bring us back to where we were. I received no answer. I pointed out that if we were to get it right it would take at least a generation of time, and so I asked the Opposition what their policies were to restore the position. I received no answer. I believe therefore that it is fair to say that the diagnosis which I indicated earlier is right. There is a lack of determination and a lack of long-term leadership in
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the three elements necessary: government, management of industry and the unions.
6.20 p.m.
Lord Vinson: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, for this timely debate and am privileged to follow the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Benson. I must be one of the few Members of your Lordships' House who describes himself on his passport as an inventor, a description of which I am still proud although I have to admit that the justification for that happened some years ago. As a former inventor I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if my speech moves the debate from the general, which has been so well covered by other noble Lords, to the specific. I should like to advance two ideas which I hope might strengthen this country's wealth creating base and reinforce the success of the Government's policies to date.
The Government have done wonders in re-establishing the importance of enterprise and the significant role entrepreneurs play in wealth creation. They have taken many steps to facilitate that process and the public recognition of the importance of wealth creation is at last central to the economic debate. However, whatever the good intentions, we singularly handicap the development of business by pursuing a single-minded monetary policy of attempting to correct inflation and excess demand through the use of the high interest rate mechanism alone. Whatever the merits of that policy, it has one singular fault in that it exacerbates in the long term the very malady it is said to cure. It snuffs out or retards the growth of many small companies which are inevitably heavily borrowed—the acorns that will turn into the oaks of tomorrow and meet the supply side problems of the economy of tomorrow. We must look for a better way of checking consumer demand than one that damages a great swathe of the big business sector due to the double squeeze of falling order books and higher interest rates.
Monetarism is a beguilingly simple theory. We should not be too absolutist. Monetarism is not always enough. To use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, no one wants to see monetary incontinence, but under the existing corrective policies we have to raise inflation to help cure it. We all know the problem of raising interest rates, which in turn raise the cost of mortgages, which in turn raise wage demands, which in turn fan inflation until the bloodletting of high interest rates has to be applied so hard that the patient gradually weakens —to normality, so called. But in so doing we have damaged the supply side of the economy. I want to suggest that, contrary to the wisdom currently prevailing, there might be a better way if we attempted to tackle inflationary causes rather than inflationary symptoms alone.
I realise that this begs the question of what can be done other than through the use of the blunt interest rate mechanism. Why, singularly, does the United Kingdom suffer from such inflationary cycles? What makes us different from our competitors? One of the fundamental reasons is the inexorable rise in house prices. They are an enormously important source

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of unrecorded notional credit collateral that feeds consumer expenditure.
We have debated the matter before in the House, but in simple economics, if one subsidises the buyer and restricts the demand, the price will always rise. If we give mortgage relief to house buyers and ration the supply of land through over-restrictive planning policies (enforced on us politically by the "not in my backyard" syndrome) then we, unlike other countries, continue artificially to boost consumer credit collateral. This is proven by the fact that land prices, in the South-East particularly, have risen at twice the price of building costs. That must surely be a sign of excess rationing.
I appreciate that to bring the supply of land and the demand for it into balance would be politically most difficult, but at least it is important to air the problem as a first step towards solving it politically. Unless we tackle that problem, it will remain one of the basic causes of inflation and doom the economy to the damaging discipline of continuous high interest rates.
It has been well put that one of the driving forces of the recent run-away boom could be encapsulated in the phrase
"too much credit chasing too few consumer goods".
My first suggestion is a way of trying to limit that credit, which is based, as I say, on the collateral of ever-rising house prices due to over-restrictive planning policies.
My second suggestion is well aired. It is the importance of allowing companies to expand on their own self-generated wealth; in other words, to use the funds generated in any year on expenditure incurred in that year without tax penalty. This is all the more important at present when companies have to borrow at high real interest rates.
There is often a sterile debate about the importance of service and manufacturing industry. Both are important and both depend upon each other. However, it is much easier to achieve productivity gains by the mass production of goods through highly automated processes than it is to achieve productivity gains in service industries, many of which by their very nature are labour-intensive and non-exportable.
The numbers employed in manufacturing as productivity rises will continue to fall, but the output of manufacturing industry, which is the key matter, will continue to rise to meet our society's material needs. The consequences of higher productivity will enable there to be a high wage, non-inflationary economy. So the bigger the manufacturing sector in any economy, the greater the likelihood of fewer inflationary pressures, especially if competition ensures that manufacturing firms pass on some of their productivity gains by way of price cuts and do not hog it all.
However, to achieve investment in automated equipment needs a lot of cash up front, and our existing tax regime penalises companies that wish to invest in that way. In most cases it does not allow them to recover the costs of that investment under some seven to 10 years. As your Lordships will be
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aware, the accountancy term for that is the 25 per cent. diminishing balance write off. About four years ago companies could write off investment in the year that they made it, but the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, for good reasons, said that he would abolish that benefit, as he saw it, for the wider benefit of lower corporation tax.
While that did some good not least by encouraging more overseas companies to come to this country, it shot in the foot the very reinvestment programmes that we so badly need. We may congratulate ourselves on the fact that industry invested last year at a higher level than ever before, but even that was at a lower pro rata level than our Continental competitors, and the signs are that industrial investment, which is so badly needed to fill the supply side inadequacies of tomorrow, is fading away —a victim of our high interest rate policy and the consequence of a tax regime that has moved us from a regime of accelerated depreciation to one of retarded depreciation —it is in no way possible to recover the costs of any investment over seven years at a level to meet the full replacement cost of that investment in an inflationary period such as today.
What is more, the existing slow and low levels of depreciation encourage an attitude of mind that writes off investment against its mechanical deterioration rather than against its technological obsolescence. Much equipment is out of date the year that it is installed, and any forward-looking company wants to recover the cost as quickly as possible so as to be ready to drop its price and to reinvest in the next round of labour-saving machinery.
We need such things as part of our industrial policy and sadly they are so seldom discussed. Our existing tax mechanisms retard that process, and, with the exception of a few concessions on some electronic equipment, to make all industry depreciate at the same rate is like saying that all citizens should wear the same size pair of shoes—hardly a free market!
There is a simple solution: to allow companies to depreciate at any rate they wish, provided that that rate is used in their published accounts. Some companies would do so, some would not. Having decided on their pattern they would have to stick to it. I believe that the consequences of such a change would be to encourage investment, particularly at this time of costly borrowed money. It would enable companies to continue to invest using their own self-generated funds. That is just what is needed at present.
I hope that the Chancellor will listen carefully to the considerable weight of evidence before him to support the move to accelerated depreciation allowances. I for one believe that there is great force in the arguments put forward. One only has to look at our dwindling merchant navy to see the consequences of the present tax regime.
There are two suggestions from a passé inventor. Time is short; I have a number of others up my sleeve. Suffice it to say that the Government can continue to do much for the development of wealth in this country by minor changes in policies that

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positively further the development of our supply side which has inadequacies, be they the supply of land or the liquidity of our businesses, small and large alike.
Neither of these suggestions implies a tax handout. Allowing businesses to use their own self-generated cash on which to expand and invest leaves untrammelled the Government's wider monetary policy, but it would at least ease the burden and reduce the damage that the high interest rate policy has on the wealth-producing supply side sector of our economy. I urge the Government to reinforce the success of its policies and look again at these measures.
6.31 p.m.
Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, I wish to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord De La Warr on his excellent speech. We are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Boardman for introducing this debate on an important subject on which many words of wisdom have already been expressed. I fully agree with him on the benefits of the market economy, free but sensibly regulated. I fully agree too that great progress has been made under the present Government over the past 10 years in rekindling the spirit of enterprise and risk-taking, as my noble friend Lord Joseph said. The removal of restrictive trade practices of all kinds, the privatisation of manufacturing and some other companies, and much more, all lead to a more productive and competitive industry which is of vital importance.
In many ways that is all highly satisfactory. However, I believe that my noble friend Lord Boardman would agree—indeed he said so —that much more remains to be done. The noble Lord, Lord Benson, has put forward in a dramatic way how much needs to be done and how long it will take. Much more should be done to achieve our objectives of lasting prosperity, providing opportunities for all to lead a satisfying and happy life.
However, the blunt fact is that the British version of the market economy is not yet working well enough to meet the country's needs in the home and export markets. I do not intend to quote any more figures, but I believe that there is widespread agreement that we need to create more wealth more efficiently. That has been made plain by many noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. And as the noble Lord, Lord Benson, made clear, we particularly need to correct the huge balance of payments deficit.
I also agree with the emphasis placed by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, on the importance of manufacturing industry. But the record shows that when his party is in charge of affairs, enterprise is held back and centralised controls and high taxation stifle enterprise, wealth creation and growth, with disastrous results.
I take it that we are agreed that there is an urgent need to create more wealth. I wish to look forward to how we might achieve this more quickly. There are two essential conditions: the reduction of
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inflation and increased investment. The chosen instrument for reducing inflation is high interest rates. It is a very blunt instrument which is already showing signs of controlling the money supply and consumption with their beneficial effects on inflation. But clearly it will take much longer to be effective, and I believe much longer than Her Majesty's Government originally envisaged. These high interest rates are now seriously damaging and depressing industrial investment. They are damaging it in the long term at the worst possible time because now, at the beginning of a reduction in growth and perhaps even a recession in industry, is the time to invest. Thus we shall be ready to make use of the investment with the increased capacity when in a few years' time —not too long, I hope—we come out of this period of slow growth. That investment is desperately needed now to be ready for a return to growth in the future.
I believe that we should seriously consider less damaging ways in which to defeat inflation by more direct means of controlling credit and consumer demand. As an amateur I wish to suggest what seems to me a simple way which would be effective. It would be to impose a tax on the use of any credit card issued to a UK resident based on a percentage of the monthly balance on the credit card account. It would be easy to collect, a powerful deterrent to consumption and no impediment to industrial investment. I suggest that if some such tax as this were put on it would be a partial substitute for high interest rates which could therefore be reduced sooner than otherwise, with all the attendant benefits that would bring.
Inadequate investment is a long-standing British problem, right from the days when the late Dr. Dalton squandered the post-war loan from the United States on consumption rather than investment. Ever since the war we have consumed too much and invested too little to provide for sustained growth through wealth creation. As many noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord Boardman, have made clear, we have made substantial progress over the past 10 years. Manufacturing industry is more productive, more competitive, more profitable. But the sad fact is that, despite all that, output has increased very little. It has certainly not increased enough to meet all our needs at home and those of the export markets. That, in my view, is the root cause of most of our economic problems. It contributes as well to inflationary pressure.
Investment is the job of industry. It is not primarily a matter for Government: it is a matter for industry, for the private sector. But overall we must, I am afraid, accept that industry is failing in this respect. It has failed to invest enough in capital plant for more efficient, low cost manufacture to counteract rising unit labour costs in comparison with our competitors. We are still not investing nearly enough in the design, manufacture and marketing of new competitive products.
As the noble Lord, Lord Benson, said, there must be a reason for these problems. I suggest that it is a combination of inadequate incentives to industry to invest, a lack of skilled human resources to make

