Sitting of 24 November 1993

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

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—
(1) the total number of Questions to Ministers or other Members which stood on the Order Paper, distinguishing those set down for oral, written priority and written answer

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

  CLOSURE OF DEBATE AND ALLOCATION OF TIME
  Ordered,
  That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—
  (A) applications of Standing Order No. 35 (Closure of debate)—

  (1) in the House and in Committee of the whole House, under the following heads:

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Date when Closure claimed, and by whom

  Question before House or Committee When claimed

  Whether in House or Committee

  Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the Chair

  Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without that Motion

  Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against

  and

  (2) in the Standing Committees under the following heads:

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Date when Closure claimed, and by whom

  Question before Committee when claimed

  Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the chair

  Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without that Motion

  Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against

  (B) applications of Standing Order No. 28 (Powers of Chair to propose question)—

  (1) in the House and in Committee of the whole House, under the following heads:

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Date when Closure claimed, and by whom

  Whether in House or Committee

  Whether claimed in respect of Motion or Amendment

  Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the Chair

  Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against

  and

  (2) in the Standing Committees under the following heads:

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Date when Closure claimed, and by whom

  Whether claimed in respect or Motion or Amendment

  Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by the Chair

  Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against

  and
  respectively, the number of days upon which replies to Questions for oral answers were given in the House; and the total number of Questions for oral answer to which such answers were given in the House;

  (2) the total number of Notices of Motions given for an early day;

  (3) the number of Members ordered to withdraw from the House under Standing Order No. 42 (Disorderly conduct), showing separately the orders given in the House and those given in Committee; and the Members suspended from the service of the House under Standing Order No. 43 (Order in debate) or otherwise, distinguishing whether the offence was committed in the House or in Committee, the period of such suspension, the number of occasions on which more than one Member was so suspended having jointly disregarded the authority of the Chair, and the number of occasions on which the attention of the House was called to the need for recourse to force to compel obedience to the Speaker's direction; and

  (4) the number of public petitions presented to the House distinguishing separately those brought to the Table at the ti mes specified by Standing Order No. 133 (Time and manner of presenting petitions).—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

  (C) the number of Bills in respect of which allocation of time orders (distinguishing where appropriate orders supplementary to a previous order) were made under Standing Order No. 81 (Allocation of time to Bills), showing in respect of each Bill—

  (i) the number of sittings allotted to the consideration of the Bill in Standing Committee by any report of a Business Sub-Committee under Standing Order No. 103 (Business sub-committees) agreed to by the Standing Committee, and the number of sittings of the Standing Committee pursuant thereto; and

  (ii) the number of days or portions of days allotted by the allocation of time order and any supplementary order to the consideration of the Bill at any stage in the House or in committee, together with the number of days upon which proceedings were so taken in the House or in committee.

  DELEGATED LEGISLATION: Return for Session 1992–93 of—

  (A) the numbers of Instruments subject to the different forms of parliamentary procedure and those for which no parliamentary procedure is prescribed by statute (1) laid before the House; and (2) considered by the Joint Committee and Select Committee on Statutory Instruments respectively pursuant to their orders of reference, setting out the grounds on which Instruments may be drawn to the special attention of the House under Standing Order No. 124 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee)) and specifying the number of Instruments so reported under each of these grounds; and

  (B) the numbers of Instruments considered by a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c., and by the House respectively, showing the number where the Question on the proceedings relating thereto was put forthwith under paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—

(A) the numbers of Instruments subject to the different forms of parliamentary procedure and those for which no parliamentary procedure is prescribed by statute (1) laid before the House; and (2) considered by the Joint Committee and Select Committee on Statutory Instruments respectively pursuant to their orders of reference, setting out the grounds on which Instruments may be drawn to the special attention of the House under Standing Order No. 124 (Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee) and specifying the number of Instruments so reported under each of these grounds; and

(B) the numbers of Instruments considered by a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c., and by the House respectively, showing the number where the Question on the proceedings relating thereto was put forthwith under paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

PRIVATE BILLS AND PRIVATE BUSINESS
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—

(1) The number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, Bills for the confirmation of Orders under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders introduced into this House, and brought from the House of Lords, and of Acts passed, specifying also the dates of the House's consideration of the several stages of such Bills;

(2) All Private Bills, Hybrid Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which were reported on by Committees on Opposed Bills or by Committees nominated by the House or partly by the House and partly by the Committee of Selection, together with the names of the selected Members who served on each Committee; the first and also the last day of the sitting of each Committee; the number of days on which each Committee sat; the number of days on which each selected Member served; the number of days occupied by each Bill in Committee; the Bills of which the Preambles were reported to have been proved; the Bills of which the Preambles were reported to have been not proved; and in the case of Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, whether the Provisional Order ought or ought not to be confirmed;

(3) All Private Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which were referred by the Committee of Selection to the Committee on Unopposed Bills, together with the names of the Members who served on the Committee; the number of days on which the Committee sat; and the number of days on which each Member attended;

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(4) The number of Bills to confirm Orders under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936, distinguishing those proceeded with under section 7 and under section 9 respectively; specifying, in the case of Bills proceeded with under section 9 against which petitions were deposited, whether a motion was made to refer the Bill to a joint committee, and if so whether such motion was made to refer the Bill to a joint committee, and if so whether such motion was agreed to, withdrawn, negatived or otherwise disposed of; and stating for each joint committee to which a Bill was referred the names of the Members of this House nominated thereto, the first and last day of the committee's sitting, the number of days on which each joint committee sat for the consideration of the Bill referred to it, the number of days on which each Member of the committee served, and whether the committee reported that the order ought or ought not be confirmed;

(5) The number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, Bills for the confirmation of Orders under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders withdrawn or not proceeded with by the parties, those Bills being specified which were referred to Committees and dropped during the sittings of the committee; and

(6) The membership, work, costs and staff of the Court of Referees and the Standing Orders Committee.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

PUBLIC BILLS
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return to Session 1992–93 of the number of Public Bills (other than Bills to confirm Provisional Orders and Bills to confirm Orders under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) distinguishing Government from other Bills, introduced into this House, or brought from the House of Lords, showing—

(1) the number which received the Royal Assent, and

(2) the number which did not receive the Royal Assent, indicating those which were introduced into but not passed by this House, those passed by this House but not by the House of Lords, those passed by the House of Lords but not by this House, those passed by both Houses but Amendments not agreed to; and distinguishing the stages at which such Bills were dropped, postponed or rejected in either House of Parliament, or the stages which such Bills had reached by the time of Prorogation.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of the days on which the House sat; stating for each day the day of the month and day of the week, the hour of the meeting, and the hour of the adjournment; the total numbers of hours occupied in the sittings of the House; and the average time; showing the number of hours on which the House sat each day and the number of hours after the time appointed for the interruption of business; and specifying, for each principal type of business before the House, how much time was spent thereon, distinguishing from the total the time spent after the hour appointed for the interruption of business.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

SPECIAL PROCEDURE ORDERS
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—

(1) The number of Special Procedure Orders presented; the number withdrawn; the number annulled; the number against which Petitions or copies of Petitions were deposited; the number of Petitions of General Objection and for Amendment respectively considered by the Chairmen; the number of such petitions certified by the Chairmen as proper to be received and the number certified by them as being Petitions of General Objection and for Amendment respectively; the number referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses; the number reported with Amendments by a Joint Committee, and the number in relation to which a Joint Committee reported that the Order be not approved and be amended respectively; and the number of Bills introduced for the confirmation of Special Procedure Orders; and

(2) Special Procedure Orders which were referred to a Joint Committee, together with the names of the Commons Members who served on each Committee; the number of days on which each committee sat; and the number of days on which each such Member attended.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

STANDING COMMITTEES
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of—

(1) the total number and the names of all Members (including and distinguishing Chairmen) who have been appointed to serve on one or more Standing Committees showing, with regard to each of such Members, the number of sittings to which he was summoned and at which he was present;

(2) the number of Bills, Estimates, Matters and other items referred to Standing Committees pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.), or Standing Order No. 102 (European Standing Committees) considered by all and by each of the Standing Committees, the number of sittings of each Committee and the titles of all Bills, Estimates, Matters and other items as above considered by a Committee, distinguishing where a Bill was a Government Bill or was brought from the House of Lords, and showing in the case of each Bill, Estimate, Matter and other item, the particular Committee by which it was considered, the number of sittings at which it was considered (including, in the case of the Scottish Grand Committee, the number of Meetings held in Edinburgh, pursuant to a motion made under paragraph 3 of Standing Order No. 94 (Scottish Grand Committee)) and the number of Members present at each of those sittings; and

(3) the membership, work, costs and staff of the Chairmen's Panel.—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.]

SELECT COMMITTEES
Ordered,
That there be laid before this House a Return for Session 1992–93 of information and statistics relating to the membership, work, costs and staff of Select Committees (other than the Standing Orders Committee).—[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.

Oral Answers to Questions
  TRADE AND INDUSTRY

    Deregulation
    Mr. Bates: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the progress of deregulation proposals.
    The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Michael Heseltine): As announced in the Gracious Speech, we will introduce a major Bill to deregulate and to remove obstacles to contracting out by central and local government.
    Mr. Bates: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Is he prepared to consider giving priority to deregulation in the small business sector because while many large corporations and institutions believe that they may have the structures to support unnecessary bureaucracy, to the small business man and the entrepreneur that bureaucracy can often be the difference between success and failure?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend clearly understands the problem. In all the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) on the deregulation initiative, we have ensured that small business representatives have been included in the consultative process.
    Mr. Malcolm Bruce: May I follow the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates) and ask whether the President of the Board of Trade accepts that many small businesses feel that the imposition of statutory sick benefit, the draconian penalties in relation to VAT collection and the collection of statistics for exports, which deter small companies from seeking export business, should be considered as part of the deregulation programme and not just aspects that affect consumer protection or health and safety?
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman is out of date because we have made significant exemptions in respect of the VAT system for small businesses.
    Mr. Spring: Is my right hon. Friend aware of how much unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy emanates at local level? Will he assure the House that, as he seeks to encourage deregulation, local government plays a part in that important process?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend raises an important point and the answer is yes.
    Mr. Robin Cook: Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that of the regulations that he is reviewing as a burden on business, 71 per cent. have been introduced since the Conservatives took office and 21 per cent. since the Prime Minister took office? Has anybody told him that the second largest number of regulations are in the DTI, of which 84 per cent. have been introduced since the Conservatives took office, 27 per cent. since the Prime Minister took office and 13 per cent. since he became President of the Board of Trade? As the overwhelming majority of the burdens on business have been introduced by the Conservatives, is there no one in the Conservative

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    Government willing to defend their record of 14 years of regulating that includes the record of the President of the Board of Trade?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That is excellent news and shows how determined we are to continue improving our performance.

    Small Businesses, London
    Mr. Shersby: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is his policy for encouraging the expansion of small businesses in the Greater London area.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Patrick McLoughlin): The Department provides a range of services in London and elsewhere designed to allow small businesses to operate with the maximum freedom and efficiency. In particular, the Business Link network that my Department is helping to develop will greatly strengthen the delivery of those services together with other business support organisations at local level.
    Mr. Shersby: Does my hon. Friend agree that most small firms are well managed and if they were not, they would probably not be in business? Will he take every opportunity to relieve them of the burdens of paperwork that afflicts them as part of the deregulation initiative and give the House an example of the kind of burdens that are to be removed?
    Mr. McLoughlin: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. As for the examples for which he asked, he will have to wait for the publication of the deregulation Bill to which my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has just referred.
    Mr. Gapes: Does the Minister agree that the biggest problem for small businesses in Greater London is the impact of the recession? In my constituency, where one adult male in six is currently unemployed, there is certainly no glimmer of hope: unemployment has doubled in the past five years, and is twice as high now as it was when the Prime Minister came to office.
    Mr. McLoughlin: The hon. Gentleman overlooks the important point that small businesses contribute to employment opportunities. Given the whingeing that we hear from Opposition Members, it is no surprise that such businesses have no confidence in the Labour party.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that the greatest boost for small firms in Greater London will come from a more prosperous economy? Will not those firms welcome the fact that interest rates are at their lowest for 25 years, and the fact that inflation is at its lowest for a generation?
    Mr. McLoughlin: My hon. Friend is, of course, correct. Those underlying factors are giving great confidence to businesses—including small businesses—not just in London, but throughout the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Nigel Griffiths: I welcome all measuress to help small businesses, but why have the Government done so little to crack down on the banks that are persecuting so many small businesses? Is he aware of the survey carried out by the Forum of Private Business? [Interruption.] Conservative Members sneer at its 21,000 membership,
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    but the survey showed that, in the past six months, 50 per cent. of respondents had found that banks were to introduce tougher charging policies. When will the Minister crack down on those banks, and eliminate practices that are doing so much harm to so many small businesses and individuals?
    Mr. McLoughlin: What the hon. Gentleman never tells us is what his party would do. The simple fact is that, since we have been in government, some 400,000 new businesses have started up each year. That is a far greater success than was ever achieved during the socialist years of Labour government.

    Deregulation
    Mr. Hendry: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the progress of his deregulation initiative.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs (Mr. Neil Hamilton): We have made reasonable progress on the deregulation initiative so far, but we cannot be satisfied with the progress that we have made. What we are trying to achieve is a culture change on the part of Ministers and Departments—and, I like to think, possibly a culture change on the part of the Opposition as well. There will be a deregulation Bill, which will shortly be introduced in the House. The proof of the pudding will be whether the Opposition are prepared to support us.
    Mr. Hendry: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I assure him that the business community in my constituency considers that the Government have no more vital task than tackling over-regulation.
    Will my hon. Friend assure the House that, as well as tackling over-regulation—which he is determined to do—he will tackle over-zealous inspectors, who all too often appear keen to put out of business small, successful firms for the sake of some unnecessary and expensive regulation dreamt up by some inspector who knows nothing about the businesses that are affected?
    Mr. Hamilton: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Regulations that might otherwise be thought reasonable can be made unreasonable if they are interpreted and enforced excessively. Through our local authority, business partnership initiative schemes, we are seeking to bring business and local authority enforcers together, so that authorities can understand their obligation to keep regulation within reason, and so that regulation does not become a burden on business.
    Mr. Burden: It is easy to parrot cliches about deregulation, but is it not disgraceful that the Government should even consider weakening health and safety standards, when last year no fewer than 28,000 people suffered serious injury at work?
    Mr. Hamilton: There is one regulation—uniquely—that I would like to introduce: a regulation to compel Opposition Members to know what they are talking about before they stand up. I realise that it would deny us a good deal of innocent entertainment, especially from the Opposition Front Bench, but I am prepared to forgo that enjoyment.
    The hon. Gentleman is, of course, completely wrong. We do not intend to interfere with sensible health and

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    safety regulations. The scales may fall from his eyes if I read him a press release from my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), the Minister of State, Department of Employment, who is responsible for the Health and Safety Commission. The press release states:
    "The purpose of the review being undertaken by the Health and Safety Commission is to simplify, clarify and to update health and safety legislation. There is certainly no plan to sacrifice the high standards already in place—in fact, the aim is to improve them by judicious pruning."
    Sir Michael Grylls: Does my hon. Friend accept that his initiative in introducing the Bill and really get the deregulation programme moving is welcome throughout the country? It is of prime importance, particularly to smaller firms, as my hon. Friend has said. When he comes to consider an announcement on the abolition of the statutory audit, will my hon. Friend resist pressure from other parts of Government to make it a mouse rather than a major announcement—in other words, to include all unquoted companies? There is no necessity for a statutory audit of any privately owned company. It would be disappointing if he were to abolish that audit for just certain companies.
    Mr. Hamilton: I regard resistance as a negative attitude. My job is to be more pro-active than that and to attack Government Departments that are not playing a prominent enough part in the deregulation initiative. I shall bear in mind what my hon. Friend says about small company audits, and I hope a decision on that will be announced very quickly.

    Technology Transfer
    Mr. Maxton: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans his Department has to assist with technology transfer from defence-related activities; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister for Industry (Mr. Tim Sainsbury): A number of schemes in my Department assist technology transfer, including transfer from defence-related activities.
    Mr. Maxton: When the United States Government are planning to spend $19·5 billion over the next five years on retraining programmes, investment programmes and incentive schemes to deal with the problem of technology transfer from defence industries, is not the Government's attitude to this problem irresponsible and dangerously complacent? Is the Minister prepared to see the skills of thousands of highly qualified and trained workers lost to our economy for ever? When will the Government come up with the same sort of package as that of the Clinton Administration?
    Mr. Sainsbury: The most important factor in encouraging technology transfer from the defence industries is to have the right climate to encourage innovation. That is what the Government are determined to support and the Opposition persistently oppose. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman of some of the schemes we have. Apart from the budget for industrial revolution [Interruption.] sorry, innovation—innovation often needs satisfactory revolution—we have the pathfinder programme, the dual use technology centres, the defence research information centre and the changing tack seminars, all of which have been strongly welcomed by industry.
    Mr. Mans: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way to develop defence technology for commercial use is for direct links to be established between the companies involved and the Ministry of Defence? That would produce a partnership and bring research and development forward, and the commercial and military use of such research could be equally exploited.
    Mr. Sainsbury: I strongly agree with what my hon,. Friend says from his specialist knowledge. My Department is working closely with the Ministry of Defence. The identification of civilian applications for defence research technology is steadily improving to the benefit of industry.
    Mr. Caborn: I am not asking the Minister for a revolution, but does he acknowledge that there is great concern, particularly in the aerospace industry, about the question of technology transfer? What steps will his Department take to rearrange and reorganise that, as requested in the recent Select Committee report on the aerospace industry? The industry and the Select Committee are concerned about the lack of action from the Minister's Department and the Ministry of Defence. We are not getting the best out of our industry, and we are not assisting firms to stay at the competitive edge of leading technologies.
    Mr. Sainsbury: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we work closely with the aircraft industry in our civil aircraft research and development programme, known as CARAD. The directions in which we spend the money in that programme have been identified by the industry as being the most important. That is the most effective way that we can continue to benefit the industry from our research and development programmes.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the most effective and efficient ways of transferring technology is to ensure that the present companies involved in the supply of defence equipment continue to receive the orders already committed, such as those committed to Babcock Thorn at Rosyth, which has demonstrated very clearly how technology transfer can be operated in practice?
    Mr. Sainsbury: The matter to which my hon. Friend refers is primarily one for my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, but one way in which to strengthen defence companies and thus enable them to have the resources to look for methods to transfer their technology to civilian uses is by the successful sale of defence equipment overseas. I take this opportunity to congratulate defence industries on their success in that respect.

    Trade (Japan)
    Mr. Viggers: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the current trade balance with Japan.
    The Minister for Trade (Mr. Richard Needham): Despite the difficult economic conditions in Japan, United Kingdom exports rose 19 per cent. in the first 10 months of 1993 compared with the corresponding period in 1992. The United Kingdom has a visible trade deficit with Japan which, for the same period, stands at £4,894 million.
    Mr. Viggers: Does my hon. Friend agree that raw statistics are rather misleading because of the variation in value between the yen and the pound? The true position is that our exporters have performed strongly in the Japanese market in recent years. Is my hon. Friend in a position to make an announcement now about the successor to the extremely successful Priority Japan programme?
    Mr. Needham: My hon. Friend is right. If we look at the balance between exports and imports to Japan, we see that it has hardly changed in the past five years and is better than it was in the early 1980s. Our exports to Japan have increased by 20 per cent. this year against a difficult background. We continue to attract enormous investment from Japan. I will announce the successor to the Priority Japan programme in the next few weeks and I am sure that it will command the support and backing of the House and British industry.
    Mrs. Anne Campbell: Is the Minister aware that the Japanese have now identified the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries as the ones in which special effort and special investment will be made in the next few years? Currently, we do quite well against Japan in those industries. What does the Minister think that those British industries will be like by the year 2000 in comparison with the Japanese industries?
    Mr. Needham: We have among the most competitive and successful pharmaceutical and aerospace industries in the world. The only way in which that position could alter is if the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends ever sat on the Government Benches and imposed the ridiculous rules that they want to introduce, which would undermine the competitiveness of our country and make our competitive position more difficult than it would otherwise be.
    Mr. Butcher: My hon. Friend will be aware that the United States is looking increasingly eastwards towards Japan and the Pacific basin as the areas of more dynamic growth and trade than that offered by Europe. As a counter to that trend, is my hon. Friend prepared to encourage negotiations to establish a north Atlantic free trade area, which would dynamise the economies of the western European ports, such as our own and the American eastern seaboard? Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we could achieve that, it would be an important subset at the GATT negotiations?
    Mr. Needham: I am for dynamising wherever I can go. Western European/Asia-Pacific trade is now greater than north American/European trade and that trend is likely to continue. The most important aspect of that for the British economy is whether Britain is taking maximum advantage of our opportunities in the east. The answer is yes. For example, our own exports to China are up more than 100 per cent. this year and those to Hong Kong have increased by 48 per cent. Throughout the far east, British industry, British commerce and British services, with the help of the British Government, are doing remarkably well and we will continue to concentrate on that part of the world.

    Manufacturing
    Mr. Hain: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will give figures for the percentage change of manufacturing as a proportion of gross domestic product since 1978-79.
    Mr. Heseltine: The share of manufacturing gross domestic product has fallen by around six percentage points since 1979. All the main industrialised countries are seeing a decline in the share of GDP accounted for by manufacturing.
    Mr. Hain: At this rate, Britain is in danger of becoming a manufacturing-free zone with more people on the dole doing nothing than in factories producing British goods. Instead of blaming everybody else, why will the President of the Board of Trade not start to invest in skills, infrastructure and industry and provide industry with the long-term, low-cost finance which it needs. That is the way to recovery. Why does the right hon. Gentleman not have an industrial strategy to build that recovery?
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member will be pleased to know that manufacturing output rose by 1·6 per cent. during the past 12 months. Manufacturing productivity rose by 5 per cent. during the same period, while manufacturing exports to non-EC countries were 16 per cent. higher. I am sure that the hon. Member and his right hon. and hon. Friends will welcome that good news.
    Mr. Anthony Coombs: Will my right hon. Friend remind the Opposition that recent figures issued by the university of Cambridge show that manufacturing output in this country has risen by 30 per cent. since 1979, while under the previous Labour Government it fell? Is not it perverse in the extreme to wish small firms well and at the same time to support the social chapter, to support compulsory recognition of trade unions, and to support increased taxation? Is not that exactly what the Opposition have tried to do?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is anticipating the speech that I hope to make to the House later this afternoon.
    Mr. Barry Jones: May I tell the right hon. Gentleman about a manufacturing success in my constituency—the construction of the executive jet which can fly the Atlantic and which can carry 12 people? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why he permitted the sale of that magnificent aeroplane by British Aerospace to the American firm, Raytheon? Will he guarantee that production of the aeroplane will remain in Britain after three years?
    The right hon. Gentleman should know that my constituents who build the plane are concerned about the future of their jobs in the long term. The right hon. Gentleman boasts about manufacturing. Why did he allow that great machine to be sold to an American company?
    Mr. Heseltine: Is the hon. Member suggesting that we should have controls in every constituency and in every industry over whether British companies should be sold to American companies? The hon. Gentleman should realise that the effect of that would be to choke off the inward investment from which this country has had such success.
    Mr. Burns: Does my right hon. Friend accept that one way to help enhance manufacturing capability in areas that have suffered from defence-related redundancies is through the support of the Konver fund which his Department backs? Given that results on bids for Konver are being made available next week, may I, as a last-minute

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    request, put in a plug for the bid by Essex and Chelmsford to help those areas that have been badly affected by defence-related redundancies?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is right to take every possible opportunity to put in bids that will help his constituency. I only hope that all of my hon. Friends will not take immediate advantage of that precedent.
    Mr. Fatchett: In his responses, the President of the Board of Trade seems to have failed to understand the problems that affect British industry or to accept the Government's record during the past 14 years. Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that 2·6 million jobs have been lost in British manufacturing industry? Will the right hon. Gentleman also acknowledge that this country comes near the bottom—if not at the bottom—of league tables on research, development, and training by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development?
    The Prime Minister talks about returning to basics. Will the Government, as part of that policy, go for an investment policy in manufacturing industry, and also for an industrial strategy so that manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom can be restored to the strength and capacity that it enjoyed when the Labour party left office in 1979? If that is not done, will not there be more years of decline and job losses under this Government?
    Mr. Heseltine: The basic fact that Opposition Members are quite incapable of understanding is that, throughout the advanced economic world, there has been a shift away from manufacturing. If one looks at this country's record, it can be seen broadly that we have marched in line with other similar economies. [Interruption.] It is no use Opposition Members shouting down the facts. Those facts may not suit their arguments, but Opposition Members will not silence me. They will have to get used to that.
    There has been a reduction of 6 per cent. in our GDP percentage since 1979. The House will want to know that until 1987, the equivalent figure for America and for Germany was 4 per cent., for France it was 5 per cent., and for Italy it was 7 per cent. Our output is now rising while the output of other nations is falling.
    Mr. Oppenheim: Will my right hon. Friend cast his mind back to those heady days of manufacturing might in the 1970s when the Labour Government were implementing their industrial strategy? At that time, British Steel was the world's largest loss-maker, British Leyland was the butt of international jokes, multinational car firms were falling over themselves to transfer production overseas, manufacturing output fell—
    Madam Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a speech, he should try to catch my eye in the debate that will follow, and I shall try to call him to speak in it, but I ask him to put a question now.
    Mr. Oppenheim: Is my right hon. Friend also aware that, in the 1980s, we were top of the manufacturing, productivity and growth leagues and second only to Japan in manufacturing output—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I have given the hon. Gentleman a warning. I might call him if he tries to catch my eye in the debate afterwards, but I need a question now.
    Mr. Oppenheim: What is my right hon. Friend going to do about it?
    Mr. Heseltine: I hope, Madam Speaker, that if you do call my hon. Friend, it will be after me because otherwise I shall have nothing left to say. What I shall do about it is to listen carefully to what he has to say in the debate.

    Defence-related Manufacturing
    Mr. Chisholm: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is his latest estimate of the number of people employed in defence-related manufacturing employment.
    Mr. Sainsbury: The latest estimate published by the Ministry of Defence is that in 1991–92 United Kingdom defence-related manufacturing employment was around 410,000.
    Mr. Chisholm: Does the Minister agree that that is a large and highly skilled group of workers, who must be kept in manufacturing employment? Will the Government therefore abandon their hands-off approach to defence diversification and start by accepting the recommendation of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry on that subject in its recent aerospace report? When considering the EC Konver bids, will the Government give sympathetic consideration to the submission from the Lothian region, where almost 20 per cent. of manufacturing jobs are dependent on defence orders?
    Mr. Sainsbury: On the latter point, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that all the Konver bids being considered today will be given careful scrutiny by the committee. On his first point, I agree that defence employees form a skilled group of employees with many and varied skills which we want to see used to the best advantage. The one sure way to ensure that that did not happen would be for the Government to decide what should happen to them, rather than for their employers, the companies, to make their own commercial decisions. We are not in the business of telling management how to run their companies. We are in the business of encouraging management by providing the right environment for them to succeed.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the saddest casualties of the reduction in defence orders was the receivership of Swan Hunter shipbuilders at Wallsend? Can he give the House an assurance that his talks with Commissioner Karel Van Miert about the absurd Community regulations that prohibit that company from obtaining intervention funding for commercial shipbuilding will lead to the lifting of that regulation, so that other shareholders will have a chance to invest in Swan Hunter, and there will be a future for that company and for jobs on the Tyne?
    Mr. Sainsbury: First, I agree with my hon. Friend about what a sad day it was when Swan Hunter went into the hands of the administrators. We continue to hope that those administrators will be successful in finding a buyer for the company so that shipbuilding can continue on the Tyne. My hon. Friend made an important point about the shipbuilding intervention fund, a matter on which the Commission has to agree because it is a state aid. I had useful discussions with Commissioner Van Miert last week. Our negotiations are continuing and I hope that we

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    shall be able to bring the matter to a conclusion relatively shortly. I believe that we have a strong case in respect of Swan Hunter.
    Ms Eagle: Can the Minister confirm whether a similar approach has been made on behalf of Cammell Laird shipyard? Both the current owners and the potential buyers, who have so far failed to secure more than 1,000 jobs on Merseyside—already a high unemployment area —have all agreed that with access to the intervention fund Cammell Laird could have remained open. If such an approach has not been made, why has it not, as the survival of shipbuilding is as important on the Mersey as it is on the Tyne?
    Mr. Sainsbury: I can assure the hon. Lady that the original approaches to the Commission in July were in respect of all the warship building yards covered by the original agreement about subsidies. Because the circumstances of each yard differ, it has been necessary to focus particularly on discussions in respect of Swan Hunter. My latest meeting with Commissioner Van Miert was solely in respect of Swan Hunter.

    Domestic Telephones
    Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what proportion of homes now possess a telephone; and what was the proportion in 1979.
    Mr. McLoughlin: In 1979, 67 per cent. of households were connected to a telephone. The latest figures show that 89 per cent. of households are now connected, which represents a 33 per cent. increase.
    Mr. Bruce: I wonder whether in his busy day my hon. Friend might have a chance to read the Second and Third Reading debates and the speeches made by Opposition Members when we were discussing the Telecommunications Bill. He may well find that the predictions that were made by the Opposition about privatisation have all been proved to be totally untrue. I should like to encourage my hon. Friend to continue the Government's policy of extending the number of people getting into the telecommunications market so that we can not only continue to have a successful industry but also provide the services that consumers clearly want.
    Mr. McLoughlin: I am not sure that it would do much good if I re-read those speeches, but I recommend that Opposition Members do so because they ought to see the way in which their forecasts have so miserably failed to come to fruition. The facts are that to have a telephone installed in 1979, at today's prices, cost £188. Today, that connection cost is £99.
    Mr. Ronnie Campbell: Many of my constituents have telephones and they keep calling me and telling me about the rotten Government and what they are doing. When will the Minister take a hand to British Telecom and ask it to cut the price for the installation of telephones for pensioners? The cost is enormous—it costs almost £200 for pensioners to have a telephone installed. Is not it about time that the Minister did something about that?
    Mr. McLoughlin: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have been able to pick up the telephone to BT. The figure that he has just given—and which I gave in my last answer—shows how much he is out of touch. As
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    I have said, to install a telephone in 1979 would have cost £188 at today's prices. BT has just reduced the connection charge to £99. I hope that you, Madam Speaker, will now give the hon. Gentleman a chance to get up and welcome that and the privatisation of British Telecom.
    Mr. Peter Ainsworth: Will my hon. Friend confirm that there has also been a substantial increase in the number of payphones in the past 10 years? Does he agree that the telecommunications industry provides a classic example of exactly what deregulation can achieve?
    Mr. McLoughlin: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That was another scare being touted by the Opposition at the time of privatisation—that somehow all rural phones and mobile phones would cease to exist. The fact is that public phone boxes are working.
    Mr. Cousins: Does the Minister not know that there are fewer telephone lines in British homes than in most European countries? The Minister talked about installation charges. Is he not aware of the extortionate installation deposits which are levied in addition to installation charges, particularly in some of the tough inner-city areas? What is he doing about the antique pricing structures and the rank overcharging which mean that British telephone lines are used a third less than telephone lines in the United States? What is he doing to create a mass market in telephones which link the screen to the telephone rather than confining it to yuppies?
    Mr. McLoughlin: I honestly do not know where to start in answering the hon. Gentleman's question. When we were privatising BT, the Opposition predicted that prices would go up. In fact, they have fallen by 27 per cent. so far as BT is concerned. There has been a greater increase in competition, with cable companies investing massive amounts of money in this country because they see that as an opportunity to develop their industry. They are providing telephone services, too. It is amazing that the Opposition spokesman can find nothing on which to attack the Government but the leading companies in this country.

    Manufacturing, Leicester
    Mr. Janner: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will take steps to assist manufacturing industry in the city of Leicester.
    Mr. Sainsbury: My Department already has in place a number of schemes that are helping manufacturing industries and other companies in Leicester and elsewhere.
    Mr. Janner: I am sure that the Minister is aware of the awful troubles afflicting Leicester's traditional industries —hosiery, textiles and, in particular, footwear—and the massive job losses which have resulted, but is he aware that, despite reductions in interest rates, those companies that are trying to rebuild are having enormous problems raising capital, whether from the banks, venture capital or otherwise? Will the Minister undertake to look into that problem, which affects not only Leicester and the east midlands, but manufacturers throughout the country?
    Mr. Sainsbury: I congratulate the hon. and learned Gentleman on being the first Opposition Member to say anything during this Question Time which has even slightly implied that something good has happened, such as a reduction in interest rates. As he knows, that reduction

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    is a benefit to businesses in his constituency and elsewhere. With regard to small businesses, I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman would also welcome the fact that 400,000 new businesses have started up this year. We wish to continue to provide an environment which will encourage the creation of businesses and enable them to succeed and grow.
    Mr. Garnier: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, like the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner), I have constituents who work in manufacturing, textile and hosiery businesses? Is he further aware that many textile, hosiery and engineering businesses in my constituency are thriving and that in my constituency we have the lowest unemployment figure in the county? Does he agree that we have such a happy picture to paint because of the increasing deregulation, which is being welcomed by business men, because of lower interest rates and because the Government have been fighting hard to keep the social chapter off the backs of British business men?
    Mr. Sainsbury: I am delighted to hear from my hon. Friend about the success of some of his businesses. He confirms the point that, in the right conditions, well-run businesses will flourish, expand and create more employment. I congratulate the textile industry on the success that it is achieving in exports, particularly in the wool and best quality textile markets.

    Retail Sector
    Mr. Booth: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the change in the performance of the retail sector since 1992.
    The Minister for Energy (Mr. Tim Eggar): Retail sales figures issued last week for October showed a year-on-year increase of 3·2 per cent. in volume and 5·5 per cent. in value.
    Mr. Booth: Putting the vexed issue of Sunday trading on one side for another occasion, what proposals will the Government bring forward to help small shopkeepers by deregulating?
    Mr. Eggar: As I am sure my hon. Friend will understand, I cannot prejudge the contents of the deregulation Bill or anything that might be in the Budget statement of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, we are acutely conscious of the need to ensure that the retail sector is truly competitive and we know that there must be a particular emphasis on reducing red tape for smaller businesses, whether in the retail sector or elsewhere.

    Exports
    Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what has been the percentage change to the volume of exports of manufacturers to (a) other EC countries and (b) the rest of the world since August 1992.
    Mr. Needham: The volume of United Kingdom exports of manufactures to other EC countries was 0·3 per cent. higher in the three months ended August 1993, compared with the same period a year earlier. The volume of manufacturing exports to the rest of the world increased by 13·8 per cent. over the same period, resulting in an overall increase of 6·2 per cent.
    Mr. Mitchell: On those figures, the Minister accepts that our trade in manufactures with the rest of the world is doing much better, thanks to the fact that our devaluation in relation to the rest of the world was much greater than it was against the EEC. On the other hand, we are doing less well against the EEC because of the surreptitious policy of shadowing the deutschmark, which in real terms has brought the real exchange rate back to the figure before wonderful Wednesday in 1992. Does that not mean that almost half our trade in manufactures in volume terms is now outside the EEC and we need a much bigger fall in interest rates to get the pound down to a competitive level in Europe?
    Mr. Needham: The recovery in this country happened in the second quarter of 1992, before we came out of the exchange rate mechanism. It may not have occurred to the hon. Gentleman that the major reasons why our exports to Europe are not doing so well as they are to the rest of the world is because—
    Mr. Mitchell: Of the pound.
    Mr. Needham: It has nothing to do with that. It is because Europe is in deep recession. Our volumes have increased in Europe. As for the rest of the world, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have done remarkably well. The Government are working with British industry to ensure that we are making export credit available and that we have a long-term strategy with industry to maximise opportunities outside the EC as well as in it. The hon. Gentleman has accepted that those figures prove that. On that basis, he will congratulate us.
    Mr. Paice: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is amazing that there is relative silence about the exceptional export figures, particularly to the rest of the world? Would my hon. Friend like to take this opportunity to note a very traditional manufacturing company in my constituency, Standens of Ely? That company has been fabricating materials for export to the far east and the Pacific rim, with considerable help from my hon. Friend's Department. Should not such achievement be sung about from the highest mountains?
    Mr. Needham: My hon. Friend has given one example. I am sure that an endless series of my right hon. and hon. Friends could give similar examples, as could Opposition Members if they searched their telephone books and listened to their industrial constituents. British capital goods companies have set themselves a target to double their exports to non-OECD countries in the next few years from £10 billion a year to £20 billion a year. That is the answer to Opposition Members on the resurgence of manufacturing in this country.
    Mr. Bell: The Minister has referred to export credit. What would he tell exporters who increase their competitiveness and productivity, yet when it comes to export credit guarantees look askance at Europe and see what they think are more competitive rates? The President of the Board of Trade said at the Confederation of British Industry conference that our rates were broadly in line. Is the Minister aware of the anxiety of exporters who fear that the European Commission is looking at a new directive designed to create a level playing field for export credit guarantees which they believe is tilted towards the French? Will he give the House an assurance that in relation to that

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    directive and the negotiations, the Department of Trade and Industry will play an active part, with a strategy for trade and for industry, and not leave it to the Treasury with a strategy for money?
    Mr. Needham: When it comes to export guarantees, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we have increased the cover by £2·5 billion, we have reduced the premium rates by 25 per cent., we have several markets back on cover and we have increased short-term insurance cover by £1·4 billion. British industry and commerce are much better placed than they were before. However, I accept that it is vital that we are not the only ones playing on the level playing field. Any directives from the Community or any proposals that come forward will be considered by the Department of Trade and Industry and by the Government to see whether they are of benefit to our industry. We are of course determined to make sure that British industry receives the maximum support possible. That is what we have been doing and we shall continue to do it.

    Deregulation
    Mr. French: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what have been the findings of each of the deregulation task forces set up last March.
    Mr. Neil Hamilton: More than 600 proposals for removing unecessary burdens are being put forward by the seven business task forces. The eighth task force, on the voluntary sector and charities, will report shortly. I expect to be able to publish the contents of the deregulation task forces' investigation documents as soon as possible.
    Mr. French: Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to read the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union publication entitled "Freedom to Kill? The case against deregulation", in which it is argued that the Government are endeavouring to weaken the laws that protect employees against death, injury and disease and give unscrupulous employers the right to kill? Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning the hysterical and emotional language in that publication and confirm that the Government's proposals are reasonable and should not be allowed totally unnecessarily to cause anxiety?
    Mr. Hamilton: My hon. Friend is perfectly correct, but he must remember that where the Opposition and their trade union allies are concerned criticism is never inhibited by ignorance. This is a good example because the Government do not have any firm proposals in the area. The deregulation task forces have made their suggestions for deregulation. We are not obliged to accept them, but it would be sensible to debate the proposals in an adult way; then we can take a balanced view of their desirability. To condemn things out of hand, on the basis of emotion, hysteria, shroud waving and headline grabbing is not exactly an adult approach for an Opposition.
    Mr. Illsley: Will the Minister tell the House why local authorities were excluded from the deregulation task forces? Would it not have been sensible to allow local authority trading standards officers to be part of them, as they are the people best placed to determine which regulations are redundant and which are still necessary?
    Mr: Hamilton: I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon in Bristol, at a
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    conference to which we had invited all the local authorities and trading standards departments in the south-west. It was the fourth such conference to be held in England during the past few months—the others were in Manchester, Newcastle and London. No one from local government has been excluded from the deregulation exercise. Local government has an important role to play in making constructive proposals of its own and we are inviting it to do so. Unlike that from Opposition Members, we have had a very constructive response.

    Small Businesses
    Mr. Thomason: To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he last met the Institute of Directors to discuss small businesses.
    Mr. Heseltine: I met representatives of the Institute of Directors last night when I spoke at their annual dinner on a number of issues, including small businesses.
    Mr. Thomason: Does my right hon. Friend agree that many small businesses continue to require assistance in management and marketing? Will his Department continue to ensure that support is provided to them in various ways? Does he agree that that should be seen as part of the extension of an enterprise culture, which is so derided by the Opposition?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I very much accept the thrust of his questions. I am considering the basis of the services that we provide, especially the more intense back-up for small and medium-sized firms that the Business Link organisation will provide. I hope to be able to say something about that shortly.
    Mr. Turner: Has the President of the Board of Trade received representations from companies in the west midlands regarding the inordinate delays in receiving appraisals through the regional selective assistance policy? That is causing some concern in the west midlands. It is taking more than four weeks for the initial appraisal to be made, which is causing consternation to companies, and I believe that the delay is being caused by staffing problems. We need more staff in that department. Also, market testing is creating great problems in that area.
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member is asking two questions. About £700 million of Government expenditure was market tested last year, as a result of which we have achieved an ongoing annual saving of £100 million. As to his first question, I do not believe that the service that we provide in dealing with those grants is the subject of widespread criticism. If it were, I or my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry would have heard about it many times. However, if the hon. Member knows of a case that may not have received prompt attention I hope that he will bring it to my attention.
    Mr. Nicholls: Does my right hon. Friend agree that many small businesses in the tourist sector are concerned about over-regulation, especially the package holiday directive? Can he give us any hint as to whether that might be one of the regulations that could be considered for review?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend will know that the essence of the exercise that we are carrying out is to study

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    all aspects of laws, regulations and practices, whether from Whitehall, European directives, or the practices of local authorities. In essence, my hon. Friend will find that we have looked at, and will continue to look at, the area that he has drawn to our attention.
    Mr. Robin Cook: If the President of the Board of Trade is serious about helping small businesses, will he acknowledge that, in survey after survey, they cite late payment as their biggest problem? Is he aware that small businesses have to pay their bills, on average, 10 days before they get paid by big businesses? So why does the Conservative party, alone among the major parties, refuse to accept the case for a statutory right to interest on late payments? If interest on late payment works for the Inland Revenue, why not for small businesses? Or does the Conservative party's interest in small businesses stop short of offending its friends in big business?
    Mr. Heseltine: No, that is not our position. This is a matter on which we have made many statements and conducted a great deal of consultation. We realise that it is a matter of concern to small businesses, and we are actively considering it.

    Manufacturing Industry
    Mr. Robert Hughes: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is his estimate of the growth of manufacturing industry for the year 1992–93.
    Mr. Sainsbury: My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will publish new forecasts of manufacturing output when he presents his Budget to the House on 30 November. However, it is very encouraging that manufacturing output, manufacturing productivity and manufacturing investment all rose in the last 12 months.
    Mr. Hughes: Surely the Minister is aware that, according to the last published figures, manufacturing industry grew by only 1 per cent. in the previous 12 months. Does not his answer mask the massive decline in manufacturing industry that took place during a period when the Government continually denied that we were going into recession, even though we were already deep in one? Will the Minister now stop complacently pretending that the recovery has taken hold and introduce a proper strategy for investment-led growth in manufacturing, which is the only way the country can get out of its balance of payments problems?
    Mr. Sainsbury: Manufacturing output rose by 1·6 per cent. over the past 12 months. I would have hoped that that would be welcome to the hon. Gentleman, in the light of the decline in many of our major export markets in continental Europe. The sort of policies proposed by the party that he supports—saddling manufacturing industry with the burdens and restrictions that would follow from the social chapter—would be likely to stifle any further growth in output more quickly than anything else.
    Mr. Clifton-Brown: Although I welcome the growth of manufacturing output last year and predictions of more growth next year, may I ask my right hon. Friend to point out to his colleagues in the Council of Ministers how much labour on-costs, such as those from the social chapter, will hamper manufacturing industry? Will he point out to them
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    that it is essential that those labour on-costs be kept to a minimum so that both this country and the rest of Europe can remain competitive with the rest of the world?
    Mr. Sainsbury: It was my impression at a meeting of Council of Industry Ministers last week that a number of colleagues in other Community countries are now conscious of the points that my hon. Friend makes and are perhaps beginning to have second thoughts about the wisdom of some of the things to which they have signed up.
    Dr. Berry: Is the Minister genuinely surprised that manufacturing output is higher this year than last, given the appalling state of the economy last year? Is it not more relevant to recognise that the trade deficit in manufactured goods at this point in the trade cycle has never been worse in recent economic history? How does he explain that?
    Mr. Sainsbury: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be prepared to welcome the changes since 1981. Manufacturing output is up by nearly a quarter, and productivity and exports are up by nearly three quarters. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has already pointed out—perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not listening or was not in his place at the time—that it is normal for advanced economies to experience a decline in the proportion of manufacturing in their total gross domestic product. This country is no exception.

    Skeletal Implants Testing
    Mr. Flynn: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the total estimated cost of the development of life-time predicative test methods for the skeletal implants project.
    Mr. Sainsbury: The total estimated cost is £750,000. The Department of Trade and Industry will provide up to £472,000, 63 per cent., and industry £278,000, 37 per cent.
    Mr. Flynn: Is the Minister aware that this project is of enormous importance and will bring relief to many millions of people in this country if successful? Will he investigate the tendering procedure as it is claimed that many organisations with great expertise in this area were excluded?
    Mr. Sainsbury: I am not aware of the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. I have received no formal complaints about the tendering process. If the hon. Gentleman has a specific point that he would like to bring to my attention, I will certainly follow it up if he writes to me.

    Konver Initiative
    Mr. Anthony Coombs: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what grants have been made in the current year under the Konver initiative.
    Mr. Sainsbury: None so far. The Konver programme for the United Kingdom was approved by the Commission only on 19 November. An announcement of grants allocated will be made early in December.
    Mr. Coombs: While waiting in eager anticipation for that undoubtedly much-valued programme, will my right hon. Friend support, when it comes along, the application from Royal Ordnance in my constituency for a bomb-proof

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    waste paper container, which will be valuable in view of the current activities of the IRA? Can he confirm that there is no feeling against small and medium-sized companies in relation to the criteria for the Konver programme? That is certainly something about which the office of the Department of Trade and Industry in the west midlands has hinted.
    Mr. Sainsbury: I congratulate my hon. Friend on finding a perhaps slightly unexpected opportunity to
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    commend that project in his constituency. As I said earlier, the Konver national programme committee is meeting today. I can assure my hon. Friend that it will be looking carefully at all the schemes, including the one to which he has referred. There is no prejudice against schemes from small companies. We are looking for quality schemes, and I believe that we shall find a large number of such schemes to support.

Paediatric Intensive Care
3.30 pm
Mr. David Blunkett(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the report of the multi-disciplinary working party on paediatric intensive care convened by the British Paediatric Association.
The Minister for Health (Dr. Brian Mawhinney): I welcome the report from the British Paediatric Association on the care of critically ill children, and would like to thank Dr. Peter Fleming and his colleagues for their work.
The report is based on a study of critically ill children and their care in hospital. My Department funded this study, the most comprehensive ever undertaken anywhere, because of the priority which we attach to the care of those children. Today's report needs to be seen against the background of significant improvements in children's health achieved in recent years.
In the past 14 years, infant mortality has halved. Over the same period, the number of children dying at birth or in the first week of life has dropped by about 40 per cent. Rates of immunisation against major childhood infections are at an all-time high. Since the introduction of the HIB vaccine a little over a year ago, the incidence of HIB meningitis has declined by 74 per cent.
The House will also want to know that the total number of designated paediatric intensive care beds has increased from 127 in 1987 to 209 this year. Two out of three children who need paediatric intensive care are admitted to specialist units. There are many such units in the national health service providing first-class care, and I wish to record my appreciation to the doctors, nurses and other staff who work in them.
Today's report rightly expresses concern that some children are still not able to receive the care that they need in specialist units. While those children receive skilled care, nevertheless, as the report identifies, they should be cared for by nurses and doctors trained and experienced in paediatric intensive care. We therefore need to extend our existing facilities and training programmes.
District health authorities have the responsibility for assessing local health care needs and determining how they should be met. They do so within the priorities set by Government. Child health is a priority. Consequently, I have already asked the national health service management executive to ensure that health authorities are aware of today's report and the importance we attach to its main findings, and to ensure that health authorities make a co-ordinated and effective response.
Mr. Blunkett: I am grateful to you, Madam Speaker, for granting this question. Can the Minister tell the House how we can claim to have a national health service when we cannot guarantee equal treatment and access for the most severely ill children across the country? Will he acknowledge that the fact that we have an internal market has severely damaged the chance of co-ordinating the planned and invested care that we need for severely ill children?
Will the Minister accept the recommendations in the report that such specialist facilities cannot be subjected to the internal market and to the mechanisms of local purchasing care? Will he tell the House why, with a 34 per cent. shortfall in specialist children's intensive care, the
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Government are prepared only to refer the report to local district health authorities and to ask the NHS Management Executive to supervise their reaction?
What would any parent feel if they took their child to an intensive care unit only to be turned away? That happened at every single specialist unit during the period of the report's survey. It happened to 77 children this year at the Royal Manchester children's hospital—a situation which the Prime Minister is reported in today's Manchester Evening News as describing as "heartbreaking".
What will the Minister do about this? Why are the Government simply referring the report to local level when 76 per cent. of adult units have no trained child nurse available, when there is a shortfall of 34 per cent. in the places available, and when we know from the report that there is scandalous under-investment in these absolutely crucial specialist facilities?
Will the Minister this afternoon agree with the recommendations of the report that paediatric intensive care should be organised not on a district basis, but on a regional or multi-regional basis to co-ordinate the necessary investment and a sufficient availability of these units?
Will the Minister, instead of merely passing the buck and passing responsibility down to the internal market and the district health authorities, guarantee today that he accepts the clear recommendation of the specialist report that we should have
"a co-ordinated national programme … instituted by the Department of Health"
and not by someone else, for the care of the most sick and needy children? Will he accept the Government's responsibility for co-ordinating, planning and investing in intensive care facilities for children in every part of Britain?
Dr. Mawhinney: Clearly, the hon. Gentleman did not listen to my answer. We are in no sense passing the buck, as he so inelegantly phrases it.
We agree with the report's conclusion that the overwhelming number of children who are very sick should be treated in paediatric intensive care units. I suspect that that is common ground between us all because the concern for very sick children is not a partisan matter. Indeed, I was able to tell the House of the strides that have been made over the past six years in providing extra facilities. I recognise that further facilities must be provided.
I remind the hon. Gentleman that the report makes it clear that these matters should be dealt with in the context of the reformed NHS. He will see in the recommendations that reference is made to purchasers and providers. He is right to point out that the report recommends that it may be necessary for these facilities to be provided on a wider basis—perhaps a regional basis—than simply by each individual district health authority. I am happy to accept that recommendation. I have made it clear in the instructions that I have already given to the NHS Management Executive that, as it works with the district health authorities to ensure that these priorities are addressed and met, it should have that recommendation very much in mind.
Mr. Roger Sims: Does my hon. Friend agree that the increase in beds between 1987 and now is substantial, but that the report suggests that there is scope for more? They are certainly needed. Does he also agree

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that the rate at which knowledge is increasing and technology developing in this area is outpacing the rate at which we can train doctors and nurses in those new techniques?
Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is right on both counts. Since 1987, the number of paediatric intensive care beds available has increased by some 70 per cent. Indeed, the increase of about 70 beds recommended by the report is less than the increase that has taken place since the last report in 1987, so I have no doubt that we can address the report with the same success as the previous one.
My hon. Friend is right on the second point also. Part of the pressure has arisen because of the skill of the medical profession, which can now offer treatment, care and hope to very sick children who, some years ago, would have been beyond the scope of medical help. We recognise that that is itself creates an upward pressure on the need for provision.
Ms Liz Lynne: The Minister just said that this is the second report in seven years. Although I am glad that he has agreed to act on the report, why are we in such a sorry state if the previous report was fully implemented? Will he assure the House that this report and the intensive care beds needed for children will be properly funded, and that trained staff will be available? Does he now accept that this is just another example of how the NHS reforms have not worked?
Dr. Mawhinney: It is a pity that the hon. Lady put in the last point, because, until then, she was on reasonably solid ground. Her last point was nonsense, as we both know.
We responded to the 1987 report with a 70 per cent. increase in the number of paediatric intensive care beds. On the basis of research, which we funded because we recognised that a problem was developing again, we now learn that more beds need to be provided. Our response will be as strong and directed as our response to the 1987 report. We shall continue to treat this as a priority and shall make it clear to district health authorities that they, too, must treat it as a priority.
Mr. Alan Duncan: Will my hon. Friend confirm that there is good news to tell about children's health? Will he confirm that, whereas the World Health Organisation has set a target of 90 per cent. for the immunisation of children, the record in this country is not 70,80 or 90 per cent. but exceeds 90 per cent. and for some diseases has even reached 95 per cent?
Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I put in the answer to my question the significant information about the halving of infant mortality and the 40 per cent. reduction in perinatal mortality in the past 14 years. The report raises serious issues, to which we shall respond with commitment and priority, but it is against a background of improvement in child health which I should have thought hon. Members on both sides of the House would welcome.
Mr. Alfred Morris: Is it not high time that we had centrally available information on where children receive intensive care? Is the Minister aware that many children in need of intensive care have
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had to go to adult intensive care units, while, at the same time, adult patients have had to go from Greater Manchester to as far afield as Blackpool at times of critical need—indeed, in life-or-death situations—and that some of them died en route?
Dr. Mawhinney: I am certainly aware, as the right hon. Gentleman is, that most of the very sick children in need of paediatric intensive care were treated in paediatric intensive care beds. Some were treated in intensive care general beds, and some in children's wards. He and I both recognise that it is preferable for very sick children to be treated in paediatric intensive care beds. No Government can guarantee that no child will ever have to move out of a paediatric intensive care unit because, as he knows, there are peaks and troughs in demand, for which it is impossible to plan. It ought to be the case that, where possible, very sick children should be treated in paediatric intensive care unit beds. That is what we are seeking to achieve.
Mr. David Congdon: It was useful that my hon. Friend was able to remind hon. Members of the excellent improvement in child health care in this country, but there is no room for complacency, as the report makes clear. Will he assure the House that he will put maximum pressure on district health authorities in the reformed health service to ensure that they update their purchasing plans so that we do acquire the improved facilities that we need?
Dr. Mawhinney: We have already told the NHS Management Executive to take the proposal forward as a priority. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that as the best answer to his question.
Mrs. Alice Mahon: The Minister has already said that this is a heartbreaking report which tugs at the emotions. Therefore, will he give a guarantee extra resources will be provided for more intensive care beds for children rather than pass the buck to district health authorities? As the subject is emotional, to avoid the heat those authorities might move money from other departments in serious need. Will he fund the service properly by provided extra resources?
Dr. Mawhinney: The hon. Lady knows that the priorities of the health service are set by Ministers and reflected down to district health authorities, which have the responsibility for ensuring that the priorities are met, taking account of their assessment of local health needs and how best to meet them. I have told the hon. Lady and the House that we give the subject priority. Each year in the health service, we deliver new services to patients because they constitute a priority. Within that framework, we will, as a priority, deliver the new services to patients.
Dr. Liam Fox: I greatly welcome the frankness with which my hon. Friend has talked about the report. Is not the simple truth that Ministers with responsibility for health will continue to be victims of the success of the NHS? In many sectors, such as neonatal paediatrics, medicine will always be able to deliver more than we can practise. Is not the way that the Opposition use even the health service as a political football testimony to their sickening cynicism?
Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend speaks with great authority as, unlike most of us in the House, he has had responsibility for such matters. I am grateful to him for

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underlining the point that I made a few minutes ago. In the sector medical skill under discussion, rapid developments are being made. Doctors can offer patients care and treatment that would have been literally inconceivable a few years ago. We must accommodate that in the health service because it is a priority for the Government, the health service and the House.
Rev. Martin Smyth: The Minister's statement is to be generally welcomed. However, does he agree that there is still room for improvement, not only in intensive paediatric care, but in paediatric orthopaedics? Does he accept that, even in Britain, there is a need for development in that sector? The process of rationalisation brings added pressures—as happened at the Royal children's hospital in Belfast in my constituency. Will he admit that some of the leading work has been done through charitable work, as in the Gait unit at the Musgrave Park hospital, of which the Minister has personal experience?
Dr. Mawhinney: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome for my statement. I accept that, in various parts of the country, pressures involving the delivery of paediatric care must be addressed. The hon. Gentleman will understand that I am not familiar with the details of his constituency, but I shall ensure that they are brought to the attention of my noble Friend who has responsibility for such matters in Northern Ireland.
Mrs. Jane Kennedy: I welcome the Minister's new-found recognition of the fact that the shortage of specialised trained nurses and doctors in the sector is contributing to the crisis. Will he investigate why, in Alder Hey children's hospital in my constituency, of the 15 nurses who qualified last year, only four found work at the hospital after three years' training in precisely those specialised skills of which he now recognises there is a shortage? Is it not only a shocking waste of resources to train people, but an indictment of the way in which the health service is being run that, after all that investment, those nurses could not find work?
Dr. Mawhinney: The hon. Lady wishes to widen the debate, and that is perfectly acceptable. The proportion of nurses moving into jobs is high, and many are remaining in posts much longer than before. If the hon. Lady was
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alluding to the fact that there is some evidence that nurses who are trained in paediatric intensive care specialties are not remaining in those specialties, she is right, and we are looking at that special issue. I have asked the chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer to enter into urgent discussions with the professions to address the question of the necessary extra training.
Dr. Tony Wright: The Minister will recall events at Birmingham children's hospital a few years ago, when many children needing heart surgery were turned away because of the lack of paediatric intensive care beds. I was the parent of one of those children waiting for such surgery, and my child later died. We were all assured that that situation would never recur. Several years later, and after and two further reports, we are being told the same story. Is that not cause for enormous shame and great anger?
Dr. Mawhinney: I was not aware of the hon. Gentleman's personal circumstances, and I shall bear them in mind in my response, when I say that significant change has taken place since 1987. There has been a 70 per cent. increase in the number of paediatric intensive care beds since the events occurred to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. It is widely accepted among the professions that it is a developing specialty. We funded the report precisely because we wish to have an authoritative assessment of where we are now, so that we can plan to build on the decisions that have already been implemented.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. We are now going to move on to the next item of business, which is the Welsh Grand Committee.

Paediatric Intensive Care
  WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 98(5) (Matter relating exclusively to Wales).
  WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE

    BUDGET (WALES)
    That the Matter of the implications of the Budget for Wales, being a Matter relating exclusively to Wales, be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for its consideration.—[Mr. Andrew Mitchell.]
    Question agreed to.

Points of Order
3.51 pm
Mr. Brian Wilson: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wonder whether you could assist the House on a point of real confusion and difficulty. I refer to printed papers of the House that were sent yesterday to hon. Members on both sides of the House who are members of the Select Committee on Transport, I do not wish to detain the House, but to make the point of order, it is necessary to quote briefly from the paper, as I understand it is in order to do.
The supplementary estimate for 1993–94 states:
"This supplementary estimate is sought to increase provision for current expenditure on royal travel to cover revised expenditure forecasts with a corresponding decrease in the provision for Government support of British Rail pension funds."
In other words, the authors of that official document of the House made the clear link between taking £730,000 away from the British Rail pension fund to supply it
"to royal travel and grant audit".
Another document covering the same subject was placed in the Library. I have no other way of putting it but to say that that doctored version of the same document sought to obfuscate the link between the money taken from the British Rail pension fund and given, extraordinarily, to the royal train. The two points were broken.
One half of the earlier statement became point 1, which is:
"Increased provision for current expenditure on royal travel to cover revised expenditure forecasts";
and the other half became point 5:
"Provision for Government support of British Rail pension funds".
The fact that £730,000 was being transferred from one heading to another was being deliberately and cynically disguised.
My point of order is this, Madam Speaker. There is a widespread belief, both inside and outside this place, that at least one of the major objectives of the whole unwanted rail privatisation procedure is for the Government to get their hands on the British Rail pension fund surplus in order to use it for other purposes. This document—this deception—will feed those fears.
I have two requests, Madam Speaker. First, I ask you to seek clarification of why the two documents were, respectively, sent to Members of Parliament and placed in the Library; secondly, I ask you to protect the interests of the House, railway pensioners and everyone in the country who wants to see the end of the Railways Bill by asking the Secretary of State for Transport to come to the House and answer for the deception that he attempted, which has been ameliorated only by the incompetence of his Department.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I think that I can deal with the point of order, unless hon. Members can put a fresh complexion on it.
Mr. Stephen Milligan: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. May I seek your guidance? The charge made last night by the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), and repeated today by the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), is extremely grave and affects many of my constituents. It seems to be based on a genuine misunderstanding of the document.
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However, as the British Rail pension fund has today made it clear that not a penny has been filched, as has been alleged—it is perfectly clear that there has been a mistake—-and as the Secretary of State has made it clear that this is nonsense, may we have an early discussion of the matter to give Opposition Members a chance to apologise for the unnecessary concern that they have caused to pensioners?
Mr. Paul Flynn: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I have had a discussion with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan), who is rather better informed now than he was before and whose remarks are rather more considered than they were earlier.
We are in an extraordinary position. The Select Committee on Transport is in session at this very moment; I left it to make this point of order. We have two documents. One, which we received yesterday, told us that there was a correlation between the increase in the money given to the royal train and the decrease in the money given to the pension fund. The other document, which we received from the Library a few weeks ago, does not make that point at all. It seems to me that in this case the House, rather than the Select Committee, has been misled.
The accompanying documents make it crystal clear that three quarters of a million pounds has been taken from the British Rail pension fund allocation and added to the royal travel fund. Many of us would say that, if spare money is floating about, we can think of many causes—in transport and elsewhere—that need it more than the royal train. At a time when the Government are threatening to take money from the unemployed and the sick, it is an outrage that three quarters of a million pounds should be given to the royal train, which will cost £2·5 million in a single year.
Madam Speaker: Let me respond to the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who first raised the point of order, and to other hon. Members who clearly have an interest in the matter.
As the hon. Gentleman will understand, I have not seen the papers to which he referred, or the supporting documents that he mentioned; they are not in front of me. I know, however, that the authentic version of the supplementary estimates is the one that has been deposited in the Votes and Proceedings office. I will, of course, look into the suggestion that some versions of the estimates may not be consistent with the original. I must satisfy myself on that point, and I will come back to the hon. Gentleman when I have done so.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Would it not be helpful, and clear the matter up completely, if any one of those 10 Ministers sitting on the Front Bench came to the Dispatch Box now to clarify the position? Then we could have the issue out, and establish that in no circumstances will £730,000, or any other sum, be taken out of the British Rail pension fund to subsidise the royal train—and, what is more, the Queen should have to subsidise the train herself instead of calling on the British people. She has plenty of money.
Madam Speaker: I am sure that the House will appreciate that the point of order was originally made to me. I will deal with it in a serious and sensible manner.

Points of Order

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That—

  (1) Standing Order No. 13 (Arrangement of public business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modifications, namely:
  In paragraph (4) the word 'thirteen' shall be substituted for the word 'ten' in line 44; in paragraph (5) the word 'eighth' shall be substituted for the word 'seventh' in line 46; in paragraph (6) the word 'Thursday' shall be substituted for the word 'Wednesday' in line 61; in paragraph (8) the word 'two' shall be substituted for the word 'four' in line 67; in paragraph (9) the words 'and Thursdays' shall be inserted after the word 'Wednesdays' in line 74; and in paragraph (10) the word 'Thursday' shall be substituted for the word 'Wednesday' in line 84;

  (2) Standing Order No. 90 (Second reading committees) shall have effect for this Session with the following modification, namely:
  In paragraph (2) the word 'eighth' shall be substituted for the word 'seventh' in line 23;

  (3) Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 28th January, 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th February, 4th and 11th March, 15th and 22nd April, 6th, 13th and 20th May and 15th July;

  (4) Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence over Government business on 10th December, 14th and 21st January, 18th March, 29th April, 10th, 17th and 24th June and 1st and 8th July, and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on 25th November, 8th and 15th December, 2nd March, 13th April, 18th and 25th May and 8th, 15th and 22nd June;

  (5) On Monday 7th February and Monday 25th April, Private Members' Notices of Motions shall have precedence over Government business until Seven o'clock and ballots for these Notices shall be held after Questions on Thursday 20th January and Thursday 24th March; and

  (6) No Notice of Motion shall be handed in for any of the days on which Private Members' Notices have precedence under this Order in anticipation of the ballot for that day.—[Mr. Andrew Mitchell.]

Orders of the Day
  Debate on the Address

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

  Trade, Industry and Deregulation
  Madam Speaker: I must announce that I shall have to impose a limit of 10 minutes on speeches between 7 and 9 pm.
  3.59 pm
  Mr. Robin Cook: I beg to move, as an amendment to the Address, at the end of the Question to add:
  But humbly regret that the Gracious Speech contains not a single measure to raise investment in industry, to improve the level of skills of the workforce, to modernise public infrastructure, or to expand private research and development expenditure, and no recognition of the burden on the economy and the cost to individual citizens of mass unemployment, and no commitment to make its sustained reduction the priority of macro-economic management today; support the repeal of outdated regulations but reject proposals that will reduce the protection of the public as consumers and as employees by means of legislation that will increase the powers of Whitehall at the expense of its accountability to this House; and further regret that the Gracious Speech contains no proposals to tackle the rigged market created on the privatisation of the electricity industry or to provide a more open opportunity for coal to compete for a fairer market share, but proposes the privatisation of the coal industry which will accelerate closures of mines and threaten the safety of miners.
  At Question Time, those on the Opposition Front Bench were teased for not adequately recognising those industries that have shown advance over the past year. I am always willing to accept the instructions of the House, so let me refer to an industry whose achievements in the past year have been outstanding.
  It is an industry in which productivity is up by one third in 12 months, and in which most of the production units have managed a reduction in price of a quarter in the same 12 months. Curiously, it is an industry about which no planted questions were asked by the Government Whips in order that answers could come forward from Ministers congratulating the industry on its achievements. The simple and sole reason for that is that it is the coal mining industry—an industry which, despite those achievements and advances, is in crisis. The Queen's Speech outlined the Government's preferred solution to that crisis, which is to privatise the coal industry so that they can walk away from the crisis that they have created.
  The President of the Board of Trade is with us today, and I welcome the fact that he has returned to speak from the Dispatch Box on this occasion. He was present to listen to the debate that we had on the coal industry four weeks

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  ago, and he will recall that the Opposition repeatedly asked how many pits would survive until privatisation; how many pits would be left by the time we had finished our debates; and how many pits would be closed to pave the way for privatisation.
  We already know some of the pits that will not make it to privatisation. In the four weeks since we had that debate, seven pits have been fingered for closure. Last week, the President of the Board of Trade passed a watershed of his period in office. I do not know whether he is aware of it, but it would be unfortunate if it went unremarked. When he took office and became responsible for the Government's energy policy, there were 50 pits operating. As from last week, the majority of those 50 pits have been closed or announced for closure.
  No one has pretended that any of the seven pits that have been fingered for closure in the near future are near exhaustion. Hatfield pit has over 30 years of coal reserves at its present rate of production. It has a lifespan which would enable it to remain in production when most of our gas and all our oil will be gone. What strategic sense does it make to fill up the mineshaft that gives access to such a rich energy source? What other Government in Europe would dream of agreeing to do that?
  The Littleton pit has been named for closure. That pit produces coal of such good quality that two fifths of its output goes to industrial and house coal markets. British Coal is importing coal because it cannot meet its industrial contracts from the domestic market. What are we doing importing coal when we have under our feet domestic coal of a standard to meet those markets?
  There has been the most feeble pretence that these pits are not financially viable. Silverdale pit made a profit of £100,000 in the week that its closure was announced. All the coal from Silverdale goes to the Fiddler's Ferry power station, and Fiddler's Ferry is the nearest power station to the ICI chlorine plant at Runcorn. It is an interesting industrial chain. Silverdale is one of Europe's most efficient pits, supplying one of its most efficient power stations, which in turn supplies energy to one of our most efficient industries.
  The power services manager at Runcorn is driven to frustration by the knowledge that Fiddlers' Ferry could supply his plant with electricity at between £10 and £15 per megawatt hour. Instead of squeezing every drop of cheap electricity out of that power station, what is happening? Fiddlers' Ferry is operating at half-capacity, the pit that supplies it is closing, and ICI is paying between £25 and £30 per megawatt hour for power supplied from new and more expensive gas-fired power stations. How does that make economic sense? What kind of industrial strategy is that?
  A year ago, the President of the Board of Trade announced the pit closure programme, and justified it on the grounds that he could not ask British industry to lose competitiveness by paying more for its electricity from coal. Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman what has happened since then. The price of coal has continued to come down and, while it has become cheaper, the price of electricity from the generators has continued to go up. The study by Caminus Energy last month discovered that the pool price went up by 23 per cent. in the first six months of the year.
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  What sort of energy strategy is it that closes down productive coal mines when the price of coal is falling and boosts the production of gas when the price of it is going up? Yet the Queen's Speech does not include any measure to remedy the rigged market that makes that possible.
  There is no proposal to tackle the sweetheart contracts that exist between the gas-fired power stations and the electricity companies. The Gracious Speech provides no measure to ring-fence the nuclear levy to the nuclear power industry. No proposal is made even to stop paying the nuclear subsidy paid to France, even though the electricity it sends us does not have to be produced at nuclear power stations. None of those measures, which would keep the pits open, are contained in the Queen's Speech: instead, we have the grotesque irrelevance of coal privatisation.
  We will oppose that wretched Bill, whenever the President of the Board of Trade manages to produce it, because our coal reserves are a national asset which should not be managed in the interests only of private profit. We will oppose it because we have not forgotten that pits were brought into public ownership to stop the carnage that occurred under private ownership.
  Since 1947, there have been 3,000 deaths in the public coal industry—far too many, but many fewer than under the private industry that it replaced. In the 46 years before nationalisation, there were 50,000 deaths in private coal mines. That equation between public ownership and safer mines is not just a historical fact. The same is true now. The private pits of Britain employ a smaller work force and produce a smaller output than that produced by British Coal, but they had the same number of deaths underground as those in the whole of British Coal in the past year.
  British Coal has the best safety record of any deep mining corporation around the world, and that alone provides compelling reason for keeping it in public ownership. We will also oppose the privatisation Bill because it is utterly and abjectly irrelevant to the real crisis in the coal industry. The privatisation of coal will not save a single pit, but will accelerate the closure of those pits that cannot produce a profit within the time scale set by parliamentary procedures.
  It is the stark irrelevance that bonds the privatisation of coal with the other main contribution of the President of the Board of Trade to the Queen's Speech. Let us first consider the background to our debate. On the very day that we heard the Queen's Speech, the employees of Rolls-Royce heard that another 1,000 of them were to be made redundant. They are skilled craftsmen whose output is vital to the aerospace sector, which is this nation's largest single exporter.
  Today as we debate, Parliament is being lobbied by manufacturing workers from the north-west. In the document that they have produced, they point out that, in the year to March this year, 88,000 more jobs in manufacturing in the north-west have gone. That has happened, mark you, in the year which we have been told is the year of the upswing. In that year of recovery, the north-west has lost the last pit in Lancashire, the last shipyard in Merseyside and almost the entire United Kingdom capacity to produce bulk denim.
  The President of the Board of Trade, or at any rate his Department, is aware of the extent of the crisis in manufacturing. We know that they know it, because they have produced the most damning report on innovation. I do