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that investment effective and the short-term outlook in this predator environment.
I wish to make a few suggestions for the solution of the first two of these problems. They are suggestions as to what Her Majesty's Government can and must contribute to the solution. I do not intend to become involved in the problem of short-termism. It is too big a subject to start on this evening. I submit that there is a need for new, perhaps dramatic, initiatives which will act as quickly as possible. There is an opportunity to take those initiatives in the Budget which we shall soon have in March.
To encourage capital investment, why not allow 50 per cent. or more of the tax relief resulting from capital investment in 1990–91 to be offset against 1989–90 profits in addition to the normal relief which would be provided in 1990–91? This would give a much quicker boost to cash flow than any kind of tax relief in the year 1990–91, because it would be effective in the accounts of the current financial year.
Similarly, we could allow an additional 50 per cent. of R&D expenditure, as now clearly defined by the latest standard accounting practice No. 13, incurred in 1990–91 to be set off against 1989–90 profits and we could treat expenditure on training incurred in 1990–91 in exactly the same way. All those moves would have a relatively quick effect on cash flow and, as my noble friend Lord Vinson pointed out, this is of very great importance if we are to encourage the investment which industry needs.
I know well from experience in industry in a medium-sized company the very great pressures that are put on the management not to invest at times like this when orders are falling and cash flow is adverse. So some drastic methods are needed to counter those pressures and to encourage industry, to give incentives to industry to invest at this time.
I appreciate that implementing such schemes of tax relief would be expensive, but they would be very good value, for I fully recognise the need to reduce the tax burden on industry as a percentage of GNP as proposed by the CBI, because it is about twice as high as the average of our competitors. My suggested methods of tax relief would be much more effective than a direct cut in the corporation tax rate because they would ensure that money was used to the best advantage in higher investment and not squandered in any other less advantageous way. The CBI has also suggested other ways of reducing externally imposed costs on industry and I hope that those too will be looked at very constructively and sympathetically.
In passing, I should like to make a point about the Export Credits Guarantee Department, for I see that the Government are proposing to increase the insurance premiums for the export of capital goods. This really is a retrograde step in present circumstances. That is a charge which we all ought to share in the interests of the whole country in order to encourage industry to take the very substantial risks in exporting capital goods.
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On the training side, Her Majesty's Government are already taking many initiatives and I leave others to argue whether those are the best way forward. Here again I would emphasise that training is industry's prime responsibility. But it is not only to train; it is also to attract high quality people into industry. There are widespread complaints of uncompetitive pay scales, lack of opportunities to use skills and bad planning and supervision of initial training and careers in manufacturing industry. All interact to make a career in manufacturing industry unattractive.
Above all, there is the lack of appreciation by manufacturing industry overall of its need for more high quality engineers on which the efficiency and long-term prosperity of manufacturing industry so greatly depends—engineers as managers, in design and development, in marketing, in servicing and in production. In the absence of that appreciation of the need for more high quality engineers in those fields, the rewards are too low and so the average quality and quantity of recruits suffer and we are in a vicious downward spiral. So the first thing industry needs to do to get better recruits and more highly qualified people is to recognise and create the demand for them, to increase the rewards in every sense that they get in industry and to make sure that their skills are used to the full as soon as they get there.
Finally, may I sing my old song again. Though products, output, training and investment are matters for industry itself, Her Majesty's Government must stimulate sound policies more effectively by demonstrating their conviction that manufacturing industry and growth in its output of competitive products is of fundamental importance.
In support of this I should like to quote two extracts from a new book by Peter Drucker, The New Realities. He says:
"Adversarial trade" —
the condition we are now in—
"changes the basic rules, and drastically. It can no longer be assumed that competition is entirely beneficial, which is the basic postulate of the economist".
Secondly,
"In the transnational economy the goal is not profit maximisation. It is market maximisation. Trade increasingly follows investment and indeed is becoming a function of investment".
I hope that Her Majesty's Government will take that advice to heart as it comes from the very long and wide experience of Mr. Peter Drucker.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Cobbold: My Lords, there has been general agreement on all sides of your Lordships' House this afternoon with the first part of the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Boardman. A free market certainly, as my noble friend Lady Seear, said, has the full support of those of us on these Benches. It clearly has a major role to play in creating wealth, prosperity and jobs. It is only necessary, as several noble Lords have pointed out, to look to Eastern Europe and to the Soviet Union to see the total failure of closed, centrally managed economies to deliver wealth and prosperity.

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The same does not apply to the second half of the Motion, which proposes that a free market has provided, or is best at providing, public services for the whole nation is a more doubtful proposition. The extreme position that the free market can solve all problems is clearly absurd. If that were the case there would be no role for government at all.
What then is the basic role of government? It is surely to devise rules of fair play, to provide an efficient infrastructure and a stable environment in which the game can be played and to act as umpire. It is in the creation of an efficient infrastructure and a stable environment that we on these Benches feel that the Government, in spite of much self-congratulation and hype, have manifestly failed. Under the heading of infrastructure, I include the basic services of health, education, transport and communications.
I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, has read a paper which has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, and which was presented by Mr. David Lomax, group economic adviser to the National Westminster Bank, to an Institute of Economic Affairs Conference on 9th January. If not I commend it to him——
Lord Boardman: My Lords, I have read the paper. Perhaps the noble Lord would read it in full. Unfortunately the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, extracted one sentence out of a long article.
Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I have read the report in full. Indeed it is an excellent paper and I commend it to your Lordships. It is also from a first-class bank. It gives credit where it is due, but it does not hesitate to criticise. I should like to read a couple of extracts. I recognise that they are not representative of the whole paper—the whole paper is very fair—but they are nevertheless relevant to the point I am making. Mr. Lomax writes:
"There is one supply-side area where the present Government's performance has been execrable."—
to use the word quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue—
"This relates to education and training. It is by now standard market economics that certain groups and services may be under-provided if supply is left entirely to market forces. These are the goods and services which are linked with externalities or are public goods, or where income deficiencies may prevent there being adequate demand for the goods or services in question … It is the charlatan's version of market economics to argue that such goods and services should be provided only to the extent to which the private sector is willing to pay for them…
If the UK wishes to succeed in a competitive world, as a high income country, then it has to move up market in quality and skills. Cheap people producing cheap products only generate cheap incomes."
I agree with the views expressed in those paragraphs. We have to improve our relative performance in education and training if we are to compete successfully with the single market of the 1990s. Many noble Lords on all sides of the House have endorsed that point this afternoon.
Other inescapable government responsibilities under the heading of infrastructure are communications, roads and railways. Responsibility does not mean control and nationalisation. It means
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partnership. Efficiencies can and have been introduced by privatisation but the Government retain overall responsibility, not least as a result of the planning laws.
The Government are fully committed to the single market in Europe. They must therefore be committed to a single market in the United Kingdom. It therefore seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility to leave the development of the modern high-speed communications network required to develop our domestic single market, and to link it to the single market on the Continent, entirely to private capital and for private developers to be forced to pay extra to meet the, highly desirable but nevertheless public, good of preserving the environment. That way nothing gets done until it is too late and we lose competitive advantage as a nation to our delighted Continental neighbours.
I should like to quote one more small paragraph from Mr. Lomax:
"To argue from the Channel Tunnel or from Docklands that only the infrastucture should be built which can be financed by the private sector is a complete travesty of market economics. In areas where there are externalities or public goods, there may be a decisive role for the public sector to play".
Once the infrastructure is in place, market forces can indeed operate to determine the most efficient allocation of resources and comparative advantage.
Perhaps I may turn now to another area of government responsibility, to which I referred earlier—namely, the provision of a stable environment. One of the main themes on which this Government was originally elected was the promise to eliminate inflation, to move away from the roller-coaster stop-go economics of the previous decades, and to provide a stable monetary environment complete with medium-term financial strategy. Such a stable environment would permit sustained economic growth provided by free market forces.
For the first half of the decade, in a climate of falling inflation worldwide, there was undoubtedly success. Headlines proclaimed record growth of 4 per cent. in this country, while Germany was criticised as the laggard of Europe with only 2 per cent. growth. Then came 1987 and the October crash. Understandably the Government, together with Western governments, relaxed monetary conditions and lowered interest rates progressively until the spring of 1988. At that time the smouldering consumer boom was turned into a holocaust by a budget which gave five months to avoid tax changes on mortgage interest rates, pushing house prices through the roof—as has been mentioned in a thoughtful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Vinson —and leading to an explosion of consumer borrowing on the back of the resultant inflated asset prices. The roller-coaster was back in a big way.
Now we are having to pay for the damage. As several noble Lords have mentioned, we have a record balance of payments deficit, the highest inflation rate and the highest interest rate of all our competitors. Our growth rate has been forced back to almost zero while Germany has maintained and slightly increased its growth rate steadily throughout the decade.

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Enough of the past. What of the next decade? The future for this country is undoubtedly as a participant in the single market in Europe. The single market has to be the most exciting challenge that the free market culture has ever faced. Can we really turn 12, and perhaps more, separate and diverse economies into a free and prosperous domestic market stretching across the continent? To achieve that will require political vision and leadership of the highest order. Unfortunately we have not seen much of that from the Government to date on this subject. We in Britain are seen as reluctant Europeans. Some new thinking is required, and long-term thinking to boot.
To take but one example, the free market will not be able to operate with maximum efficiency so long as there are still 11 currencies, 11 interest rates and 11 balances of payment within the Community. We must start looking at the Community as a single economy. The benefits of comparative economic advantage can never be properly gained unless that is the case. If the Germans are better at making cars than we are and we are better at financial services than they are, the benefits of those efficiencies should benefit the whole Community and not just one or other national balance of payments.
The Stage I EMS —I hope with sterling as a full member —can only be a transitional stage. For our Government in particular, with their poor record in monetary management —or monetary continence as it has been called this afternoon —new strategies are essential if we are to build up confidence in the stability of our exchange rate even within the exchange rate mechanism. We need to improve our country's credit rating.
We must consider seriously the separation from government of the power of money creation. We must consider matching the undoubted success of the Bundesbank with the granting of greater autonomy and a clear mandate to the Bank of England. We must debate and solve the problems of sovereignty and accountability that such a change implies.
We on these Benches support the free market. We believe that it has a great future. However, it is not perfect and it deserves better husbandry from now on than it has had in the recent past.
6.56 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, in many ways this has been a fascinating debate. It started with a Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, which was couched in terms for which we were all prepared. We were prepared for a philosophical debate about the free market—whatever that may mean; and I shall come to that point in a minute—and the consequences thereof. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, will not mind my saying that I thought he got the debate off to a not very good start because his speech turned into a party political broadcast. Some of his figures were wrong, but I understand that in a party political broadcast. We then turned to a philosophical debate and then heard recommendations for the Budget, notably from the
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noble Lord, Lord Vinson, and the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote.
I shall not pursue the recommendations for the Budget because I am sure that those have been noted by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I am sure that he will advise his right honourable friend what his noble friends have said on such matters as how to encourage investment, control credit, and so on. Nor should I like to engage in party political debate. As noble Lords will know, I am never reluctant to do so. However, certain themes have developed from the debate which I should like to pick up and which raise it beyond the party political arena. I hope that the noble Earl will cast aside his prepared speech and respond to the debate that has taken place this afternoon.
Some noble Lords have asked what is the Labour Party's policy on this matter. Perhaps I may quote from a document, the genesis of which I shall reveal in a moment. It reads:
"The country must restore adaptability and enterprise to its industries and must break through the net of trade restrictions, if it is to succeed in raising industrial efficiency, in maintaining employment at a high level, and so improving the standard of life".
That was written by Mr. Hugh Gaitskell in 1945. That is what we believe should now be done.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, restored the balance of the debate and returned it to the realities of the world rather than the record of the Government, be it good or bad, North Sea oil, and so on. She started the real debate, which was taken up by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, in a notable contribution, and the noble Lord, Lord Roll of Ipsden, on the subject of what we mean when we talk of the free market economy, and the consequences. Those are the themes that I should like to take up.
The debate appears to have posed four questions for noble Lords. First —to echo what the noble Lord, Lord Roll of Ipsden, and my noble friend Lord Jay said —what is a free market economy? Secondly —to echo the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear —does the creation of wealth automatically provide better public services and a better standard of life for the whole nation? Thirdly, what kind of economy do we have at the moment? Finally, what kind of economy would we like to have?
The noble Lord, Lord Boardman, knows that he has great respect in the House. I mean no offence when I pick on him personally, which I do not like to do, but the most depressing point about his speech was the fact that he said there was no middle ground. When I heard his speech I thought, "My goodness, we've been trying over the years to adapt our policies and the Government have tried to adapt theirs. If we cannot find"—to echo the noble Lord, Lord Joseph—"a middle ground in this matter, we are dead because we shall continue the ping-pong across the Benches. We shall continue the adversarial situation in which we shall do this and they will do that and we shall never get anywhere". I was depressed by the noble Lord's comments because there is middle ground, as was set out by my noble