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  not know how that report slipped through the net. Perhaps no political commissar was allowed to see it in time to detect that it was so politically incorrect.
  The document contains a graph which shows a real lapse in the security of the Department. The graph shows that, between 1975 and 1979 under the previous Labour Government, Britain's share of world exports rose by one fifth. Since 1980, Britain's share of world exports has fallen under the Conservatives by exactly as much as it rose under Labour during the 1970s.
  On the same page, it is pointed out that there are now only three UK companies in the international top 50 of companies ranked by spending on research and development. Over the page, we find that there are now no UK companies in the top 25 companies ranked by the number of new patents registered.
  However, I want to be fair. I shall certainly give the full and balanced picture as it is provided by the report. There is one sector in which Britain leads the world. There is a graph that shows that, in that one sector, British companies are head and shoulders above any competitor. That is the percentage of profits that is paid out in dividends.
  That is something for which the Conservatives can take some credit, as it has happened during their period of office. In 1979 the percentage of profits paid out in dividends was below 50 per cent. In 1991, it was almost 70 per cent. That is double the figure for Japan and for Germany. I cannot comment better on those figures than the report itself, which says:
  "this may be a reflection of an attitude of jam today rather than investment for the future."
  The problem is spelled out in the Government's own document. Perhaps the President of the Board of Trade did not see the document before publication. Perhaps no one has dared to show it to him since it was discovered that the document has been published.
  If the President saw the document, one could not tell it from the Queen's Speech. There is not a single measure to turn that bleak picture around. There are no measures to increase manufacturing investment, which is now one tenth of the level it was in the 1970s under the Labour Government. There are no measures to increase the level of skills in Britain, in which we are among the poorest in Europe, with only Portugal and Greece beneath us.
  There are no measures to increase spending on research and development, although we are one of the few industrialised nations where spending on research and development is less than the pay-out in dividends. There are no measures to discourage companies from treating profits as a bottomless jam jar from which dividends can be paid out.
  Having glimpsed the magnitude of the challenge to the manufacturing base, what did the President have a tilt at in the Queen's Speech? What was uniquely identified in the Queen's Speech as holding back British industry'? It was Whitehall red tape, and the burden on business.
  First, how dare the Government talk about lifting the burden on business when every press briefing about the Budget warns us that statutory sick pay is to be handed over to business? That is an imposition of £1·5 billion-worth of burden on to business. To be fair to the President, we must recognise that he did not think up that nonsense.
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  During the Queen's Speech debate in 1988, the President made a speech which was quite different from the one that I suspect he is about to make. He said about regulation:
  "There will always be somebody in an unfettered marketplace who pressures the standards at the lower end and thus destroys environmental standards that it is the Government's responsibility to uphold. The only way in which that can be prevented is by …regulation by the Government."—[Official Report, 28 November, 1988; Vol. 142, c. 460.]
  I say with humility that I could not make a better case for regulation. Regulation is needed to give a set of decent standards which will provide a common floor so that cowboys cannot drive down standards to get a competitive edge. Today, sadly, the President finds himself on the side of the cowboys, and is extending to them the freedom to get a competitive edge by lowering standards.
  Why has the President been forced to lower his own standards? The reason is that the pace on this is being forced by mightier minds than his. It is being forced by the mind of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton).
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs (Mr. Neil Hamilton): Oh!
  Mr. Cook: The intellect of the hon. Gentleman is such that I would wish to have his full attention.
  During Question Time, the hon. Gentleman lectured us three times on our ignorance. My respect for that rebuke would have been greater were it not for his decision, in his speech to the Conservative party conference, to cite the EC directive on the import of caramel as one of the cases proving that we need deregulation. The hon. Gentleman will recall that he pointed out to the conference that the Lord's Prayer needs 59 words, but the directive requires 26,911 words.
  The only problem with that parable is that, when we asked the EC Commission for the directive on the import of caramel, it told us that there was no such thing, although someone remembered Sir John Banham, when in Brussels two years ago, making an after-diner speech in which he used that as a joke. That joke is now the foundation of the policy of the Department of Trade and Industry.
  The hon. Member for Tatton is on the right wing. He is one of those people who believe that Government do not work, and who get into Government to prove it. Earlier this year, he made a speech to the Conservative Way Forward group. That must surely become the Conservative way back, but that is its problem. He is reported as saying:
  "Measures controlling everything from health and safety at work and food, to fire prevention and the sale of dangerous goods, should be entrusted to business instead."
  That, God help us all, is the man entrusted with running the deregulation initiative.
  As I understand the reasoning behind the hon. Gentleman's ideology, it is that all regulations are an interference with the market. Left to itself, the market will compete for consumers, that competition will oblige the market to ensure ever higher standards in the competition for customers and if, through the absence of food regulations, a person contracts a fatal dose of salmonella, the market will automatically punish the producer because he will not get that person's custom again. I think that that is the reasoning in the loopy world inhabited by the hon. Member for Tatton, where reality does not intrude and environmental health officers do not call to inspect.
  The hon. Member for Tatton gave the Conservative conference a most telling example of the red tape that holds

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  back British industry. At extended length, he explained that people who bake cakes for Conservative fund raising have to register their premises if they do it for five days every month. I am not clear as to how common is that practice among industrialists, upon whom it is a burden. I have my doubts whether that is how Asil Nadir raised the £400,000 that he gave to the Tory party.
  However, I can pinpoint the offending regulations. I have looked them up. They are called the Food Premises (Registration) Regulations 1991, and the order was signed by four Tory Ministers, including two Cabinet Ministers. The hon. Gentleman has done us a service. He has exposed the humbug in the rhetoric about deregulation, which arises from the fact that the Tories themselves brought in most of the regulations about which they now complain.
  I have here "Butterworth's Company Law Handbook 1979", which sets out British company law in under 500 pages. In 1979, Sir John Nott, the first of many Tory Secretaries of State for Trade, announced the first of many deregulation drives. I also have here "Butterworth's Company Law Handbook 1992". After 14 years of drives to deregulate, the book is now over 5,000 pages—10 times longer—and the pages have had to be made thinner so that everything can go into one volume.
  If those 4,500 extra pages contain matter that is only tying up enterprise in red tape and regulations that serve no purpose, fine—the President will have our full cooperation in cutting that out. As that is always desirable, why does he need a special Bill to proceed? That is the point at which the alarm bells begin to ring. We have read that the Bill will not be a list of the 4,500 pages of regulations which should be repealed. Instead, the Bill will give the Government the power to repeal regulations. Specifically, it will give the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs the power to repeal those regulations.
  Mr. Stephen Milligan: With his expert knowledge of the workings of the EC and EC directives, can the hon. Gentleman explain how many pages would have to be added to the tome that he has just produced if the charter on European socialism, signed by his colleague in Brussels two weeks ago, became European law?
  Mr. Cook: I do not have the slightest difficulty in saying that, if we want to compete with other countries in Europe, we must compete with them in work practices. That is why no successful industry in Britain would face any serious problem in meeting the terms of the social charter. The people on whom it would bite are the cowboys whom the Government have encouraged to come into business over the past few years and who provide work practices and conditions for their employees of which the Government should be ashamed.
  As I understand it, we are to be invited to provide the Government with the power to deregulate without reference to Parliament, which passed the regulations in the first place. On the day of the Queen's Speech, the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs went on record as saying that "nothing is ruled out". If the President of the Board of Trade wants the Bill to go through without controversy, he had better start ruling out some of the regulations. In particular, he will need to rule out any
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  deregulation that will reduce the safety of the public. That does not appear to have been a working principle of the review of the regulations.
  I have a copy of a letter about furniture regulations which the deregulation initiative sent to many companies. It informs those companies that part of the review of deregulation is to consider the furniture and fire safety regulations. Those regulations were introduced only six years ago, after a week during which 10 people, mainly children, died as a result of toxic gas produced from foam-filled upholstery. What are we doing even contemplating the deregulation of those controls?
  The Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs went on the record at the Conservative party conference as saying:
  "We must always remember that the silent majority of consumers are backing us all the way."
  This month, the National Consumer Council put that assertion to the test and held an opinion poll. The poll discovered that 91 per cent. of consumers want consumer protection to be regulated by the Government, particularly in respect of fire regulations on furniture. The arithmetic of the Under-Secretary of State appears to be as suspect on this occasion as it was in respect of the caramel directive. His silent majority in favour of deregulation has dwindled to 3 per cent. of that sample.
  I understand why the Under-Secretary formed the view that consumers were silent. He formed seven task forces to carry out the review. Those task forces comprise 55 members, not one of whom is on a task force as a consumer. They are all there as business men. To be precise, 52 are there as business men and, for the sake of what passes for balance, three are there as business women. They are all members of the task forces as producers. Consumers are kept silent while vested interests gather around the table and consider how to cut the costs and standards of regulation, without reckoning the risk or cost to the consumer.
  In fairness to those estimable people, some of them have been admirably frank about how they see their role. Mr. Christopher Spackman is chairman of the construction task force. He comes from Bovis, whose parent company has given the Tory party £600,000 over the past five years. Mr. Spackman and his colleagues have obviously been baking a very large number of cakes.
  This is how Mr. Spackman described his objective:
  "There is no use playing around. We have to be drastic—for example, kill off the Building Regulations."
  There was none of that language that we heard during Question Time, of upgrading and improving the regulations. Mr. Spackman said that we should
  "kill off the Building Regulations."
  We were rebuked for using such words when we used them in respect of what the Government are proposing for health and safety. There cannot be much hope of protection for the home buyer after the building regulations are killed off.
  There is a word to describe the arrangements by which the party in government takes large sums from a company and then takes direction from that company on which regulations it would find it convenient to have scrapped. That word is "corruption". It is the corruption of a party that has been in power for so long that it has forgotten that it holds office in the public interest, not the vested interests of its friends.
  Mr. Spackman, of course, does not confine himself to the building regulations. Mr. Spackman also says that he

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  will express his views on the safety regulations for the construction industry, an industry that already has the worst safety record in Britain. It is not just the safety to the consumer that is at risk, but the safety of the employee.
  We know that, among the 3,600 regulations that have been looked at, there are dozens relating to health and safety—for example, the regulation on lifting loads manually, the regulations intended to contain repetitive strain injury while using a visual display unit, even the regulation obliging employers to supply toilet rolls and a lavatory, which was signed by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. Mcloughlin), the present Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in 1992 when he was at the Department of the Employment.
  That is back to basics with a vengeance. Is that how we will increase competitiveness—by making our workplaces the most dangerous? Is that how we will attract inward investment—by letting companies take greater risks with British workers? Only the myopic would describe the cost of proper safety measures as a burden on business. The business executive who has got beyond counting candle ends and joined the modern world knows that the real burden is the cost of accidents, that better safety is not a burden on business, and that better safety means reductions in lost production, less absence through injuries, fewer compensation claims, and lower insurance premiums.
  Earlier this year, the Health and Safety Executive produced a study of the cost of accidents in five workplaces. It found that the cost of accidents in one company was the equivalent of 37 per cent. of profit. In another company, it was the equivalent of 8 per cent. of turnover.
  As Conservative Members are contemplating deregulating the new regulation on manual lifting, I invite them to remember that 3·5 million working days are lost in Britain through back injury. That is five times the number of days lost through strikes, which Conservative Members are quick to denounce as damaging to the economy. I am not so naive as to hope that Conservative Members might back off because there are 3·5 million days of pain for members of the public suffering from back strain, but I ask them to think again and pause to reflect that 3·5 million lost working days add up to several hundred million pounds of lost output.
  We could make a similar financial case in respect of the environmental regulations. Among the 3,600 regulations which the President of the Board of Trade has put into the review are regulations on air quality, water and waste management, nuisance from noise and litter, and insulation in lofts. We do not do our industry any favours by permitting it to operate to lower environmental standards than in the rest of the world. The rest of the world is our market.
  The OECD estimates that, by the end of the century, the market for green technological products will be £300 billion—bigger than the global aerospace market. The rest of the world will want products that meet their standards, not our standards. They will buy from countries that will provide the best environmental technology. Our industry will not invest in developing that technology if we run our country on the worst environmental standards.
  Such consideration should inform the thinking of any Minister who is interested in a serious industrial strategy. Instead, deregulation is offered to this Session of Parliament as a grotesque parody of industrial strategy.
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  The hon. Member for Tatton defended it by saying that the fastest growing economies are the unregulated tigers of the Pacific rim. The hon. Gentleman deludes himself if he thinks that their impressive technological advance was achieved by doing without toilet paper in the lavatory or insulation in the loft. They advanced by a formidable rate of savings and investment, and by a first-class education service, which is putting through double the proportion that Britain puts into higher education. They got there with a massive programme to build modern transport and communication systems. Most of all, they got there with active partnership between Government and industry to identify, and they to occupy, markets in new technology.
  Britain needs a Government who are ready to face up to the challenge that those countries pose to us. What the Queen's Speech proves is that this Government are incapable even of understanding that challenge. Instead of measures that will provide for more investment, skills and technology, we are presented with a measure which will bring lower safety and environmental standards and a lower level of consumer protection. That this pathetic, mean-spirited Bill should be held up as one of the two big Bills of this Session is a revelation.
  We have a Government who have been in office so long that they are bereft of any sense of purpose, or any idea of what good they can do for the public. It would flatter them to compare them to a row "of exhausted volcanoes", which was Disraeli's phrase. Most of them—I exempt the President of the Board of Trade—have never produced a single notable eruption in their entire careers. They bear more resemblance to a line of abandoned molehills, and it is long past the time that they were turned over and ploughed back into the earth.
  That is what we shall start to get down to tonight, with the first official vote of the parliamentary Session. We will express our contempt of a Government who present deregulation as a parody of an industrial strategy, and we shall signal our determination to fight any attempt by them to abandon their duty as a Government to protect the safety of the public.
  4.31 pm
  The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Michael Heseltine): When I returned to the House not many weeks ago—I thank the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) for his kind remarks—someone asked me, "How's life?" I replied, "A great deal better than the alternative." As I listened to the hon. Member for Livingston today, I wondered whether I had been a little rash in my judgment.
  The Gracious Speech made clear the importance that the Government attach to a successful outcome to the present general agreement on tariffs and trade round. It was fascinating that not a word was said about that, although it is perhaps the single biggest opportunity facing the entire world, to improve living standards and trading opportunities—not a word about that from the hon. Member for Livingston. However, Conservative Members will welcome the boost which the passage of the north American free trade agreement has already given to the Uruguay round. There must be no doubt that no country will work harder than we will for a successful conclusion to that round.
  The calculations show the excitement of the possibilities. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation

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  and Development claims that a successful outcome could raise annual world income by about $270 billion during a decade. That estimate could well prove to be on the cautious side, once the effects of trade in services and the dynamic benefits of trade liberalisation are taken into account.
  We all realise that the timetable is perilously tight and, frankly, all the Governments of the world must face the understandable criticism that it has taken seven years of negotiation, yet we now face trying to conclude the deals on so many issues with just three weeks to go.
  It is also important to remember that a successful outcome to the GAIT round would not only be welcomed on trade grounds, important though they are; the less-developed and poorer countries in particular stand to gain far more in extra trade and investment than they could ever expect in extra aid from the more prosperous countries.
  Within a more open trading environment, our policy is to enable and assist British-based companies to gain the largest possible share of world trade.
  On any detached analysis, there are growing signs today of success. We heard virtually not a word from the Opposition about the direction in which the economy is moving or about the news, which is more encouraging by the day. Inflation is at its lowest level for 30 years. Headline inflation has been below 2 per cent. for 10 months—the best performance since the 1960s. With the base rate now cut to 5.5 per cent., since October 1990 interest rate reductions have added about £12 billion a year of benefit to business. Investment is rising; manufacturing investment in the third quarter of this year was up by 2 per cent. on a year earlier, a point which also seems to have passed the hon. Member for Livingston by—it certainly passed his colleagues by when they drafted the amendment on the Order Paper.
  Our GDP has been rising for 18 months. It was 1.9 per cent. higher in the third quarter of this year than a year earlier. Perhaps most excitingly of all, exports are at record levels. The volume of manufactured exports going outside the EC was up by 16 per cent. on a year earlier. Characteristically, the hon. Member for Livingston sought to diminish the world trade that this country has achieved by claiming that our share of it had risen under the Labour Government. The only way he can do that is by talking about cash and ignoring exchange rate calculations. In fact, persistently and under all Governments, since the war we have lost our volume share of world trade. Our share has now stabilised, however. The task is to ensure that we build up our export success, to make sure that it increases in the right direction.
  It is particularly encouraging to realise that this is now beginning to happen, given the depth of the recession affecting our principal markets in the European Community. Within the single market, it is this country's economy that is leading the recovery. There are clear background signs now that we can look forward to persistent growth. Our prime task, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has spelt out with great clarity, is to enhance the competitiveness of our economy.
  Opening the debate on the Gracious Speech, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister covered many of the essential ingredients of this enhanced competitiveness
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  when he set out our central strategies for education, training, research and development, infrastructure and macro-economic management—to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor will return tomorrow.
  In the Gracious Speech, my Department, as the hon. Member for Livingston rightly said, has three Bills: the deregulation Bill, the trade marks Bill and the Bill to privatise the coal industry, and the House would expect me to comment on each of them. I wish to make it clear that the deregulation Bill will not be about destroying the environment, imperilling safety or exposing the unsuspecting to fraud and cheating.
  "We believe it is vital to keep red tape to a minimum."
  I expected that phrase to provoke a response from the Labour party—I thought that its members might have welcomed it. Why? Because those were the words of the Leader of the Opposition to a small firms conference that he held the other day.
  It is all very well for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to come out with these wonderfully ringing words—with which I agree—when he is away from the House and away from the parliamentary Labour party—and when he is not being listened to by his supporters. But when he comes here, he dismisses deregulation, as he did in his remarks on the Queen's Speech, as almost irrelevant to our national recovery.
  The truth is that the only thing that is marginal, in the context of a party that has lost four elections in a row, is the policy of that party on deregulation. We want to make sure when we regulate that we protect the vulnerable, protect the public, protect our heritage and protect the countryside, but in such a way as to deal best with the real risks and to put the fewest obstacles in the way of wealth creation. We must keep paperwork to a minimum and keep the intrusive nature of bureaucracy under the tightest possible control.
  There are three thrusts to the policy that we intend to introduce. The first is the new regulations; we will ensure that regulators count the cost of their proposals before they publish them. Secondly, there is no point in taming domestic regulators in Whitehall if European directives keep piling on the burden. Last year, we persuaded our European colleagues to put the cost of business into account and to publish it when new European measures are proposed.
  Thirdly, there is the subject matter of the Bill. We are reviewing existing regulations. Under the guidance of Lord Sainsbury, eight task forces from business and the voluntary sector have been examining regulations on the statute book to see whether they can be scrapped, modified or improved.
  Even then, primary legislation can stand in the way of reform. That is why we are introducing a deregulation Bill to cut the red tape and open up the opportunities for business. The Bill will include specific deregulation measures, as well as a means to deregulate in the future. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] The hon. Member for Livingston was deeply immersed in creating fear, at which he is a past master. A parliamentary process will be involved in our proposals.
  In the same Bill, we will be removing statutory obstacles to market-testing and contracting-out programmes of both Government and local authorities because we want to see better value for money for the taxpayer in all our policies.
  Mr. Bill Etherington: I am pleased to welcome back the President of the Board of Trade after his illness. He seems to fail completely to comprehend that some Labour Members do not correlate cutting red tape and minimising death and injury in the industry. Why does he fail to comprehend that?
  Mr. Heseltine: I do so for precisely the same reason that the Leader of the Opposition made it absolutely clear that he wanted to cut red tape to a minimum as well. The hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington) and other Labour Members cannot understand that in a competitive world we have no choice but to make absolutely sure that every avoidable cost is avoided in our legislative programme.
  It must be recognised that deregulation is not simply about the letter of the law. The law gives rise to a plethora of guidance notes, circulars, inspectors and forms—all the familiar trappings of bureaucracy. Our review covers the impedimenta of legislation, as well as the legislation itself.
  Mr. Anthony Steen: Conservative Members are finding this speech extremely invigorating, and I hope that we will hear a little more of this wonderful stuff. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend will bear in mind that it is not simply about deregulation—it is about the over-zealous interpretation by officials not only in Whitehall but at local level. It is an attitude problem which we must address from the top.
  Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why I referred to the impedimenta of legislation and all the practices that flow from it. We are well aware that many of the changes that we hope to see will not require legislation; they will require changing practices in a new changed culture. The House will have an opportunity to examine our detailed proposals when we introduce the Bill.
  The speech of the hon. Member for Livingston was anticipated, but he is not the only one. Labour Members are already in full cry and, if I may say so, in characteristic vein. This is not the first time that the hon. Gentleman has had an opportunity to indulge in what might be called slightly exaggerated versions of the truth. Indeed, he has a technique. He is a sort of chill factor in the body politic. We are well aware of how he does it because the record is there. He was shadow spokesman for the health service.
  Mr. Robin Cook: I was very good.
  Mr. Heseltine: Let me remind the hon. Gentleman, if he needs any reminding, of what he said before the election about Conservatives seeking a health service where organisations were put on the second floor of buildings to discourage people who were disabled and therefore expensive to treat from enrolling, or where casualty patients died because no one could pay for them. The hon. Gentleman knew that that was not true; it was a great distortion of anything that we had in mind, but if he could find people to frighten, frighten them he would, regardless of the facts.
  The Leader of the Opposition had an even more brazen charge. He said that it is all the Government's fault—we heard that again from the hon. Member for Livingston — because we are simply reviewing our own regulations. Nothing so reveals the fossilised inherent approach of the socialist in practice as that allegation.
  A communications revolution can sweep the world. The globalisation of markets can overwhelm national
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  boundaries. The Asian-Pacific rim can transform the competitive threat. Industry and commerce must change. The one thing that must never change is the good old British regulation. Like the pint and the good old British banger—once a regulation, always a regulation. What a battle cry for the modernised Labour party.
  But who can be surprised? The Labour party is the regulator's natural ally. About the only things left of the trade union movement are the white collar affiliates of the Trades Union Congress who dream up the regulations, inspect the regulated, regulate the regulators and drown the rest of us under the weight of the burden. That is typical of those socialists in their approach, with their ideas frozen in time and practices set solid in concrete. That is the image that one would think they wanted to portray—no change; and when it is done, leave it there.
  Hon. Members will want to consider carefully whether that argument is applied as consistently by Labour Members as they would have us believe. They may not be prepared to change one dot or comma of the most outdated regulation. Not a hair on the head of the most lowly inspector must be subjected to the wind of change, but when it comes to their fundamental socialist beliefs, which have cost them four consecutive elections, they want us to believe that the whole lot have been flung out the window. They fought against Europe for 30 years. Now they take every nugget of Euro-speak before the red ink is dry on the paper. Nationalisation was once the essence of their industrial strategy. Now it has become the word that dare not speak its name.
  I shall give one example of what can be achieved when the yoke on nationalisation is removed. In 1983, we privatised the ports. In 1989, we abolished the dock labour scheme. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) doubtless reacted with a characteristically moderate and balanced judgment. The modesty of his language was exceeded only by the energy with which he rushed around the docks spreading the news of impending disaster.
  I took the liberty of doing a little research. In 1980, less than 4,000 tonnes of cargo went through Hull. In 1992, it was nearly 9,000 tonnes. The figure had more than doubled. The only other difference that I have detected over the years of Hull's growing success is the absence of the hon. Gentleman, who, I am told, has not visited the thriving new dock company since its inception. Like the scarlet pimpernel, they seek him here, they seek him there. But the first sign of real success in his constituency brings forth in the hon. Gentleman a unique contribution to the political debate—absolute silence.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner rose—
  Mr. Heseltine: There is someone who has never known what absolute silence is.
  I can only say that when the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East describes my deregulation proposals as a return to the killing fields, nothing persuades me more that I have got them more or less right.
  Mr. Skinner: Give way.
  Mr. Heseltine: Yes, why not?
  Mr. Skinner: I have a little tablet here that the President can put under his tongue. Is he aware that when he talks about imports into Hull, he is talking about the massive increase in coal imports which have enabled him

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  and his fellow Ministers to encourage pit closures? As a result, the 31 pits that he said he would save now look as if they will be closed. He should be ashamed of himself for putting all those workers on the dole.
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman gives the game away. In the real world, employment in the docks is the preoccupation. He cannot understand that there has been a container revolution and that the efficiency of the ports today makes them competitive. What he would really like to see are the days of old when thousands of men carried the loads in sacks on their backs. Then he could have a national union of sack carriers. Doubtless we would have Members of Parliament sponsored by the national union of sack carriers, paying their funds into the Labour party and shackling the competitive instinct of this country, at which the hon. Gentleman is one of the greatest experts.
  I should be the last person to wish to do the Labour party any sort of injustice. I have said that it would regulate everything. I am prepared to believe that every rule has an exception. I have missed out one area where no doubt the deregulating zeal of the Labour party would be at the forefront of its political agenda: the trade unions would be deregulated. Here we would find a veritable bonfire of controls: strikes, go-slows, no-gos, Labour in power, socialism in practice—all back to an agenda that we drove from the country 14 years ago. The painful sacrifices accumulated over 20 years that have given the country the best industrial relations for a century would be thrown away in a single Act of Parliament.
  On this issue at least let me accuse the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East of no silence. He has made it absolutely clear that Labour would repeal all our trade union legislation. There is nothing to keep. It all has to go. The House will want to contrast that with the charge made by the hon. Member for Livingston that, because we talk to leaders in the construction industry, with a view modestly to changing the regulations to lighten the load on our system, we are indulging in corruption. Yet the Labour party is prepared to sweep from the statute book all our trade union legislation to satisfy its paymasters. What are we supposed to call that? So we shall press on with our deregulation programme as part of our determination to help British industry compete.
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: The President of the Board of Trade is making an entertaining speech. Will he tell the House specifically how the regulations will be introduced? Will the House be presented with a detailed Bill that includes the specific regulations, which can be debated, amended and voted on; or will we be presented with an enabling Bill in which each individual regulation will be determined by statutory instrument? If the latter is the case, that is not the way to deal with deregulation.
  Mr. Heseltine: The good old Liberals are at it again. They want it all ways. Whatever we do, it will be wrong. The hon. Gentleman must contain himself. We will have a Second Reading of the Bill, when he can examine it in great detail. Doubtless he will table some amendments, the scrutiny of which we shall be forced to subject ourselves to. Nevertheless, in the proper, democratic exercise of our duty, the Liberals must have their turn, however small it may turn out to be.
  Mr. Richard Caborn: It is good to see the President of the Board of Trade back on form. His speech is entertaining, if in no way factual. I remind him that a great deal of research was done by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry for its report on Europe. Does he recall that the report pointed out clearly to Ministers that the burden of many European Community regulations had been increased by his own civil servants? That was a strong criticism.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) has referred to the increase in regulation. That has arisen directly from the inability of Ministers, particularly those in the Department of Trade and Industry, to control their civil servants, who are adding extensively to EC regulations. Ministers rode on the back of EC regulations that would not have passed through the House had the turnkey of the European Community not been used.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members present that interventions are supposed to be brief. They are not supposed to be mini-speeches.
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and I thank him for his generous words to me personally. If he wants to help me to a full recovery, he will avoid inviting me to appear before his Select Committee again.
  I now want to say something about the privatisation of the coal industry. The hon. Member for Livingston treated us to a general denunciation of the issues of privatisation, so it may be helpful if first we spend a moment or two looking at the record of privatisation over this decade. We have absolutely no doubt that privatisation drives up standards of efficiency and management, ensures that investment decisions are taken by customers, not Government, leads to increased efficiency and lower costs and encourages innovation, all of which help the privatised companies to get out and become world class players on the international stage.
  Just one sobering statistic—a single sentence—will show why we believe that we have brought about a fundamental and important shift. In 1979, taxpayers paid £50 million a week to subsidise the losses of the nationalised industries. The privatized industries are now paying £60 million a week in taxes to the Exchequer on the profits that they are making. There is no clearer vindication than that of the privatisation policies of the past decade.
  British Steel is now one of the most efficient in the whole world. PowerGen, National Power and the National Grid are international companies. We have a major extension and modernisation of our water and sewerage infrastructure, with a £30 billion investment programme. British Telecom's prices are down by more than 27 per cent. in real terms since 1984. Domestic and small business prices for gas have fallen by 20 per cent. in real terms since privatisation. British Gas now operates in more than 45 overseas markets.
  The hon. Member for Livingston describes that as the grotesque irrelevance of privatisation. There has been a dramatic transformation of the commanding heights of our economy precisely because they have been privatised. This is the remarkable transformation of great parts of the previously nationalised industries. It is against that background that we believe that the best future for coal is in the private sector.

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  I have no need to repeat the concern shared by everyone in the House for the difficulties experienced by those in the industry.
  Mr. Terry Lewis: Bloody hypocrisy.
  Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman talks of hypocrisy. The Opposition have presided over the run-down of the coal industry every time they have been in office. The figures are startling. In 1948, when the industry was brought into public ownership, there were 958 collieries and 700,000 workers; by 1970, it was down to 300 collieries and 375,000 workers. Everybody knows that the market for coal has been declining persistently for the past half century.
  Another matter has been proved beyond peradventure. Energy markets are too volatile for any kind of central planning system to make sensible decisions for the future. A salient feature of Government forecasts on energy is that they have always turned out to be wrong. It was forecast that oil and gas would become rare and expensive towards the new millennium. In practice, new discoveries are taking place all the time. Production is at a high level and reserves are mounting. As a result, prices are low and look set to remain that way.
  We plan to bring before the House as soon as possible this Session a Bill to privatise British Coal. That would free the industry from the dead hand of state control and allow it to compete within the wider energy market. The Opposition do not see it that way. They have not seen it that way whenever we have privatised an industry and they have always been wrong.
  The hon. Member for Livingston is up to his old tricks and trying to suggest that privatisation will threaten the safety of miners. It is despicable how the hon. Gentleman always finds the most vulnerable sectors of society and cynically exploits their legitimate fears for narrow party purposes. When I became President of the Board of Trade, at my first meeting on the subject, I said that I would do nothing to prejudice safety in the mines. I have never been asked to do anything that would do that and, if I were asked, I would not do it. We have fully accepted the advice of the Health and Safety Commission which was contained in its recent report, which has been placed in the Library.
  I look forward to the day when British coal companies are free to seek—and invest in—world opportunities and to export their skills and experience in the huge international market. Furthermore, looking back over the decades, I have no doubt that, had we privatised the industry earlier, British Coal would have saved more jobs and we would have had a larger and more viable industry than the market can now sustain.
  Mr. Robin Cook: The President must have missed out a page of his speech. Before he leaves the issue of privatisation of the coal industry, will he answer the question put to him? If privatisation is to work such a wonderful transformation of the coal industry, how many pits will survive to be privatised?
  Mr. Heseltine: It is an illusion of the Opposition. When they were in power, the pits closed month after month. They never knew, and no Minister will make such forecasts in a market condition where the customer will determine the market.
  My third Bill covers trademarks, which play a critical part for business. The forthcoming trademarks Bill will
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  deregulate procedures. It will open the door to the use of international trade mark registration systems under the Madrid protocol, thereby allowing businesses to protect trade marks overseas in all contracting states by a single application. That will achieve substantial savings for other businesses.
  The Gracious Speech debate and the Opposition's amendment go wider than the specific legislation that I propose to introduce. I should like to update the House on the position of Leyland Daf because nothing so illustrates the difference in policy as the differing approaches of the Government and the hon. Member for Livingston on that issue.
  The House will remember that the company went into receivership in February this year. The hon. Member for Livingston was on his feet demanding instant intervention. "Bail the company out" was the instant policy. I refused, not least because, having put £3.5 billion into Leyland, we did not seem to have succeeded in doing the trick by bailing the company out with taxpayers' money. Instead, we backed the entrepreneurial skills of the management, receivers, banks and financial houses to let them find a commercial market solution. The van and truck businesses were able to set themselves up as two independently run companies. Half the jobs were saved, as was the supply and distribution chain. The cost to the British taxpayer was £5 million in regional assistance.
  While my Department was encouraging and helping all that intricate, detailed work to save half the jobs at minimum cost to the taxpayer, the hon. Member for Livingston was not idle. He was leaping about, flying to the continent, and climbing on any old soap box urging me to do what the Belgian and Dutch Governments were doing. It all made good headlines at the time, and nudged the hon. Member up the shadow Cabinet pecking order a bit. But, as always, when the facts come out, they do not fit the scare stories in which the hon. Gentleman trades.
  The Dutch and Belgian work forces were reduced! by virtually the same proportions as ours, but the poor old European taxpayers were £100 million worse off as a result of their Governments' hasty involvement. That is whai the hon. Gentleman really believes in—spend money first and then try to find solutions. That is what the last Labour Government tried, but it costs money and it does not work.
  The news for us is even better. Both Leyland DAF Vans and Leyland Trucks have recovered well. The vans business is maintaining its production volume and has recently announced an £8 million development programme. Leyland Trucks has been able to increase civilian volumes by 30 per cent. and win export markets, and is discussing joint development of a new medium weight truck.
  However, to the hon. Member for Livingston, all that was grist to the mill. Some of my hon. Friends, who do not need to concern themselves with the details of those matters, may have missed a little press release that he put out at the time. It was in characteristic language and was headed:
  "Labour reveals the threatened 'dossier of disaster' if Leyland Daf closes".
  The hon. Gentleman had identified 6,000 firms that would be pushed into closure by the loss of business. He produced a "dossier of disaster". Ap my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government in whose constituencies a Leyland van had ever been seen were listed for that hideous impending

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  disaster—6,000 fingers stretched out in blame, reaching to tear the throat from the hapless President of the Board of Trade.
  My poor old right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was up to his eyes in it simply because the Rover car company in his constituency had supplied parts to Leyland Daf. Rover would be hit, we were warned. What happened? Rover is selling cars like there was no tomorrow, recruiting extra employees and setting world quality standards.
  It was not just the big fish. Even the junior Ministers were not to be spared the ruthless scourge of the hon. Gentleman's searing foresight. He said that my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor), the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, was about to see Land Rover knocked off its perch. What happened? Land Rover has taken on 300 extra staff, and sales of the Discovery have doubled in Japan and Australia.
  What has happened to those 6,000 fingers? They are stuck in the dykes of Labour's crumbling allegations, as every day the recovery reveals the bankruptcy of its statements. If the hon. Member for Livingston is searching around for another press release, why does he not put out one containing good news stories from the constituencies of his colleagues in the shadow Cabinet? I do not want to impose any unnecessary burden or strain on him. Let us have just a press release of good news stories from his constituency—£20 million investment in NEC semiconductors by 1994; 300 new jobs at VRG International in the next four years; 200 new jobs at Mitsubishi in the next two years; 300 new jobs at Marshall Food Group in the next three years; 400 new jobs at David Hall in the next four years; 400 new jobs at IMTEC. I could continue with the list in his constituency alone.
  So why are there no press releases about all that? Where are all those menacing fingers? They are itching to get to work in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, with the new technologies, new factories and new British opportunities. What else? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Livingston said that it was a gross misrepresentation.
  Mr. Robin Cook: The President of the Board of Trade must not run away with a mishearing. What I said was that it was an excellent representation of Livingston.
  Mr. Heseltine: That is interesting. It brings me conveniently to the next argument. Why are all those companies in the hon. Gentleman's constituency? What is it that brings them there? They are all seeking a base in Europe and they are choosing Britain because we are competitive and attractive and they are welcome here. Under this Government, Britain will stay that way, but not under a Labour Government.
  I am sorry that the Leader of the Opposition is not here; he is probably looking after some of his new friends in the boardrooms of England. He is famed for his flirtation and carrying-on with the leaders of our great companies—last week, he was at the Confederation of British Industry conference and, week by week, he is among the thick pile and hushed atmosphere of the City dining rooms. I must make it clear to the leaders of our great companies that it is not their smoked salmon that he is after. He has a different agenda. He has a manifesto of Euro-socialism. Of
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  course, he says that it does not mean all that it says, but it has got his name on it, he is a lawyer and it is printed in English.
  The manifesto may not mean much to the Leader of the Opposition or his hon. Friends, but if one asks the directors in the boardrooms of the international companies deciding whether to invest in our country or not, they have no doubt about what it all means. What is the agenda that we have from the Euro-socialists? The manifesto supports
  "a substantial cut in working time"
  including the prospect of a 35-hour or four-day week.
  "to breathe life into the European social Chapter."
  It supports
  "European works councils, consultations of workings in multi-national businesses and European sectoral collective agreements … a guaranteed minimum wage"
  and
  "Community measures … to avoid a tax-cutting competition between member states".
  We shall not even be allowed to cut the taxes to bring the investment to create the jobs in the constituency of the hon. Member for Livingston.
  There is one other little nugget tucked away in the manifesto for Euro-socialism. It supports
  "a European policy on waste".
  Let us start by ripping up the manifesto itself. To what does it actually add up? Every competitive advantage that this country possesses will be thrown away. To pursue the international brotherhood of man is one thing, but to sell the dear old country down the river to get it is another.
  The Leader of the Opposition made much play—[Interruption.] There were a great many more people at the Tory party conference than there are Labour Members present today. The Leader of the Opposition made much play of the need for evidence. He asked, "What is it about the Tories? They make all the decisions and announcements—the only thing that is ever missing is evidence." He accused us of designing policies, against the facts, without regard for evidence, and as a mere reaction to events. I reject that charge absolutely. We are determined to steer the country to a new competitiveness and a sustained recovery.
  If the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) wants evidence, I shall give it to him. We have the highest proportion of our population at work among the major Community countries. Unemployment has fallen by 137,000 this year. Inflation is persistently lower than at any time since 1960. Exports are at record levels. Interest rates are among the Community's lowest. Industrial relations are excellent. That is the evidence upon which a sustained recovery can be based and on which I invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote for the motion.
  5.16 pm
  Mr. Alfred Morris: The late Earl of Stockton, when he was Prime Minister, was talked of in the House as an actor manager. I hope that the President of the Board of Trade will forgive me for saying that today he has shone more as an actor than a manager. Let no one ever say that he has no alternative career.
  Europe's fastest growing airport, which is also the north-west's most prolific job creator in the private and public sectors alike, has been much in the news recently. I refer, of course, to Manchester airport in my constituency. The airport is owned by Greater Manchester's 10 local authorities and we have been told by the press, on the basis