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friend Lord Donoughue and by the noble Lord, Lord Joseph.
Let us consider my first question—what is a free market economy?—leaving aside the ayatollahs and fundamentalists of the free market, such as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, who is no longer in his place. He operates in political outer space.
Lord Joseph: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, particularly after the noble Lord has been so kind to me, but that is unfair to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, who is absent. He simply believes that we would be effective in the things that we want to do for all our citizens if we let business run better.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and accept what he says. I used the phrase "in political outer space" because we are dealing in politics, not just in economics. The noble Lord has his own beliefs and I am sure that they are sincerely held.
I should like to move on to deal with the question: what is the free market? Clearly, there is no perfect market. The only perfect market that I knew when I was at the Price Commission was the offshore financial market. It was perfect in terms of non-regulation, total freedom of entry and total information from all sides so that the market could operate in the Marshallian sense in a perfect manner. As my noble friend Lord Jay said, the result is a unique price across the board and the development of monopolies and cartels. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, talked about his experiences in the cement industry. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear will remember, as I do, that when I was chairman of the Price Commission the noble Lord argued persuasively in favour of the cement cartel and said that it was important for the future of Rugby Portland Cement that the cement cartel should operate at a fixed price across the board. I sometimes wonder whether people changed their minds or whether it was simply a spasm of the moment.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I am not surprised that the noble Lord does not wonder about that any more, considering the amount of changing of mind that has gone on on his Benches.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I do not know whether it was as a result of my alleged persuasiveness or whether perhaps as a result of the merits of the matter, but the noble Lord will recall that the Price Commission approved the set-up at that time in the cement industry.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I have no objection to cartels. I do not argue in favour of the free market economy. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, rightly said that we are changing our views in this party. That is right. However, I remind her that she and her party —when it was the Liberal Party, before it became some other party —supported the Labour Party in office for some time when we were accused of operating non-market policies. I have no doubt that she has always been in favour of the free market.
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My second question was: does the creation of wealth automatically provide better public services for the nation? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester more or less made my winding-up speech for me. I agree with what he said. As my noble friend Lord Jay said, it is a matter of record that the free market develops inequalities. Unless there is government intervention, it does not help the worse-off. As the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, was good enough to admit, the point of the free market is that it rewards entrepreneurs. But at the same time there is only one cake, and if one awards more of the cake to one group one must award less to another group.
Lord Joseph: My Lords, but there would be a bigger cake too —more, if you like.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, there could be more cake, but I did not notice how the noble Lord suggested that we should have it. Whatever anyone says about the growth of the gross national product between 1979 and 1989, it has been on the long-run trend. Nothing has happened apart from the discovery of North Sea oil.
As I do not wish to waste noble Lords' time, perhaps I may move on to the question of the kind of economy that we have. We do not have a free economy; we have a partially free market economy. We have a government sector which still takes nearly 40 per cent. of the gross national product. We have natural monopolies. In some cases we have a price-competitive sector and, in other cases, distorted sectors, such as housing or agriculture, which are all in one way or another distorted by various measures, government or Community.
I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Jay that the economy in its present balance—we shall have a great deal of time in a fort night to argue out what the present balance is—does not fully employ the proper factors of production. We have too many unemployed and too low investment —here I join with the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote —which is the result of lack of government intervention.
What kind of economy should we have? I accept the argument of my noble friends and of noble Lords on other sides of the House that there is a case for the mixed economy. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said that it was a mixed up economy. I do not believe that the mixed economy has done us any harm. We join with the noble Baroness in disliking private monopolies. We believe that, if there are to be monopolies, they should be publicly owned, but, if they are not publicly owned, they should be properly controlled.
The Labour Party has never been opposed to the mixed economy. I quoted from Mr. Gaitskell speaking in 1945. That theme has been consistent throughout periods of Labour government and opposition since then. However, I should like to remind noble Lords, even those on the Left and to the Left of the Labour Party, that in 1917 a certain statesman came to office and said:
"Capitalism long ago abolished small independent commodity production, under which competition could develop enterprise,

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energy and bold initiative to any considerable extent, and substituted for it … joint companies, syndicates and other monopolies … Now that a socialist government is in power our task is to organise competition".
That was Lenin. It may be that we are all Leninists. I hope that the noble Earl will say that we all agree that the job of government is to organise competition and make sure that it is properly organised. The most satisfactory model for the economy is that of the mixed economy with the state intervening to correct market failures —failures that subsist in education and training and in all the other things that noble Lords have pointed out —to control monopolies and also to ensure that non-economic factors, such as the environment, with which the noble Earl himself was very much involved in the context of the Water Bill, should be brought into the economic equation. That is the model that we think is right and that is the model that we shall pursue.
7.11 p.m.
The Paymaster General (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, today we have had a most stimulating and, indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, said, a most wide-ranging debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. Alas, there should have been more noble Lords, on the Benches opposite but we understand that they do not like to take part in debates on the creation of wealth and the betterment of the economy.
There is however one person, namely the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, whom I think all the House misses. He had intended to take part in this debate. I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in sending him and his wife our very best wishes. We hope that we shall see my noble friend back in his place in the very near future.
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Boardman for initiating the debate which has been very beneficial. It has clearly shown that over the past 10 years this Government have improved the situation with the free market and that the free market is the only effective mechanism for improving the prosperity of the nation.
The history of Western civilisation cannot be divorced from the development of the market economy. However, over the post-war period, the benefits of the market economy —freedom, choice, and competition —were increasingly lost from view. The apparently inexorable power and scope of the state advanced largely unhindered.
It is easy to see why that happened, particularly in this country. The use of state power had led to victory in the Second World War. Those who shaped post-war Britain saw no reason why the power of the state should not be just as successful in achieving the peacetime goals of economic and social progress. That preoccupation led to the paradox that the post-war economic recovery—which owed much to the "bonfire" of wartime controls and regulations that affected even the most trivial decisions —was frequently presented as a triumph for planning and control at a macro-economic level. My noble friend Lord Joseph put his finger on the main problem.
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The legacy that this Government inherited in 1979 was thus one of over 30 years of a fundamentally misconceived approach to economic policy. The post-war consensus was that growth and low unemployment could be achieved through expanding the budget deficit, with the state taking a major role in directing resources in the economy.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, is the noble Earl saying that the period of office of the Conservative Government between 1950 and 1964 was a complete waste of time?
The Earl of Caithness: No, my Lords, I am not saying that it was a complete waste of time. It was a great deal better than anything that we could have had from the other side. I do say that the economic policy has been much better in this 10-year period than it was under previous administrations since the war.
To return to what I was saying, it was thought that if that method produced inflation, it could be tackled by direct controls on prices and incomes. That approach not only failed to deliver economic success. It did grave damage to the economy. While inflation rocketed, excessive interference and controls meant that important markets ceased to work effectively and some barely worked at all. That is why the restoration of the free market stood alongside the defeat of inflation —and that defeat was keenly sought by my noble friends Lord Selsdon and Lord Beaverbrook —as one of the two main elements of our economic strategy in 1979.
Much has been done to rectify the problems that we inherited, which are still the cause of many problems that we have to face. We appreciate that there is still much to do. However, my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing was right to say that we should also look at what has been achieved. My noble friend Lord Boardman rightly said that recent developments in eastern Europe have clearly revealed the effects of excessive government interference in the economy. Czechoslovakia, for example, was one of the wealthiest and most successful countries in Europe before the war —and before the central planners took control. In the 1930s GDP per capita in Czechoslovakia was higher than in Austria. Today it is about half.
The clearest lesson is that state control and massive quantities of inefficient investment get nowhere. In countries like Poland and Romania, investment accounted for around a quarter or more of national income, significantly higher than in Britain, or for that matter other advanced industrial countries. But we can see from the economic problems that these countries now face that the amount of investment alone means nothing.
State control and intervention have resulted in a massive misallocation of resources. We have suffered that recently in this country. In fact the GLC did not do terribly well. In 1984, of the 18 companies in which the GLEB (Greater London Enterprise Board) held 10 per cent. or more of the equity share capital, there were four in liquidation, one in receivership and nine failed to provide audited financial statements. Of the remaining four

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only one had made an operating profit and two had negative share capital and reserve. Let us contrast that with my noble friend Lord Limerick's examples of where highly successful progress was being made without political interference. If the Labour Party were ever to resume power, which with any luck it will not, then my noble friend Lord Selsdon and all those people like my noble friend Lord Vinson who have created employment will find the heavy hand of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, lying on their shoulder and will hear him say, "You can't do that. You must do it my way." However, the great thing about the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, is that he has not changed; he has not become a convenience politician like so many others.
An illustration of how far views have changed about the market can be seen from Labour's debates of the early 1960s. In the days when the Labour Party conducted its arguments through the civilised columns of Encounter, Mr. Richard Crossman castigated what he called Tony Crosland's
"mixture of Bohemian flippancy and economic punditry".
He went on to say:
"The Communist countries demonstrate with ever increasing force the efficiency of nationalisation. Progressively year by year we shall see that, judged in terms of national security, scientific and technological development, popular education, and, finally even of mass living standards, free enterprise is losing out in the peaceful competition between East and West … The superiority of socialised economies is being triumphantly vindicated in world affairs".
I am sure that many of your Lordships will know from Crossman's famous diary that he sometimes failed to record events accurately. But those errors are nothing compared with the errors in his forecasting and, indeed, the errors in the policy that the noble Lord, Lord Jay, continues to promulgate.
The recent rapid and very welcome changes in eastern Europe only serve to underline the reasoning behind the changes that have been introduced by this Government over the past 10 years. There is no doubt that the message from eastern Europe to the Conservative Government is, "Thank you Mrs. Thatcher for your lead and inspiration". The message to the Labour Party is, "Don't ring us; we'll ring you".
The rehabilitation of market forces in the early 1980s was seen at first as an aberration of the post-war consensus. But as other Western nations have followed this path and as eastern Europe abandons state control, I have no doubt that over time people will judge that intervention and planning were the aberration and that the market economy is the normal, healthy state of affairs.
There have been many elements in the Government's programme to revitalise the free market in Britain. Large parts of the economy have been freed from bureaucratic interference and made to work more effectively, and the tax system has been reformed so as to encourage enterprise and reward people for their efforts.
A key element in that strategy has been the privatisation programme. Privatisation has resulted in some of the most radical economic changes that have taken place in Britain in the 1980s. It has transformed large parts of the economy and
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industrial structure and reintroduced incentives for efficiency, enabling dramatic improvements in performance for businesses which the Government inherited in 1979 as subsidised public enterprises.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, admitted that Labour governments had hoped that nationalised industries would be able to operate efficiently, reaping the advantages of economies of scale, yet at the same time fulfil various social objectives which were never very clearly defined. He admits that these industries were not able to live up to such ideals but still thinks that they should exist without explaining why, having failed before, they should work in the future. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, supported him and said that nationalised industries should be properly controlled—whatever that means. No doubt it means whatever the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, meant: that he must continue to interfere.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, can the noble Earl indicate any point where I said that nationalised industries should be controlled?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, that is what I wrote down. If I did not write it down correctly I can apologise, but I shall look at the Official Report to see what the noble Lord said.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, if I may intervene again, what I said was that monopolies, whether private or public, should be properly controlled.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, in other words, the noble Lord has confirmed that he said that nationalised industry should be properly controlled. I presume that to mean, as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, so clearly spelt out, his keen desire to interfere.
I do not think that either noble Lord has ever explained why it is impossible for businesses to operate in a commercial way when they are constantly faced with the prospect of political and bureaucratic interference, however well intentioned. Decisions taken by managers on price levels or investment plans have had to take into account, and will have to take into account, government objectives which are often in conflict with their own goals. In the final analysis there was, and will be, no real incentive, to succeed, since businesses knew that they could always rely on the finances of the state to help bale them out when they were in trouble.
We have seen great improvements made in the performance of the nationalised industries since 1979. Ultimately there is no substitute for the disciplines and responsibilities of the market place. The success of our privatisation programme bears this out. So far we have transferred about half of the 1979 state-owned commercial sector to the private sector —29 major businesses, with over 0.75 million employees. The benefits to the businesses themselves, to the employees who become shareholders and to the taxpayers and consumers, have been tremendous. Across the board these