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  of recent Whitehall briefings of parliamentary journalists, that the Government intend to enforce the sale of the airport to the private sector. We have been told by The Sunday Times:
  "The Government would not benefit directly from the cash raised [an estimated £560 million] but could cut Whitehall grants to the local councils which raised funds from the sell-off."
  Another and perhaps better way of describing what the Government were said to be proposing is that Greater Manchester's 10 local authorities would, at the end of the day, retain not a single penny from the sale price because the Government would cut Whitehall grants to them by the same amount. In other words, the 10 local councils lose their airport, while the Government save £560 million in Whitehall grants. If that is what the Prime Minister means by "going back to basics", I advise him not to take his soap box anywhere near Manchester airport or to any of the 10 town halls.
  If accurately reported by The Sunday Times, the Government plan will involve theft of public property on a massive scale and will make the "great train robbers" look like petty pickpockets.
  Many responsible newspapers were expecting the Government's intentions in regard to Manchester, Birmingham, Luton and other airports to be announced in the Gracious Speech, most probably in the context of the debate on the Bill to facilitate deregulation which, of course, we have yet to see in print. Now, we are told that Whitehall has discovered that it might not be as easy as it thought to grab Britain's still publicly owned airports for the private sector.
  For example, on 19 November, after a briefing at the Department of Transport, The Guardian reported that forcing local councils to sell their airports could be "fraught with difficulties". But despite all the briefing given to Parliamentary journalists, the House has still to receive any kind of statement on the Government's intentions.
  I speak in the debate first to seek full clarification of the Government's position. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that it is just not good enough for Ministers and their officials to give a welter of briefing to the press while Parliament is being left in the dark. My second purpose in speaking today is to warn the Government that there will be the most fierce and utterly unyielding opposition to any attempt to dispossess the people of Greater Manchester of their proudest asset, not least, much to their honour, from a great many Conservative members of the 10 local councils.
  If Ministers are in any doubt about the scale of Conservative opposition to what the Government are said to want, let them spend a day or two with their party's local public representatives in, for example, Bury and Bolton. They will find scant, if any, dissent in any party in Greater Manchester, from the message in a recent leading article in the Manchester Evening News, which said of our airport:
  "It is the shining jewel in Greater Manchester's crown, and should be allowed to remain the property of 2·5 million people in Greater Manchester who benefit from the profits the Airport makes".
  Ms Estelle Morris: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising the important point on the future of airports. Will he accept that any campaign or effort to oppose the privatisation of Manchester airport and other airports will be joined by hon. Members who represent Birmingham constituencies?
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  Is he aware that, under the control of local authorities in Birmingham, our airport is a success story because it has expanded its standard and level of service to make it equal with not only any other airport in the country, but throughout the world?
  Mr. Morris: I hope that I may be excused for referring to that welcome intervention as one not from an hon. Friend, but from a close relative, my niece, whose work for and total commitment to her constituents in Birmingham I greatly admire. I understand that we are the first niece and uncle ever to serve together in the House and, of course, I am grateful for what she said.
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Would the righ hon. Gentleman give way although I am not a relative? Is he assured to learn that at least one Conservative Member shares many of his concerns? Will he accept that Manchester airport is a fine example of a successful partnership that makes a substantial profit? Indeed, some months ago, a number of us attended the opening of terminal 2, which was not only constructed below its estimated cost, but was finished ahead of time. If that is not an example of efficiency in the public local government sector, I do not know what is.
  Mr. Morris: In a way I am related to the hon. Gentleman, at least geographically in terms of our constituencies. Mine adjoins his at the airport and he is a regular user. I entirely agree that the airport's achievements are a superb example of partnership at its best, as I shall explain in more detail.
  Mr. Barry Jones: It is also superb for people in Wales.
  Mr. Morris: As my hon. Friend says, it is also much appreciated in Wales. I know that he often drives from Wales to Manchester because of a quality of service that gives great pride to those who work there, based, as the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) says, on close partnership between the public and private sectors.
  I must now complete the quotation I was giving the House from the leading article of the Manchester Evening News. It concludes:
  "The Government must be made to understand that Manchester International Airport has nothing to gain from being sold off."
  Let me briefly document the justification for that last sentence. Manchester airport is highly efficient and very profitable. By every test—growth, profitability, performance, consumer satisfaction—the airport is Britain's best. In fact, only two months ago, the airport won the "Best of Britain" accolade, and its ability to pick up other prizes and awards has made it the envy not only of other British airports, but of airports across the world. Of the 12,200 people who work at Manchester airport, some 80 per cent. are in the private sector. Tens of thousands of other people in the north-west, all in the private sector, owe their jobs to Manchester airport's huge success.
  The airport's profit in the past year was £42·8 million, compared with £7·4 million nine years ago, and it is now out-performing Gatwick. In 1988-89, when Gatwick, as a British Airports Authority airport, was publicly owned, it had 21,056,000 passengers a year and Manchester 9,700,000. Now that Gatwick is in the private sector, it has 19,843,000 passengers a year, compared with publicly owned Manchester's 13,200,000. So much for the totally

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  bogus argument that transfer from public to private ownership means automatic growth. Stanstead, which is heavily subsidised, is another instructive case that Ministers may wish to examine for the purpose of comparing private and public sector airports.
  Manchester airport's success did not happen overnight. It was achieved by courage, foresight, imaginative planning, patience, intensely hard work and shrewd business sense. That combination made Manchester airport as important to the regional economy of the north-west today as the ship canal was earlier in the century. Who were the shrewd business men who brought this about? They were successive generations of Manchester city councillors, public men and women of all parties and of none. Expertly advised, and acting together with the full support of Manchester's ratepayers, they took the investment decisions that are paying off so handsomely today.
  There were many years when Manchester airport did not make a profit. The people of Manchester have had a return on their investment as ratepayers only since the early 1980s. Moreover, that return has been ploughed back into the regional economy. In what the Government are said to be proposing, there can be no guarantee that the airport's profit will stay in the north-west. It comes as no surprise in Greater Manchester, now that the major risks have been taken and an increasingly successful future is assured, that people want to poach our most valuable asset for private profit. That is why there is so much resentment in the conurbation about the Government's reported intention and why there is such strong, all-party determination to resist any attempt at dispossession.
  If anyone questions our airport's efficiency, let him name the private companies in the north-west that showed anything like a profit of £42·8 million in the past year, or let him point to any other airport that has won, by independent adjudication, so many prizes and awards. By common consent, Greater Manchester has many daunting problems that merit the attention of the House. Its longest and most distressing queue is that for jobs. We have one of the gravest problems of youth unemployment in Britain and the Government's reported plan for an enforced sale of Manchester airport is widely seen as a threat to make the job crisis even worse.
  The best message that we can send to those who own, control and work at Manchester airport is one of congratulations on what they have achieved and the best wishes of the House for still further success. In the interests of the economic revival of the north-west as a whole, Greater Manchester's fixed commitment is to an expanding international airport that will create more and more growth, and more jobs in a region with unacceptably high unemployment. I ask the Government now to drop their manic obsession with privatisation for privatisation's sake, to learn from Manchester airport's undoubted success and to help it to attain the important new goals which it has the high management skills and sense of purpose to achieve.
  After the Newbury and Christchurch by-elections, the Government promised to repent, to change their ways and to start listening to people. Let them now, at long last, have the common sense to start listening to the voice of the
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  people of Greater Manchester on an issue of crucial importance to them and the north-west of England as a whole.
  5.30 pm
  Mr. John Biffen: The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) is a long-standing and compelling exponent of the virtues of aviation in the north-west, but I am sure that he will understand if I choose to follow the main course of the debate as set out by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.
  As the first Conservative Member to speak following my right hon. Friend's appearance at the Dispatch Box, I should say how warmly we welcome him back, and how delightful it was to embark on a vigorous debate and an argument which set out the developing areas of dispute between the two sides of the House. It is a dispute that we shall take to the nation in two or three years' time, at the conclusion of this Parliament, and it is our responsibility to ensure that our differences are put in the most compelling fashion. Only in that way can we secure a popular and meaningful mandate.
  In following the theme set by my right hon. Friend, I intend to detain the House for only a short time, and to speak mainly about issues of deregulation. My first three points concern the proposed Bill. I welcome the introduction of such a Bill. There seems to be almost a culture of controls and regulations which build up incrementally over the years, and it is perfectly legitimate to look again at whether they are fulfilling the role for which they were intended—a proper and protective social role. I welcome the legislation in that context, and I shall not be offended if its basis is the use of statutory instruments. Indeed, I find it difficult to conceive how it could be done otherwise, although I take the point made by the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce).
  As a consequence of the decision to deregulate, the public will be relied on to do their own regulating, as it were, and to make their own judgments. "Caveat emptor" is a cheerful and casual expression, but in truth it is more applicable to an alert middle class than to the public at large. I hope that the Government will underline their commitment to the legitimate role of protection by making further contributions to the consumer advice bureaux. It is not a particularly expensive or onerous undertaking, but it would be appreciated and would legitimise the responsibility that will be placed on the public.
  My second point was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. Inevitably, the whole operation will have a Community context. I do not believe that the House yet appreciates the consequences of the Single European Act. The Act requires tremendous authority for the European Commission, and seeks a level of compliance that I do not think the Government appreciated when the Act went through Parliament. I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) agrees with me. This is not really a party point, but one of the areas in which the House has a learning curve. The development of bureaucracy under the Single European Act is now proving onerous in this country, and I consider it a matter of direct political challenge.
  In a recent article in The Economist, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spoke of "the tangle of regulations". Some years ago, when he was at the Board of

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  Trade at the close of the post-war Labour Government, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx talked of the "bonfire of controls"—a phrase that was not particularly original, and has now passed into political usage. I think that we should now envisage the prospect of a Euro-inferno, given the consequences of the treaty of Rome and, more particularly, the operation within that framework of the Single European Act.
  I hope that the subsidiarity provisions can be used aggressively to seek the end outlined by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, and that he will have some system whereby he can report back to the House not merely on aspiration to reduce controls, but the achievement of that aspiration.
  My third point involves the so-called even playing field, which is prayed in aid repeatedly in circumstances such as these. I must say that, until the last few years, everything in my life—in terms of economics—denied the existence of an even playing field. It was recognised that there were always differences; life was a tapestry of judgments made against that background.
  None the less, I think it important to establish something in our arguments about the social chapter. I do not suggest that Conservative Members are disposed to downgrade the significance of social obligations; it should be asserted, however, that these judgments properly belong to national Governments and Parliaments rather than to Community institutions. That is the position that we now have—although it exists in a rather blurred fashion, as many of my fellow Euro-sceptics would be the first to stress.
  That is a profoundly important judgment, if we are trying to minimise the impact of bureaucracy—not because we seek to hold back its exercise for legitimate objectives, but because the additional level of bureaucracy intended to bring about pseudo-uniformity is found increasingly distasteful.
  My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade—clearly relishing the prospective fight—has given a sharp tap to the kaleidoscope of European debate. He has identified Labour as the party of size—of general bigness —within the Community, and he has clearly done valuable research to that end. I am glad to say that I can wholly endorse his analysis and I should like to take it a little further.
  A fascinating recent development is the cult of size. Of course, bigness has a certain appeal to the faction of the Labour party now in the ascendancy, represented by the leader of the Opposition, but it also has a great appeal to certain elements of the manufacturing community. I was particularly interested by a speech made recently in Harrogate by Mr. Iain Valiance, chairman of British Telecom. Mr. Valiance is a man of bigness in every sense —starting with his salary, which according to my calculations is equal to the entire parliamentary salary bill of the parliamentary Liberal party, give or take a touch. [Interruption.] I am invited by an anonymous voice on the Front Bench, in typically ungenerous fashion, to say how I would judge value for money. I have always had the deepest regard for the party of Gladstone, but I realise that judgments are constantly subject to revision. I will perhaps allow myself that reflection and no more.
  Mr. Valiance made a very powerful address—not so much a speech, more a string of sound bites—and asserted:
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  "Britain must not allow itself to be marginalised; to become so introspective that it is effectively excluded from the inner core of EC decision making. The key areas of monetary policy, employment issues, social costs"—
  I hope that all his fellow industrialists took that point—
  "innovation and regional aid are too important for that."
  Those are all legitimate areas for Community discussion, but the approach that comes from big business, exemplified by Mr. Valiance and elements of the Labour party, is that those are matters which are to be determined under the basic philosophy of the judgment of size and the alleged virtues of centralisation. That is totally contrary to the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and myself, but our response will get further encouragement from the Government Front Bench and the President of the Board of Trade, as has been the case this afternoon. We are in for exciting times as the European debate is taken forward towards the next general election.
  Given those judgments, the question of regulation is not a technical matter at all, but begins to run to the very heart of how we see the relationships between the nations of Europe and the institutions of the Community. Through the Commission, we are currently seeing the development of a most powerful regulation-making body; we are seeing ambition to bring about a degree of uniformity that inspires the most tremendous commitment to regulation.
  I have an idealism about Europe which is based on free nation states in open co-operation. Others may take a more centralist view, but there is no idealism in a Europe of bureaucracy, and that is the Europe that is emerging.
  5.41 pm
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). I am not going to make a European speech, but I have considerable agreement with the hon. Gentleman's point. Whatever our views about Europe and our own domestic arrangements, we have to beware of excessive regulation. The thrust of that debate should strike a chord on all sides of the House and outside; it is the detail about which we may have substantial reasons to differ.
  The President of the Board of Trade was in good form. It was suggested that he made the speech that he was unable to make at the Conservative party conference; it was certainly of that style.
  It was interesting that he ended his speech by saying that the measures he outlined are what we need to put Britain back on the road to recovery. I take that to be an admission by the Government that we have had not 14 years of consistent economic success but a rollercoaster ride; that the Government's policies have not always worked in the best interests of the British economy.
  The core problem for the Government is the scale of the budget deficit of £50 billion. It should be put on record that a substantial part of that deficit is a direct creation of the Government's own incompetence and irresponsibility. It is arguable, but something like £15 billion of that deficit is a hangover from the cost of sorting out the poll tax. The same amount is the cost of Lord Lawson's tax cuts., for electoral reasons, at a time when we could not afford them. That took money out of the Exchequer, as did the cost of the job cuts that have flowed from certain aspects of the Government's policy.
  The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) made a powerful plea for Manchester airport, and put a finger on a worrying dimension of the

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  Government. Now that the Government are running out of things for which they are directly responsible and which they can sell, they will plunder other people's investments to bail themselves out of a hole of their own creation. The least that the Opposition parties can do is expose that as asset-stripping to get the Government out of the mess that they have created. It is not the ideology of privatisation for privatisation's sake.
  A central concern of the British economy is our role as a trading nation. It is a truism to say that we will not be able to maintain a decent standard of living for our population unless we can trade successfully with the rest of the world. We live on an overcrowded island, and we have to use the skills of the nation to add value and to enable us to pay our way.
  If any of the figures that are currently coming out demonstrate a genuine recovery in our performance, I welcome them. I am not interested in taking issue with the Government about the figures. We need to ensure that we have a clear, long-term development that will put Britain into a position of competitiveness.
  I hope that Ministers will accept that we are a long way from being able to claim that, because we are in deficit to most of the major traders in the world. We have reduced our deficit with the European Community over the past few years, but we still have a deficit with it, and with Japan and North America. Spain stands out as the shining example; it is the one country that we seem to be able to export significantly more to than we import from. Our otherwise poor performance must be put right if we are to find success in the future.
  There is a whole raft of things that we need to do. We need to have a strong base of manufactured products and services that add value and are competitive. We need to abandon our propensity for short-termism. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said that it was short-termism that meant that, over the past few years, dividends had been maintained while profits were squeezed. That is not healthy for the long-term good of British industry. British industry may argue that that is not its fault, but is caused by the pressures put on it by the funding institutions on which it depends.
  It was this argument which caused the boardroom fallout in Britain's biggest company, British Petroleum. That was why Robert Horton was forced to resign. His view was that the dividend ought to be cut, but his opponents thought that it should be maintained. They maintained the dividend to the point where the company went into loss for the first time. It is absurd that a company should maintain dividends to the point where it goes into loss, and that issue should be addressed. That is not an attack on the City of London—which has great contributions to make to our economy—but it is a weakness that undermines our long-term investment strategy.
  As to the Government's own short-termism, the Trade and Industry Select Committee yesterday took evidence from the National Engineering Laboratory, and from Warren Spring. The National Engineering Laboratory is being prepared for privatisation, and when I asked the chief executive for his mission statement, he said:
  "Our mission is to prepare ourselves for privatisation."
  I pointed out to him that that was more of a job description than a mission statement, and that we needed to know what
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  was the laboratory's function. I am sorry to say that I did not get a coherent answer, because of the Government's driving force.
  Warren Spring is a much more serious situation. It is a laboratory which is developing practical technology in the environmental area that we need to develop. Warren Spring was being prepared for privatisation and, in response to the Government's strictures, had taken itself into profit; its site had been sold to Glaxo for £25 million to £30 million, and a new site had been promised.
  Without warning, the Government announced that Warren Spring would be closed and forced into a merger with the Atomic Energy Authority. The result is that some two thirds of its excellent staff will be made redundant and 25 per cent. of its business has been lost. That action, which was taken to save a little money, has left a skilled and dedicated work force destroyed and demoralised for what in the private sector would be termed asset stripping. That is a classic example of Government vandalism, which does not serve the long-term interests of the British economy. We need to find better means of co-operation to ensure long-term investment.
  Members of the Select Committee also visited Korea recently, where we were interested to discover that the Koreans have developed a new generation RAM chip. They claim to be world leaders in that work. We asked those responsible how that development was brought about. They replied, with a somewhat puzzled expression, "The industry got together and decided that we needed investment, and the Government naturally agreed to contribute their half. Isn't that what happens in your country?" That, sadly, is exactly what does not happen. Korea is not an underdeveloped economy; the average industrial wage in Korea exactly matches that in the United Kingdom.
  We need to learn certain things. One of the weaknesses of our economy is that small and medium-sized enterprises do not seem to be able to achieve the same degree of technology transfer, innovation and export success as that of overseas competitors in similar companies. That failing is apparent wherever one goes.
  Regardless of the reported motivation and the timing of the intervention from the Prince of Wales, his suggestion that he should be made more use of in promoting British exports should be taken up with enthusiasm. British business men and exporters who have been part of trade missions in which the royal family has taken an active part will readily admit that members of the royal family generate far greater interest in British goods than those business men can do, simply through their presence. They believe that they have been able to win business on such missions because of contacts that otherwise would not have been made.
  We have an excellent overseas consular service for which many business people have reason to be grateful, but we should use those services more effectively. Those in the consular service and companies also need to understand that export markets must be supported.
  One of our weaknesses is that, when we are in a recession, we put our toe in the water of the export market, but, as soon as things pick up back home, we abandon the customers that we have just found. Those customers are understandably less willing to do business with us again. The French, the Germans and the Americans do not behave

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  in such a manner. The Government must take on board the fact that they have a contribution to make, in partnership with British companies, to achieve export success.
  I was disappointed, although not surprised, when the President of the Board of Trade did not reply to my request for information on the format of the deregulation legislation. It is fine, and good fun, for the right hon. Gentleman to partronise me—I do not mind that—but in fact he patronises not me or the Liberal Democrats, but the process by which our laws are made.
  This is the only democratic forum in which we can debate and improve the details of any proposal. I must take issue with the Government if they consider it acceptable that the deregulation legislation is simply an enabling Bill, which will lead to a whole raft of statutory instruments. The right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) said that such a process was the only option, but I hope that he would acknowledge that we cannot amend statutory instruments. If the Government get them wrong, all they can do is withdraw them and introduce different ones.
  At the very least, I hope that the Government will be able to offer a detailed compromise that gives some clear idea of what the proposals are likely to be, even if the fine details are to be left to statutory instruments. We are all anxious to hear about that.
  We must not underestimate the impact of regulation on small businesses. It is a matter of great concern, however, that, when the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs talks about what we consider the core factors of health and safety and fire regulations, the language he uses to justify sweeping those regulations away is that used to justify the slave trade and putting boys up chimneys. That makes me think that there is no difference between the phrase "back to basics" and "Victorian values".
  The argument is that, by ridding business of regulation, more jobs will be created, but they will be jobs at any price, including the health and safety of those performing in the workplace. That is not something that the House would welcome.
  I asked the Forum for Private Business for its views on business regulation. It referred to the report, alluded to by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), about the threatened proposal to cut the employer's statutory sick pay reimbursement. It put to me the following case:
  "Imagine a firm of 100,000 employees. Imagine that it was hit with an epidemic of 10,000 employees in the same department all going sick at the same time. Without the rebate, the businesses will have to fund sick pay for the 10,000 while shouldering the cost of lost production and taking on temporary replacements … As I am sure you can imagine such a firm would suffer very badly … Ah well, you may say that is a very unlikely situation … True but imagine now a business with 10 employees, how likely is it that one employee will go sick? Quite likely: such a firm could quite possibly face even 2 or 3 going sick at the same time … 10 per cent., 20 per cent. or even 30 per cent. of its workforce."
  If the Government persist with their proposals, such firms will simply be forced out of business and, ultimately, the net revenue to the Government will be lost. It is not even in the Government's interests to persist with that proposal. I would believe more in the Government's commitment to deregulation if they were prepared to address the burdens that they have imposed, which can be removed.
  I do not have time to address the raft of other issues that I had in mind. I should like the Government to tell the
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  House, however, about the future of the Post Office. Do they have any idea about that, because many people are asking?
  As time goes by I wonder just how much of the coal industry will be left. The President of the Board of Trade may have spoken about the irritation that will be caused by amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats, which the House will have to detain itself to consider. He should remember what happened with the privatisation of other energy industries. If the Government had listened to the arguments behind certain amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats, they would have saved an awful lot of money, as well as being spared a great deal of embarrassment. Many jobs would also have been saved.
  It is the Government's refusal to accept that any wisdom exists outside their own ranks that has led to the situation in which the coal industry is now being destroyed by a Government whose only ever strategy for energy has been to have no strategy.
  I represent an area in which the North sea oil and gas industries are extremely important. It is also an area in which certain companies lead the way and where substantial exports are made per head of the population. In the six months since the Government introduced tax changes in the Budget relating to exploration, however, jobs have already been lost from the exploration industry, and export opportunities have been lost. As forecast at the time, those changes have been deeply damaging to the industry.
  The price of oil in terms of North sea production has never been so low, whereas the costs are high. Exploration activities are already moving from the North sea to Russia, other states within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the far east. The Government introduced their tax change at an inappropriate moment. The North sea industry needs active support. We need an active exploration programme to ensure its long-term future. One does not provide that by completely removing tax incentives.
  This debate relates to the core of the British economy. We must be able to add value and pay our way in the world. After 14 years, however, the Government do not yet understand how to go about that. The deregulation measures do not spell out a revolution, as the Minister for Industry inadvertently said at Question Time: they are merely another phase in a propaganda war that often misses the point.
  5.59 pm
  Mr. Iain Mills: It is sad that in our discussions so far no one has drawn the House's attention to the successes this year in the car industry. I should declare an interest as joint chairman of the all-party motor industry group. It is relevant to the later part of my speech that I declare my chairmanship of the community trademark office committee, and my long-standing work with trademark agents, the anti-counterfeiting group, and others on such matters.
  My constituency covers the area between Birmingham and Coventry, where the dominant industries are cars and car components. Hon. Members who represent midlands seats will know that the motor industry has achieved great success, not only this year, but in previous years during, the recession.

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  I came to the House in 1979, to see employment law changed to the benefit of the car industry, and I was fortunate to be the parliamentary private secretary to the noble Lord Tebbit when we made the step-by-step changes in the early 1980s. The changes were a part of a package that was created by a Conservative Government to allow the car industry to manage its own affairs, and to achieve a level of productivity that is now the envy of the world.
  On a trip to Japan with the all-party committee, we were told by the Japanese that they saw Britain as the most natural place to base their outward investment in manufactured goods to tackle the European markets. That was not only because of the difference between the yen and the pound, but because of our work practices, productivity and attitude. In 1979, that would not have been conceivable.
  How have we managed to move from the winter of great strife, from the days of Longbridge being permanently on strike, when the car industry was crippled by bad productivity and poor reliability? I spent 20 years in the industry, so I know something about it. How have we managed to reach the point where we are admired by the Japanese and by Taiwan, which is now a high wage cost economy? Those countries see Britain as the place to invest because of our high productivity and low wage costs, and because of our good attitudes towards work.
  We have accepted that people may not any longer be workers, but that they should be associates, from the chairman and the managing director down to the shop floor. In 1979 in the car industry, that would not have been possible. That has come about because of the policies of a Conservative Government. It is not often referred to by Opposition Members, but there is no doubt that their constituencies benefit from the increasing productivity. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will send my congratulations to the President of Board of Trade and to his predecessors.
  It was obviously important to ensure that our car and car components industries had the right fiscal climate in which to carry on their business of producing and selling cars. That is why, with Nissan, Honda and Toyota, we have inward investment from Japan, where 80 per cent. of cars are local content built, and where 80 per cent. of those cars are exported.
  Hon. Members should think that through, because it means that there will be an awful lot of new jobs. If 80 per cent. of cars which have 80 per cent. local content are exported, the Japanese firms are not in any great way competing with our domestic manufacturers. Rather, they are taking sales away from our EC competitors, companions, or whatever they may be.
  I suspect that that is why our EC partners resent us, and why they are trying to reinforce their strong views that we should average our costs upwards through the social contract into a high wage cost economy, so that they will not have the problem. I hope that my right hon. Friend will pass that message on to the Secretary of State for Employment and others. It is clear to those of us involved in discussions in Japan and Taiwan that any extra imposition of regulations or costs through the social contract would be a disaster for that most important manufacturing sector of our economy.
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  The companies to which I have referred are basing their activities in the United Kingdom, and that is just the iceberg tip of the Japanese and Taiwanese investment in this country. We are assured by those concerned, including the Japanese ambassador, that investment will continue. Therefore, there is every possibility that part of our domestic manufacturing economy will continue to grow, and so it should.
  There are also what one might call the more traditional firms which manufacture cars in this country. Those firms are not always British, but they have a high local content. For example, Peugeot has a site near my constituency in Coventry. Part of the site for Land Rover is in my constituency, as is the headquarters of Rover. Ford and Vauxhall are also familiar to me, and all those firms have had stunning successes. An increase of 12 per cent. in production during the past year is not a bad thing for a Conservative Government to look back on.
  One may disagree with the exact nature of the increase in sales during August, September and October—whether it is 16 or 18 per cent.—but the fact that it will give a year-end increase in car sales in the United Kingdom is an extraordinary achievement for the industry. That has not been achieved only because of the successes of the industry, although that is the primary reason.
  It has been helped by a Conservative policy of removing special car tax—a bold move, which was taken in two steps. It has stimulated sales, particularly in the fleet sector. It is often forgotten that the company car market was in the doldrums during the recession. Many salesmen and others were asked to keep their cars for three years, and later that was increased to four or five years, or up to 200,000 miles. That was because increased technology and reliability and the high quality of British-built cars allowed them to use the cars for that length of time. I am sure that many hon. Members have 200,000 miles on the clock of their cars, and I hope that they all have British cars.
  I give one word of warning to my right hon. Friend. Traditionally, when the car industry is doing well—an 18 per cent. increase in home sales and a 12 per cent. increase in exports shows that that is the case now—Chancellors of the Exchequer tend to think that is a way of regulating the economy. I would ask my right hon. Friend to pass a message to the Chancellor that any increase in company car tax beyond that already in the pipeline from the previous Chancellor's tax moves would be a great mistake, and could cripple the fuel for our economic recovery.
  As cars and car components are sold, there is a knock-on effect for other jobs in the car industry. That is reflected in three quarters of a million jobs in the car components industry throughout the country. I ask my right hon. Friend to make strong representations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I have done, that there must be no change in taxes—in particular, those which affect fleet or company cars—that would restrict the increase in car sales, all being well, should continue.
  It would be unfair of me to speak too long, particularly as a ten-minute limitation on speeches will apply later. I would like to welcome strongly the Bill on trademarks which was given its First Reading in the other place earlier today. I have searched for a copy of the Bill in the Vote Office, and I am assured that one will be available shortly, although I am not complaining about that.
  I greatly welcome the introduction of a Bill on marks. I do not suppose that Opposition Members will be fully aware of the significance of the Bill. I would draw their

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  attention to a parliamentary answer given to me by the Prime Minister. The answer showed that a Bill to introduce a Community trademark and to simplify the system of registration of brands and trademarks will in the first year save industry some £50 or £60 million. That is because of the lower cost to register marks, as they will no longer have to be registered to protect great British names throughout every country in the EC. It will be possible to do so from one office.
  The continuing costs per annum will be about £30 million, and it seems to be an excellent Conservative measure with a thoroughly Eurpean content to which, I hope, my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) will not object. The Community trademark is the most innocent of measures in terms of the Eurosceptics' attitude towards Europe. The mark is keenly wanted by the capitalist structures of industry and commerce, and will enable us to have a pan-European protection for famous brand names. There is a negative side to it, which I will come to.
  The measure will be greatly welcomed by our massive trading partners of Japan, America and other areas. They want the ability to protect their marks and trademarks throughout Europe, and eventually, one hopes, through GATT and the Madrid convention, throughout the EFTA countries, and the world.
  There were last-minute doubts, I understand, but I can assure the Government that the measure will please trademark and patent agents and those who are responsible for great British companies' names, and will also please industry. I understand from conversations with Opposition Members that the Bill is not controversial, although they may have detailed arguments. The speech made at the Edinburgh conference of the anti-counterfeiting group by the junior spokesmen for the Labour party suggests that the Opposition are in full support of the measures that we hope will be included in the Bill against commercial counterfeiting.
  As I have not seen the Bill, I do not know whether there are provisions in it to deal with my next point. We are concerned, and we have made urgent representations, about the difficulties created at car boot sales and markets where traders show, above counterfeit goods bearing famous brand marks, a disclaimer saying, "A brand copy". That is as a result of the Price and Veys cases, brought under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. Traders can now get away with selling counterfeits of famous names with that disclaimer.
  We looked at that matter in the Committee considering the Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill, which became an Act in 1988. It was made quite clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher), who was then a Minister, that counterfeiting was a criminal act and should attract criminal penalties. I ask my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy to pass on to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade my strong concern that, if the Bill does not contain measures to deal with that most important point, it should be amended to include them.
  I was terribly disappointed, as one who reluctantly supported my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the Maastricht debate, to see the pork barrel politics and the less than graceful behaviour at the recent summit—not by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but by Mr. Delors and others in the Commission. They proposed a handout of
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  European institutions based on nothing more than, "What do you want? We'll give you this if you'll agree that someone else can have that."
  The Trademark Office, which will be attended by the most eminent people from commerce, industry and the trademark profession, will be located in Alicante. 'That might raise a ripple of laughter. The sandy beaches are delightful, but there are only two flights a day from London, and one flight a day from Frankfurt, so goodness knows how those people will get there.
  Mr. Steen: The beaches and the weather in South Hams are much better than they are in Alicante.
  Mr. Mills: While London is the most desirable location, South Hams would not have been a bad location. Knowing how well it is represented by its local Member of Parliament, I am sure that facilities beyond the usual would have been laid on for any trademark agents coming from Japan.
  That seems to be the European way of doing things —a share-out of the most important institutions. Germany insisted on the bank, and we were bought off with the Medicines Agency. Spain, supported by all the Latin countries, also got the health and safety body—I thought that we were the health and safety experts, or so my friends from the Labour party tell me. We were the obvious location for the Trademark Office.
  Mr. Jim Cousins: Does the hon. Gentleman think that the possibility of privatisation of the Patent Office was helpful or unhelpful in those discussions?
  Mr. Mills: The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. The move of the job-heavy aspect of the Patent Office down to Newport was originally seen as an inhibition, but not in the final stages. I am assured by the Commissioners concerned that the original decision was to look at the location of the office based on suitability for the people who would use it, and on the facilities that it would offer.
  I do not have to tell the House that London, with three airports and flights throughout Europe and the world, with its infrastructure of over 2,000 trademark agents, 1,000 trademark solicitors and many trademark barristers, was an obvious choice.
  The Europeans are not concerned about privatisation of our national Patent Office, as long as it is operating, because the Community Trademark Office will take over, to a large extent, from the Patent Office in registering trademarks. That was not an issue. Apparently the only issue was who would deal with what to get what. I find that thoroughly objectionable, and I question my previous commitment to aspects of Europe. I have never been a federalist, but that almost makes me want to join the camp of those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are sceptics.
  I do not wish to end on a negative point. I started with a positive point, so I shall end with one. The Alicante decision is apparently final. I have written to Mr. Delors to express my strong view on it, and I shall continue to campaign. However, the achievement of a Community trademark is more important than the location of the office in terms of our commitment to Europe, the savings to our companies and European companies and our ability to be

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  at the heart of Europe in promoting the Community trademark. Therefore, I welcome the introduction of a Bill on that matter in this Session.
  6.14 pm
  Mr. Ken Purchase: I know that the hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills) has a long and deep relationship with the motor industry and has acted as an excellent conduit to it for Members of Parliament who want to learn more about the motor trade. However, I take exception to his remark that, throughout the 1970s, the industry was permanently on strike. That is far from the truth. It was certainly the view of the popular press, and that was how it liked to portray the industry, but it was not the truth for those working in it. I know that the hon. Gentleman worked in that industry for a long time, and he was not on strike for all that time. In fact, strikes would have been rare.
  The hon. Gentleman spoke of the pork barrel politics of handouts and which country gets what agency. We are getting the agency that will control pharmaceuticals. I do not know whether we are getting a good deal or a bad deal. I have recently seen research which suggests that, by the year 2000, through gene research and the advent of gene technology applications and treatments, up to 2 million jobs could be created in that sector in the Community, largely at the expense of pharmaceuticals. Hoffman-Laroche has estimated that about £8 billion-worth of sales will be lost annually as a result of that development. Whether the pork barrel politics has worked in Britain's favour remains to be seen.
  The President of the Board of Trade spoke of deregulation. Although Ministers have denied, first at Question Time and then later, that deregulation will involve wholesale removal of the health and safety at work protections that we enjoy, I intend to give the right hon. Gentleman a taste of what he may expect in opposition should he introduce the measures that are rumoured and that we fear.
  I do not know whether the President of the Board of Trade has extensive industrial experience or, if he has, how involved he has been at shop floor level where such measures really count. I know that some Conservative Members have such experience, and I respect them for it, but I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has paid any attention to the different practices in large and small companies.
  I worked in the engineering industry for getting on for 20 years and spent part of that time in contract toolrooms in the west midlands, mainly in the black country and Wolverhampton. As a young man with two children and a mortgage, I took risks to ensure that my rate of pay remained at a level that would sustain my commitments. I am appalled when I think back on them, but I escaped serious injury. Others did not. I shall mention a couple of cases because detail is important.
  A colleague at a small contract toolroom lost his hand in a milling machine accident. It was severed at the wrist. He was a youngish fellow in his thirties, also with a mortgage and children. He was a member of the trade union, but the settlement was miserable—just a few thousand pounds for the loss of a hand. The accident pre-dated health and safety at work regulations, the milling
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  machine was not properly guarded and he was rushing. We used to use the phrase—if it is not parliamentary language, no doubt I shall be told—tear-arsing, and it was a common or garden thing.
  Before regulations on eye protection, my father lost an eye in a most painful way while maintaining a pair of dies. For the last 15 years of his life, he received a miserable pension. Like many of us, I will not tolerate a return to the practices, in small or large companies, that led to such injuries. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am pleased to hear Conservative Members applauding that sentiment.
  It is true that, in modern, forward-thinking, progressive and enlightened managements in our larger companies now, such problems have largely been eliminated in two ways: first, strong, proper and sufficient legislation was introduced to regulate the way people operated machinery and the practices that they followed; secondly, it was expensive—not as expensive as my father losing an eye or my colleague losing a hand—to introduce all the necessary controls. As a result, many different and more advanced processes were introduced that guaranteed protection for people working machinery, such as tape control machinery, numerically controlled machinery and that controlled with plug boards. All those processes tended towards a solution to injuries at work.
  Conservative Members point out the huge gains that have been made in productivity, not just in the past 14 years but over 20 to 25 years. That has been due largely to the introduction of technology which saves on working hours, reduces the length of process and is economic in the use of metals and the other materials that it uses. But there has been a cost. In my area of the west midlands, it has meant that 350,000 jobs have been lost.
  One might say that that is how markets work, and to some extent that is right, but the Government have failed completely to recognise that what was needed was not to lose those skills that were inherent in the area that I represent—and in the west midlands generally—and about which the hon. Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills) knows enough, too. It should have been ensured that those skills were channelled into productive enterprises, whether in manufacturing or service industries. That has not happened, and the price that we have paid for the introduction of the most superb technology, which was developed in this country, has been extremely high.
  On regulation, today and over the past few days I have had phone calls from a small company that is just starting out in Wolverhampton. The local inspectors descended on that company and told it that the process in which it is engaged—the manufacturing, shaping and forming of resins—is not safe for the workers who use those materials, as the extraction is not sufficient. It would not be sufficient to get a simple extraction plant and connect it to the outside, because the emissions would be too poisonous and dangerous to the surrounding domestic properties.
  The company contacted me and asked whether there was any way that it could be helped. The Government's loan guarantee scheme was one way, and one of the few pieces of legislation that have been exceedingly helpful —at least in theory—to small or medium-sized companies. I regret to say that many banks have refused to co-operate fully in it, even though their risk has been minimised by Government guarantees. I further regret that very few banks would entertain really small companies which

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  wanted assistance with £10,000 or less, because the cost of administering and monitoring the scheme would have been too expensive.
  Nevertheless, I believe that it is a good scheme and I advised the company to see its local bank about it. Unfortunately, the main owner of the company has negative equity on his house. Therefore it was felt that it would not be entirely appropriate for the bank, which merely has to cover 20 per cent. of the risk, to support it on that occasion. I have sent him to another bank that I think may be more helpful.
  The scheme should be working like clockwork, but it will take from six to eight weeks to process the application. That is far too long for a scheme which should have been designed to be simple and easy. It would be a start if we cut out some of the bureaucracy. It should be made easier for local bank managers to take that decision as speedily and cleanly as possible.
  The company knows that it is not allowed to put its emissions into the atmosphere—quite rightly. It knows that that is right and it supports that. The company is looking for the money to assist it. Paradoxically, in that area of work, it is the kind of company that can produce all the ducting and the process that will help to take the emissions away, but it cannot get the money to start up properly even though it has a relatively full order book.
  Many small and medium-sized companies should have limited liability and be able to enjoy reasonable protection, provided that the directors act in a proper way. But limited liability brings with it pretty onerous duties with regard to company accounts. I suggest that another area that would be worth considering in terms of deregulation would be a simplified set of accounts for small companies, particularly those—of which there are many—working as companies limited by guarantee, where the people working in the enterprise own and control it on the basis of their pound share and their willingness to commit assets to the company.
  It seems to me that it is way over the top that such companies must use European conventions to present their accounts. For companies, particularly those limited by guarantee, we could simply go back to the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and perhaps a statement of application of funds. That would be helpful to small companies and I look forward to the Government introducing such regulations, although I may be looking in vain.
  It is important that the matter of payment, and late payments, to small companies is tackled properly. That will need regulation, not deregulation. I believe that a mixture of measures should be taken by the Government to assist the collection of debt, particularly that which has been outstanding for 60, 90 or 120 days or even longer. Perhaps a statutory right to interest would assist, although I suspect that that would not go to the heart of the matter because the smaller companies would be persuaded that it would be in their interest to forgo their statutory right if they wanted to get more work from the companies concerned.
  Perhaps we should look at British standard 5750. Companies are increasingly saying to their customers and clients that they conform to that standard. Would it not be appropriate before the kite-mark was agreed that measures were taken to include prompt payment of debt? That is
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  another area that could be considered in the quest for a solution to the serious problem of small firms' debt collection.
  I shall move briefly now to small firms and access to research. More than 90 per cent. of employees work in companies with fewer than 200 employees. That is a significant statistic in terms of the development of products, of innovation and even of invention. My experience of small companies is that innovation is their speciality. They may take a product and develop it to the nth degree, by ingenuity applied at the point of production. That is what they excel at. But often they need technical and sometimes research assistance.
  I suggest that it would be helpful if grants were available—and I mean grants, not tax incentives, because small companies trying to develop products often do not have profits to set against the tax liability. I suggest grants, perhaps administered through universities, and especially through former polytechnics, many of which have well developed links with their local industrial scene. In that way we could gain access for small companies with good ideas. They could be properly assessed, and thought could be put into that time does not permit within the company itself.
  The White Paper on science and technology which was published last summer should be developed very rapidly. We need to reach serious conclusions on how to ensure that our scientific effort is channelled into liaison with the engineering and industrial sectors so that we make the best use of British brain power and ingenuity and all that that has meant to us in the past.
  If "back to basics" should be about anything, it should be about restoring the excellence that was once Britain's prerogative in terms of science. We have let that fall away. That is very largely your fault on that side, if I may say so.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I hope that that was not directed at me. I remind the hon. Gentleman that remarks are addressed to me.
  Mr. Purchase: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. My speech style is a little informal, unlike that of the President of the Board of Trade which is very theatrical. I apologise and no offence was intended.
  We should encourage young people to take up science as a career and ensure that they can move freely between industry, university and back again in the pursuit of a career.
  Mr. John Sykes: Did the hon. Gentleman not welcome the Government's recent announcement about pushing funding for students towards manufacturing rather than to the arts?
  Mr. Purchase: I believe that science and engineering have been made profoundly unattractive by the rewards offered at the other end of the scale. Some phenomenal matters were brought to our attention during the 1980s under the Thatcherist rule. People with no experience, who had never set an industrial mousetrap, made fortunes. I know so, many people who have worked so hard and with such effect and brilliance, but they ended up with very little.
  We must make engineering, industry and science attractive. Smart graduates will not opt for the lowest

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  reward; they will opt for the best reward. We must start at that end of the equation and also consider how to attract more people into those areas.
  Mr. Oliver Heald: Has the hon. Gentleman had an opportunity to see the kind of educational material that is now available as part of the national curriculum, which has been prepared by the Chemical Industries Association Ltd., with which I have absolutely no connection? That material is an impressive example of what can be achieved. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the way in which the Government are encouraging trade associations to come up with schemes of that kind is a good move in the right direction? If he has not seen that material, will he look at it?
  Mr. Purchase: I have not seen that material, but I saw a programme on Channel 4 one evening earlier this week in which young people backed off from the idea of a career in science or engineering on the basis that such careers were dirty and did not offer much money. They believed that there were higher rewards in the City and in accountancy and legal work.
  People in education on that programme said that the advent of the national curriculum had made the position worse and not better. There may be a middle position between those two views, but if there is it is not being well communicated to the educators. They do not believe that the Government have a commitment to science and engineering careers in the way that perhaps the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) and I would like.
  We socialists always end on a cheerful note as we are very cheerful people. We like a good laugh and a good joke. The horizons are there for us to search for. Young people need and deserve encouragement and this House must do all that it possibly can to ensure that they get it.
  6.33 pm
  Mr. Christopher Gill: I am grateful for being called so early in this debate. As one who has absolutely no ambitions to see his name attached to any new statute on the statute book, I am uniquely qualified to talk about deregulation.
  As the owner and driver of a business for 30 years, I have been on the receiving end of much legislation and regulation. It has often occurred to me that I have succeeded not because of Government, but in spite of Government. I trust that the remarks that I have to make, based on a lifetime's experience of running a medium-sized business, will be helpful to those on the Government Front Bench in terms of shaping a Bill which will be both sensible and practical.
  I am pleased to support the new initiative which the Bill will represent. However, I do not for a moment underestimate the scale of the task or the obstacles that will have to be overcome. I want to instance my attempt at deregulation. This January, as a new year's resolution, I decided to make my own initiative for deregulation and I opposed the Hedgerows Bill.
  People who contacted me after I opposed the Hedgerows Bill applauded my sentiments when I explained that I was attacking regulatory overkill. They supported the principle that I was trying to express.
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  However, they said, "Mr. Gill, unfortunately you have chosen the wrong Bill to express your opposition to regulation. You have started in the wrong place. It is all the other Bills that are wrong. This Bill is wonderful and this is the one we must have." Ministers will come up against that kind of thinking time and again.
  Deregulation is an idea whose time has come. It is universally supported throughout the wealth-creating sector and it is a logical initiative for a Government who have already fuelled the engine of the economy with improved labour relations, competitive exchange rates and the lowest interest rates for 16 years.
  I do not intend to waste time examining the reasons for the present situation of regulatory overkill, the causes of which might include anything from special pleading, the feeling that "something must be done" and the belief that the man in Whitehall knows best, to the personal ambitions of hon. Members to get their name on the statute book and the Government's desire to be seen to be doing something. What concerns me most are the effects of over-regulation and the consequences of those effects on the long-term prospects of this country as a manufacturing and trading nation and the effects on the body politic.
  I want to refer to the effect on an important area of political activity—local government. The effect of the plethora of legislation has been to dilute constantly the ability of councillors to take decisions. That plethora of legislation has certainly restricted their ability to make decisions based on common sense, local conditions or special circumstances, because it is necessary for them to take advice from the paid officials of the council who are the professional people charged with the task of understanding the rules and regulations to which we are all now increasingly subjected. As a consequence, the gulf between the elector and the elected has widened. That phenomenon is not confined to local policies. All hon. Members would do well to recognise that.
  I want to instance another effect of over-regulation. It imposes unnecessary and costly burdens more upon the bona fide than on any other section of society, because those who live beyond the law clearly avoid those costs and burdens. Human nature being what it is, the powers that be—the enforcement officers—relentlessly pursue the easy targets while harder cases are written off or ignored.
  To my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench I say that the law is the law. The Government have a responsibility to ensure that it is applied even-handedly and without fear or favour. One essential criterion of any law or regulation must therefore be whether it is enforceable. My colleagues will need no reminding of the fate of the unlamented community charge and the consequences of that unenforceable legislation on the Conservative party and its leader.
  A further hazard of regulation or over-regulation is the scope that it affords for crime, corruption and fraud. The House will be saddened by the tragic killings earlier this week of two Ministry of Transport inspectors investigating the theft and sale of illicit Ministry of Transport road certificates. Later in this Session, Parliament will receive the Court of Auditors report, which will doubtless once again highlight examples of the fraud that has become institutionalised as a direct result of the many regulations governing the common agricultural policy.
  Wherever we look and whichever way we look at it, the bona fide foot the bill. They foot the bill for the cost of compliance. I am, of course, encouraged by what my right

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  hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said. The regulators will in future be charged with counting the cost of regulation before a regulation is introduced. However, I make one special plea—that we do not simply count the cost to the Government of additional regulation or the apparent superficial cost to individual industries but also count the cost of the time and effort which are devoted to regulation, which are time and effort which are not devoted to producing a product or improving a service.
  I repeat that it is the bona fide who always foot the bill. They foot the bill for the unfair advantage that is given to those who continue to live beyond the law, and, through their taxes, they pay for the theft from the public purse, represented by the fraud and corruption of which we are only too well aware. Perversely, the effect of much legislation can be the absolute opposite of that which is intended.
  I refer to the time when the House decided that it would introduce a regulation which prevented travellers or tourists from taking more than £50 out of the country. That is going back a long time, but I invite hon. Members to consider the effect of that Act of Parliament, which was designed to ensure that money remained in this country, both in the short term and, more significantly, in the long term—it resulted in the establishment of the package tour industry. The package tour industry took off from that moment—a phenomenon that we had never seen before. It was unintended and the absolute opposite of what the Government had wanted.
  Parliament must renounce its belief that every problem has a legislative solution. The Government must trust the people. The majority of the population just want to be left alone to get on with living their lives, running their businesses and providing for their families, but that is not to say that the law should not come down heavily on those who transgress the accepted norms and standards of a civilised society.
  I illustrate my feelings on the subject by inviting my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to consider that, if he has a constituent who does absolutely nothing, that constituent probably has no worry or concern about regulation. If that constituent is retired, unemployed, under age or even a drop-out, regulation hardly affects him at all, but the moment that constituent sets out to do something or to make something, he is assailed on all sides. That simply cannot be right. That is something that the country can no longer afford, least of all in competition with the low-cost economies of the Pacific rim.
  Business and life are about taking risks, but, on the other hand, public opinion and, dare I say it, the civil service are, generally speaking, risk-averse. Government must ensure that a balance is struck between those two competing nostrums. The Government must hold the ring between that which is desirable and that which is necessary. In seeking to achieve that balance, Ministers have my absolutely unqualified support.
  There must be a presumption against further regulation, and there must be a recognition that much contemporary legislation seeks only to correct the imperfections of the legislation that preceded it. I am tempted, somewhat facetiously, to say, in view of what the House will soon have to consider, how much better it would have been for all concerned if, instead of legislating for Sundays, we had kept the fourth commandment—that might be an instance of back to basics.
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  We must ensure that the many commendable, intelligible and popular policies which are espoused by our Government in this Chamber are the policies that finally emerge at the end of the legislative process. Too many straightforward ideas, whether they involve paying for local government, testing in schools or food safety—incidentally, the Food Safety Act 1990, in its three years of existence, has already spawned no fewer than 81 regulations—have lost their focus when expressed in legislation. That is why I have said on previous occasions that Ministers will need to be ruthless in the prosecution of this vital battle. The obstacles and resistance that they meet on the way to deregulation may also mean that, on occasions, they have to be quite arbitrary so as to establish the greater good.
  6.45 pm
  Mr. Michael Clapham: I wish briefly to consider the philosophy that underlies the Gracious Speech, refer to industry generally and discuss the proposals to privatise the coal industry.
  The framework of ideas which underpins the Gracious Speech was structured by an extreme and now dominant influence within the Conservative party. Those views prevail, despite attempts by the President of the Board of Trade and his colleagues to pull back that influence. Clearly, in the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), that influence has passed to the B team. I will not take the euphemism of the B team any further.
  "Back to basics" is a phrase to which no public relations people worth their salt would put their names. At one and the same time, it suggests failure and is meaningless. That point was admirably made by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) in his article in Thursday's issue of The Guardian, when he wrote:
  "who on earth could have landed us with the cry of `Back to basics'? … No one has ever captained an advance by shouting to his troops 'Back, boys, back'."
  Clearly, that phrase is a measure of failure. It shows that the Government have no idea how to mobilise available resources in society to make a better life for our citizens.
  For the economy, "back to basics" means deregulation, as we have heard, and that in turn refers to low wages, poor working conditions and a lack of representational rights. It is clear that the Government will never learn that to motivate a work force means treating people in industry as equal partners.
  In April, a secret report commissioned by the Government revealed the tragic state of British industry. The findings clearly showed that, despite being competitive on costs, the United Kingdom's product base was very weak. The President of the Board of Trade failed to mention that point. He also failed to refer to a report in June by the World Economic Forum, which showed that the United Kingdom was sinking to the bottom of the league of the 22 wealthiest nations. The United Kingdom has fewer qualified engineers than any of those 22 countries. In education, it ranks only above Greece and its private funding of research and development is the lowest of the 22 nations.
  Bearing that in mind, one would have thought that the Gracious Speech would include provisions for putting in place strategies to promote competitiveness and to reverse the decline. Instead, organisations such as the National

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  Engineering Laboratory and the Warren Spring Laboratory are either to be privatised or combined. For example, the latter is to be combined with the Atomic Energy Authority.
  Dr. Liam Fox: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell the House how he thinks that competitiveness would be improved by the social chapter regulations, which the Labour party supports.
  Mr. Clapham: As I said, the Conservative party has failed to realise that to motivate people to reach better competitiveness in industry, it is necessary to treat people with dignity and to treat people in industry as equal partners.
  The rigging of the energy market against the coal industry has made it impossible to achieve a balanced energy policy. The dash for gas threatens to destroy the entire coal industry and most of the nuclear industry. Instead of widening the market for coal and dealing with the imbalance in the energy market, the coal industry is to be privatised. The President of the Board of Trade should realise that it is a matter not of ownership but of markets. If there is no market for coal, as he has tried to point out, the Government have to intervene to widen the market. Without such Government intervention, the market stays closed, with a result that is detrimental to society.
  The President of the Board of Trade mentioned nationalisation in 1947 and said that about 958 collieries were nationalised. He went on to say that privatisation would offer great qualities and give industry great opportunities. In fact, the industry was nationalised after a fashion during the first world war. At the end of the war, the Sankey commission was set up before the industry was handed back to the private owners.
  In the 26 years between 1921 and 1947, the coal industry experienced its worst period of industrial relations. The loss of confidence in the ownership of the coal mining industry, the bad industrial relations and health and safety records of the industry, as well as the fact that it had fallen behind technologically, led to its nationalisation.
  In the 1950s, the well-remembered Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, referred to the fact that the coal industry had gone beyond the phase of being able to serve social purposes by returning to the private profit incentive. That statement is as true of the coal industry today as it was in 1950. Deregulation and privatisation of coal mining are a recipe for disaster. As I said, the problem is one not of ownership but of markets.
  All in all, the Gracious Speech is devoid of ideas for regenerating British industry. It is regrettable that there is no mention of tackling unemployment, of a strategy for industry or of unravelling the rigged market. It smacks of a Government who are being led by the nose by a particular group within the party. It also smacks of a Government whose time is up.
  6.54 pm
  Mr. John Sykes: I am grateful to be called, Madam Deputy Speaker, because, as the House will know, I speak as a northern manufacturer whose family firm was established in 1845. I also speak as the secretary of the Back-Bench deregulation committee, and as one who is passionately interested in deregulation.
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  I shall speak about deregulation and bureaucracy, and the debilitating effect that the latter has on society. In 1952, a film called "The Titfield Thunderbolt" was made at Ealing, starring Stanley Holloway and John Gregson. Shortly after nationalisation, it told the story of a branch railway line faced with closure, which the local people wanted to take over as a private concern. They needed permission and a man from the Ministry was accordingly dispatched. The villagers' preparations were detailed and his eventual arrival was somewhat vice-regal in style. After they had presented their case, they awaited a decision from that powerful man in awestruck and expectant silence.
  I saw the film on television, as a little boy in the 1960s. I could not figure out why the villagers were so frightened of him. Why were fellow Englishmen so cowed by a bureaucrat? Englishmen, who decades previously had commanded a quarter of the earth's land mass and one third of its population; Englishmen who had changed the face of continents with their cities, railways and other great engineering projects; Englishmen who had changed the way of life of entire peoples and stamped their values on civilisation—[Interruption.] —including the Scots—why were men who had created several fully fledged new nations now so timid in the face of a civil servant?
  The answer to that question lies in the growth of the power of the state during the 20th century. The power of the state is exemplified by its power to regulate, and is underpinned by our English willingness to be regulated and our inherent respect for the law. It is a power personified by the civil service.
  Mr. Alex Salmond: I am fascinated that the hon. Gentleman was inspired into politics by "The Titfield Thunderbolt". Is he arguing that deregulation will get back England's empire?
  Mr. Sykes: Certainly not. I am arguing for a commercial empire nowadays. The hon. Member comes from a country which receives an awful lot of English taxpayers' money. He should remember that. He should also note that the British empire—one of the greatest in the world—was built by the fusion of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish blood. That is what has made this country so great, and it is also why he is one of the few Scottish nationalists in this place.
  In the private sector, man's inclination to build departmental empires is constrained by the bottom line —the balance sheet and, not least, the bank manager. No such restriction tempers the bureaucrat, so he is always looking for new areas over which to exercise his influence. He can do so through a large number of agencies.
  Let us consider one—local government. I served on Kirklees council for some years. Kirklees was spawned by the absurd Local Government Act 1974, since when its vast gridlock structure has clamped itself securely to almost every aspect of local life. Kirklees is a council with more than its fair share of Labour councillors. [Interruption.] I hear Opposition Members cheering. They should instead regret the fact that, because we have so little to fear from Her Majesty's Opposition, my hon. Friends are induced to direct their fire at their municipal cousins.
  Across a bewildering range of everyday activities we all have to deal with bureaucracy. It can be a frustrating experience hacking one's way through the permafrost of

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  officialdom—except that in Kirklees the permafrost is harder and colder and its icy grip has frozen Huddersfield town centre.
  A good example: in the late 1980s, the private sector proposed to build a modern undercover shopping centre, to be ready by 1993, so that we could compete with other towns; but the Labour council decided that it could manage things better itself and used the regulations then in force to do so. The result was all talk and no action, and no shopping centre yet or for many years to come. That is what an over-regulated municipal Labour council can do.
  Since I moved to the North Riding, I have found other regulatory bodies that stifle progress. The national park in my constituency, where the famous series "Heartbeat" is produced, is in danger of becoming a jurassic park. The planers are choking the life out of the farmers, who find themselves bogged down in a morass of refusals and red tape whenever they propose improvements to their farms. The planners want to freeze the national park in the past, so that townies will come and admire it, forgetting that it is the people who farm the land and live and work on it who have made it worth visiting in the first place.
  Other regulatory forces are at work too. My family firm of manufacturers has a factory in Filey, near Scarborough. We have an excellent record which we are always anxious to uphold. We paid for someone to come and talk to us about the COSH—control of substances hazardous to health—requirements. We wanted to talk about materials and handling.
  Instead of showing us how to lift the panels that we had been manufacturing and handling for 25 years, he proceeded to tell us what we are allowed to lift in our own factory, as if our entire work force were a bunch of wimps. Worse, he then proclaimed that no one could use any of the machinery in the joiners shop unless he was a joiner—understandable in the case of complex machinery, but not when someone wants to cut a length of four by two.
  All in all, trying to comply with health and safety regulations has cost us £19,000 this year. I do not complain about that, but every week there appear to be more and more regulations to comply with. This comes at a time when small businesses are struggling to keep people employed, even without the social chapter and its effects.
  Small businesses are trying to win orders abroad, where regulations either do not exist or are ignored. Small business men are frightened to death of the health and safety Gestapo, with its perceived powers to close down factories. The paperwork, the rules, the regulations, the guidelines—often misrepresented as law—and officialdom generally are all just as much a disease today as strikes were in the 1970s.
  If our regulators get fed up with home-grown rules, there are plenty more to be found in directives from Brussels, such as the European fresh meat directive. On the surface, it seemed innocent enough when it left the Commission in Brussels, but by the time it leaves Whitehall and is provisions have been magnified a hundredfold, it gives frightening new powers to enforcers up and down the land, and imposes hugely inflated costs on butchers and slaughterhouses that come within its scope.
  Many decent businesses have been forced to close, and we should be angry about that—angry about the livelihoods that have been lost, the more so when we recall that some countries in the EC do not obey even their own laws, let alone laws from Brussels, as the RSPCA film taken in a Spanish abattoir showed only last week.
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  One such decent company in my constituency was the F. H. Wilkinson and Sons slaughterhouse, which, like my family firm, had been trading successfully for 150 years. I believe that every single one of those years should count for something. Neither the firm nor its customers nor its employees could understand why the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food wanted to design the company out of the future.
  When it eventually went to the wall, it went quietly with no fuss, believing as we all do that the law exists ultimately for the good of us all. The real reason why it went to the wall, however, was that Ministers and Members of Parliament did not stand up for the firm when it really mattered—when the bureaucrats were laying their plans in 1990.
  Mr. Derek Fatchett: The hon. Gentleman is clearly passionately in favour of deregulation, but 71 per cent. of current regulations were introduced by his party since it came to office, 10 per cent. of them while the hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House. How many of those did he vote against?
  Mr. Sykes: I dispute those figures. I happen to believe that many regulations that start out with good intent are maladjusted by people working further down the line. The hon. Gentleman well knows that many regulations from this place are misinterpreted further down the line—
  Mr. Fatchett rose—
  Mr. Sykes: I will give way in a minute.
  Mr. Fatchett rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is well known that, if the Member who has the Floor does not give way, other hon. Members must resume their seats.
  Mr. Sykes: When I wrote to MAFF asking for help for my constituent, I received a reply from Whitehall written by a bureaucrat with a safe Whitehall job and a nice Whitehall pension. He told me that my constituent's business was closing down because of market forces. It was not. This decent family firm was closing down because of dark, blind and foolish forces with all their destructive powers.
  These were the same dark forces that led to a small grocer in Saltburn who had failed to display a health and safety notice in his shop being fined £750. They were the same forces that fine someone £1,000 for dropping a crisp packet, the same forces that forbid people to fly their own country's flag and which seek to prosecute brave soldiers who have fought for their country in defence of freedom. Yet the same forces allow criminals and thugs to roam the streets, because it is said that gaol does not work.
  Mr. Peter Butler: My hon. Friend has referred to slaughterhouses having to close down. We are always told by the European Commission that the same rules are applied with equal rigour throughout Europe. Might it therefore be helpful to arrange for an exchange of our inspectors with those from Italy, Spain, France and Germany so that we can be sure that they are imposing the same regulations with the same force?
  Mr. Sykes: My hon. Friend makes a good point, to which Opposition Members would do well to listen. The Spanish regulate themselves according to the doctrine of mañana, which could usefully be adopted here.
  Mr. Charles Hendry: Is my hon. Friend aware that many of the veterinary inspectors in this country have been imported from Spain because we do not have enough to check on what is happening in our slaughterhouses, as a result of which there are no vets in Spain to carry out inspections there? So the abuses that have been vividly portrayed on television recently can go on unchecked.
  Mr. Sykes: My hon. Friends are making my speech for me—I can always rely on those behind me to do that.
  Mr. Fatchett: The hon. Gentleman has not answered my question. He says that he feels strongly on behalf of his constituents, so will he tell us how many regulations he has voted against since becoming a Member of this House?
  Mr. Sykes: I should prefer the hon. Gentleman to listen to the debate with his ears, not his mouth. I have explained that many of the regulations from this place are misinterpreted further down the line. That is part of the psychology of bureaucracy.
  Mr. Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that the committee of which he is secretary and which is powering forward the whole idea of deregulation is likely to mean that the Government scrap 3,500 regulations this year, which is at least as many as have been brought into force since he became a Member of Parliament? Does he agree that that is not bad for the second year of a Parliament?
  Mr. Sykes: My hon. Friend makes my point again.
  The effectiveness of any political idea depends on the skill with which it can be integrated into the practice of government. This Government proved that throughout the 1980s, and in the 1990s deregulation is a political idea whose time has come. I believe passionately in deregulation. It goes to the root of my political beliefs and of the realities of political life, both in the United Kingdom and in Europe, as we approach the year 2000. The Bill flows naturally from the Prime Minister's success in securing the opt-out from the social chapter. It flows from the idea that deregulation means more investment, more jobs, more prosperity and more success for Great Britain in Europe and in the world at large.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, may I remind the House of Madam Speaker's ruling that there will be a 10-minute limit on speeches between the hours of 7 and 9 pm.
  7.9 pm
  Mr. Alex Salmond: After listening to the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes), I was unsure whom he disliked most—people from Scotland, men from the Ministry or bureaucrats from Brussels. Surrounded by all those "dark forces", I must say that it is miraculous that his family firm has managed to survive. If he ever finds out who is running this shambles of a country with regulations that have inflicted so much disaster on companies in his constituency, he should tell the House.
  It is highly appropriate that we are debating trade and industry, because two important Scottish industries have been lobbying hon. Members today. The Salmon Farmers Association has been arguing that a great deal more is needed from the Government in terms of looking for effective European Community action to stop the
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  Norwegian dumping of farmed salmon, which is destabilising the market. The salmon industry is critical to many rural areas in Scotland.
  The farming and food processing industry in Scotland has been lobbying hon. Members from north of the border about the statistical blunder of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in Scotland, which is causing a crisis in both cereal and livestock farming in Scotland. The industry is looking for effective action to redress some of the damage, which will cost it up to £20 million in farm income unless something is done.
  The connection between those two industries is that, in one case, the industry has found Government action to be useless and in the other case, the industry has found the Government's action to be positively damaging. In both cases, I hope that Ministers will pass on to their colleagues the urgent need for effective action in those vital Scottish industries.
  I shall concentrate my remarks on the energy industry, especially the activities of British Gas. I suggest to the Government that, before they proceed with any further privatisation in the energy market, they should clear up some of the mess that previous privatisations have left in the energy industry.
  When the President of the Board of Trade returned from his recent illness, he found his desk groaning under the weight of the report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission's inquiry into British Gas. In response to the commission's inquiry, British Gas is talking about shedding one third of its work force—some 20,000 jobs throughout the United Kingdom—and restructuring its gas business. An announcement was supposed to be made on Monday, but it has been delayed. However, I can give the details of it to the House.
  British Gas intends to restructure its business into five functional areas—gas transportation and storage, contract trading, public gas supply, installation and contracting, and a retailing division. It is interesting that that reorganisation is being made before ever British Gas has heard the comments of the President of the Board of Trade on the commission's report. That suggests that British Gas already knows the President's conclusions, or it does not care, and will restructure its business anyway.
  As part, and as a result, of that functional restructuring of business, British Gas will eliminate the regional tiers of management. That includes the elimination of British Gas Wales and British Gas Scotland, and its chairman and management board. The consequence of that for the Scottish economy is that perhaps an additional 2,000 jobs in the gas industry north of the border will be lost. The removal of the Scottish management tier will also result in the loss of further decision-making jobs.
  At this stage, there is no guarantee that any of the headquarters of the new functional divisions that will be created will be in Scotland. Indeed, initial signs are that, at least in the property management division where decisions have been announced, the Scottish division headquarters will be located in Manchester.
  My point is that there can be absolutely no confidence in the attitude of senior management in British Gas to their responsibilities to their Scottish employees and Scottish customers. I would not say that the senior management of British Gas do not know where Scotland is—they know that it is that area to the north that supplies the resources which are used to produce a profit of about £1 billion a

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  year. However, there is no indication that any concept of Scottish interests has any bearing whatever in decisions that are being made by the company at present.
  About two years ago, I was able to turn on the gas supply in St. Fergus village. As many hon. Members know, that village is the largest gas terminal in Europe, yet for some 15 years it had no domestic gas supply. Two years ago, that wrong was rectified when a gas supply was at last brought to St. Fergus and the villages surrounding it. At that time, British Gas gave a public commitment that the gas supply would be extended to further villages in the Buchan area in my constituency. Indeed, some of my constituents invested in gas appliances, looking forward to the day when they would be connected to a gas supply.
  People in these villages are now being offered the gas supply, but at a cost of £1,200 to £1,300 per household. In villages such as Rosehearty, Sandhaven and Longside—the flares from St. Fergus light up the evening sky in all those villages—people can see the gas platforms where the resources come from to generate gas profits. Yet people in those villages are being offered connections to a gas supply at a price that is well beyond the reach of the average family in my constituency.
  People in those villages, and many other people up and down Scotland and beyond, are falling victim to the game of commercial chicken that is being played between British Gas and its regulator, Ofgas. British Gas does not want to extend its gas network at present, because it believes that it might fall into the hands of another company. Nor does it want to extend its domestic gas network while regulations ensure that it can be used by any one of its competitors. The casualty in all that is customers who cannot be connected to a gas supply at a reasonable cost.
  During my investigation of the problem, I found that British Gas in London had instructed the Scottish division to change its marketing allowances in an unfavourable way. Previously, its marketing allowances reflected the fact that Scotland was an underconnected gas area. However, by diktat of its London headquarters, British Gas in Scotland was forced to change its marketing allowances to make it even more expensive for people north of the border to be connected to a gas supply. The eventual effect is that, in the part of the country that will suffer most from value added tax on domestic fuel, many people are being denied access to the cheapest form of energy for domestic heating.
  Before the Government embark on any further chaos and confusion in the energy market, they should sort out the chaos and confusion that they have already created. Not content with exploiting Scottish staff and Scottish customers onshore, British Gas is also involved in anti-Scottish behaviour offshore.
  It has a controlling interest in the central area transmission system pipeline which currently pipes gas from the central North sea to Teesside. That pipeline was built by public subsidy. Indeed, £200 million was used to subsidise the CATS consortium to build the pipeline over the past three or four years. Scotland became the first country in history to pay a consortium of oil companies to take away its most valuable natural resource. That resource was then used through the CATS pipeline to undercut and undermine England's indigenous natural resource—its coal.
  Now there is debate about the destination of Britannia gas. Britannia is the largest of the new gas condensate developments. My concern is that British Gas will have not
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  only a controlling interest in the CATS pipeline but a minority interest in Britannia. It is also the potential buyer for gas at St. Fergus or, indeed, a Teesside landfall point.
  It is difficult not to believe that it is in the interest of British Gas to ensure a Teesside landfall point for Britannia gas, although that will be substantially against the Scottish interest. It is difficult not to believe that British Gas will use its position in the marketplace, and all sides of this bargain, to send Britannia gas through the CATS pipeline network to Teesside.
  My argument is that many previous privatisations have given companies virtually a licence to print money at the public expense. British Gas is being given a licence to exploit the Scottish people.
  If there is to be a private-sector reorganisation of that company, it should be along regional lines. There should be a regionally integrated company in which Scotland will be properly represented. It would be far better, however, if the Government were to legislate to bring the public utility of gas back into the public sector in Scotland and so allow the energy resources of our country to be used for the benefit of our people and Scottish companies.
  7.19 pm
  Mr. David Martin: It has been difficult for me to select exactly the right day to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I wish to raise one or two matters of particular relevance to my Portsmouth constituents and to the Gracious Speech, which do not necessarily fall into today's debate on trade and industry. I shall have to mix into today's set menu a little a la carte.
  It is a truism which cannot be too often repeated that, above all else, trade and industry, whether manufacturing or service industry, want and need the maximum freedom to make profits and to invest, as well as to be helped in every way possible by the Government rather than to be hindered by Government.
  I had great sympathy with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) when he said that, when somebody decides to start a business, too many other people make it their business to check him on this or that. He is assailed from all sides with bureaucratic forms and demands. That must make him feel, as it did me when I was in business, and my late father when he was building that business, as if he has a mother who, always harassed by her children, shouts, "Whatever you are doing, stop it".
  That is sometimes how business men feel when their efforts are met by regulations from central and local government. Often many just feel like stopping. Indeed, in recent years many have been impelled to stop by the burden of regulation and by demands made on them, particularly in difficult economic times.
  As we have been reminded again and again through bitter experience in recent years without profitable business, employment suffers, taxes do not meet public expenditure, borrowing soars, growth stutters and insupportable pressures bear down on every aspect of Government expenditure—the good, the bad, the necessary and the unnecessary.
  Everyone understands that there must be proper health and safety standards in employment, and that the law has a part to play in enforcing employment and consumer rights. But it must be recognised that every regulation beyond essential matters is a regulation too many. It was profoundly depressing to hear that the Opposition are