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companies are now reporting greatly increased efficiency, profits, turnover and investment.
It is not only the newly privatised industries that have benefited from the Government's actions. Throughout the economy the operation of normal market forces was constrained by a battery of direct controls —controls on prices, incomes and dividends among other things. These were all swept away at an early stage. Management was at long last free to manage. The resulting improvement in the quality of management decisions has played a particularly important role in Britain's economic renaissance.
The most striking example of the effects of deregulation at work is in the financial sector. The decision to abolish all exchange controls in 1979 created a new range of investment opportunities for Britons wishing to invest abroad and has encouraged foreign investment to flow into this country. The abolition of controls on banks and building societies has greatly increased the flexibility of the markets and has led to a much wider choice for consumers. Big Bang has already given the London markets the freedom that they need to maintain London's role as a leading financial centre of Europe.
My noble friend Lord Beaverbrook mentioned the reforms that the Government have introduced in the labour market, which are just as significant. A proper framework of law is now in place and has curbed much of the trade union excesses and destruction seen in the past. That is to the great benefit of industrial relations.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, can the noble Earl inform the House when he intends to start winding up the debate?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I have been winding up the debate for 13 minutes apart from the odd speeches that the noble Lords have made as they have intervened.
My noble friend Lord Beaverbrook mentioned strikes. It is interesting to note that the only strike that the Labour Party have not supported in the 1980s is the one that they had at their own headquarters.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the noble Earl has a Central Office brief!
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, it is a good deal better than the one that the noble Lord managed to produce. The Government have also encouraged schemes which give employees a greater stake in the performance of the companies for which they work, through profit-related pay and employee share ownership schemes. These changes have made the labour market more flexible, improving its ability to deal with the changes inevitable in a dynamic economy. A properly working labour market is the key to creating jobs.
The key to creating wealth is a tax system which does not distort private sector decisions; a tax system that encourages entrepreneurship and rewards effort. My noble friend Lord Selsdon mentioned
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corporation tax. He will agree with me, I know, that the reduction in marginal tax rates, both in corporation tax and income tax, made by this Government has vastly improved the working of the enterprise economy. Not only that, but there are advantages —my noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle lucidly extolled them —when people are free, as now, to keep more of what they earn to spend as they like.
In the 1960s and 1970s the United Kingdom grew more slowly than any of the other EC countries. In the period since 1980 only Spain of the other major European countries has matched our performance. Even including the slow growth forecast for the United Kingdom in 1990, we shall still be near the top of the European league and comfortably ahead of our major competitors, France and Germany.
The strong growth over the past eight years has been associated with a combination of strong productivity and employment growth. The economy has created over 2·75 million new jobs since 1983. The efficiency with which the labour force is employed has been significantly increased. Since 1980, whole economy productivity has increased more quickly than the average of the other major industrialised countries and productivity in manufacturing industry has increased more quickly than in any of them.
A major factor behind the much improved productivity performance has been the improvement in the quality of British investment decisions. Investment is no longer undertaken simply in order to take advantage of tax breaks but in order to earn a profitable rate of return. The profitability of British companies is now higher than it has been for 20 years. British business clearly has confidence that this is a permanent improvement, and it is investing in the future. Contrary to the impression that the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, gave, I can tell noble Lords that business investment as a share of GDP looks likely to have reached a new record last year.
I listened with care to what my noble friends Lord Vinson and Lord Caldecote said on this and related matters. They know that I cannot comment on what they said today. However, let me reassure them, as I can reassure all noble Lords, that I shall draw their remarks to the attention of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not only British companies that have been convinced of the wisdom of investing in Britain. For example, three of the most important firms in the Japanese car industry have made significant investments in the United Kingdom, attracted by the liberal business climate that this Government have fostered. The beneficial effects of these and other decisions on British manufacturing industry will be felt for years to come.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter was right to say that it is only this increase in efficiency and the creation of so many new jobs that has led to a substantial increase in prosperity and living standards. This increased prosperity has been widely spread through society. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the right reverend Prelate seem to believe, it is not true that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor getting poorer. The

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poor are getting richer too. For all the interference that the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, still believes in, the real take-home pay of a married man with two children on half average earnings rose by only 4.2 per cent. under Labour. In contrast, under this Government it has risen by over 24 per cent. —nearly six times as much.
No less importantly, the freeing up of the economy, the recognition and rewards now possible in an enterprise culture, have started to erode the "them-and-us" divide. To be an owner, manager of a businessman is no longer the preserve of one class, one income group, or one part of the country. The numbers of people who now work for themselves, or run their own company, own shares and own their own home have all reached new record levels. This reflects the increased prosperity that can be generated by a free market economy.
Of course the public finances must be in order if any economic system is to function properly. The Government have made sound public finances a cornerstone of their economic policy and have successfully reduced the share of economic resources controlled by the state. The increased prosperity of recent years, however, has generated the resources necessary to allow increased public expenditure on priority areas in real terms. For example, the Autumn Statement included the announcement of significant real increases in expenditure on the NHS and transport.
I agree with my noble friend Lord De La Warr, who made such a good maiden speech, that only as a result of running a sensible free market economy have we been able to generate the increased wealth necessary to allow us to spend more on areas such as the environment. Noble Lords know well my concern about water and the dreadful investment decisions that were taken in the 1970s. The Labour Government also ordered the Drax B power station but it was the Conservative Government which had the finances to have it fitted with flue gas desulphurisation equipment.
At the same time as spending on priority areas, the Government have been able to reduce the share of resources taken by public expenditure, reduce tax rates, and start to repay the national debt. This enviable combination has been made possible only by the success of the restoration of the free market. It is true that the economy currently faces some short-term difficulties. In recent months they have been discussed and debated at some length.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, gave us an out-of-focus snapshot of part of the present picture in the UK. He did not look at the trends over the 1980s and compare them with earlier trends. Inflation and the current account deficit are too high. I remind noble Lords that the current account deficit is a private sector deficit. The Government have taken strong action to deal with those problems and there are now clear signs that the tight monetary and fiscal policies are working. Demand growth has slowed down significantly and inflation and the current account deficit are forecast to fall this year.
However, short-term problems should not be allowed to obscure the long-term and lasting
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improvements which have taken place during the last 10 years. The economy enters the 1990s in much better shape than it entered the 1980s. Britain is in a strong position to take advantage of the challenges which lie ahead.
My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing brought home to all noble Lords the dramatic increase in real terms that has taken place in charity giving. He said that he wanted further tax reliefs. I note his comments but know that he will understand that I can say no more at this stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, chastised the Government for spending too much taxpayers' money during the past 10 years and mentioned in particular social services and health spending. In contrast, the right reverend Prelate would like to see a massive increase in spending. Both those different concerns were well expressed by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour. She said that the important factor is the level of the safety net necessary in the market economy. The problem of how to help those worst off without creating a dependency culture is difficult and is one which we are always considering.
Many noble Lords said that there was still much to do, and I agree. However, I remind noble Lords that the recent Housing and Education Acts have still to make their full benefits felt. Much was said about training and education by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and by my noble friends Lord Joseph and Lord Selsdon. The noble Lord, Lord Roll of Ipsden, reminded the House that only a week ago we debated this subject. Therefore, I have decided not to spend time on the matter today because much of what I could say was said then by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde.
In the 1970s the consequences of the post-war social democratic consensus combined with the financial mismanagement were clear. Britain was an inefficient, slow-growth economy which could not deliver the living standards, the public services and the wider opportunities and choice that our people wanted. It was clear that the mixed economy in Britain had failed.
It was also clear from Germany and Switzerland, North America and third world countries such as Singapore and Taiwan that in the long run market economies delivered the goods. And that is what people voted for in 1979. What is more, the Government have succeeded in realising these ambitions to a greater extent than any of their critics, or even their friends, believed possible in the early 1980s.
In the late 1970s we recognised that we had something to learn from other countries. In the 1980s the success of market-based liberal policies in this country have led other nations to decide that they have something to learn from us. It is neither an exaggeration nor hubris to say that Margaret Thatcher and the economic policies of her Government have become the role model for the new non-communist governments in central and eastern Europe.
I believe that the outlook for this country in the coming decade is brighter than at any time that

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someone of my generation can remember. We have succeeded in rebuilding a market economy in Britain. We have also now succeeded in creating a genuine internal market within the European Community. And we now have the prospect of new market economies being established in central and eastern Europe. These changes will be of immense benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned; and as part of a wider liberal trading economy will bring immense opportunities and benefits to the citizens of this country.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Boardman: My Lords, I wish to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. They have made many well-informed contributions. In particular I thank my noble friend Lord De La Warr for making his maiden speech on this occasion.
I have only two points to make. First, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, criticised my use of the middle ground. If he reads my speech in Hansard he will see that I referred to the middle ground as a vision of principle and showed two ways in which it could be held in stark contrast. I said that there was no middle ground between them. However, there is middle ground as regards policies and their administration. We must all seek a compromise to obtain the right solution. If the noble Lord reads my speech perhaps he will decide that his criticism is not fully justified.
Secondly, as expected, noble Lords suggested areas in which there are shortages of resources and have used that as a criticism of the Motion. We all know that a great deal remains to be done. The Motion set out the achievements resulting from the policies I have outlined, while recognising that a great deal remains to be done. A number of noble Lords appealed for more to be done in education and training. I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lord Caithness say that he has taken note of that.
Of course much remains to be done, and that will always be the case. But in order that we can achieve as much as possible, the right course is the creation of further wealth. In that, the free market has a most important role. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Environment Protection Bill
7.37 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. In opening the Second Reading debate, it may be useful if I first discuss four principal matters: the purposes of the Bill, the background to it, the responses I have received and its future prospects.
The Bill before the House is of a different nature to the Environmental Protection Bill at present before another place. I shall refer once or twice en passant to that Bill but it is not my purpose to produce a critique or criticism of it.
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In the Bill before the House, Clause 1(1) is intended to provide a general definition of the phrase "protection of the environment". It is intended that its contrary will be recognised; that is to say, harm to the environment. The definition would be something new in British legislation. It is set in terms of two major international programmes both of which the Government are dedicated to support. The first is the fourth environmental action plan of the European Community which calls for the elimination of pollution. The second is the world conservation strategy from which subsections (1)(b), (c) and (d) are derived.
The aim of the Bill is that the definitions will provide a common framework for environmental protection. The definition links pollution control to the conservation of nature and renewable natural resources. I note a first difference between this Bill and the Environmental Protection Bill. At different points in the latter there are at least three operational definitions of "environmental harm", each of them slightly different. I know that an amendment has now introduced the concept of protecting ecological systems into Part I of the Bill but there is still lacking a general definition of environmental harm or protection. In Clauses 25, 28, 29 and 109 pollution of the environment is not defined. In Clause 110 of the Environmental Protection Bill the risk of pollution is not defined. Those would all be definable in terms of Clause 1(1) of the Environment Protection Bill.
Clauses 2 to 6 of the Environment Protection Bill are concerned with a duty created in the Bill. That is a duty to protect the environment. That duty falls on very wide classes of person as described in the Bill. Those persons include employers, the self-employed and those engaged in potentially damaging activities which are proscribed under Clause 12.
The concept of such a duty is not totally new in British jurisdiction. For example, there is as an existing model the duty which is laid on employers in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act to have regard to the safety of their employees. In the Environmental Protection Bill there will be a duty of care laid upon waste producers and on the users and releasers of genetically manipulated organisms.
Clause 2(2) of my Bill defines requirements to provide relevant instruction and training. That is an important feature. Clause 2(3) requires those subject to that duty to prepare a written statement describing how the duty will be fulfilled and that statement must be available to members of the public on request.
I now move to Clause 7 which is central to the Bill. That establishes an Environment Protection Commission with an executive arm which is to be called the Environment Protection Executive. The powers of appointment to the Commission will lie with the Secretary of State for the Environment. Its composition is indicated in Clause 7(3) and its constitution is elaborated in Schedule 2. The principal duties of the Commission are laid down in Clause 8(1) as:
"to do such things and to make such arrangements as it considers appropriate for the general purposes of this Act".