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  likely to fight the Government every inch of the way on a Bill which will tackle regulations that should not exist or should be altered. I have no doubt that we will hear the sort of ludicrous, ridiculous, petty-minded tirade that we have heard today from the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook).
  I do not for the life of me understand how yet higher total taxation than we already have can be thought to help our economic problems. When did it again become fashionable to believe that the Government filching money from the hard-won earnings of individuals or businesses was better for us than leaving that money with individuals and businesses to make their own decisions on spending, saving or investing? When did it again become fashionable to believe that Ministers and bureaucrats make better decisions for us than we can do for ourselves?
  Principally, it is growth in a low-inflation, competitive economy, such as we now have and such as we had in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s, which will settle public debt and fund public services, not the growth promised by higher taxation, so beloved of Socialist Oppositions but never delivered by them when in government. The only growth ever to be delivered in that way has been a growth in debt and in inflation.
  Competitiveness in domestic and overseas markets, and stringent attitudes and actions on regulations are precisely what are needed. That is this Government's policy, as set out in the Gracious Speech and developed so energetically and well today by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.
  On deregulation, I should like to raise some matters of concern to those running private nursing and rest homes in my constituency—each one a small business. The ministerial announcement earlier in the year inviting suggestions for reducing red tape in this area was generally welcome.
  Some regulations are vital. For example, independent inspection should apply equally to local authority and privately owned and run homes, and there should be proper fire precautions and regulations on room size. The Registered Homes Act 1984, while meeting matters of genuine concern, sometimes went a little far. We must look again to see how matters have worked out in practice. We must not let low standards flourish again or cowboys re-enter a business which in recent years has successfully expelled them. Nevertheless, we need to consider how things can be improved.
  Let me give the House some examples where action should be taken. It is not necessary for a home to have a test of all electrical circuits and appliances every six months. Generally, it should be possible for a home to be given a certificate of general competence: not the BS 5750—that is not appropriate to rest and nursing homes—but something along those lines. Once it is granted, there should be a period, for example of three years, when those running the home are trusted to maintain good and safe standards and when such rigorous, frequent and detailed inspections as are carried out at present are not required.
  There should be a close study of the number and content of forms required when an individual patient or resident is admitted. One must speak and listen, as I have done, to
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  those who run these homes to understand what a problem this is to those who are attempting to supply a service that is vital in today's world.
  A much clearer definition is required of what appliances, such as incontinence pads and special mattresses, can and should be supplied by health authorities free to the individual patient or resident, and what requires payment. There is considerable variation in practice and considerable confusion as different rules apparently apply to a BUPA hospital and a private nursing or rest home. That certainly needs to be looked at closely, and clarification introduced where confusion reigns.
  The Gracious Speech also contains a promise of legislation for the reform of student unions. This will affect Portsmouth university. I welcomed hearing yesterday from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education that, while student membership will be voluntary, core student union services will be protected. There have been worries that sport, for example, will be under threat. It is most important that we make it clear that that is not the case, and that all types of sport will be recognised as an essential part of university life.
  Finally, I welcome the promise of further action on law and order. Money and ingenuity have been showered at the problem of lawlessness in every year that the Government have been in office, and rightly so. It is not for lack of effort that so many problems remain. The general public recognise that, and know that further measures, which I hope will be successful, will come from this side of the House, as set out in the Gracious Speech.
  The need to provide better protection for the public, more consideration for the victim, better organised police forces and better help for the police to detect crime, arrest criminals and see them properly punished when convicted is well understood by those I represent. The Government deserve every support in pursuing those welcome objectives this Session.
  7.28 pm
  Mr. Barry Jones: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin), but he will understand that I disagreed with a large part of his eloquent speech.
  The President of the Board of Trade gave us a rip-roaring, truly ripping, high-decibel, provocative diversion of a speech. It was a "Mike the Ripper" speech. Clearly he has returned as a healthy contender in British parliamentary politics.
  There was a steelworks some 10 miles from my home in my constituency, called Brymbo. The smelter is now closed; indeed, it no longer exists—I last saw it earlier this year on a large convoy of trailers being transported towards Birkenhead docks, and I believe that it is now being erected in the Republic of China.
  The Deeside titanium smelter used to stand at the heart of my constituency. It was the only smelter of its kind in western Europe and was a strategic industry. It has been allowed to close and is currently being dismantled, labelled and bagged. Early next year, I shall probably see it on low loaders in convoy, heading towards Birkenhead docks where it may be exported to Korea or Malaysia. I hope that I am wrong, but the work force there are broken-hearted at the closure of a successful smelter.
  Also in my constituency, 700 people made an executive jet. They are the finest plane makers in the world, but the

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  Government allowed that production process—some of the finest manufacturing in Britain—to be sold, lock, stock and barrel, to an American company.
  There are successes in my constituency: we have Toyota and Sharp and, wider afield in south Wales, there is Sony and Bosch. However, the rate of loss in manufacturing in Wales has been huge. The mining industry has been decimated; the textile industry no longer exists; the brick industry has virtually disappeared; and the cement industry has been pruned back harshly. The steel industry has only two centres of production, although those are fine centres. Our railways have been starved of investment and virtually no apprenticeships are to he had. That is the manufacturing record.
  Britain's greatness was always rooted in our manufacturing industry and capacity for manufacturing. We were paramount in engineering and innovation. We were a great industrial nation with apprenticeships, technology and scientific know-how. We had the investment, manpower, skills and record. We were a power in the world and were looked up to as a manufacturing state, and we were all proud of our status.
  The Queen's Speech is devoid of a strategy to defend or promote our manufacturing base, which is much smaller than it was but 10 years ago. I want to see my country, Britain, at the top of the world league of manufacturing nations and I want her to reclaim her industrial greatness. Large-scale unemployment could be ended by manufacturing and the profits from successful manufacturing could be invested in jobs, schools, hospitals, homes and pensions so that our fellow citizens could have civilised, dignified and happy lives rather than, as is the position for many millions now, lives of worry and humiliation.
  My charge against the Government and my criticism of the Queen's Speech is that the Cabinet lacks a strategy for Britain to secure her industrial future for the next century. Our country faces a serious situation. In the early 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Chancellor Geoffrey Howe and the Secretary of State for Industry, Keith Joseph, acted disastrously for our nation and manufacturing industry. By their obstinate and misguided policies, they allowed the catastrophic loss of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs, which is why we lack capacity in manufacturing today. It is the tragedy of our society and our nation's status against its competitors in the world.
  I am deeply disappointed in the record of the President of the Board of Trade. He did well in tackling the problems in Merseyside and had something to show for his commitment and energy, but he has failed as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Although he is in rude health—good theatrical health—he is now an extinct volcano in the Cabinet. He should look at the attempts made by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), who had been a Minister responsible for labour and for the regions. When unemployment rose in the mid-term of his premiership, he reversed policies and tried to cope with a rising crisis. The present Prime Minister should try to do the same and adopt a strategy.
  The outlook for manufacturing in Britain is grim. I am sorry to say that we have an almighty Executive dedicated to market forces and neglectful of manufacturing. The same overmighty Executive has squandered all the revenues from North sea oil and failed miserably to invest them in manufacturing to secure the future of our society and economy in the next century. The Government have no
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  strategic policy for our economy. Successive Conservative Cabinets have betrayed Britain's industrial future. Perhaps the present Cabinet should be lodged in the Tower of London for its betrayal, because it has a great deal to answer for.
  7.37 pm
  Mr. Anthony Steen: Having listened to most of the debate, I have noticed the difference between the speeches on the two sides of the House. The speech by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) was all doom and gloom—one of the most depressing speeches that I have ever heard—whereas the speech by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade was really stimulating, very enthusiastic and gave us hope for the future. All the speeches that I have heard from Opposition Members have been depressing, while those from Conservative Members have expressed hope for the future. The public outside will judge the Labour party by their depression. I was extremely depressed by what Labour Members said.
  Mr. John Garrett: Well, cheer us up, then.
  Mr. Steen: I shall cheer the House up. During the last Session, I sought leave to introduce three Bills to deal with deregulation, all of which drew attention to bureaucratic absurdities. My arguments were the same on each occasion —that bureaucracy is getting the better of business and enterprise is being stifled by over-zealous officialdom. I suggested that it was the most debilitating disease in the nation and was delaying our recovery. My analysis concluded that many rules were innocuous, even those from Brussels, but the problem was the massaging of directives from Brussels by Whitehall officials, of which there are far too many. They deploy their talents in putting sharp teeth in fairly harmless guidelines coming from Brussels. In that respect, our problems are often self-inflicted.
  Another aspect of the same problem is the over-zealous interpretation of legislation from Parliament and byelaws from local authorities, not to mention the rules arid regulations from SEFRAs—self-financing regulatory authorities. That is the backdrop against which I approach and welcome the Government's deregulation initiative.
  When the Bill is introduced, no doubt the Opposition will suggest that it reveals how defective the Government are, as they should not have passed the rules arid regulations in the first place. It is important for the Opposition to realise that rules and regulations that we wish to bury have become irrelevant in the fast-moving society in which we live. It is better to repeal them than to allow them to remain on the statute book if they are n o longer relevant.
  Is deregulation so different from repealing statutes? Deregulation picks out items from a number of Acts and puts them in a composite deregulation package—I do not understand what the fuss is about. It seems normal that Governments of either political party should repeal Acts of Parliament when they are no longer relevant. We are merely picking out a few rules and regulations from various Government Departments and putting them into a package in a Bill—there is nothing much in that.
  The new aspect of the matter is the way in which the Government are going about the process. The Government

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  are taking such action because the House of Commons is passing too many laws. The amount of bureaucracy generated in the House is enormous. Therefore, for the first time, we are reducing the number of rules and regulations to balance the scales. I am in favour of the deregulation Bill announced in the Gracious Speech. I hope that we shall have a bumper deregulation Bill every Session.
  Deregulation is nothing more than repeal. A progressive and flexible Administration will constantly try to perfect the statutory framework by repealing legislation that is no longer relevant. The speed of change and the pressures of everyday life require a constant awareness by the Government of the need to throw out antiquated and irrelevant bureaucracies. There will always be too many regulations.
  The problem may not just be the rule, but the way that rule is interpreted, as can be seen with the legislation on royal parks. Section 1(9) of the relevant Act states that one must first obtain the Secretary of State's permission before using any apparatus for the transmission, reception, reproduction or amplification of sound by electrical means. Over-zealous interpretation of that byelaw resulted in my being asked to stop using my portable telephone while walking my dog across St. James's park. A polite official said that I could not use a portable phone inside the royal park as I was in breach of the byelaw. If that is not an example of over-zealous interpretation, I do not know what is. I have been overwhelmed by letters from all over the nation following the incident when my car was removed because one of its tyres was straddling the next bay. I mentioned that in one of the speeches I made on deregulation.
  Rules and regulations should exist to help the public. Officials should try to serve the public, not use the rules as an oppressive way of damaging public relations. Over-zealousness has become the hallmark of a new British disease that attacks the public in an aggressive and hostile manner.
  Ticket collectors on British Rail have a job to do. Last Sunday, I came up from my constituency—one of the most beautiful in Britain, in south Devon. Within 30 seconds of my boarding the train, a ticket collector had presented himself. He was on the spot before I had put away my luggage or taken off my coat. He politely asked me for my ticket. Half an hour later, another ticket collector appeared and tapped me on the shoulder while I was having a well-earned snooze after a hard weekend's work in my constituency—beautiful though it is. He tapped me on the shoulder and asked to see my ticket. I said that I had been asleep and asked him to leave me alone. He said that he could not do so as he had not seen my ticket, which I then gave him.
  Later, when I was having another snooze after we had passed Reading, the same ticket collector tapped me on the shoulder again and asked to see my ticket. I said that he had already seen it once—in fact, twice. He said that he had seen it only once, as another ticket collector had seen it on the first occasion. I asked him what had happened to my ticket as I had been travelling on the train for only two hours. I did not think that it could have become out of date or invalid in that time.
  There is a further intrusion on the comfort of British Rail passengers. Before each train arrives at the station,
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  there is an announcement of the immense number of connections possible if one leaves the train at that station. One can imagine all the wonderful places that could be visited if one took the various connections. To crown it all, there are endless announcements about safety. Before a train arrives at a station, an announcement tells passengers not to open doors and to take luggage off the train carefully.
  There are three buzz words, of which one is "safety"; every time the word "safety" is used, it triggers endless announcements by British Rail. The three buzz words are security, hygiene and safety. We need look no further than the Palace of Westminster. If one mentions security and hygiene, people's eyes glaze over and their cheque books come out. I presume that is why there are 24 security attendants at St. Stephen's entrance and £30,000 was spent on new machines in the name of security.
  There are so many officials in some parts of the Palace of Westminster that it is difficult to get into the building. The corridors of the Palace are full of fire officers, who are presumably increasing the number of safety measures. So many new fire doors have appeared that it is difficult to get into the Chamber—one's entrance is also obstructed by the thick carpet. There are so many officials that I sometimes have difficulty in getting into my office in Dean's Yard. When I open the front door, I am confronted by a myriad of officials whom I have to ask, "Excuse me, may I get by?"
  I have never seen so many people checking things. If a new valve is put on a radiator, somebody checks it. The television screen in my room is cleaned, the windows washed, and another group of people change the light bulbs. More people arrive to say that the light bulbs are not the right ones. I have never seen so many people checking and rechecking at the public's expense.
  Another buzz word is "hygiene". It is said that the kitchens in the Palace of Westminster are out of date and need to be renewed. The amount of money required to do so is, apparently, approximately the same as that needed to build a new hospital in a middle-sized town. It is as if the officials have seized control of the place so that it is run by them and for them, rather than for us—to provide a service for Members.
  The existence of buzz words, together with overzealous enforcement locally, is at the root of the problem. However, there is another overriding problem—one of attitude. We can change the attitude of public officials only if they start to see themselves in a different way—as servants, not inquisitors, of the public. For that reason, the United Kingdom fails to make the progress that it deserves. Our energies are drained away from increasing wealth and jobs in order to handle the demands from officials—not to mention finding the money required to assuage their thirst for enforcement. It is as if bureaucracy has gone mad, and its principal task has become building obstacles rather than bridges.
  We have not schooled our public officials to understand their role in British society and their task of helping industry and private individuals. Too often, public officials see the public as enemy number one and view the business man as dishonest. How many business men have said to me that the VAT man treats them—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but bureaucracy is now falling on the hon. Gentleman. I call Mr. Paddy Tipping.
  7.47 pm
  Mr. Paddy Tipping: When the now noble Lord Parkinson told the Tory party conference that he was going to privatise the coal industry, he heralded the decision as dealing with the last great bastion of nationalisation. "Last" is the key word, as the timing was not fortuitous, but the result of a deliberate strategy. That strategy was: first, privatise the principal customers by creating a duopoly; secondly, ensure that the market is rigged, and only then extract vengeance; as the momentum towards legislation develops, keep talking down the coal industry and highlight its lack of prospects; when the mutterings in the Conservative party about the course being followed become louder, issue a White Paper, commission studies, but do nothing. The Government did nothing.
  Vengeance is a powerful emotion, and when it becomes a vendetta, nothing less than total destruction will satisfy it —that is what is happening to the British deep-mine coal industry. Over the past year, since October 1992, the closure of 24 collieries has been announced, and approaching 20,000 men have lost their jobs at those and other pits. It is no wonder that all over the United Kingdom, and especially in Nottinghamshire where promises were made, miners feel that the Government have turned their back and broken promises. There are fears that worse is to come.
  Does coal have a future at all? The short answer must be yes. The long-term prospects are brighter, but those will follow a painful period of readjustment in the short term. A hurried and botched privatisation will destroy the industry before the 21st century. The generators' market for coal will be 30 million tonnes next year. That contract expires at the end of March 1998—three years after the possible vesting date of new, privatised coal companies, which I understand the Government plan to occur on 1 April 1995.
  Even after allowing for other variables—the production of coal from opencast mines and the market for domestic and industrial coal—in the current year, British Coal has been over producing to the tune of 20 million tonnes. It has been stockpiling coal at 250,000 tonnes a week. That is exemplified by the 50 million tonnes of coal held in stock by British Coal and the generators. A market of 30 million tonnes could be satisfied by the output of, at most, 15 collieries. That figure does not allow for any significant reduction in British Coal stocks. It is clearly an output that any private sector pit owner would want. How the stocks will be dealt with is the key issue of coal privatisation.
  The Government look set to close half the coal industry as quickly as possible. They may take actions that will destroy more than 15 collieries, which would be sad because, in the long term, in 15 years' time for example, the prospects for coal will be brighter. By that time, gas supplies in western Europe will be much tighter and significantly more expensive. Whatever happens as a consequence of the much promised and delayed nuclear review, it is unlikely to result in a crash programme of nuclear power station construction, the environmental consequences of which must be considered.
  What about decommissioning and disposal costs? In 15 years' time, the big, pulverised-fuel, coal-fired power stations of today will be coming to the end of their natural lives. In 10 to 15 years' time, we will see an emerging shortage of electricity generating capacity and a shortage
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  of anything other than coal to feed it. At that time, there is good potential for minehead, combined cycle coal-fired plants, which will be highly efficient and non-polluting.
  To exploit that long-term potential, we must retain our coal industry. Some have argued that the coal reserves will always remain even if the collieries close. That is a complete fantasy. Energy prices would have to go through the roof before it is commercially viable to sink new mines.
  The real danger is over-dependence on gas. That dependence is destroying coal and could destroy the nuclear industry. A further danger is the neglect of research and investment into new, clean-coal technology. I have heard that Tory Back Benchers are planning to revolt over a possible £1 billion defence cut that they believe will put the security of the country at risk. That £1 billion could be used to provide our energy supplies. To put 25 pits on a full care and maintenance basis would cost £100 million per annum—£4 million per pit per year. All 25 pits could be saved for 10 years at the cost of that defence cut. Ten years will be sufficient to realise the folly of our action. We shall be held to ransom over gas contracts and the international market.
  To arrive at that long-term realisation, we must manage the short term. We must also navigate the medium term —the period after 1998—which will be the most difficult and crucial. In the short term, we can live off the productive capacity that already exists in our pits. In the medium term, deep mining must be capable of earning and retaining sufficient profitability to justify the continual reinvestment in replacement capacity, which is an important feature of the deep coal mining industry. Unless we can earn and retain profit, coal mining in the United Kingdom will not be economically viable on a sustained basis.
  I am utterly convinced that a fragmented coal industry —the Government's desire to sell off British Coal in five packages is a fragmented industry—will not survive into the medium to long term, for four main reasons. First, there would be a grotesque imbalance of market power between the generatorsvthe big players—and the new, privatised coal industry. Generators can purchase their fuel wherever they like, but United Kingdom coal producers have no other market than the generators.
  The massive overhang of stocks at the pits makes their position even more weak. All the generators have to do is play one coal producer off against another and they will be able to dictate the price of coal and capitalise on any savings that are made in the industry. Those benefits will not be passed on to consumers because the electricity generating market is not truly competitive. The only way to prevent privatised coal from being eaten alive by the generators is to sell the industry in one piece. Even then., life would be rough.
  Keeping the industry together would also spread the risk. A fragmented coal industry of 15 pits would result in companies with one, two or three collieries as well as perhaps some opencast mining. A business composed in such a way would not survive or have the strength to ride the inherent difficulties in coal mining.
  In a fragmented industry, there would be a risk in doing anything new. Old practices would prevail and new, exciting techniques would not be tried by small companies which owned one or two pits. A unitary industry would ensure that the best safety practices were preserved.
  We must fight for the coal industry. It is a strong and good industry facing its last chance. The miners have done

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  everything they have been asked, and more. The wheels of time are turning; it is their last chance and we should not destroy the industry.
  7.57 pm
  Dr. Liam Fox: After the successful summit in Brussels in 1988, my noble Friend Baroness Thatcher said:
  "The creation of the single European market by 1992 is regarded by the British Government as the most important objective of the European Community".
  It was important then, but it is doubly important now. Conservative Members believe in the single market because we believe profoundly in the importance of free trade and we want Europe to be at the centre of a free-trading world. We believe in the power, supremacy and wisdom of the free market and that commerce—not politics—is the greatest unifying force available.
  At present, Europe faces both a crisis and a challenge. There is a crisis of decreased competitiveness in world trade and an increase in regulations. It has a reduced share of the world market and a higher share of world unemployment. I sometimes think that we have an obsession with nationality in the Community. We talk of French models of Europe, or what the Danes or the Germans want. There are only two models: a free-trading Europe at the centre of a free-trading world—a Conservative Europe—or a socialist, harmonised, regulated, inward-looking Europe. Our challenge is to compete and create a meaningful place for Europe in the free trading world.
  I congratulate President Clinton on his success in pushing through the north American free trade agreement. The agreement gives Europe both a clear signal and a clear warning. It signals the declining importance to the United States of European trade; it shows the President's personal increased commitment to free trade. It also shows Europe —as Europe must be shown—that it should rely on world competitiveness if it is to survive.
  We must, as a European Community, reaffirm our commitment to competition, free trade and deregulation; we must make Europe work. There is no point in some of my colleagues, both in the House and outside, saying that they wish we were not in Europe, because we are in Europe, and we must make it successful. We cannot be in NAFTA, we are not on the Pacific rim, and the Commonwealth is not a viable trading entity. We must also make it clear, however, that Europe cannot survive on internal trade alone, as the French Government might wish to believe. We must trade outside.
  We in the House of Commons must state both what we want and what we do not want for Europe. We certainly do not want what the Labour party wants—a social dimension. Beneath the veneer of concern for workers' rights expressed by Opposition Members is the fear—especially in foreign countries with socialist Governments —that deregulated markets will take a bigger share of the world market: a bigger share of what trade is going. The fear is that those countries will be left behind.
  Increasingly, a number of European politicians are inclining to the British view of Europe, believing that we are correct—that we will secure more inward investment and a bigger share of world trade, because ours is the country that is deregulating in Europe. Sooner or later, they
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  will realise that we are right and they are wrong. We must not be deflected by smokescreens that have been created to obscure anti-competitive behaviour.
  One example is the proposed ban on tobacco advertising. Our competitors in Europe are desperate for such a ban. When they are willing to turn their backs on the millions of pounds of common agricultural policy money that have been used to subsidise tobacco growing in southern Europe, when they are willing to abandon their nationalised tobacco industries, when they are willing to use price mechanisms as successfully as we have in reducing tobacco consumption—then, just perhaps, they can have the gall to lecture us on the need for a ban on tobacco advertising. We must never be lured into a willingness to sacrifice our domestic industry simply to satisfy the nationalist aspirations of some of our European partners.
  I believe that, not only in the United Kingdom but in the whole of Europe, the Prime Minister is seen to be increasingly far-sighted in opting out of both the European social dimension and—perhaps even more important—the single currency. Economic and monetary union is not about the politics of trade, the politics of prosperity or the politics of competitiveness; it is about the politics of political union. We in the United Kingdom can have no truck with that, because it is not at present based soundly on competitive free-trading principles.
  If there is one area in which the challenge to Europe is seen particularly clearly, it is that of one of our leading manufacturing industries—the pharmaceutical industry. As in other sectors, the challenge is whether we can develop in a free market, allowing consumers maximum freedom while ensuring harmonisation, but only with the highest possible standards and the least pro-industry bias.
  If harmonisation is to be acceptable, it must do two things. First, it must provide consumers—in this instance, health services—with the benefit of a greater choice of medicines becoming available more quickly. Secondly, it must benefit the industry with less duplication and inconsistency between the regulatory processes of member states, because that burdens business with unnecessary costs. Moreover, it must always be shown that harmonisation can be achieved at the highest possible level of quality, rather than at the lowest common denominator. In Europe's development so far, harmonisation has taken place at that lowest common level; that has simply meant the best trap being available for everyone, rather than the best being allowed to go forward freely.
  In the pharmaceutical industry, we have seen a fairly constant evolution in legislation since 1965. Now, at last, Europe has made the quantum leap of allowing an application for a pharmaceutical licence to be in only one language rather than 12. The United Kingdom also welcomes the better patent protection that we have experienced recently. The United Kingdom sector has immense profitability and impressive research and development records, which must be maintained; the promotion of postgraduate education in our medical schools is also extremely important. We want to protect the areas in which our businesses are ahead. We in the United Kingdom must be in the business of protecting our market leaders, and allowing them to function in a free market without interference from substandard competition in Europe.
  We are helping that process in two ways. One involves drug licensing. The current multi-state and concertation

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  procedures do not work well. The new future systems legislation, with one regulation and three directives, will work much better—to the benefit of British companies. The European Medicines Evaluation Agency will also provide technical and administrative support, and will co-ordinate pharmaco-vigilance. Perhaps most important for our industry, it will monitor manufacturing sites.
  I am delighted that the EMEA is coming to London rather than going to Spain, for example. I believe that we shall be rigorous in monitoring manufacturing standards, and that the problems that we have experienced with parallel imports will therefore be minimised. We do not mind competition, but we want fair competition, and we want proper quality when it is brought into our national health service.
  The implications should include quicker and cheaper access to European markets for our business, with a single application giving access to all of them. There should also be cheaper medicines for the national health service, better medicines for our patients and a wider range in a shorter time scale. This is a real example of the direction in which Europe ought to be going.
  We should not concern ourselves with the minutiae of political integration. There is a way forward for Europe. I believe that commerce is the most unifying force. If we allow commerce to take its course—and if there is a real case for further integration into Europe—the case will be made by the markets alone. If we try to force harmonisation and unification on the peoples of Europe for the sake of political timetables rather than what commerce, the markets, industry and trade need, we shall be potentially sacrificing all the gains that we have made so far in Europe.
  As possibly the youngest Conservative Member in the House, I believe that the next generation will have the most to lose if we make mistakes now in the way in which Europe moves forward. If we hold true to our faith in a free-trading, deregulated Europe, that will give us our best chance of grasping the future for the next generation. We have everything to gain if we succeed, and no one but ourselves to blame if we fail.
  8.7 pm
  Dr. Tony Wright: My mind turns, as it often does, to the Conservative party's 1979 election manifesto, a perennially interesting document. I was distracted, when reading it, by sentences such as:
  "Value Added Tax does not apply, and will not be extended, to necessities like food, fuel, housing and transport."
  Ploughing on, however, I found at the beginning of the first paragraph:
  "This election is about the future of Britain—a great country which seems to have lost its way. It is a country rich in natural resources—in coal"—
  I could not read beyond that point and continue to take the manifesto entirely seriously.
  This week, the miners of Littleton colliery, most of whom live in my constituency—they were told a matter of months ago that they worked in a core pit and had a future in the coal industry that had been carved out, or the remains of it, in the coal review—were informed that their pit would close in the first week in December. I met them the other night. They said, "What more can we do? We are prepared to work in the public sector or the private sector. We have done everything and more that anyone has ever asked of us. You said that we were a core pit; now you say
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  that we have no future." Five hundred men and their families, and a whole community, are affected. I simply pass that on to whoever might listen. There might still be somebody who is prepared to give people like that the kind of chance they have asked for.
  I will address most of my remarks to deregulation. The context in which we have to consider it is, quite simply, the growth of Government. Again turning to the 1979 manifesto, it says:
  'The traditional role of our legislature has suffered badly from the growth of Government over the last quarter of a century.
  We will see that Parliament and no other body stands at the centre of the nation's life and decisions, and we will seek to make it effective in its job of controlling the Executive."
  Then there is more about the attack on over-Government, regulations and bureaucracy.
  What have we had? We have had the biggest growth in Government in modern times. We are now having to deregulate because the Government have invented the regulatory state; everything that they have touched they have sought to regulate. The whole thrust of the Government's privatisation programme has produced massive regulator strictures—most recently with the privatisation of British Rail. Those strictures were replicated across the whole range of utilities, and are to be replicated in the education system—"Death by ringbinder" as it has been called in the profession. I will not refer to what has been happening inside the health service, where managers, bureaucrats and accountants multiply by the day.
  There is a sensible approach to all this. I prefer good regulations to bad ones; simple ones to complex ones; and sensible ones to silly ones. There are many regulations that the business community would like to see but the Government have not delivered. One that has been mentioned in the debate is late payment problems for small businesses. Small business men have been pressing the Government to do something about that, and it would be a sensible regulation to introduce.
  Regulation has become the hallmark of the Government. The Department of Trade and Industry's report on the implementation and enforcement of European Community law in the United Kingdom, shows that both Government and officials are largely responsible for the problems that we have. Failure properly to integrate EC directives with domestic legislation has produced a maze, and it is that maze that the Government are now trying to sort out.
  We have seen the development of the extended state, the regulatory state, the contract state, the market tested state and the quango state. Soon, by the end of this Government, that will account for almost a quarter of public expenditure, tripling the number of quangos that Mrs. Thatcher, in her great quango cull, was going to get rid of. That is the crime of regulatory regime that the Government have created.
  The volume of legislation introduced by the Government is telling, and is a backcloth to everything that we are doing today. Since 1979, the total number of Acts passed was 861; the average number of Acts passed each year is 61·3. The total number of pages is 29,811; the average number of pages per year is 2,466. The total number of statutory instruments is 33,382; the average number per year is 2,335. The total number of SI pages is 70,088; the average number per year is 7,008.
  Mr. James Pawsey: Would the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Dr. Wright: I would give way, but other people wish to speak and the 10-minute rule applies.
  In 1988 the extraordinary number of 15,403 pages of legislation were produced. People should not think that that figure is par for the course, because 10 years earlier in 1978 under, dare I say it, a Labour Government, there were 1,481 pages. The Government came to power determined to roll back the state; it would not be possible to find a bigger rolling forward.
  If we look at not only the volume of legislation but its character, we find that the Government have increasingly introduced framework legislation, with great holes in it which they wished to fill by order. Everyone who has looked at this issue has said that it is one of the great trends of the times, and that it has become more so under the Government. Henry VIII clauses abound, which enable Ministers effectively to legislate. We do not know what the form of the deregulation Bill will be, but in one form it would be a constitutional outrage.
  We have serious problems in both the volume of legislation and its increasingly complex character. Lord Wakeham, when talking about this in the House of Lords the other day, said:
  "The truth of the position is that there is now around five times as much legislation as there was in the days when others remember how we did things."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 November 1993, Vol. 549, c. 1084.]
  Unless the Government and the Conservative party confront the fact that they used to be a conserving party, that it once wanted to conserve things, and that if too much legislation is introduced, bad legislation and legislation that is insufficiently scrutinised, eventually there will be a problem of burdensome legislation which will have to be attacked, undone and undressed. That is what is happening now.
  Along with other Members, I received this week—in addition to an invitation to a rather expensive lunch—a report from the Food and Drink Federation. Under the heading "Deregulation" it said:
  "Whilst firmly supporting the Government's stated commitment to deregulation the Food and Drink Federation is concerned that the initiative is carefully presented to consumers as a means of increasing choice and competitiveness and not of reducing levels of safety and consumer protection.
  I heard the former Chancellor, Lord Lawson, say the other day, in a notable speech, that the hallmark of the Government had become presentation. He went further than that, but I will be delicate for the moment. Many major trade organisations are saying that they are concerned—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Mr. Mark Robinson.
  8.17 pm
  Mr. Mark Robinson: This debate has been characterised by the fact that Conservative Members have accentuated the positive and Opposition Members have accentuated the negative. That has been noticeable in every speech that we have heard from them.
  I will further accentuate the positive by giving a wann welcome to the legislative programme for the year, which will cover law and order, Sunday trading and deregulation. The Bills which will come forward in those areas are in response to things for which my constituents have been asking for many months. If ever there was a programme coming before the House which has been asked for by the people of this country, it is the programme of Bills before us in the coming Session.
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  I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, in his sparkling return to the Chamber, emphasise the importance of seeking a successful conclusion in the next few weeks to the general agreement on tariff and trade negotiations. Nothing could be more important for business men in my constituency and businesses in the United Kingdom.
  Britain is currently well placed to lead Europe out of recession. Interest rates and inflation, as a combination are at their lowest for many years. Business costs have been forcibly but by the recession, leaving our exporters in an extremely competitive position from which they can take advantage.
  My constituency may not naturally be associated with the manufacturing industry, but it is home to several companies involved in that activity. One of the better known is Cuprinol, which specialises in wood preservatives. Last year, it increased its exports by 30 per cent. It can be done. That company exports to European markets, but at least it has been able to respond to the slowdown in traditional European export markets by achieving success primarily in the middle east and the far east. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will be pleased to know that Cuprinol's export manager says that the DTI's support for export potential is "improving all the time."
  As Cuprinol has shown, British industry must not be over-wary of previously untapped markets, because they represent a useful source of new opportunities. South America, for example, is another market that deserves special attention by those exporters in adventurous mode.
  There is no doubt that the conditions for exporters have improved and that today's prevailing economic circumstances will encourage that trend still futher. Our current exchange rates mean that our exporters can sell goods at about 20 per cent. below the cost incurred in 1992. Britain has the lowest interest rates in Europe and inflation is now well below the European Union average. Our business taxation is the lowest in the industrial world and I hope that that will remain the case even after 30 November. Unit wage costs in Britain are falling faster than at any time since 1970 and I hope that that, too, will remain the position. Certainly it should do so as long as the European socialst manifesto never has the chance to be implemented.
  I listened to a strange broadcast one Sunday morning from the Leader of the Opposition who tried to explain why he had signed up to the European socialist manifesto. At the same time, however, he went to great lengths to try to make it clear to people that, although he was a signatory, that did not amount to assent because it would not be implemented in the United Kingdom. I do not, however, believe that that signature would amount to nothing, nor do the British people.
  When one listens to the Opposition one might think that this country exports little and manufactures less than anywhere else in the world. However, we export a higher percentage of our GDP than Japan and we export more per head than Japan or the United States. We have already heard today about Rover, and it is worth mentioning that, because of its efforts and those of other car manufacturers, the trade deficit in car production may well be removed by 1996. That is a considerable achievement.
  The Government can take specific action in three areas to enhance our competitive advantage. The first and perhaps the most obvious action is high-profile Government backing for potential exports. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his colleagues have already

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  shown the way by backing United Kingdom Ltd. in their overseas tours. The Prince of Wales has made and continues to make an important contribution to the export drive. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has given full public recognition of that and confirmed that his Royal Highness' role will continue and will be enhanced.
  Secondly, the Government should reduce the burden on industry brought about by national and local government. That can be achieved through increased market testing, because the competitiveness that that secures leads to cuts in the underlying costs of Government services to business. That result is nothing but beneficial to businesses in their bids to win orders.
  Thirdly, the Government can do much, as we have already heard today, through deregulation. I listened without surprise but with plenty of disappointment to the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). Under Labour, Britain might not be so good at winning export orders but, my goodness, as the hon. Gentleman said, it would be at the top of the league of European regulators. That is obviously what the hon. Gentleman wants.
  The deregulation Bill is about common sense. It is not about getting rid of sensible and necessary health and safety legislation. It is about getting rid of outdated, useless regulations, for which no proper legislative procedure exists. It is not about throwing babies out with the bath water, wholesale, as the hon. Member for Livingston would have us believe. It would not create wide-ranging powers to remove regulations without reference to Parliament. The Bill will, however, help companies in my constituency which are confronted by mountains of forms. Earlier this year, one printing firm in my constituency, Butler and Tanner, had to deal with vast paperwork because of the regulations contained in an Act passed in 1947.
  Another local company, Wincanton Ltd., has a turnover of £200 million a year. It has to deal with regulations covering health, hygiene and safety. It does not object to that burden, provided it is sensible and reasonable. The Bill is designed to ensure that regulations will be sensible, reasonable and up to date, and that the cost of their implementation will not be out of all proportion to their effect.
  The Queen's Speech is welcomed by many people. It is certainly welcome to businesses. It is good for business, good for exports and will certainly ensure that Britain is able to capitalise on the extremely favourable competitive position in which it finds itself.
  8.26 pm
  Mr. John McAllion: The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said that he would have no truck with the idea of political union. He said that without even a hint of embarrassment despite the fact that he stands at the heart of a political union—the political union of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The fears that he expressed for Britain in relation to European union have already been realised in relation to Scotland and its union with the United Kingdom. Conservative Members should sometimes stop to think when they demand the application of the principle of subsidiarity from Europe to Britain while at the same time they deny the application of
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  subsidiarity from the United Kingdom to Scotland. Their argument is utterly hypocritical and cannot be defended logically.
  The hon. Member for Woodspring went on to argue that he believes in a free-market, free-trade, deregulated Europe in which money can be moved at will across national boundaries by those in control of the financial markets. He did not mention that this is the Europe with 17 million unemployed people and that, in the short term, that unemployment will rise to 20 million. It is also a Europe in which the fascist right is on the march across the continent. It has failed its citizens because it is a free-market, free-trade, deregulated Europe.
  Dr. Liam Fox: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. McAllion: I have just 10 minutes, so I will not give way.
  I wish to concentrate on one part of the amendment tabled to the Queen's Speech in the names of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition and other colleagues which deals with the reduced protection to the public and employees arising from legislation included in the speech: legislation which will increase the powers of Whitehall at the expense of accountability to the House. The legislation to which the amendment refers relates to that part of the Queen's Speech which promises:
  "Legislation will be introduced to facilitate deregulation and to remove obstacles to contracting out by central and local government."
  In other words, the Bill makes it easier for the Government to continue their programme of market testing in the civil service. In that respect, I am glad that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is in his place, as I want to refer to a speech that he gave in June 1992. I believe that the speech launched the Government's market testing initiative. The Minister made the speech to a conference that was organised by The Sunday Times for industrial and financial leaders. It may seem a long time ago, as it was made shortly after the general election. The Minister even began his remarks by saying that Britain had a new Government, and he went on to describe that Government as perhaps the most permanent and most secure Government anywhere in Europe.
  I am sure that the Minister came to regret using that phrase. He used it before black Wednesday, and the Government's panic withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism, before the pit closures fiasco, before the Maastricht debacle, and before the public sector borrowing requirement was revealed to be standing at £50 billion as a result of the Government's policies. In the course of his speech, the Minister referred to the PSBR as being £28 billion in that year. Is it not marvellous how within a matter of months the PSBR can jump from £28 billion in a speech by a Cabinet Minister to £50 billion? I wonder why the figure jumped so quickly, and why it was out of all proportion to what the Minister was saying.
  The Minister went on to talk about a revolution in the way in which public services were organised and delivered. Of course, he was announcing the launch of the market testing initiative in the civil service. He said that the emphasis in market testing is on free and open competition. He said:
  "In promoting the extension of market testing and competitive tendering, we are endeavouring to ensure that all in-house costs are calculated and taken properly into account. Our aim is to ensure competition is both free and fair."