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The working arm of the Commission would be the Environment Protection Executive. That will have powers to appoint inspectors and also to act through or on behalf of other agencies and/or local authorities. It is envisaged that initially the executive will be formed mainly from existing organisations. They will include certain departmental agencies and some non-departmental public bodies. The process of growth of the executive would probably be gradual, but ultimately component arms are likely to include —and I just give a few examples —Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution, the National Radiation Protection Board, the Nature Conservancy Council, the National Rivers Authority and probably the Forestry Commission in its regulatory capacity. Schedule 1 lists existing enactments which include relevant statutory provisions relating to those bodies.
En passant I think it might be useful to note that some of the current difficulties in implementing integrated pollution control, as is the aim of this Government, are clearly due to the unequal status of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution, which is an arm of the Department of the Environment, and the National Rivers Authority. As I heard the Director General of the National Rivers Authority say on the wireless, that difference would disappear if both were arms of an environmental protection Commission.
The rest of the Bill establishes the powers and the working methods of the Commission and its executive. Briefly, the Commission will have powers to draw up codes of practice and to make environmental protection regulations. Inspectors will have powers to issue improvement and prohibition notices and in a case of imminent danger to the environment to enter premises and make seizures.
The Commission would be responsible to the Department of the Environment but would also have authority to advise any Minister of State in any department where matters concerning environmental protection are important. The regulations will be subject to parliamentary approval. The Commission will publish an annual report which will match requirements, for example, of the impending habitats and species directive from the European Community. And, finally, the Crown is not exempt.
I turn to the background of this Bill as I see it. I claim that it brings together strands which have been developing for some time both nationally and internationally in what may be called, broadly speaking, environmental circles and also in industry. As an industry perspective I include as background information to Clause 1 a quotation which I take from something written by Mr. Ian Graham-Bryce of Shell International Petroleum Company in 1988:
"It is clearly necessary to have a more rigorous and much less subjective basis on which to develop policy for environmental protection. For this purpose we may characterise the environment in terms of: Its value as a source of raw materials and resources, including food, and fibre and other biological and genetic resources. Its functions, such as degradation of toxicants, nutrient cycling, maintenance of habitat etc. Its amenity value, including aesthetic considerations".
I take that to be an industry point of view.
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There are plenty of existing models for environmental protection agencies with wide powers in the international scene. The environmental protection agency of Sweden in 1969 and the United States in the 1970s led the field. Both those institutions now have a considerable track record to which one can refer. Even the Republic of South Africa in July 1989 enacted a broadly ecological definition of environmental protection and formed a council for the environment, together with wide ministerial powers to regulate activities which,
"may have a substantial detrimental effect on the environment".
In this Chamber I first heard the call for a British version modelled on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act from my noble friend Lord Craigton in the debate on the Nature Conservancy Council on 17th February 1988. On 26th October 1988 Dr. Charles Suckling and I jointly presented a paper on the subject to the all-party conservation committee. Coincidentally, on 7th December Professor John Knill, chairman of the NERC, in a speech at Plymouth Polytechnic, expressed his view that:
"Too many of the interactions which occur in natural and man-influenced environmental systems cross the boundaries of convenience of scientific discipline or political expendiency… as we move towards the year 2000 there will be an increasing need for us to establish … a single policy-making and executive body".
That is the view of a scientist.
In February 1989 in the course of a well supported opposition debate on the protection of the environment, I developed the idea of an environmental protection Commission as far as I could within the allotted nine minutes. On 22nd February 1989 the preface to the House of Commons Environment Committee Report entitled Toxic Waste at paragraphs 1 to 15 concluded that:
"the Government should now aim for the establishment of an Environmental Protection Commission which would be charged with an overall responsibility for safeguarding environmental quality in the UK".
It envisaged that that Commission would incorporate HMIP and:
"through mergers … would take over the pollution control responsibilities of the NRA, waste regulation functions, local authority pollution control functions, and other environmental protection functions".
The Government's response to that report, which was published in April 1989, rejected the proposal on the grounds that a multiplicity of agencies, tailor-made to regulate specific issues, was more effective and, secondly, that ministerial accountability must be paramount in the arrangements.
About February 1989 —if my memory does not belie me —the then Secretary of State, Mr. Nicholas Ridley, recognised the need for an environmental monitoring body with sufficient independence from the Government to carry non-partisan plausibility. At the time he considered this important, but later, in response to a question from the audience at a major departmental PR show in the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, he again invoked the importance of ministerial responsibility to resist calls for an environmental protection Commission.

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I arrived in late summer with the feeling that no one seemed obviously about to take further steps. I therefore began to examine the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as had been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, and I recast it in the form your Lordships now see to make it into an environment protection Bill. In that process I was much helped by consultations with specialists in many different areas, whose anonymity I will protect for the time being. Their experience covered industrial safety and worker protection, environmental law, Civil Service administration and related matters, all of which were useful adjuncts to my own environmental background. Like any sole author I am grateful for that help, but accept responsibility for all outstanding deficiencies in the text of the Bill. It is my first.
Coincidentally —and this was a true coincidence —on the very day before the First Reading, the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council, Sir William Wilkinson, introducing his annual report, said:
"Surely the day for a powerful independent environmental agency cannot be far away. Such a body is fast becoming a necessity".
I said that I felt it was also proper to look at some of the responses I received. I can say that all those from the non-governmental voluntary environmental organisations have been favourable. I have had responses from the National Society for Clean Air, the Council for the Protection of Rural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. However, I must admit that I am a member of all those organisations and a vice-president of at least one. So perhaps it will be said, "They would, wouldn't they".
I have had responses from professional and commercial associations, such as the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, that were broadly favourable. I look forward to hearing your Lordships' views. I have, of course, taken note that the Opposition have produced discussion papers on similar lines and I was able to attend a briefing at the launching session across the way. I note also that Mr. Bryan Gould proposed amendments to the Environmental Protection Bill, which is now in another place. These would have served to introduce an environmental protection executive, but he lost on a Division.
I said that I would touch on the deficiencies in the present version of the Bill which inevitably have come to my attention in the time since it was published. Several correspondents have pointed out inadequacies in the text; similar shortcomings have occurred to me quite spontaneously on reflection since First Reading. Many are attributable to the Bill's rather close modelling (if one cared to be rude one could almost describe it as plagiarism) to the Health and Safety at Work etc Act. Some things have crept in which are not appropriate to an environmental protection Bill.
I should like to think that now, in Clause 1(1)(d) I would introduce a reference to "natural resources". In Clause 2(2) I doubt now that the use of the term
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"risk" is advisable in framing legislation of this nature. Clause 3 is probably largely redundant and could be assumed under the general duty. Clause 25 is seriously defective. I have no intention whatever of curbing the freedom of public access to information as is implied in the clause, which dates from 1974. I believe that the register mechanisms or other appropriate arrangements envisaged in the Environmental Protection Bill are useful and valuable ways of bringing free access to environmental information for the public. I would delete Clause 25 in its entirety.
With regard to Clause 26, I recognise that it is probably foolish to put fixed values on fines. One of my lawyer friends could not see any provision in that clause for non-compliance to be an offence. Some kind critic described Schedule 1 as "eclectic." I am prepared to admit that Schedule 1 was written in the course of a busy afternoon in the Library while I thumbed through past legislation, and for that I should perhaps apologise, but it is intended as an illustration rather than the complete compendium of existing legislation that would be brought into the Bill.
The future prospects of the Bill are uncertain at this stage. We shall in due course have before us the Environmental Protection Bill when it arrives from the other place. There is no doubt that the manner in which we integrate environmental protection in our national legislation is highly topical and must be regarded as important and of immediate intention. No doubt there will be a variety of views expressed this evening: for the time being I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(The Earl of Cranbrook.)
7.56 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I warmly welcome the initiative taken by the noble Earl in producing and moving the Second Reading of this Bill, though I am a little puzzled as to his intentions in view of the fact that the Government already have a Bill in another place. Perhaps he hopes that the Government, either during the progress of their Bill in another place or in this House, may listen to what is said about the present Bill and include in their own Bill some of the ideas which have been produced by the noble Earl. If that is his objective I very warmly applaud it and hope that the Government take note.
The Bill illustrates the heart of the whole debate on the environment and is a very valuable contribution to that debate. In particular, as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, pointed out last night, it echoes the words of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, last week when he introduced and spoke to his report on the greenhouse effect. He said that we are past the stage at which we can say that until this is scientifically totally proven no action should be taken. This Bill echoes what has often been called the "no regrets" policy —that prevention is better than cure and that we cannot wait for total certainty in scientific research on the subject.

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The benefits that will accrue from a credible institutional framework for the protection of the environment are essential if we are to be serious about the matter. Within that framework public accountability is also essential. As I shall explain later, I am worried as to whether public accountability goes far enough in the Bill; but certainly it is an issue which is tackled. The creation of an agency which, as the noble Earl said, can go right through government departments and can draw to the attention of governments the environmental consequences of actions which are not necessarily apparent as environmental issues is very valuable.
However, I am worried that in all this institutional creation the position of the Secretary of State seems to be too paramount. When we come to the two essential institutional innovations—namely, the Environmental Protection Commission and the Environment Protection Executive —I would prefer that they did not depend so much on the action of the Secretary of State. We know that some Secretaries of State do not act or they cover up issues which are brought before them. I am not suggesting that I can draft the matter easily, but I would like to see a greater accountability to Parliament rather than to have the immense power which is put with the Secretary of State in the terms of the Bill as it stands.
Nevertheless, if this Bill were passed it would give an opportunity for the introduction of primary legislation of a character which would enable more executive action to be taken as regards matters such as European directives which at the moment are more difficult to introduce. There is one major omission (if it is an omission) to which I hope the noble Earl will address himself when he winds up this evening. In all the discussion on actions to protect the environment, there tends to be a concentration on what is being consumed, emitted or corrupted in this country. I agree entirely with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, and with the noble Earl who said that we cannot wait for action until there is certainty.
It is not an argument that, because international action is crucial on this issue, unilateral action is useless. It is the responsibility of this country to set an example. However, more than that, there is also a responsibility in this country to see what is produced here and sent abroad. I am frightened of the danger that we could limit and perhaps abolish the production and consumption of environmentally dangerous products in this country and then find that companies were sending those products abroad, particularly to third world countries.
I draw the attention of the House to the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of the National Audit Office called Bilateral Aid to India. I mention that document in the following context because it is very relevant. Over the past 10 years this country has provided £1 billion in aid to India. The responsibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General was to find out how that money had been spent. There are some very disturbing revelations made in the report and I shall give two.
The Comptroller and Auditor General stated that the worst example was the Amlohri open-cast mine
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in Uttar Pradesh. The report says that a visiting British High Commission team found,
"serious environmental problems: considerable devastation of the landscape; spontaneous surface fires; the lack of a watering system for the mine,"
and severe pollution hazards from dust and gas.
That is the first instance. The second concerns the £37 million aid programme to the Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation which aims to help 200,000 farmers to increase grain production. The Comptroller and Auditor General found that pollution was not considered and hazardous pesticides, banned in Britain because they were dangerous to people, were included in the initial aid package.
At the welcome instigation of the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, last night we were debating the question of CFCs. I make no apology for returning to that debate for a moment. We found that in the attempt to reduce the emission of CFCs from refrigerators new gases had been produced, mainly by ICI. A particular new gas is that known as HFC 134A. I pointed out last night that though that gas reduces CFC emissions, it is two-and-a-half thousand times more dangerous to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
The point I am making is that we hope that this country concentrates on developing its technology in environmentally-benign products to export to the third world in order to enable them to develop their standard of living at least to the point where the populations are able to stay alive. If we are to concentrate on that gigantic task, we must carefully examine what is being sent out to those countries. My fear is that though imports are mentioned in this Bill, exports are not. That may be an omission or a misreading of the wording of the Bill. In a Bill of this kind I should like to see a prohibition placed on all environmentally-dangerous products produced in this country, and not just those used here.
I should like to see powers taken to prevent companies in this country from producing these dangers to the environment because the products are already being sent abroad to third world countries and other countries. That is the major criticism I have of the Bill. I hope that the noble Earl will take the criticism in the spirit in which it is meant. Perhaps he will address himself, in his winding-up speech, to the question of whether I have misread the Bill or whether the changes that I have suggested can be made under the powers of the Bill. If not, perhaps the noble Earl will pursue the issues beyond Second Reading stage so that we may discuss and amend them at Committee stage.
8.8 p.m.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, is a distinguished scientist. Some of the language used in this Bill is decidedly technical and not in my dictionary. Nonetheless, I hope that the House will bear with me. The noble Earl has introduced the Bill with skill and I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, with interest.
My speech will fall broadly into two parts; first, an appreciation of a brave step in the right direction

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based, I understand, on the inspiration of the Brundtland Report of 1987. We offer criticism on certain points for examination more carefully at a later stage. Secondly, I offer a more personal and emotive expression of my firm conviction that this Bill is but one of many steps that will be necessary if global environmental problems, which cannot fail to rub off on the United Kingdom, are to be effectively dealt with.
On the basis that "sufficient unto the hour is the evil thereof', I have not followed in detail the progress of the Government's Environmental Protection Bill, at present going through another place. But I was fascinated, if I may digress for a moment, by Clause 16 of that Bill. It says that if an inspector finds that,
"the article or substance is a cause of imminent danger of serious harm he may seize it and cause it to be rendered harmless (whether by destruction or otherwise)".
I submit that if every act of common sense has to be specified as within the law, it will be a very long Act.
The Bill presently before the House is welcome in principle in that it seeks to establish an independent Commission with overall executive powers to enhance environmental protection at arm's length from the Secretary of State. This represents an important departure from normal practice although falling short of the American model. However, the powers of the Secretary of State are also extended, and the degree of independence of the Commission is questionable.
In Clause 1 the intentions are sound but lack clear definition. The noble Earl touched on this point. How is the Bill expected, at a sweep, to eliminate pollution? What are "essential ecological processes"? What is "sustainable utilisation"? On this last point I sought the opinion of my noble friend Lord Ezra on our domestic coal supplies. He told me that when he was at the National Coal Board —and it may well be so today —it was accepted that the whereabouts of 50 years' supply of coal, at current usage, available with reasonable ease, should always be known. A further 250 years' supply is researched and held as a reserve. But beyond those 300 years, which is surely not a very long time in the history of mankind, the supply is less certain. It could go on for as much as a further 1,500 years, but location is by no means certain. Extraction, even where possible, could be desperately difficult and consequently exhorbitantly expensive. And my noble friend reminded me that oil supplies, including the great reservoirs in the Middle East, will run out long before coal. I ask the noble Earl to clarify what he considers acceptable and sustainable utilisation of resources.
Perhaps I may add a personal experience. A 40-acre field near my father's house was found to contain gravel. This was extracted over the years and the level of the land lowered by up to 15 feet. The contractor has now moved on to a much larger area in a neighbouring parish. What is sustainable about that?
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I turn to Clauses 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Not surprisingly these clauses seek to impose a general duty of care to ensure,
"the protection of the environment".
But the phrase "so far as is reasonably practicable" suggests a worrying invitation to provide a defence of commercial judgment as against the basic provisions. We would support those organisations which suggest there is a case for a new clause providing for a specific duty on public bodies, local authorities and government departments, in addition to duties on employers, in connection with the care and protection of the environment.
Preparing environmental protection statements could be unreasonably onerous for some, but the duty of public disclosure is good if enforced. But will it be? It is a very real concern to us that sensible regulations are often valueless, because at the end of the day no attempt is made to see that they are carried out.
Clause 7 covers the establishment of the two separate bodies, the Environment Protection Commission and the Environment Protection Executive. We welcome the idea of an authority with real teeth. Presumably this structure is intended to cover the whole United Kingdom, although the Bill only rarely mentions Scotland and there are intriguing references to the Isles of Scilly. Although I spent 10 years debating the affairs of Northern Ireland, I am still surprised that the environment of the Province is not to be protected, apparently, as immediately or enthusiastically as the mainland. Perhaps the noble Earl could again comment.
I find encouraging the instruction in Clause 8(2)(c) that it should be the duty of the Commissioner,
"to provide advice and dissemination of knowledge about the protection of the environment".
General education of the public is so clearly desirable.
The remaining clauses introduce welcome strengthening and codification of existing powers of enforcement. I understand that these provisions need to be consolidated within the Government's proposals for integrated pollution control, contained in Clause 1 of the Environmental Protection Bill.
Beyond this Bill, beyond the Government's own Bill, we expect a detailed White Paper. The problems are immense and urgent action is vital. We are not even considering today the felling of the rain forests in Brazil, the tragic chemical pollution in Poland, the appalling devastation in much of the USSR, quite apart from the nuclear disaster area at Chernobyl, or the spreading of desertland in Ethiopia and across the African continent. But we all share one world and our problems are inter-related. It has become a truism that we are only trustees of this planet for future generations. I fear that we are not good trustees.
In the debate on the greenhouse effect on 30th January, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, the chairman of the reporting committee, emphasised the need to keep the balance between panic and complacency. That is wise advice. But I suspect that complacency in all these matters is the

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more prevalent attitude today. I am not up in the theology of the situation and no bishop is present to help, but perhaps I may conclude with quotations from two Church leaders. The first is from an article by the Bishop of Dudley, who assists in my home diocese of Worcester. He wrote recently:
"It now seems there are limits which must be observed if the world is to survive as a viable planet. Some people are telling us we have already reached these limits and a halt must be called now. It certainly seems that during the nineties we shall be near to the point of no return. These could be the years when the state of the planet becomes so bad that it is too late to reverse the rundown. Evidence points to our being nearly at that point and so the nineties will be a crucial decade for global survival, the time when we nearly lose the world through greed".
Secondly, Martin Luther King said shortly before his death in 1968:
"Over the bleached bones of numerous civilisations are written the pathetic words 'too late'. If we do not act, we shall be merely dragged down the dark corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight".
I frankly enjoy my present sense of comparative prosperity, but without confidence in its permanence. I was going to ask the noble Lord, Lord Reay, whether he would reply to a criticism often heard that this Government go too far in their belief in the operation of market forces. A good business head is valuable, but are we not in danger of over-use of resources at the cost of future generations? This matter was dealt with at length in the previous debate. My noble friend Lady Seear made the point that often market forces tend to operate satisfactorily only in the short term. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester referred to the tremendous environmental damage that sometimes results.
My Lords, 1972 was the year of the famous Stockholm Declaration by the UN Conference on the Human Environment. It said:
"Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being".
I submit that we should ponder this carefully.
Perhaps I may therefore summarise. I do not wish unduly to alarm but world environmental problems are at a critical stage. Let us put our own affairs in order, as the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has said. This Bill is a step in the right direction. But let us beyond that, and beyond the Government's own Bill, look to the needs of international co-operation in this field, and on an unprecedented scale.
8.20 p.m.
Lord Norrie: My Lords, I wish only to make a brief comment in support of the aims of my noble friend's Bill. The very fact that he has brought forward a Bill which proposes an integrated system for environmental protection illustrates the fact that we do not have such a system at present. That fact is to be regretted. The Bill is also of special significance, coinciding as it does with the Government's own Environmental Protection Bill currently being debated in another place. My view is that my noble friend's Bill is more far-reaching than the Government's; indeed, it proposes a comprehensive system for regulating all activities which will affect the environment.
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As we enter the 1990s we find ourselves faced with a variety of potentially disastrous environmental problems both nationally and globally. Such problems call for a radical shift in the way in which environmental protection is administered in this country, and, above all, it must be in a form in which the public and those working in conservation and environmental protection can have confidence. It seems to me that if we are to instigate a major upheaval in our environmental protection institutions and administration —and I believe we must do so —this should be considered carefully and with adequate consultation with those who will operate it.
The Government will be aware of the disquiet among NGOs over their proposals for reorganising the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission. This was clearly expressed at a recent Wildlife Link conference held on 19th October 1989. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that Wildlife Link is the leading UK body which liaises between voluntary organisations dealing with wildlife and conservation. I shall quote from a summary of the proceedings of the conference:
"Speaker after speaker has confirmed that the Government has not addressed the real issues, and as a consequence these proposals will not advance the cause of landscape and wildlife protection".
Institutional reform is definitely needed. We must ensure that we get this right. Indeed, it lies at the very heart of my noble friend's Bill. I believe that this Bill represents a significant contribution to the debate about the way forward both for conservation and ultimately for the environment itself.
As has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, it is perhaps worth noting the Government's response to amendments tabled to their Bill in another place by the shadow Secretary of State for the Environment on 30th January. The Minister reiterated the Secretary of State's view that the Government still have an open mind on these institutional issues.
I therefore urge the Government to respond in a positive manner to the ideas which lie behind these proposals and to address them either in their Bill or in their forthcoming White Paper. As the Government have made it clear that the environment is an issue at the top of their agenda, I hope that we can pull together the best ideas that are surfacing in the current public debate. For the sake of the environment we must improve upon present arrangements and not merely change them.
8.23 p.m.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I am sympathetic to the general intentions of the Bill. All of us are against evil and all of us, in the same way, must be against pouring quantities of noxious chemicals into the atmosphere or polluting the water supplies. I hope that I can express to your Lordships this evening the reasons for the profound disquiet I have about the Bill as drafted. In my view it is drafted very widely and will give the Commission and the Government very wide powers.
The noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, complained that the Government's Bill did not contain adequate

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definitions. I wish to complain about the fact that his Bill does not define the environment. We probably think that we all know what the word "environment" means, but I believe that there are considerable grey areas at the margin. I referred to the Oxford Reference Dictionary this morning to find a definition of "environment". It was defined as:
"Surroundings: Especially as affecting people's lives".
That is a very wide definition. Moreover, the extremely wide powers which are given to the Commission and, indeed, to the Secretary of State in the Bill could, I suggest, lead to all kinds of unintended powers being made available.
As some noble Lords will know, my particular concern is mainly in the field of agriculture and forestry. I am therefore concerned with such issues as landscape, visual amenity, smell, wildlife and, of course, the production of food and timber. I recently came across what is possibly an interesting example of a borderline case of what is generally accepted as the environment when the National Coal Board erected three or four enormous searchlights of the kind which are used to illuminate football grounds on a coal mine not very far from my house. These lights throw out a strong orange glare which has completely ruined my enjoyment of the night sky. However, is the beauty of the night sky part of the environment? It is an interesting question. I think that it is, although some people would undoubtedly not agree.
A few days ago I noticed in the 15th report of the Nature Conservancy Council an interesting definition which I think perhaps sets an example of the kind of objective which one would have hoped to find somewhere in a schedule to this Bill. Of course it is in a much more limited context than that which relates to wildlife. It reads:
"We believe it is important that the countryside is managed in a way that permits it to sustain the fullest possible range of British wildlife and gives people the opportunity to experience and enjoy our native wildlife".
That is a fairly clear statement of what the council is trying to do, albeit only in one field of the environment concerning the countryside.
Agriculture and forestry are activities which by their very nature are concerned to modify the environment. When I was reading agriculture at Oxford I remember my professor stressing to us again and again that agriculture is a process of modifying the environment. He added that the harder you push nature in the face, the harder it pushes back.
Why does this Bill only protect the environment? Should we not be improving it? Moreover, should we not be managing it? I think that we should. My concern is with who will make the decisions. The beauty of the English countryside today depends upon man-made modifications which have taken place over the years. It has resulted from individual decisions, sometimes wrong, but it has given a wealth of variety. Of course there is a need to control vandals and those who pull out all the hedgerows. However, such people are relatively few. In my view too much control will stifle beneficial change. It
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will lead to dull monotony and it will deaden the enthusiasm of those who are responsible for managing the countryside and those who largely fund the cost of its care.
If the Bill is enacted, who will decide about the landscape under its provisions? I do not think that the proposed composition of the Commission makes it very well qualified to make aesthetic decisions or, indeed, decisions on landscape and visual amenity issues.
How much control is envisaged by the Bill? In connection with the urban environment, will it not seriously overlap the responsibilities of the planning authorities? I think that clarification is needed as to what the Bill is about and to set limits to the powers which it confers. If that is not done there will be a danger, if the Bill is enacted, that it will be used by specialist groups and enthusiastic pressure groups to further their own ends, possibly at the expense of others. In my view it should clearly define what aspects of the environment it relates to; it should set out more clearly the objectives and aims which it seeks to achieve; and it must also place squarely on the Commission the duty to achieve a balance between the legitimate claims of all those who are concerned about the environment and the countryside.
8.30 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I strongly support the Bill, and therefore I listened with a certain dismay as the noble Earl threw some doubt on its future. I hope that his worst fears will not be realised and that the Bill's provisions can somehow be incorporated, if not in this Bill, into some other Bill. I am advised, although, like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I have not yet digested the Bill which is in another place, that this Bill complements and improves the provisions of the Government's Environmental Protection Bill. The Bill's broad principles, which are set out in Clause 1, include the maintenance of essential ecological processes; the preservation of genetic diversity; and the sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems. They form a sound basis for conserving our natural environment and are a recognition of the need for environmental management, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, felt was essential.
Clauses 2 and 4 place duties on employers to adopt policies aimed at protecting the environment and on employees to take reasonable care for the protection of the environment. I should like to see the Bill strengthened to place a duty on government departments, local authorities and public bodies to promote the conservation of wildlife and the environment. That would be similar to regulations which already exist in Northern Ireland. It is a shame that we cannot achieve the same standards for Great Britain.
Clauses 7 to 11 establish the Environmental Protection Commission and its executive and outline their various duties and powers. I note with approval that the Commission and its executive would have a Great Britain-wide remit.Does not that highlight the need to regulate pollution control and