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  No one could ask for a fairer attitude from a Minister. Later in the speech, the Minister went further:
  "1 want there to be parity of esteem between public and private, based on the rival and complementary excellences of each sector."
  Those, again, were laudable remarks from a Minister who was trying to be even-handed between the public and private sectors. Of course, those words were uttered before the onset of the sea of troubles that have beset the Government in the past 12 months.
  I move on from the speech given by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster last June to that given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in September this year to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. That speech had a different emphasis altogether. He said:
  "When once Government asked what shall we sell? We now ask what must we keep?"
  In other words, there is to be a bias towards getting rid of Government services or privatising them in some form. The Financial Secretary went on to say:
  "I believe there is significantly more scope for privatisation or contracting out of central Government functions than has previously been envisaged."
  The Financial Secretary went on to describe the discussions that he had had with Ministers of every Department.
  Mr. Heald rose—
  Mr. McAllion: If the hon. Gentleman wants to raise the point that I am sponsored by the National Union of Civil and Public Servants, he is free to do so.
  Mr. Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to make a speech in which he heavily criticises market testing without declaring his interest as a paid consultant for a civil service union?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. It is entirely up to hon. Members to disclose such interests as they believe to be appropriate.
  Mr. McAllion: The hon. Gentleman will know that such interests are contained in the Register of Members' Interests. I declare that interest in most speeches that I make. If I were to do so in every speech, hon. Members would complain that I was continually referring to the union. Of course I am a parliamentary consultant for the union, and I am happy to declare that fact.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. For the benefit of the House, I will say that any hon. Member who has an interest to state should state it at the beginning of every speech where it is relevant.
  Mr. McAllion: I shall certainly do so in future. I shall return to what I was saying before I was interrupted in an attempt to drive me off the point.
  During the discussions held between Ministers, it was agreed that in future what they called prior options would be applied when making decisions. The Financial Secretary said that of each departmental activity they must ask themselves the following questions in order of priority. The first is, "Can it be abolished?" If the answer was no, they would move on to the second question, which was, "Can it be privatised?" If the answer was again no, the
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  third question would be asked, which was, "Can it be contracted out?" If the Minister was told that that could not be done, only then would the fourth question, "Can it be market-tested?" be asked.
  The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told the conference in June 1992 that there would be free and fair competition and even-handedness between the public and private sectors, but there is nothing of the kind. The public sector is not even getting an opportunity to take part in market testing because Ministers are asking the prior questions. Only when the questions have been asked do they bother with market testing or matching the civil service departments against their competitors in the private sector. It is a complete stitch-up in favour of the private sector. The Minister knows that, as does every other Minister and every hon. Member.
  I understand that the messenger service for the Office of Public Service and Science has been contracted out. There was no market testing, and the Department was not given a chance to test its bid against the private sector bid. The contract went straight to a leading private sector company which put in a loss-leader bid. It is honouring the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1986. It will pay the same wages and will have the same holidays and pensions conditions. It will do so for less money than the public sector can do it because the company is anxious to have the prestige of being the messenger service for the Department.
  In other words, the Minister is putting up the prestige of his own office by selling it off to the private sector. The company will then use the prestige to win contracts against its competitors. That is a contemptible part of the Government's strategy. The phrase used by the Financial Secretary—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
  8.36 pm
  Mr. Peter Ainsworth: Today's debate has been interesting, and we heard the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Wright) make a passionate plea for further deregulation. I was wondering how he intended to square that with the opinion of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) who has said of deregulation that the Government are introducing new killing fields into industry.
  The House was then tempted by the peculiar and bizarre vision of a European future by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion). I do not wish to lead the House down either of those routes. Instead, I shall return firmly to basics. With the Budget a week away, we will be hearing a great deal from economists; and we shall be hearing a lot of economics from politicians.
  I used to be scared by economics, and I used to think that it was some type of complicated science. A few years ago I got wise about the subject and discovered that it was an art, where an enormous amount of energy, analysis, and sophisticated computer equipment is followed up by a series of enormous guesses. I am fond of economists—some of my best friends are economists, as they say—but it is important that we understand that economics is simply an analysis of what other people produce.
  Trade and industry are, and always have been, the foundations of economic life. Industry is the cornerstone of our developed world. Men and women go out to work to do what they do best for the best return they can achieve.

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  Those people generate the money which sustains, among other things, all our public services, including health, education, and defence. In that sense, important as those services are, they must always be secondary considerations. It is only trade and industry which make them possible. I fear that Opposition Members sometimes forget that. That is why this debate is so important. We are often led to believe that it is Governments who create wealth, but they do not. They spend the wealth that other people create by making and selling things, by offering services, and by creating the economy in the first place.
  I think that the benign influence which politicians have over economic affairs is often overstated—not least by politicians. That is particularly true as markets have become increasingly international, even supranational. That was one of the lessons that we all learned from the effective collapse of the exchange rate mechanism.
  It is important that we recognise as politicians the limitations under which we work when dealing with trade and industry and economic affairs. When we forget those limitations, we generally cause trouble. While our capacity as politicans to influence trade and industry matters for the better through intervention is limited, the capacity to cause trouble is virtually limitless. It should—it must—be our object to set the framework which enables all those who work in trade and industry to do what they want to do, which is to prosper.
  That means doing an awful lot of things that the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) did not mention in his doleful speech. It means keeping a lid on inflation. It means, however difficult, not listening to those who say that an inflation rate of 5 to 10 per cent. will be all right. We all know that once inflation takes a hold it is extremely difficult to control.
  It means keeping interest rates as low as possible. We did not hear about that from Opposition Members, and certainly not from their principal spokesman. We are doing that. At 5·5 per cent., interest rates are the lowest that they have been for 16 years. It means a tax regime that enables people and businesses to keep more of what they earn to spend in the way that they choose. It means an exchange rate that recognises the reality of markets and the relative position of individual economies. We have such an exchange rate and it is perhaps in part because of that that our exports are now at record levels.
  It means doing all that we can to resist the destructive forces of protectionism and to foster free markets which unlock doors to worldwide prosperity. No Government are doing more to help the GATT round come to a successful conclusion than this Government. I was delighted to hear what the President of the Board of Trade said about that.
  Setting the framework means reducing the share of GDP taken by the state—that is something to which we are committed. It means developing in our schools the skills that industry needs. That does not necessarily mean developing the public sector borrowing requirement at the same time. It means listening to, and working with, industry. There is now a real partnership betwen the DTI and industry aimed at developing the skills that the country will need in the years to come.
  Setting the framework means encouraging good labour relations as well. It comes as no surprise that we have recently enjoyed the lowest level of strikes since records began 100 years ago. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) laughs, but it is no laughing matter—it is a great Government achievement.
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  I spoke earlier of the problems which arise when politicians forget their limitations. There can be no better example of that than the social chapter. We should not interfere with the terms and rates of pay that private sector companies agree with their employees. To do so is arrogance. It is also ignorance, because it ignores the intensely competitive conditions in which our businesses have to fight for their living.
  I was recently in Leipzig, in eastern Germany, where I was listening to local politicians and business men talking. The subject of the social chapter came up. Did they nod wisely and mutter about workers' rights? No, they laughed. One said to me, "Look, wages and social costs have soared since unification, and so has unemployment. The average daily wage in this part of Germany is 40 deutschmarks. Thirty miles away in Poland, it is 8 deutschmarks and a little further to the east, in Russia, it is 15 pfennigs. Talk to me about skills, technology or privatisation, but don't talk to me about the social chapter."
  The social chapter and other forms of bureaucratic regulation have no part to play in Europe's battle for world markets. They are devised by politicians, but that battle is being fought day after day by people in business, trade and industry. Therefore, I welcome the Bill on deregulation. I hope that it will be radical, brave and far reaching in its consequences. Nothing less will do if we are to unshackle our businesses and enable them to get on with the job of developing our economy and generating the prosperity that people want and which our society has come to expect.
  8.44 pm
  Mr. Anthony Coombs: I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench on their anti-red tape—that is a better phrase than deregulation—Bill. I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) on its importance to small businesses. Equally, the national manufacturing council of the CBI has specifically said in its document "Partners for Success" how important that deregulation and anti-red tape initiative will be for manufacturing industry. Important as it is, the Bill pales into insignificance in comparison with the huge improvement in the productivity and efficiency in British industry that has resulted from the sea change in British industry brought about by the Government's policies on low inflation, low interest rates and low taxation.
  Earlier today, I reminded the House that, since 1979, manufacturing has risen by about 30 per cent. and overall output by about 25 per cent. Sadly, both fell under the last Labour Government. What is more, manufacturing industry is becoming more competitive. We are the only country in Europe to show a significant rate of growth this year. Productivity is rising and unit wage costs, which are increasingly important in an increasingly competitive world, are falling—small wonder that, as a result, our exports are up by about 15 per cent. compared to last year. When we take exports outside Europe—inside Europe, it is extremely difficult to work out because of the introduction of Intrasat—our increase on last year is even more. 'The United Kingdom's share of main manufacturing countries' exports—our share of world trade—has shown an improvement from 7·5 per cent. in 1984 to about 8·5 per cent. recently. That is the best figure that we have had since the mid and early 1970s.

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  It is significant that, in my constituency, a carpet company called Master Weavers is importing German equipment that cannot be used effectively over there because of the high social costs, and is making a profit here. Another company is importing heavy wheel-making equipment from near Dusseldorf in Germany. The German firm wants to concentrate its production here because of the competitiveness of British industry and work forces, rather than remaining in Germany. The managing director of that company said to me, "Mr. Coombs, if we cannot compete on the basis of low inflation, low interest rates and greater certainty than we have had for many years, we never will."
  I find it amazing that, given that massive improvement in competitiveness and confidence, which is emphasised by the west midlands business survey last month, the Labour party should be seeking to weigh British industry down with the social chapter, minimum wage regulations and union recognition agreements, the like of which we have not seen since the early 1970s, and now, a socialist super-state with a 35-hour, four-day week. Those are the costs that industry most wants to avoid. I have not found one business man who welcomed the social chapter and the Labour party's adherence to it.
  As my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade reminded the Institute of Directors yesterday, in the land of reality, we live in a competitive world. Although productivity has improved dramatically, we still have some way to go, except in manufacturing, where we are among the world's leaders. Even the CBI recognises that, although 2 per cent. of our manufacturing companies are world class and 40 per cent. are near that, more than half our manufacturing companies have a long way to go before they reach a level of efficiency that would allow them to compete with the rest of the world.
  Over the next two years, we as a country, and we as a Government, need to give to two other points even more attention that we have been giving. The first is that, in this country, although we have 400,000 new small firms every year, we do not have a sector for medium-sized firms as large as those of our competitors, particularly France and Germany. If we are to encourage them, we must consider their training needs—we are looking at that through the national vocational qualifications initiative.
  There has been an improvement in the number of people staying on at school—record numbers of people are going to university and taking technical qualifications. We must look also at how they are managed so that, in the proper culture of management, that investment is used most effectively. I hope that the new one-stop shops will lead to a significant impact for small and medium-sized firms.
  Compared to our European neighbours, our small and medium-sized firms rely far too much on short-term overdraft finance. As a result, they do not have the confidence to invest that those abroad have. They have dividend policies, particularly on the market, which, given their earnings, are often irresponsible—double the rate of those for the competition overseas. Too often, business angels, who might have come in and injected business capital, are deterred by unrealistically high levels of capital gains tax. We need a means of financing medium-sized companies on a long-term basis.
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  I should like to suggest—it was last mooted by my hon. Friends in 1986—long-term industrial revenue bonds, which would give such companies a source for long-term, or at least medium-term, finance at a reasonably fixed rate.
  Obviously, low inflation will assist in providing such finance, because it drives down interest rates and makes people more certain about their future investment decisions. Nevertheless, I believe that something like the industrial revenue bond, which could quite easily replace the business expansion scheme for small companies, should be considered seriously by the Government.
  My second point is that, to maintain our improvement in world trade and competitiveness, we need fair competition. I am delighted that the DTI has set up a single market compliance unit. I hope that it will do something about the barriers that particularly affect the textile industry. That industry employs 400,000 people—more than 4,000 of whom are in my constituency. Germany has the Gut scheme, which is meant to be a standard scheme but is effectively used as a way of restricting foreign imports.
  Carpet companies trying to sell on contract to hoteliers in Germany find that they must be inspected for every single contract—not just overall—by regional governments who not only insist on inspecting in situ but whose representatives come to England and walk around the factories to make sure that they are doing everything right there. In terms of barriers to trade, those are the matters at which the SMCU should look.
  On subsidy, particularly hidden subsidy, the Belgian Government, and to a lesser extent the French Government, have been getting away with murder for too long in subsidising, through the back door, their carpet companies. I know that the DTI is well apprised of that. I think that the SMCU should be pro-active with trade associations such as the British Carpet Manufacturers Association in investigating the kind of costing that contributes towards the entirely unrealistic pricing of which carpet companies in Europe, which are subsidised by their Governments, are capable. In that way, we would stop that practice and, as a result, move towards fairer competition in that sector.
  GATT and the importance of NAFTA and other free trade agreements have been mentioned. The textiles industry in particular suffers because although it exports £4·8 billion-worth of goods every year, only £1·8 billion of that is outside Europe. Why? The answer is that there are very high tariff rules outside Europe. When exporting goods, the average tariff in Europe is about 14 per cent. In India, there is a ban—even if one can get past that ban, the tariff is 100 per cent.—in Pakistan, the tariff is 125 per cent.; in China, it is 130 per cent.; and, even in the United States, it is 60 per cent. for some goods.
  I know that GATT has called for a halving of some of the tariff barriers and a lesser reduction for the higher ones. Nevertheless, more needs to be done by the compliance unit in the DTI to ensure that those tariff barriers come down as quickly as possible. If not, appropriate reciprocal action should be taken by the British Government to ensure that they come down in future.
  8.54 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Brown: Like the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mr. Coombs), whose speech I have enjoyed, I, too, would like to put in a word for fair trading practices.
  Today's debate, which has focused on the manufacturing industry and deregulation, is of enormous important to my constituents. Indeed, it is of enormous importance to the entire industrial community on Tyneside. My constituency has two key pillars to its private sector economy—NEI Parsons, which makes turbine generators, and Swan Hunter, shipbuilders, which is now in receivership.
  The level of male unemployment of the shipbuilding community in the Walker ward of east Newcastle is now 38 per cent. That is before the receiver has shed the work force, who are still employed at Swan Hunter constructing two frigates for the Royal Navy. Tragically, 500 men lost their jobs in the announcement last week. If something is not done very soon, the other 1,000 will lose their jobs.
  It is with enormous sorrow that I take part in the debate on Britain's manufacturing base to plead with the Government that they do something to save what is left of the shipbuilding manufacturing base on Tyneside. No community deserves better from the Government. At the time of the Falkland conflict, Swan Hunter was full. Men were willingly working overtime to provide the hardware that the Royal Navy needed. Civilian workers even went to sea with the fleet to complete outfitting work as it sailed down to the south Atlantic. The shipyard workers of Tyneside have served Great Britain well, in war and in peace.
  In the tragic circumstances that now confront the yard, surely the workers have a right not only to be heard in the House but to have a response from the Government, particularly from the DTI. I think that we all accept that the warship building programme will not be in future what it has been in the past, but two key procurement decisions have put Swan Hunter into its present tragic plight: the first being the procurement of auxiliary oiler replenishment vessel No. 1 at Harland and Wolff.
  The hon. Member for Wyre Forest mentioned fair competition. Whatever else that decision was, it could not possibly be described as fair competition. Behind Harland and Wolff was the Northern Ireland Office and some £58 million-worth of subventions from the public purse; behind Swan Hunter was a management buy-out with no sizeable commercial resource at all.
  The landing platform helicopter carrier order—the second great procurement decision that has put Swan Hunter into its present plight—was won by VSEL at Barrow-in-Furness. The National Audit Office has now told us that between £25 million and £30 million-worth of reserves were used by that company to underpin its bid. There were no such reserves for the privatised management at Swan Hunter. The LPH battle is now over and I am certain that the work force at Barrow will be able to provide the Royal Navy with a perfectly suitable vessel. However, unemployment looms for the community that I represent. We are entitled to ask the DTI to do something to safeguard what is left of Tyneside's manufacturing base.
  I make this plea because everything that we have asked for so far seems to have met stony silence from the Government Benches. The Government could do several things. They could sit an economic package alongside the
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  redevelopment of the yard for merchant ship building or for related work, such as fabrication in another area. However, so far the Government have said nothing.
  I understand that, in the past day or so, the Minister for Industry has pressed the case for intervention funding for Swan Hunter so that the yard can diversify into merchant ship building. That is all very well, but the yard has been in receivership for six months. The Government should have acted as soon as the receiver moved in. They should not have decided finally to make a bid to Europe some six months later as redundancy round has followed redundancy round and when the conclusion has become all too clear to those who follow these matters on Tyneside.
  We are not talking simply about the destruction of a community and a way of life which has formed a substantial part of the way in which Tyneside has worked since the turn of the century. We are talking about the lack of an alternative. The shipyard workers at Tyneside have only ever asked for a fair chance to compete and for the famous level playing field. If they are not to have that, surely the DTI—which is our sponsoring Department—has a duty to encourage alternative employment or a private sector purchaser to take over the business and provide a new or renewed employment base. However, we have heard nothing of the sort from the DTI.
  All that has been announced so far is a relatively small sum of money—about £2 million—for the urban development corporation. Frankly, that sum will do hardly much more than grass the yard over. The people of Tyneside do not want to be park keepers or the custodians of a once proud industrial heritage and a kind of shipbuilding theme park. They want the right to work and they expect the DTI to stand in their corner and to assert that right with them.
  We have looked with admiration at the way in which the Northern Ireland Office stood up for Harland and Wolff. We looked with admiration at the way in which the Scottish Office stood up for at least two major shipbuilding yards in Scotland. They were our direct competitors. Who has stood up for the people of Tyneside? The DTI should have done that, but to date there has been no significant announcement from the Department about support for the existing shipbuilding industry or about an economic regeneration package for the region.
  Work is running out at Swan Hunter. The future for the work force looks extraordinary grim. Surely it is now right for the Government to come to the House—perhaps the Minister will do this when he replies to the debate—and say what assistance will be provided to the people of Tyneside and to a community that deserves better from the Government than just the neglect and plain ignorance which are currently all that is forthcoming.
  9.2 pm
  Mr. Oliver Heald: We have heard yet another speech from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) in the dismal Johnny litany which began with the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who opened the debate. From that speech, one would have thought that there were no grounds for optimism. We have heard about redundancy round after redundancy round. It has not been stated that, as we all know, unemployment is falling in Britain. One hundred and thirty thousand more people in Britain are in work now than a year ago.

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  The one glimmer of hope among the Opposition speeches seemed to be that of the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). He started rather well when he said that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade had made a ripping speech. There was a ripple on the Conservative Benches, as we thought that a little bit of credit was going to be given. However, the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside ruined it all by describing my right hon. Friend as "Mike the Ripper." That took all the gloss from his previously hopeful comment.
  Mr. Ian Taylor: My right hon. Friend might have enjoyed that.
  Mr. Heald: Yes, he might have. However, if one were looking for an analogy, a much more favourable impression would have been made by Munching Mike from the Letterland series of books. The point about Munching Mike is that he eats the unnecessary and wasteful things in Letterland. I hope that my right hon. Friend will make a meal of over-regulation in this country.
  I wish to make two main points. First, over-regulation greatly damages this country's interests. To deregulate is not an optional extra; it is something that we must do if we are to compete. With the Employment Select Committee, I recently visited Japan and met inward investors who are coming to this country. Forty per cent. of inward investment into Europe comes into Britain. Inward investors are not painting the dismal picture that we have just heard. They are talking about a country which has real opportunities to offer manufacturing industry, a country with the right language, a country which gives a warm welcome to inward investors, a country with political stability, and a country with an inventive work force.
  Nissan representatives will say that the Nissan product that is made in this country is the best in the world. The reason is that the company's programme of asking people for ideas on how to improve the industrial process is working much better in this country than anywhere else. Each year, 300 ideas come from the work force in Sunderland to improve the product. It is the same story at Honda. Companies that are investing in Britain praise our work force, and that shows optimism for the future. They say that almost all the conditions in Britain are right. They welcome the fact that we are in the European Community, but they sound a note of caution.
  The note of caution that those companies sound is that in the EC there is a danger that we will over-regulate to the point at which we are not competitive with the rest of the world. There is a danger that in this country, where we implement regulations to the nth degree, we will not only take on what Europe is doing but make matters so restrictive that we will not have the edge that we have at the moment. No one should imagine that we can afford to lose the competition—we cannot.
  We have only to look at the geography of Europe to realise that there is a core. The European Community has recognised that there is a core, through its funding for the periphery. In those areas—part of Britain is no doubt in them—one might be able to afford to be a little inefficient and have the social dimension, but what about the rest of Europe? What about the periphery that is having burdens put on it? Those burdens mean that part of Europe will not
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  be able to compete with the other part of Europe if that continues—something which is damaging to poorer nations.
  It amazes me: that socialists or people who claim to have some feeling for poorer countries that need to develop are the ones who are suggesting putting restraints on competition within Europe. We want a deregulated Europe which can compete. We have 20 million unemployed people in Europe, and estimates for the future are not good. Britain is the only country that is successfully tackling the problem. Let us look at the lessons which Britain can give.
  Secondly, I refer to privatisation. From Opposition Members and trade unions we hear constant criticisms of privatisation, but we must consider what our trade unions are doing in eastern Europe. They are helping the free trade unions which have just started in those countries. Those free trade unions do not stand for anti-privatisation, old-fashioned restrictive practices or the mess that our union movement is in; they stand for apolitical trade unions. Their first act is to sign conventions on privatisation, just as the new trade unions have done in Russia. They stand up for free trade capitalism because they know from experience exactly what would happen if they did not. It would be a disaster. We need to look at eastern Europe to see what over-regulation and state industry do.
  It is extraordinary that our trade unions are going to eastern Europe and helping trade unions that know all the right things because they have learnt them from history, yet they come back to this country and argue against privatisation and they are affiliated to the Labour party —all the old claptrap. The time has come when trade unions need a new language of activism, to use John Monk's words. The sooner they get it and start selling good services to their members, and doing what everyone in employment law recognises is needed, the better.
  9.9 pm
  Mr. Michael Meacher: This has been a rather uneven debate. After a measured and highly effective introduction by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), we heard some passionate speeches by some of my other hon. Friends. At the risk of being rather invidious, I must pick out the speeches by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) on the decline of manufacturing industry; by my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) and for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on the destruction of the coal industry; by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) on the problems of small businesses; and by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) on the multiplication of quangos and the rise of the unelected state. I must also mention the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) on the dangers of market testing, about which I shall say a good deal more in a moment.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) made a moving speech on the collapse of the shipbuilding industry and the Government's complete failure to take any remedial action for that stricken area.
  I now come to the speech by the President of the Board of Trade, who opened the debate. He may be restored to health, but he certainly lost no time in going straight into overdrive. I suppose that one might say he went from the

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  sickbed to a leadership bid in one astounding leap. He told us nothing about the subject that we are supposed to be debating—his forthcoming Bill. Rather as a cuttlefish conceals his retreat by exuding clouds of ink, the President of the Board of Trade spewed out personal abuse, insults, fictions, froth and lather in a great farrago of rhetorical claptrap.
  As I listened to him, I was reminded of the wise words of one of my hon. Friends, "Never wrestle with a chimney sweep." Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman's hyperactivity—stabbing the air like a demented dervish on several occasions—was in inverse proportion to his consistency.
  I see the right hon. Gentleman coming into the Chamber straight on cue. I am glad that I was referring to him. We are glad to see him restored to health, even if he has gone straight into overdrive. Given all the deregulation ardour that he exhibited tonight, one might wonder whether this was the same man who wrote a personal manifesto a few years ago entitled, "Where There's a Will", which advocated intervention in industry, or the same man who was going to intervene before breakfast and at every other minute of the day. All one can say is that one hopes that his latest craze will last no longer than his previous ones.
  The first thing to be said about the Government's proposed deregulation Bill—what we know of it—is that it is a misnomer. It is not about lifting burdens but about removing protections. It will not lift burdens if one makes temporary workers buy their own hard hats, steel-capped footwear or other necessary clothing, but it will undermine their protection and it could put their lives at risk. The removal of regulations on lifting loads, independent inspection or internal consultation procedures will not lift significant burdens, but it may give ignorant and unscrupulous employers a licence to kill.
  If food safety regulations are now described by the Secretary of State for Health as "over zealous nit-picking", why was it in 1990, just three years ago, the then Agriculture Minister described those same regulations as designed
  "to outlaw the cowboys of food safety."
  If they protected the public then, why do they suddenly cease to do so today?
  It is no use Ministers pretending that health and safety will not be undermined by the Bill. We have only to look at their record. They have already cut the Health and Safety Executive's budget by £13 million this year. They have already cut the public grant supporting safety rep training, and they say that they will abolish it completely in 1995. They have already signalled their complacency about health and safety by making the chair of the Health and Safety Commission a part-timer; and they have already begun to subject the HSE to market testing, which will seriously threaten its consistent and discretionary approach to enforcement.
  There is, however, a much more insidious and disturbing aspect to the Bill—the generalised and sweeping powers that Ministers propose to take to themselves for an open-ended expansion of privatising or contracting-out functions now covered by statutory regulation.
  We have three fundamental objections to the proposal. First, it vests enormous and unaccountable power in the hands of Ministers, power which they can use to repeal an endless stream of legislative provisions simply by issuing
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  a statutory instrument, with minimal parliamentary debate. That undermines the role of Parliament, and it takes another major step down the road to an elective tyranny.
  These are the same Ministers who have set up a host of unelected quangos, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock and Burntwood eloquently pointed out a few moments ago. Those quangos, beyond any public accountability, now control almost a quarter of total public expenditure. These are the same Ministers, too, who over the past decade have pursued the biggest centralisation of state power this century—and now they want the power, if not with the stroke of a pen, then with the stroke of an affirmative resolution, to indulge their dogma of privatisation without having to submit to the discipline of detailed parliamentary scrutiny. We say that that is not only unhealthy for parliamentary democracy but downright wrong, and we oppose it absolutely.
  Our second objection derives from our doubt about whether this move is even constitutional. Characteristically, the President of the Board of Trade simply deflected any consideration of that important issue. Our view is, however, shared by the Minister's chief officials, I have with me a letter—[HON. MEMBERS: "From The Guardian?"]. No, this is a management-in-confidence letter from the efficiency unit in the Department of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and it is written by the deputy director. I can understand why the right hon. Gentleman might by slightly worried about it.
  The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave): I am not.
  Mr. Meacher: That is odd, because the letter is about a subject on which the right hon. Gentleman has had months of aggro with his fellow Ministers. The letter states:
  "A common theme which has emerged is the risk of there being an unlawful sub-delegation of power arising from the contracting-out of certain statutory functions entrusted to Ministers."
  The deputy director goes on to use some jargon about the Carltona doctrine, which dates back to 1943 and which allows civil servants, and only civil servants, to act on behalf of Ministers. The letter continues:
  "The Carltona doctrine does not extend beyond civil servants in Government Departments … The legal advice is that the case law, including a decision of the House of Lords in 1990 … indicates that the doctrine cannot be extended beyond its present scope without legislation. It would not, therefore, extend to contractors whom the Minister might wish to authorise to carry out work on his behalf."
  That is the strict legal advice offered by a senior official in the Minister's Department. The letter goes on to say:
  "A general power of sub-delegation would be a constitutional innovation, and it may necessarily involve a wide order-making power to amend primary legislation which could in itself be controversial."
  I am sure that the Minister remembers it well, but I would be glad to give him a copy of the letter.
  The matter was taken up by the Minister in another letter that he wrote to Ministers on 2 April seeking their assistance. I quote:
  "The suggested provision would have allowed a Minister to sub-delegate any function"—
  we know from the other letter that that is illegal—
  "to an authorised person who is not a Crown servant, by secondary legislation, as and when the need to do so is identified. Such a proposal was always bound to be particularly controversial".

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  That is an understatement. Indeed, the Minister got short shrift.
  I am pleased to say that such behaviour tends not to be contained and is more widely disseminated. I have another letter written by the Secretary of State for Scotland in April. It states:
  "I can fully appreciate that a general provision to deal with the statutory constraint of delegation by Ministers to non-Crown servants might prove controversial."
  That must be the understatement of the year, given the Minister's revealed penchant for giving himself sweeping and untrammelled powers against legal advice.
  Tonight, we expect him to make it absolutely clear what route he intends to follow. He should make it clear whether he has bowed to the advice of his officials or whether he is in the same category as the Home Secretary, who likes to think that he knows better than all those who are paid to advise him. We want to know what he proposes to do about the vires of his proposed legislation.
  Our central objection to the proposed Bill is the substance and its effects. It will undermine quality standards. That is not simply the Labour party's view; it is the view of the independent National Audit Office. Recently, that body criticised the Ministry of Defence for its contracting-out programme. The points emphasised by the National Audit office are relevant to the Bill. It emphasised the overestimating of the savins produced, the failure to lay down proper quality standards, the inadequate monitoring of the performance of contractors and the insufficient training for Ministry of Defence staff involved in contracting out. Those are serious objections.
  I move on to a matter that I regard as more serious. The Bill will severely undermine confidentiality. The search for deregulation and privatisation will end the citizen's right to privacy in areas such as tax records, drivers' records, medical details, family maintenance transactions and, if the police national computer is privatised, information about criminal convictions.
  Mr. Waldegrave: As the hon. Gentleman has just read out a lot of stolen leaked letters, does he think that it is a bit rum to then complain about confidentiality?
  Mr. Meacher: I understand the right hon. Gentleman's embarrassment because the way in which he intended to advance has been shown by his advisers to be illegal and unconstitutional. It is another matter to talk about the effects of his proposed Bill to citizens.
  Next year, computer tax details of all United Kingdom citizens and businesses will be handed to an international computer company for processing. Judging by the information in the newspaper today, it appears that the contract has been awarded to the United States company, EDS. That is being done despite the fact that tax records were mishandled when work was handed to a private contractor and 84,000 annual tax advice packs were sent to the wrong addresses. Now we are to get a great deal more.
  Furthermore, the market testing of typing and secretarial work, and the information technology office in the Inland Revenue, could mean that all letters to and from tax offices will go through temporary work agencies. That must increase the risk of people's personal affairs being known in the private marketplace. The truth is that, despite the guarantees of confidentiality that the Government are only too pleased to give, the private banking and financial
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  sector already operates a secret market in personal data, and many breaches of privacy and confidentiality have already taken place. The Bill will grossly compound an already deeply unsatisfactory situation.
  That is not just our view. Three recent reports by independent and highly respected bodies drive home the danger that, in private hands, tax returns could become public knowledge. Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor General, exposed in a recent report the failure of the Data Protection Act 1988. Mr. Eric Howe, the Data Protection Registrar, criticised the banks for failing to protect customers' confidentiality. Sir Bryan Carsberg, the Director General of Fair Trading, has called for new rules to be incorporated into the banking code to prevent customers' confidentiality from being breached. All are highly critical of the corrupt way in which personal financial information can be traded just like any other commodity. The Bill will make an already deplorable situation a great deal worse.
  Individual taxpayers certainly need to be worried. They face a major increase in the risk of snooping on their personal lives. Businesses need to be worried. Their most sensitive confidential records could be available to their rivals, at a price of course, as could information on profit projections, how much they pay their employees, their research programmes, their cash flow projections and other information that could affect their creditworthiness.
  For decades, civil servants, for all the criticisms that we often make of them in the House, have handled that sort of information with integrity and discretion. Ministers do not realise that public service values cannot be written into a contract. I know that there has been a lot of talk about the need for a level playing field in competition for contracts and market testing. The Government need to understand that there is no level playing field when data protection standards in the commercial world are so inferior to those in the civil service.
  Another fundamental problem is the loss of public accountability. That is not just the view of the Labour party. The National Audit Office in its 1993 annual report, which was published a month ago, pointed out strongly that civil service reforms, such as market testing and contracting out, threaten standards of public honesty and accountability.
  In the light of recent experience, the NAO drew attention to four weaknesses. First, it noted weak financial monitoring and controls. It instanced what it called the major failings—I take that to be a euphemism for corruption—in the management of the £43 million computer project of the Wessex regional health authority. Secondly, it noted a lack of clear lines of responsibility and accountability. It pointed to the Welsh Development Agency where redundancy payments were made without Welsh Office approval.
  Thirdly, it identified conflicts of interest. A member of Wessex regional health authority was apparently connected with a company tendering for the computer equipment. Fourthly, it discovered the improper application of financial controls when the Ministry of Defence made more than £1 million of irregular payments under an incentive award scheme. That is a bad record for market testing. As those criticisms come from the NAO, one expects that the Government might just think again.
  All this arises because the private sector operates under a different ethos. That is the point that the Government simply will not grasp. The private sector does not adapt

  541
  naturally to public sector rules of handling money. It is not driven by the need to be accountable for its activities and the professional ethic is not reflected in the system of merely contractual obligations.
  There are lessons which the President of the Board of Trade has yet to grasp. A month ago at Question Time, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) asked the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science, who is responsible for the citizens charter:
  "Is not there a grave danger that, by market testing, contractorising and privatising the civil service, we shall end up with a civil service, such as those in many countries, run by Group 4 and Mega-greed plc?"
  The Minister's reply was instructive. He said:
  "It is perhaps best answered by the fact that the First Division Association, which knows our civil service as well as anybody, has said quite clearly that it is not against market testing."— [Official Report, 25 October 1993; Vol. 230, c. 573.]
  That is certainly news to the First Division Association. I have a letter—
  Mr. Waldegrave: Another letter?
  Mr. Meacher: Yes, I am glad that the Minister takes such an interest in the precise sources of information, because I would not want to misrepresent the view of the FDA as his hon. Friend did. The FDA said:
  "We remain very concerned about the, in our view, dismissive attitude of Government Ministers to the real problems there are surrounding confidentiality, impartial service, equality of standards, conflicts of interest, and corruption."
  On ministerial accountability, far from saying that it was against market testing, the FDA said the opposite:
  "To replace ministerial accountability for services by accountability through litigation may seem to be a preferable option to some Ministers, but for those citizens who are unable to buy legal advice in the first place"—
  after the changes in legal aid, that will be the great majority—
  "it is doubtful whether it is an attractive one, or even a possible one."
  On corruption and conflicts of interest, the FDA believes that market testing is utterly deficient, which is why it says:
  "Any company which bids successfully for civil service work should be able to satisfy the 1986 Directors Disqualification Act on persons fit to run a public company."
  Will that requirement be implemented? The President of the Board of Trade has been silent on the matter so far. I should be glad to give way to him if he will say whether he intends to implement that important requirement. As he does not get up, I shall continue.
  The FDA also says:
  "It is our unequivocal view that all MPs should forego their right to sit on the board of directors, in any capacity whatsoever, of a company which may tender for public work."
  Will the President of the Board of Trade legislate to require that to be so? The FDA continues:
  "It has also been drawn to our attention that at least one ex-Government Minister has moved very rapidly, on giving up ministerial office, to take up directorships with a company that has won contracts within the civil service."
  Mr. Robin Cook: At least one?
  Mr. Meacher: Yes, I think that it is considerably more than one.
  Is not there a whiff of corruption about that? What will the President of the Board of Trade do to stop it? We want answers to those specific questions tonight.
  In the cabaret-style, Victorian music hall knockabout that passed for a speech at the beginning of the debate, the
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  President of the Board of Trade threw out the silly jibe that the Labour party wanted to regulate everything. That is ridiculous.
  Of course the Government should dispose of outmoded regulations or update those that are no longer appropriate, but there is a world of difference between that and adopting sweeping deregulation as a blunt instrument across the board. It is one thing to go back to basics, but quite another to go back to the dark ages of unregulated sweatshops, unprotected building sites and uncontrolled markets. Freedom for businesses has to be balanced—a term that the Government do not understand—by securing employees' safety, protecting the consumer against dangerous products, stopping environmental pollution and ensuring decent conditions in the workplace. It is because the Government despicably place cutting red tape above all else, including the lives and the health and safety of ordinary employees and citizens, that we shall vote against the measure in the Lobby tonight.
  9.37 pm
  The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave): I join those, including some generous souls on the Opposition Benches, in welcoming my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade back to the House in his most sparkling form. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), with whom I had the pleasure of debating in a previous post, made a characteristic, prickly speech. His relationship with my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade today was a little like that of a hedgehog to a juggernaut—there was not much left of him after the President had passed over.
  I do not know whether it struck my hon. Friends or perhaps even Opposition Members, but the speech of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) seemed to have an eccentric thesis at its heart. He was determined to prove that the public sector had higher standards of confidentiality than the private sector, and he had a leaked letter from the public sector with which to do so. He used not only one leaked letter, but another—there seemed to be something odd about that thesis.
  I warn the hon. Member for Oldham, West that it is dangerous to study matters by working only on the basis of stolen letters. The first letter from which he quoted was written in February 1993. It was subsequently shown by parliamentary counsel that the point raised in the letter was wrong—we do not need the powers set out in it to do what we want to do. The hon. Gentleman's use of that letter demonstrated nothing about the debate, but merely countered his own thesis on confidentiality.
  There were some extremely good speeches from both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) made a speech that was all the more effective for being quiet and courteous, and obviously coming from the depths of his experience of the constituency. I can assure him that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is, and has been for some months, in genuine and direct contact with the Commission to see whether funds can be made available to the hon. Member's constituency from the shipbuilding intervention fund. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that, like him, the Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister are taking the matter seriously.