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environmental protection on a Great Britain basis while allowing varying country needs to be met by different regulations? That relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, was saying about the present approach to environmental conservation in this country.
Clause 8(6) gives the Commission and the executive powers to acquire land. Can the noble Earl say whether he envisages the transfer of nature reserves to the new body or would he expect them to remain the responsibility of the NCC? What would be the relationship of the new body to SSSIs? Would it take over enforcement powers or would they remain elsewhere?
Clause 12 enables the Secretary of State to make regulations for controlling polluting substances and processes. Such regulations, combined with an effective Environmental Protection Executive, would sweep up environmental controls which fall outside the NRA and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution.
I make no apologies for introducing a current worry of the RSPB, of which I am proud to be a council member. A toxic substance which is currently used without control is lead shot used by wildfowlers. Noble Lords will be familiar with the poisoning effect on swans of lead fishing weights. Recognising the failure of attempts to encourage anglers to switch voluntarily to non-toxic weights, the Government in 1988 introduced new regulations to control the manufacture, supply and importation of lead weights. It was not until the water authorities began to introduce a statutory ban on the use of lead weights later that year that non-toxic alternatives replaced lead fishing weights. That policy has been successful. Recent surveys conducted by the RSPB have shown a significant increase in mute swan populations in recent years. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in its ninth report, Lead in the Environment, in recommendations 22 and 23 on page 143, stated:
"Urgent efforts should be made to develop alternatives to lead shot and lead fishing weights.
As soon as these alternatives are available, the Government should legislate to ban any further use of lead shot and fishing weights in circumstances where they are irretrievably dispersed in the environment".
Fishing weights have gone and we now look to the Minister to take action on lead shot.
There is growing evidence that wildfowl in our estuaries and wetlands are dying from lead poisoning through the ingestion of spent shot which accumulates in the soil. Waterfowl such as pintail, pochard, mallard and whooper swan feed in the soil for food and mistakenly ingest lead gun shot with the grit needed for the bird's digestive process. The lead remains in the bird, which suffers paralysis and usually dies from starvation.
That problem has been identified and researched in North America, where they lose some 2 million birds each year. They have found a good alternative to lead shot. They are using a soft steel cartridge. Gun cartridge manufacturers have taken a commercial decision to produce soft steel cartridges as a non-toxic alternative. So successful has that been that federal legislation has been passed which will
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outlaw the use of lead shot for all wildfowling in the USA by next year (1991).
I address this question to the Minister rather than to the noble Earl: have the Government any plans to take action on lead shot?
Later clauses of the Bill contain useful enforcement powers which we would wish to explore and strengthen in Committee. I hope that we are to proceed to a Committee stage. The Bill could be a useful vehicle for some much needed improvements to the provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. We welcome the Bill, as I said at the outset, and I hope that it will continue its progress throughout all its stages in the House.
8.36 p.m.
Lord Moran: My Lords, there can be no doubt that there is an urgent need for better and more effective environmental protection in this small, overpopulated, grossly contaminated country of ours, but we are not holding the line. On the contrary, environmental damage, much of it irreversible, is being inflicted on our countryside —our coasts, estuaries, uplands, wetlands, heaths and downs—every week. What has been happening has been spelt out in the paper published by the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, Losing Ground, based on information from 48 wildlife trusts all over the country, which I have mentioned previously in the House. They say that the rate of loss of wild places is not declining.
I shall give two recent examples of what is happening. A case was reported in the Sunday Telegraph on 21st January in which Shell UK Exploration had decided to award a contract to build a pipeline construction yard on part of the Scottish coast designated by law as of national ecological importance. It is a Grade 1 SSSI, a protected area under the Birds Directive. According to the report, when asked why it could not build further up the coast where it would not do any environmental damage, Shell said that it had to maintain commercial competition between two pipeline assembly contractors. That is an almost frivolous reason for damaging what is in fact the only mainland breeding site of a rare bird, the whimbrel.
The Times today reports the chairman of the NERC as saying that only a fraction of the man-made chemicals seeping into the groundwater are being monitored. There is, moreover, still no safeguarding of the wider environment. The NCC and the RSPB are putting together facts on the grave threats to our estuaries. The damage from acid rain continues. The pressure on what remains of our natural environment is enormous. Public opinion is aroused. A Gallup poll in the Daily Telegraph in August 1989 found that 80 per cent. of country dwellers and 78 per cent. of town dwellers believed that the countryside was in danger; and that 84 per cent. were dissatisfied with the Government's efforts to protect it. I believe that those figures are remarkable.
In the circumstances, the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, has, I believe, performed a notable public service in bringing this Bill forward. It is very much the kind of Bill that many of us hoped the

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Government would bring in when we heard that they were planning a green Bill. This is what the Environmental Protection Bill ought to have been but is not. Instead, the Government's Bill is to some extent a disappointing ragbag of miscellaneous powers together with a highly controversial proposal to dismember the NCC.
Many people have been surprised that the Government seem so reluctant to consult expert opinion. If they had brought in a comprehensive Bill like that of the noble Earl, they might have secured the strong support of conservationists and of the many people who care passionately about the environment. It would surely have been wise for them to consult the noble Earl sitting on their own Benches. They have only to read this Bill to see that he is a master of his subject.
On the Environment Protection Bill itself, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, that Clause I is an admirable way in which to begin an environmental Bill of this kind. It is properly grounded in science, which is exactly what it should be. It proposes an integrated system of environmental protection which does not exist at present and which I believe we need. The agency which carries this out ought surely to be independent, powerful and publicly accountable, and above all it ought to command public confidence. The Bill covers all Great Britain. As was observed by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, it even includes the Scilly Isles, in Clause 44, but not Northern Ireland. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I think that any system of environmental protection ought to cover Northern Ireland as well. It ought extend throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.
I am glad that the noble Earl gave credit to the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, who was the first to suggest the health and safety legislation as a model. I am sorry that ill health prevents him from being here tonight. I hope that the Government will study the Bill carefully, together with what is said in the House this evening, and will take it into account when they produce their promised White Paper later this year. I believe that the Bill points the way we should go and that action along the lines of the Bill will command widespread public support.
8.43 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, this is a remarkable and very welcome Bill. I have spent seven years in this House, for too much of which I have been involved not so much in legislation as in opposing government legislation. It would never have occurred to me, although I have tabled literally hundreds of amendments to government Bills, that I could even approach the skill that the noble Earl has shown in drafting a Bill of nearly 39 pages. It is an astonishing achievement; one on which he deserves to be congratulated professionally as well as in terms of his intentions and of the substantial achievements of the Bill.
The noble Earl rightly acknowledges that the model for his Bill has been the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. I think he would acknowledge
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as well that much of the thinking which has helped him to adapt that Act to the problems of environmental protection has come from the Brundtland Report of 1987. It is interesting that so much thinking on these lines is now moving in the same direction. The noble Earl feared when he introduced the debate that there would be varied views about the purpose of the Bill. I do not think that that has been the case at all. So far, with obvious reservations about the detail of the Bill, there has been universal acceptance of what it tries to achieve. I hope that that will be continued when the noble Lord, Lord Reay, replies from the Government Front Bench.
I have looked closely at the provisions of the Bill in relation to the Labour Party's policies to which the noble Earl referred. I find many important areas where our thinking is on the same lines. The fundamental difference to which I ought to refer at the outset before making more detailed comparisons is that the noble Earl's Bill which we are considering tonight is concerned primarily with a framework for environmental protection, whereas the Labour Party has in its policy review looked much more closely at the policies which are required. Although our framework is in many ways similar to that which the noble Earl proposed, we go much further in our definition of the kinds of environmental protection that will be necessary and the kinds of remedies which are required. I shall certainly not read large chunks from the Labour Party policy review, but some parts ought to be placed on record in the debate this evening.
We propose, first, a ministry of environmental protection and a powerful independent environmental protection executive; secondly, a wildlife and countryside service operating within the environmental protection executive; thirdly, enforcement of the key environmental principles —a presumption against pollution, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle. This is my ranking.
The proposals as I quote them are not necessarily in the same order as in our policy review. Fourthly, we propose a major national programme of energy efficiency and conservation intended to reduce Britain's effect on global warming and to promote growth in the economy at zero growth in total energy requirements. This would include a least-cost planning assessment of all proposals for new power stations.
We propose pollution control standards based on the long-term health and safety of children, not adults; action to deal with noise, filth, and squalor on the streets; measures to reduce atmospheric pollution; a clean water Act to improve water quality; measures to encourage the role of farmers as countryside managers as well as food producers; tax incentives to improve vehicle efficiency and promote environmentally responsible vehicle design and use; an integrated and adequately funded approach to the minimisation, treatment, recycling, monitoring and disposal of waste; and a ban on the import and export of toxic wastes which my noble friend Lord Hatch eloquently urged in his speech.

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It will be seen that, although in terms of the framework our thinking on these matters follows much the same lines as the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, it goes much further than his framework in spelling out what policies are required and what the environmental protection executive would have to do. Our environmental protection executive would be responsible to a Minister for environmental protection who would stand up for environmental issues in the Government. He would not be named as a Secretary of State for the Environment is named in a euphemistic way, as a means of avoiding the more complicated title of local government housing and planning, which is what the department used to be before it was called the Department of the Environment. But it would be a real department of the environment.
Our environmental protection executive would have regional environmental protection executives working to it so that the enforcement on the ground would be as integrated as the enforcement nationally. As the noble Earl has indicated, it would include a wide range of the existing environmental protection bodies which would be brought under the aegis of the environmental protection executive.
The problem with the noble Earl's formula is that Clause 8 provides for the Secretary of State to control through regulation a large part of the activities of the environmental protection Commission and the environmental protection agency. Since legislation is drafted to be imprecise about who the Secretary of State is, it leaves us open to the possibility that a Secretary of State nominated under this Bill to have these powers might not be willing to have them enforced in a comprehensive way and might not have the clout or the interest in government to see that the interests of environmental protection were paramount.
When we look at the precautionary principle, the principle that we should always err on the side of caution in looking at the risks of environmental protection, we and the noble Earl are very much on the same lines. Our provisions for penalties would include both criminal and civil penalties. The noble Earl seems to place more reliance simply on criminal penalties and he might be advised to consider amendments to extend civil responsibilities. Above all, the difference is that we spell out the kinds of pollution which ought to be dealt with in the terms of reference of the environmental protection ministry and executive and the noble Earl spells them out in Clause 1 only in the most general terms.
In introducing the Bill the noble Earl was very candid about the defects that he saw in it. I must say at once that they are not defects which would make it improper for the Bill to be given a Second Reading, and nor are they defects which could not be corrected in Committee. But if he will forgive me I should like to refer to some of the defects that I see which I hope, if he takes it to Committee, could be dealt with by amendment.
First, what is lacking in the Bill is a clear statement of the polluter pays principle. What is required is that there should be a provision for liability without the need to prove negligence. It should simply have
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to be proved that the pollution had taken place, not that it had taken place negligently. Secondly, because of its origins in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, the Bill concentrates too much on industrial pollution and too little on non-industrial pollution. It does not say anything very much about pollution caused by agriculture, although I think that the provision that an employer or a self-employed person is responsible for pollution will probably cover that case.
But what, above all, is missing is one of the most serious causes of pollution in this country, which is pollution from transportation, from vehicles, and the need for a transport policy which promotes public transport at the expense of private transport, or makes public transport a realistic and attractive alternative to private transport. That does not seem to be covered by the Bill and a really comprehensive pollution policy would have to include that.
There is reference principally in the Bill to the responsibilities of employers, but I suggest that there are responsibilities of people other than employers which ought to be reflected in the Bill, notably local authorities, which are, after all, the environmental protection authorities in this country at the present time. Undervalued and starved of funds they may be, but these are the duties that they have; and of course there are the responsibilities of individual members of the public.
The Bill would benefit if, in addition to the provisions which it already contains, it provided for annual environmental impact assessments to be carried out by employers and across industry, and for an annual audit of the effect of environmental policies. A number of noble Lords have referred rightly to the need not only to protect the environment but to promote and improve it. I particularly noted that valuable point from the noble Lord, Lord Norrie, and the Bill would benefit from those changes.
But, as I said, these are not changes which invalidate the Bill. They are not changes or defects which would cause us in any way to regret it if the noble Earl decided to take it to Committee. I hope very much that, despite the indications which I have heard, he proceeds with the Bill. The Bill, if proceeded with now, would sharpen the debate on the Government's Environmental Protection Bill which is now in Committee in another place. It would sharpen the thinking in the Government's mind on the White Paper which they are now producing.
The noble Lord, Lord Moran, was quite right in saying about the Environmental Protection Bill which the Government have put forward that this Bill is what it ought to have been but is not. He was quite correct about that. There are so many defects in that Bill which we shall have to debate when it comes to us in the summer that it would be as well if we clarified our minds first with a discussion of the Bill which is before us this evening.
I hope that in any further consideration we give to the Bill we do so on the three principles which lie behind our thinking on environmental protection: first, the presumption against pollution which is in

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the Bill; secondly, the polluter pays principle and, thirdly, the need for freedom of access to environmental information which the noble Earl acknowledged was not adequately reflected in his Clause 25.
With these provisos —and they are problems which can be overcome —I welcome the Bill. I congratulate the noble Earl on producing it and I hope that in one way or another it has a positive effect on the thinking of the Government because, as has been said by a number of speakers this evening, it is clear that their thinking is by no means as coherent, effective or determined as the thinking that the noble Earl has shown in presenting this Bill for Second Reading tonight.
8.57 p.m.
Lord Reay: My Lords, I should like to start where the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, ended by congratulating my noble friend Lord Cranbrook on bringing forward this measure for your Lordships' consideration. In doing so, he has succeeded in focusing debate on important environmental issues, especially those relating to institutional matters, at a time when the broad strategy and direction of policy on environmental protection is under review.
The issues covered in his Environment Protection Bill are of the most fundamental importance, dealing as they do with general duties of environmental care and the creation of a comprehensive environmental protection agency on the model of the Health and Safety Executive and Commission.
Perhaps I may deal first with the question of the duty of care. My noble friend's Bill seeks to place a general duty on all employers and the self-employed, and on all makers and suppliers of articles or substances, to take various specified steps to minimise the risks to the environment from their activities and products. There are further duties on employees, and a general duty on everyone not to interfere with or misuse,
"anything provided in the interests of the protection of the environment in pursuance of any of the relevant statutory provisions".
This is a laudable aim, but I question the practicality of such a broadly directed duty.
Our Environmental Protection Bill, which is now before another place, takes us a considerable distance in imposing specific duties of care on those whose activities have a potentially significant impact on the environment. In Part I of the Bill, which deals with industrial pollution, a duty is laid on operators of those industrial and other processes which are to be subject to integrated pollution control and to local authority air pollution control. Clause 6(4) of the Bill imposes a residual duty on the operator to use the,
"best available techniques not entailing excessive cost",
to prevent or minimise the release of specified polluting substances to the environment, and to render harmless any releases that do take place. Where any breach of this duty is alleged in the courts, the normal burden of proof will be reversed and it
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will be up to the operator to show that in his actions he was fulfilling his duty.
In Part II of the Bill, Clause 26 will impose a duty of care on people who produce, handle or dispose of waste to take all reasonable steps to ensure that waste is handled safely and properly.
In Part VI of the Bill, Clause 89 will impose a duty of care on those who import, acquire, keep or release genetically modified organisms.
Those new duties will extensively cover the activities which most put the environment at risk. The Government have not by any means closed their mind to the further application of a duty of care in other areas where it might be suitable. However, it is fair to say that we are not wholly convinced of the value of blanket —as opposed to targeted —duties of care, especially where there is the absence of a specific means of enforcement. Noble Lords may agree with me that duties which are declaratory rather than enforceable may do more harm than good.
I turn now to the broad definition of the environment and environmental harm which my noble friend has raised. In the Environmental Protection Bill, which on current expectations will be before your Lordships' House at Easter, we have had a fresh look at the definition of environmental pollution. We attempted to reach a universal definition of environmental pollution but found the task beyond us because of the different perspectives of the subject from different standpoints. Perhaps I may give your Lordships one example. A definition which embraced "harm to living organisms" could not be extended to the field of genetically modified organisms. That is because many genetically modified organisms will be pesticides whose purpose is precisely to cause "harm to living organisms".
Despite those problems, I believe that noble Lords will agree with me when I say that we have gone a long way in that direction in our definition of environmental pollution and harm in Clause 1 of the Environmental Protection Bill. With your Lordships' permission, I shall quote part of the definition relating to environmental harm:
"Harm means harm to the health of living organisms or other interference with the ecological systems of which they form part and, in the case of man, includes offence caused to any of his senses or harm to his property; harmless has a corresponding meaning."
I am not sure whether it will be possible to achieve a universal definition of environmental pollution, but we shall keep the point at the forefront of our minds during the passage of the Bill. If we find it possible to go even further than we have, then in principle the Government are willing to do so.
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, asked me a question about our policy with respect to lead shot. I should like to write to the noble Baroness on that question. She will appreciate that it was not a question that I could have been expected to anticipate.
Turning to institutional change and the question of an environmental agency, the Government have given a good deal of attention to the structure of our environmental protection institutions in recent

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years. A number of guiding principles have been observed. Operational roles have been separated from those of regulation, greater accountability has been built into the systems, and, where appropriate, control functions have been integrated.
The Water Act 1989 created the National Rivers Authority to protect the aquatic environment. It split the water utility function, which was passed to privatised companies, from the standard-setting and policing function which went to the NRA. In that way an unsatisfactory conflict of interests was removed.
Similarly, under Part II of the Environmental Protection Bill, the utility function of waste disposal will be separated from the regulatory function of licensing and enforcement. I am sure that the benefits to be secured from that institutional change will be commensurate with those already gained from the Water Act provisions.
Under the requirements of Part I of the Bill all major sources of industrial pollution, irrespective of the environmental medium to which they discharge, will be subject to a single control regime exercised by a single authority —Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution. I remind noble Lords that the Government created that unified pollution inspectorate in April 1987 acting on a recommendation of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution several of whose distinguished Commissioners, past and present, are members of your Lordships' House, including my noble friend Lord Cranbrook.
The Government have taken steps to make control authorities more accountable to the public. In particular since 1985 there have been requirements for public registers recording consents and results of monitoring in respect of discharges to water. Integrated pollution control will be subject to public participation in the determination of applications for IPC consent. Public registers will be required which will give full details of the application, the consent itself, the record of the operator in complying with the consent and any enforcement action taken. Similar registers will be required in respect of waste disposal licences and action taken under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960.
The Bill also strengthens the powers and responsbilities of local authorities in a wide range of environmental protection functions, including air pollution, waste disposal, litter and statutory nuisances. In so doing we have taken several steps to make them more open and accountable for their stewardship. For instance, waste regulation authorities will be obliged to report annually on the performance of their duties, and the citizen will be enabled to apply to the magistrates' court for an order if the local authority is not fulfilling its new duty to keep its areas free of litter.
All that amounts to the fact that the Government are in the midst of a comprehensive reform of our pollution control authorities with a view to producing a more coherent, rational and accountable system.
My noble friend does not believe that we have gone far enough. He proposes in his Bill to create not
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just a coherent system but a single grand authority. Perhaps we could go further. Certainly he and others have advanced in their thoughtful speeches a powerful case for doing so. But there are problems and drawbacks as well as advantages in what he proposes. Noble Lords should dwell on those before coming to a conclusion.
The Government have not so far been persuaded of the case for establishing such an agency. It is not self-evident that a large and comprehensive agency would be necessarily more effective and appropriate for dealing with all aspects of environmental protection. On the contrary, there is the risk that the creation of a large and complex bureaucracy would be inefficient and unwieldy and too remote from the small-scale and local nature of the vast bulk of pollution issues and incidents. Above all, there is the question of accountability. It would be harder to make such a large and independent body properly accountable either to local electorates on small issues or to Parliament on major ones.
Those are very significant points which were set out in the Government's reply to the recommendation for a national environment protection agency which a Select Committee in another place made last year. They have not gone away in the meantime. Indeed, to the extent that the United States Environment Protection Agency, which has been held up by some as a model for this country, has gone the other way, those questions have become more pointed. Noble Lords will recall that three weeks ago President Bush announced that he would bring the EPA fully within his government, rename it the Department of the Environment and appoint its director to his Cabinet.
The Government are reconsidering their position on the question of the extent to which environmental protection authorities should be at arm's length from government and how closely they should be integrated with one another. As noble Lords know, the Government are heavily engaged in a strategic review of environmental protection policies with a view to producing later this year a White Paper which will set the orientation and priorities for environmental policies into the next century. It is only proper that institutional questions should be considered in the context of that review.
I can therefore assure noble Lords not only that those issues are under active consideration but that we are considering them with an open mind and will reach a conclusion by the autumn. Our thinking has been stimulated by the notable contribution of my noble friend Lord Cranbrook and will be better informed by the insights and arguments deployed this evening by noble Lords.
9.9 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this evening's debate and recognise that a great deal of skill and experience has been applied, far exceeding anything that I could muster. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, for his kind words, although I am afraid that I cannot accept them.

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I am grateful for the attention given by noble Lords to the Bill. Perhaps I may answer a few specific questions. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, I said in my introduction that Clause 3 was perhaps unduly specific. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, it is based on industry rather than on broader environmental aspects, but it would certainly include consideration of exports.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, there would be an extension of duties to public bodies. I included the power to acquire land simply because, as I said earlier, the Nature Conservancy Council would be an arm of the Environment Protection Commission.
With regard to the speech of my noble friend Lord Reay, I do not believe that the Bill proposes the creation of a vast bureaucracy. It is simply a reassembling of existing agencies within a new framework, so there is nothing to be afraid of there. The reassembling would create new capacities for thought, new linkages and new powers for integration of the environmental interests of those bodies. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, it is essentially a framework Bill. It lacks prescriptions, but —I should like to make this point clear —noble Lords will notice that the Commission has the power to sponsor research. The Commission is not the executive itself; it is the think-tank. That is the only new element. Essentially, at the head of a large number of existing organisations, which would continue to perform their functions but would do so on a more free-standing basis, would be placed a small, coherent think-tank which would be a cheap body. I remind noble Lords that such bodies as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution draw on the services of—I do not necessarily include myself—some excellent brains. In addition to amateurs like myself, there are a large number of professors and Royal Society members on the Commission who give their services freely, so think-tanks are a pretty cheap but useful commodity in this country.
Essentially, the Bill provides a new framework into which existing structures are adapted. It applies the capacity and adaptability to see, think, discover, discuss and promote issues in the public realm. It is a good model. If it had existed, some of the issues in the Environmental Protection Bill, such as the duty of care and the release of genetically manipulated organisms, which had been well discussed in the forum of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and on which a general consensus had been reached, could quite easily have been brought in by regulation through a simplified legislative process. We should not then have had to wait such a long time for the Government's Environmental Protection Bill.
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I was impressed by the model of the Health and Safety at Work Act, as first proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, because as a farmer, I have seen it in operation. Agricultural inspectors are powerful people with a good perception of the risks to which farmworkers are subject, and what they say goes. If an inspector does not like what he sees on the ground, he simply tells one so and explains why and steps are taken. That is how I should like to see environmental protection working in this country; in other words, at the grass roots, involving inspectors who are sympathetic to the public with whom they interact, but well-grounded in the skilled knowledge and with a powerful, well-trained capacity to recognise environmental risk when they see it. I still feel that it is a model that could work. I believe that it is something that needs to be considered.
I know that I nabbed the Government's name. I put my Bill down on the very first day it was possible to do so. There was a certain deliberate tease in that, perhaps, but the Government very quickly found that a small spelling change was all that was needed. I do not think that it was excessive cheek or unacceptable behaviour on my part. I hope it was not. I apologise if I have behaved badly in that way. I believe that the interest that has been aroused by the debate, and the thinking that has gone on as the Bill paused between First and Second Reading, have in fact been generally useful and constructive.
This Bill has served its purpose and its function is now over. I believe that the point has been brought forward. I sincerely hope that it will be discussed and that it will be considered very seriously, with all the strength of argument that has been put forward today by noble Lords in this Chamber, as the Government develop their own White Paper. I very much hope that the thinking will be carried forward and, although I heard my noble friend raise preliminary objections against it, I hope that considered opinion will recognise that there are merits in the Bill, because I believe that there are very strong arguments for some reconstruction along these lines.
There are many imperfections in the Bill, several of which I recognise myself and others which have been brought to noble Lords' attention today. It would be wrong of me to waste government time by continuing further with it. I do not feel that national resources ought to be devoted to two environmental Bills at the same time. I believe that the underlying thinking can be incorporated. Having said that, and having had the opportunity for a debate, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for a Second Reading.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes past nine o'clock.

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