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  I want to give an assurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills). He made an extremely good speech that opened up the debate. He reminded us of the transformation in British industry over the past 10 to 25 years which means that, in two or three years, we shall again be a net exporter of motor cars—a fantastic achievement. As my hon. Friend said, new methods of co-operation between management and work force are being developed by a forward-looking industry.
  My hon. Friend raised the issue of the trademark Bill, on which he is an expert. It is the Government's intention that the Bill should deal with the counterfeiting problem that he mentioned. I know that he will want to study the Bill closely when it is published. I was a bit depressed—as, I believe, was my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade—by the fact that, in their speeches, virtually none of the Opposition Members raised their eyes to the wider world scene—for example, the issues of the general agreement on tariffs and trade. One or two Opposition Members did so, but they were very few. They did not mention the development of the great, new free trade area in north America or issues that are far more important than many of the parochial ones dealt with today—
  Mr. Garrett: We are interested in British jobs.
  Mr. Waldegrave: British workers' jobs depend on those wider issues far more than on some of the whingeing that we have heard from Opposition Members today. My hon. Friends did not make those mistakes, nor did the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) who acknowledged that we are talking about issues that are at the heart of the future of our country, though he disagreed in other respects.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) and, in a characteristic speech, my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) conveyed most eloquently the fundamental point of the debate: that, as world trade opens up and we fight for free trade, if we in Europe undermine it all by rebuilding our own extra costs and controls on a European basis, we will destroy jobs in Europe and in Britain. Although it is right to look at what goes on in Whitehall and in town halls here, it is essential that when we talk about regulation we consider all the extra burdens that can and do come from Europe. My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North wanted a Euro inferno of controls—a phrase that resounds nicely. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Ainsworth) made the same point in relation to GATT.
  Let us consider, as did some of my hon. Friends, the junction at which the country finds itself. We are out of recession for the sixth successive quarter. Forecasts from the European Community, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund all say that the United Kingdom will have the fastest growth rate of any EC country in 1993–94. In the three months to September, industrial production was almost 3 per cent. higher than in the same period in the previous year, while our partners in Europe—it is nothing in which to rejoice—are still going sharply backwards. The year-on-year figures for falls in industrial production are minus 1·7 per cent. in Italy, 3·2 per cent. in France, minus 8·2 per cent. in Germany, minus 10·1 per cent. in Belgium and minus 3·3 per cent. for Japan. Remember
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  when the Opposition used to say that there was something uniquely British about the recession, as we had caused it? I suppose we have somehow also caused those far deeper recessions in other countries.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) reminded us, we now have falling unemployment that is below the European Community average. The figure for our employment is 10·3 per cent. —far too high, but falling. The European Community average is 10·6 per cent. on the same basis and rising.
  The economist Gavyn Davies, whose opinion I believe is respected as independent by the Opposition as well as by the Conservative party, described what the recession in retrospect has turned out to be in an article in The Independent on 25 October. He said that it did not fit the cliché of being the longest or deepest recession since the 1930s, a recession of similar length to that of the period from 1979 to 1981 and about half as deep.
  With unemployment still far too high, the concern is now that the recovery is well based and that it lasts. That is why a debate now about competitiveness is well timed, as my hon. Friends the Members for Wyre Forest (Mr. Coombs) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Robinson) re-emphasised. The export performance has been very good over the past year, but we must work to maintain it.
  The economy is growing steadily, with inflation at a 30-year low, productivity at record levels and unit wage costs—ultimately the most important aspect in terms of trade—are falling. Inflation stands at 1·4 per cent. and it is hard to remember that the average inflation achieved by the last Labour Government was 15·5 per cent. Our inflation rate has been below the EC average for more than two years and since December 1992 it has been below the G7 average for the first time in 10 years. Inflation has been below 2 per cent. throughout 1993.
  The productivity of the whole economy is at a record level and rose by 4·4 per cent. in the year to the second quarter and in the first quarter of 1993, manufacturing productivity grew faster in the United Kingdom than in any other G7 country—by 4·9 per cent. Strikes are at their lowest since records began. Unit wage costs fell by 0·6 per cent. over the past year.
  All those figures give us hope that the Government's work over the past 10 years is paying off in long-term gains to competitiveness. Our firms and our managers are playing their part, although, as my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said last night, there is still much more to do. There is much more to be done in research and development by the private sector. Only the few best invest at the levels we would like to see in the long-term.
  Even during the current recession, however, there have been some good signs. Research and development have been cut by less than in any previous recession in British industry, and the so-called R and D scoreboard showed a 6 per cent. increase in private-sector spending over the past 12 months. It is on that basis of a new approach to R and D on the part of British industry that our White Paper proposals build a new partnership between Government and industry. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) recognised the importance of that development: he welcomed the White Paper, and congratulated us on it.
  The private sector's work is vital; our whole future rests on it. It is not enough, however. People must manage their firms properly, generate wealth and go out to win orders

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  around the world. The first Lord Stockton, Harold Macmillan, once said, in a famous phrase, "Exporting is fun." I suspect that it is not all that much fun to win orders around the world from the Taiwanese, the Japanese and the rest and then to come back and find that the British Government are wasting your money by running their own organisations less efficiently than you are running your companies. That is why we must have a relaunched and re-energised campaign to save money in our management of the public sector—and my Department is taking the lead.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey, East pointed out, it is no use the private sector generating the wealth if we in the public sector do not spend it properly. It is not that we are not spending enough: we are spending £250 billion a year, which is 40 per cent. of gross domestic product—too high a proportion—and more than £10,000 per household. It is vital, therefore, that we obtain the best possible value for money.
  The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) announced the Government's policy position as though it were a dreadful thing. The more he read out, however, the more common sense it seemed that we should first examine every function and establish whether it is necessary. If something is not necessary, let us not do it: let us not take money from the taxpayer and waste it. If it is necessary, let us ask ourselves whether the function should best be privatised and put into a market where the benign forces of competition will produce the best outcome, or whether it should be contracted out. If we need to retain responsibility for it, must we use our own people, or can we obtain better value for money by contracting it out to the private sector? If the answer is not clear, let us test. That—as the hon. Gentleman rightly said—is what market testing is all about.

  As the hon. Gentleman fairly said, and as I emphasised again today, in a market test the playing field should be level. The in-house teams should have a fair crack of the whip—and they do. In the first year of market testing, which saved the taxpayer £100 million, in-house teams won more than half the tests.
  The hon. Gentleman talked a great deal of inaccurate rubbish about the small matter of the office services market test in my Department. It was a perfectly ordinary market test, with an in-house and an out-house bid. If the hon. Gentleman is going to be a paid consultant on these matters, perhaps he should check the basic facts before giving them to the House.
  The programme that we have launched—privatisation where that is right, contracting out where it will produce better value for money and market testing to establish whether the best supplier is in-house or out-house—has now been built into a formidable system of public-sector reform. The Times—which, I am sorry to say, is not always a supporter of the Government nowadays, although we hope for better in the future—wrote recently:
  "Considered together, these reforms are the most comprehensive overhaul of British administration since the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the 1850s."
  The reforms are already bringing great benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness to the public sector and to the taxpayer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome pointed out.
  I can give one or two examples. Customs and Excise, for example, market-tested VAT debt management. The contract was won by the in-house team—the civil servants
  546
  —with savings that were suggested to be £3 million per annum. That is enough to deploy 150 customs officers in the fight against drugs or in the fight against illegal arms shipments. I am sure that the whole House will wish to congratulate Customs and Excise on today's success in Northern Ireland.
  I can give an example from my Department. The in-house team won the contract for the printing and distribution of Hansard—which is close to the heart of everyone in the House—with savings of £400,000 per annum. That has enabled Her Majesty's Stationery Office to declare a price freeze on Hansard and other routine policy papers during the life of the present Parliament.
  I have to ask the Opposition, under what possible argument is it wrong to achieve those kinds of gains in efficiency and cost-effectiveness for the taxpayer and the people who use such services?
  Mr. Garrett: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that yesterday the head of the civil service told the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service that market testing is currently running at half its target level? Although the Minister can talk about cuts in expenditure, is it not the truth that he has not cited a single case which has shown an improvement of service as a result of market testing?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I have given the hon. Gentleman some examples, and I will give him some more if he so desires. Is not a price freeze that enables the authorities in the House to spend money on other valuable things a gain in quality? I think that it is.
  As to the former matter, hon. Members of the Opposition have not yet made up their minds whether this is a huge and dangerous programme or one that is not going anywhere. From their point of view, they would do better to recognise that it is a huge and important programme.
  That was re-emphasised yesterday by the fact that the Inland Revenue has chosen its preferred supplier for its information technology for what is arguably the biggest piece of out-sourcing ever by a Government in the western world, certainly in Europe—£1 billion or so over a number of years. That out-sourcing had the most stringent confidentiality tests attached to it, including a condition that no data should be handled outside this country.
  As to the argument that the hon. Member for Oldham, West used in relation to confidentiality, it is extremely unwise to assume that those in the private sector who owe a duty of confidentiality—and who are still covered by the law and the criminal offence of the release of any information—are less likely to behave properly than those in the public sector. Most people in this country work in the private sector. They are as honourable and behave as well as people in the public sector. I do not belittle those in the public sector by saying that.
  We have often given examples, which have never produced any serious response from the Opposition, that many of the most dangerous and valuable secrets in the defence field have been generated by the private sector, and held there quite safely. The hon. Member for Oldham, West should not pursue those arguments that seem to imply that there is something inherently untrustworthy about those who work in the private sector.
  In the eccentric part of his speech where he demonstrated the confidentiality of the public sector by reading from leaked letters, the hon. Gentleman seemed to

  547
  say that there was something odd about the fact that we appeared to say that if we needed to change the law to do something, we should bring forward an Act of Parliament to do so. That is what we will be proceeding to do in due course, and it will be debated by the House. If something is not currently within the law, and we need new legal powers to deal with it, that is how we should set about it; we should pass a law and debate it before Parliament. I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman was trying to make in that respect.
  I have said many times that we will seek to extend the Carltona principles in order that we can delegate. It is not clear at the moment whether we can delegate only to civil servants. As I have said many times before, in the House and in public, for the purpose of clarity we should extend those principles. There is no particular rhyme or reason why work on payroll can be delegated, but not in regard to some pensions. That should be looked at individually, to see what is best for those who use the services and best for the taxpayer. That is a change in the law that we will propose, and which will be debated before the House.
  The Labour party is in a muddle on contracting out and market testing, except for the hon. Member for Oldham, West, who is in no muddle. He has always been against it. I pay tribute to him on his complete consistency on the matter. He said from the start that all the contracts in the health service, which have enabled it to save £150 million a year for patient care, should be cancelled. Perhaps he still believes that. He is, however, more and more out of step with those in his party who are rather more forward-looking.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) is on record as saying:
  "There is a wide acceptance that the division between contractor and provider that compulsory competitive tendering has produced is sensible. It has meant that in areas of basic services there are now clear definitions of what services should be provided."
  According to Dr. Lawrence Silverman, who is the Labour leader of Berkshire county council, albeit temporarily—[Interruption.] From his sensible comments, he sounds a good Tory. The hon. Member for Oldham, West should learn from him, because he speaks common sense. He has said:
  "If the private sector can provide computing, payroll and other financial services cheaper than the in-house bureaucracy, then we owe it to the people of Berkshire to make these savings and put the money saved into direct services."
  That is what rather more up-to-date Labour people than the hon. Member for Oldham, West have said. As Joe Rogaly said in the Financial Times:
  "Labour continues to be perceived as the party of bureaucracy. Labour's mission appears to be the maintenance of bureaucracy. It is as if it has not only missed the public sector reform bus, it never saw it coming."
  I believe that is right.
  As Lord Jay, my colleague at All Souls, once said, Labour remains the party that believes in its heart of hearts that
  "The gentleman from Whitehall knows best."
  One notes the use of the word "gentleman". That is what the Labour party still believes in its heart of hearts, but that is not surprising since a large number of Opposition Members are sponsored by the unions concerned with deregulation. That point was made robustly by my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes).
  548
  It is obvious that the Labour party will miss the bus once again on the deregulation campaign, just as it missed all the buses to do with privatisation, market testing and efficiency in the 1980s and the early 1990s. The Labour party is now getting itself into position to defend every last regulation brought forward by every last pressure group.
  Mr. John Cummings: This is rubbish.
  Mr. Waldegrave: All the work done by Christopher Booker, all the examples written about in the Sunday Telegraph and all the examples given by my hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and for Scarborough have simply passed the Labour party by. It will go into the trenches to defend every single regulation when it comes to it. There is one exception to the trend, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. [Interruption.] That causes groans from those below the Gangway, but then the right hon. and learned Gentleman often does that.
  Mr. Cummings: I am not the Leader of the Opposition and this is all rubbish.
  Mr. Waldegrave: The Leader of the Opposition said recently that the burden on British industry from regulation was putting jobs and businesses at greater risk. He went to the Confederation of British Industry and said much the same.
  That rather reminds me of the famous occasion when Harold Wilson went to Portsmouth to make a speech and said, "And why am I speaking about the Navy?" He paused and he said, "Because I am in Portsmouth." [HON. MEMBERS: "The speech was given in Chatham."] I am sorry, it was Chatham. I was just seeing whether the Opposition were awake and they have confirmed the story. Why was the Leader of the Opposition talking about deregulation? Because he was talking to the CBI. When he comes back to the House he will oppose everything that we propose, along with the rest of the Labour party.
  The campaign that the President of the Board of Trade has launched is mirrored around the world. I read today about the German campaign on deregulation. The Germans have correctly noted that the advantage that Britain, the United States and other countries have gained over the location of industry is now putting them under extreme pressure. The same thing is happening in Japan.
  My hon. Friends the Members for South Hams (Mr. Steen) and for Ludlow made it absolutely clear that we will push this measure through under the leadership of the President of the Board of Trade. We will face opposition all the way from the Labour party, which will stand for public bureaucracy, red tape and for the man from Whitehall or the town hall knowing best.
  The Opposition's stance will be of great help to us in the years ahead, as we will be able to remind the population that the Labour party has not changed one whit. It is still the same old Labour party representing the public sector unions against the interests of the consumer, representing the bureaucracies of the past against modern management methods and representing everything that the hon. Member for Oldham, West so passionately believes in. He remains the antique, ancestral voice that believes in all of that.
  Question put, That the amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 276, Noes 319.

  Division No. 2]

  [9.59 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Eastham, Ken

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Enright, Derek

  Ainger, Nick

  Etherington, Bill

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Allen, Graham

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret

  Alton, David

  Fatchett, Derek

  Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Flynn, Paul

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Ashton, Joe

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Austin-Walker, John

  Foulkes, George

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Fraser, John

  Barnes, Harry

  Fyfe, Maria

  Barron, Kevin

  Galloway, George

  Battle, John

  Gapes, Mike

  Bayley, Hugh

  Garrett, John

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  George, Bruce

  Beith, Rt Hon A. J.

  Gerrard, Neil

  Bell, Stuart

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Benton, Joe

  Godsiff, Roger

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Berry, Dr. Roger

  Gordon, Mildred

  Betts, Clive

  Gould, Bryan

  Blunkett, David

  Graham, Thomas

  Boateng, Paul

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Boyce, Jimmy

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Bradley, Keith

  Grocott, Bruce

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Gunnell, John

  Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Hain, Peter

  Brown, N. (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

  Hall, Mike

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Hanson, David

  Burden, Richard

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Byers, Stephen

  Harvey, Nick

  Caborn, Richard

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Callaghan, Jim

  Henderson, Doug

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Heppell, John

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Hinchliffe, David

  Canavan, Dennis

  Hoey, Kate

  Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

  Home Robertson, John

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  Hood, Jimmy

  Clapham, Michael

  Hoon, Geoffrey

  Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Hoyle, Doug

  Clelland, David

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Coffey, Ann

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Cohen, Harry

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Connarty, Michael

  Hume, John

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Hutton, John

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Ingram, Adam

  Corbett, Robin

  Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Corston, Ms Jean

  Jamieson, David

  Cousins, Jim

  Janner, Greville

  Cox, Tom

  Johnston, Sir Russell

  Cryer, Bob

  Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

  Cummings, John

  Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Dafis, Cynog

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

  Darling, Alistair

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Davidson, Ian

  Jowell, Tessa

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Keen, Alan

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Kennedy, Charles (Ross,C&S)

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

  Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

  Denham, John

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Dewar, Donald

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Dixon, Don

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Dobson, Frank

  Leighton, Ron

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Dowd, Jim

  Lewis, Terry

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Litherland, Robert

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Livingstone, Ken

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  550

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Redmond, Martin

  Loyden, Eddie

  Reid, Dr John

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  Rendel, David

  McAllion, John

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

  McCartney, Ian

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  McKelvey, William

  Roche, Mrs. Barbara

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Rogers, Allan

  McLeish, Henry

  Rooker, Jeff

  Maclennan, Robert

  Rooney, Terry

  McMaster, Gordon

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  McNamara, Kevin

  Rowlands, Ted

  McWilliam, John

  Ruddock, Joan

  Madden, Max

  Salmond, Alex

  Maddock, Mrs Diana

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Mahon, Alice

  Sheerman, Barry

  Mandelson, Peter

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Marek, Dr John

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Short, Clare

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

  Simpson, Alan

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Martlew, Eric

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Maxton, John

  Smith, C. (Isl'ton S & F'sbury)

  Meacher, Michael

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Meale, Alan

  Snape, Peter

  Michael, Alun

  Soley, Clive

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

  Spellar, John

  Milburn, Alan

  Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Stevenson, George

  Morley, Elliot

  Stott, Roger

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (Wy'nshawe)

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

  Straw, Jack

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Mudie, George

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Mullin, Chris

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Murphy, Paul

  Tipping, Paddy

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Tyler, Paul

  O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

  Vaz, Keith

  O'Brien, William (Normanton)

  Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

  O'Hara, Edward

  Wallace, James

  Olner, William

  Walley, Joan

  O'Neill, Martin

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Wareing, Robert N

  Paisley, Rev Ian

  Watson, Mike

  Parry, Robert

  Welsh, Andrew

  Patchett, Terry

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Pendry, Tom

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Pickthall, Colin

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Sw'n W)

  Pike, Peter L.

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Pope, Greg

  Wilson, Brian

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Winnick, David

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

  Wise, Audrey

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Worthington, Tony

  Prescott, John

  Wray, Jimmy

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Wright, Dr Tony

  Purchase, Ken

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Radice, Giles

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Randall, Stuart

  Mr. Eric Illsley and

  Raynsford, Nick

  Mr. Dennis Turner.

  NOES

  Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Baldry, Tony

  Alexander, Richard

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

  Bates, Michael

  Amess, David

  Beggs, Roy

  Ancram, Michael

  Bellingham, Henry

  Arbuthnot, James

  Bendall, Vivian

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Ashby, David

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Body, Sir Richard

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Booth, Hartley

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Boswell, Tim

  551

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Gale, Roger

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

  Gallie, Phil

  Bowden, Andrew

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Bowis, John

  Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

  Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

  Garnier, Edward

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Gill, Christopher

  Brazier, Julian

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Bright, Graham

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Gorst, John

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Burns, Simon

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Burt, Alistair

  Grylls, Sir Michael

  Butcher, John

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Butler, Peter

  Hague, William

  Butterfill, John

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie (Epsom)

  Carlisle, John (Luton North)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hannam, Sir John

  Carttiss, Michael

  Harris, David

  Cash, William

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hawkins, Nick

  Churchill, Mr

  Hawksley, Warren

  Clappison, James

  Hayes, Jerry

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Heald, Oliver

  Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

  Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Coe, Sebastian

  Hendry, Charles

  Colvin, Michael

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Congdon, David

  Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence L.

  Conway, Derek

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Horam, John

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Cormack, Patrick

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Couchman, James

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

  Cran, James

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

  Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

  Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Davis, David (Booth ferry)

  Hunter, Andrew

  Deva, Nirj Joseph

  Jack, Michael

  Devlin, Tim

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Dicks, Terry

  Jessel, Toby

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Dover, Den

  Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

  Duncan, Alan

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Duncan-Smith, Iain

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Dunn, Bob

  Key, Robert

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Kilfedder, Sir James

  Dykes, Hugh

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Eggar, Tim

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Elletson, Harold

  Knapman, Roger

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Knight, Dame Jill (Bir'm E'st'n)

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Knox, Sir David

  Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Evennett, David

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Faber, David

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Fabricant, Michael

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Legg, Barry

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Leigh, Edward

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Forman, Nigel

  Lidington, David

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Forth, Eric

  Lord, Michael

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Luff, Peter

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

  MacKay, Andrew

  French, Douglas

  Maclean, David

  Fry, Peter

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  552

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Madel, David

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Maginnis, Ken

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Soames, Nicholas

  Malone, Gerald

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Mans, Keith

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  Marland, Paul

  Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

  Marlow, Tony

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Spink, Dr Robert

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Spring, Richard

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Sproat, Iain

  Mates, Michael

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Steen, Anthony

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Stephen, Michael

  Merchant, Piers

  Stern, Michael

  Milligan, Stephen

  Stewart, Allan

  Mills, Iain

  Streeter, Gary

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Sumberg, David

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

  Sweeney, Walter

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Sykes, John

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Moss, Malcolm

  Taylor, Rt Hon John D. (Strgfd)

  Needham, Richard

  Taylor, John M. (Solihull)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Thomason, Roy

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Norris, Steve

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Thurnham, Peter

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Ottaway, Richard

  Townsend, Cyril D. (Bexl'yh'th)

  Page, Richard

  Tracey, Richard

  Paice, James

  Tredinnick, David

  Patnick, Irvine

  Trend, Michael

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Trotter, Neville

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Pawsey, James

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Viggers, Peter

  Pickles, Eric

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Walden, George

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Walker, A. Cecil (Belfast N)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Ward, John

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Richards, Rod

  Waterson, Nigel

  Riddick, Graham

  Watts, John

  Robathan, Andrew

  Wells, Bowen

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

  Whitney, Ray

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Whittingdale, John

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Ross, William (E Londonderry)

  Wilkinson, John

  Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

  Willetts, David

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

  Wilshire, David

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Sackville, Tom

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'f'ld)

  Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim

  Wolfson, Mark

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Wood, Timothy

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Yeo, Tim

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Shersby, Michael

  Mr. David Lightbown and

  Sims, Roger

  Mr. Sydney Chapman.

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

  Trade, Industry and Deregulation

    WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE
    Ordered,
    That, during the proceedings on the Matter of the implications of the Budget for Wales, the Welsh Grand Committee have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it shall meet, and that, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 88 (Meetings of standing committees), the second such sitting shall

    553
    not commence before Four o'clock nor continue after the Committee has considered the Matter for two hours at that sitting. —[Mr. Robert G. Hughes.]

  PETITION

    VAT (bus and coach fares)
    10.18 pm
    Mrs. Llin Golding: I wish to present a petition—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. Will hon. Members please leave the Chamber peacefully and quietly?
    Mrs. Golding: I wish to present a petition, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), which expresses the fears of many thousands of our constituents that the imposition of VAT on bus and coach fares would be an intolerable burden for them.
    Many of those people pay fares to travel to colleges, to work, to visit relatives, to shop and to help out in the voluntary sector. Any increase in fares would cause them hardship and would also result in a loss of business and probably jobs in our local bus services, especially the Potteries Motor and Traction Company.
    'To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament her assembled. The Humble Petition of the people of Newcastle sheweth That the case for VAT on bus and coach fares is unsound on financial, transport, planning and environmental grounds. Wherefore, your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House will take care to reject any moves to impose VAT on bus and coach fares and to ensure the maintenace of zero rating on public transport.
    And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray'.
    To lie upon the Table.

  Set-aside (Scotland)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Arbuthnot.]
  10.20 pm
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I hope that the House will agree that, albeit short, this debate is a timely opportunity to allow the House to make some representations and to seek clarification from the Government on a subject which is causing concern on both sides of the House. I hope that, if they catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the hon. Members for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) and for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), a well-known constituent of mine, will add their voices and make my submission an all-party one.
  There is great concern because cereal producers in non-less-favoured areas of Scotland face potential swingeing penalties this year and possibly even greater losses in subsequent years. Those losses are harder to contemplate because they were completely unexpected and came after a very difficult harvest.
  I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will agree that there has been much comment in the recent past about the issue, some of which has generated more heat than light, and some of which has been unfortunate from our point of view. Unfortunately, such comments have come from both sides of the argument. I should like to try to draw a line under that rather emotional approach, put it firmly behind us and look forward rationally to what can be done to deal with the difficulty. None of us wants to be in the present situation. We must try to find a way out of it.
  As the House will know, area aid payments were put in place to compensate for the drop in farm income expected as a result of the 30 per cent. drop in price support. The general set-aside scheme offers assistance to cereal producers who are willing to leave untouched 15 per cent. of their productive land in order to be eligible for area aid payments in compensation.
  It was always accepted by policy makers that the overall costs of that package would increase in the short term in order that supply and demand could be better balanced in the longer term. Indeed, the Minister himself was reported this year expressing satisfaction that the support funding paid by his Department would be increased this year.
  The deal that was struck in Brussels—the MacSharry proposals for the three-year period until 1996—was welcomed by the industry because it was regarded as a reasonable package of measures that would provide some stability for the foreseeable future. It was hardly surprising then that such great concern was expressed when the full implications and extent of the 5·4 per cent. penalty for the majority of Scotland's arable land became known.
  Of course, that concern is not restricted to the farming industry. A detrimental effect will be felt by all sectors of the cereals sector, whether it be growers, merchants or processors. There will also be further knock-on effects in downstream industries such as road haulage. There have been estimates of up to £20 million as the full cost of the present penalties to the industry if the measures are implemented in full. Of course, that pays no regard to the longer-term effect of loss of markets to places and producers outside Scotland.
  The irony is that Scotland has been very successful in taking cereal areas out of production—successful

  555
  compared with other European countries. The figures show that clearly. The crux of the problem is the way in which the base area was originally calculated. Census figures for the years 1989, 1990 and 1991 have been invested with a significance that they were never designed to bear. To suggest that farmers have overshot by 5·4 per cent. assumes that 20 per cent. of Scottish farmers have an average 27 per cent. additional arable land.
  Various permutations of the figures can be arrived at, but it stretches credibility to suggest that this is what has happened. I must therefore tell the House that the industry has no confidence in the calculation of the base reference area. Census forms may well be statistical tools that can identify and confirm trends, but they have suddenly been used for a crucial financial calculation, and that calculation is seen by the industry as deeply prejudicial to Scotland.
  No one should doubt that this penalty discriminates against Scottish cereal producers in the Community. We must find some mechanism to mitigate the financial consequences of these penalties. If we do not, we may risk driving producers out of the system altogether. The Minister knows that it is voluntary. They will then resort to large-acreage, high-yield, high-input crops, thus destroying the whole objective that set-aside was put in place to achieve.
  We must therefore get Ministers to accept that there is a problem and to agree to use their best endeavours, within the rules, to find ways of mitigating the proposals and penalties, especially next year.
  I understand that the president and officers of the National Farmers Union for Scotland, who lobbied this place effectively earlier today, met the Secretary of State for Scotland this afternoon. Interpreting the statement issued by the Secretary of State after the meeting, it looks as though the industry will get nothing more than tea and sympathy.
  Mr. Menzies Campbell: My hon. Friend is presenting his case with considerable restraint and responsibility, but is he aware of the depth of frustration and anger felt by the farming community in his constituency and mine because of the apparent intransigence on the part of the Scottish Office? Does he agree that, unless this matter is properly resolved, there may be such a crisis of confidence that any reasonable relationship between the industry and the Scottish Office may break down for ever?
  Mr. Kirkwood: I do indeed. That point has also been made to me by my right hon. Friends the Members for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith): a real head of steam is building up, and if the Government do not recognise that, they will get their just desserts in the form of retribution later on.
  Early press reports suggest that the Secretary of State believes that the industry is already receiving large sums of taxpayers' money. That is to ignore the tiny profit margins and negligible returns on capital earned by most farm businesses in the arable sector. It also ignores the fact that the rural economy depends on a viable farming industry for survival. It further ignores the fact that there are ramifications for processors, who will in future be forced to buy grain and proteins from other countries.

  556
  In any case, it is not so much a question of money; it is more a question of simple justice. There is a great deal at stake. There is a growing perception that Scottish Ministers are simply not willing to fight for Scottish farmers. As the Minister will know, a precedent has already been set in Germany, where an admittedly smaller overshoot has already been accommodated without penalty, and most other EC countries have not even submitted preliminary returns and may be quietly cooking the books to their own advantage.
  Neither the industry nor I suggest that anything underhand should be done but I want to put two questions squarely to the Minister and I hope that he will have the chance to answer them this evening. First, will he review the validity of the census data from which the base area was calculated? Secondly, will he agree to make urgent approaches to the Commission to explore ways of getting around the effects of this penalty?
  In conclusion, I firmly believe that, with significant political will, a way around the problem can be found. I hope that the Minister will give the House an assurance and a clear undertaking that he will use his best endeavours to sort out the mess quickly.
  10.29 pm
  Mr. Bill Walker: I thank the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for giving me the opportunity to speak in this short debate. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is well aware that there is a large cereal-growing sector in Tayside. People in that sector are deeply concerned, because they do not understand how the figures were calculated. As they received information that told them effectively to ignore the set-aside data previously supplied, it would seem that there is a strong case for re-examining the figures and making suggestions that will restore the confidence not simply of the National Farmers Union but of all the farmers in the good relationship that they have enjoyed with the Government in the past.
  10.30 pm
  Mr. John Home Robertson: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for allowing me a few minutes of his time. I join him and the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) in appealing to the Minister to intervene even at this late stage to avoid a serious injustice in rural Scotland. I must declare a personal interest in this problem.
  My main concern is for the 374 lowland farmers in my constituency and the tens of thousands of other people whose jobs depend on cereals—maltsters, millers, road hauliers and many other people throughout Scotland. It is important to emphasise that many of them depend on spring crops which are now in jeopardy as a result of the present crisis. All those people are vital to the Scottish rural economy.
  They face an immediate and serious crisis because of the failure of the Scottish Office to declare accurate baseline cereal production statistics to the European Commission. That statistical discrepancy is 23,000 hectares, which is equivalent to one third of the whole area of East Lothian. The discrepancy is the only reason for the 5·4 per cent. penalty that rural Scotland now faces.

  557
  Scottish farmers have not broken any rules, but they, alone in the whole of the European Community, now face discriminatory penalties. It is bad enough that the mistake was made in the first place. But frankly, it beggars belief that Scottish Office Ministers do not appear to be lifting a finger to put things right. They can, and they must do so. If the problem had been in Norfolk rather than in northern Scotland, it would have been dealt with long ago.
  The 5£4 per cent. cut will hit rural Scotland hard in 1993–94. But my worst concern is that there will be bigger discriminatory penalties in subsequent years unless the baseline is corrected urgently. So the Scottish Office must acknowledge that the original figure declared to the European Commission was badly flawed, and the baseline area must be corrected immediately to avoid permanent damage to the Scottish rural economy. It is up to the Minister. I hope that he will say something positive tonight.
  10.32 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Sir Hector Monro): I welcome this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) on initiating it. It gives me an opportunity to answer various points that have been made in the press over the past few weeks and, of course, among farmers themselves. As hon. Members said, it is important for farmers to know the true position. It is detailed and complicated, but I will try to explain it.
  First, I want to put the matter in perspective. We need to be clear where the overshoot fits into the whole arable area payments scheme and exactly what sums of money are involved. I appreciate that in the east of Scotland, especially in the Roxburgh and Berwickshire constituency, farmers had a rotten harvest. I understand that they feel upset about this matter, but they must appreciate that we are tightly constrained by the regulations of the common agricultural policy.
  To give an indication of the sums of money that we are talking about, it is probably easiest to give an illustration. A typical arable farm of 600 acres is a reasonable illustration for many constituents of the hon. Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), and my hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker). Let us say that, of the 600 acres in the non-less-favoured area, cereals account for 425 acres and oilseed rape for 85 acres. That means setting aside 90 acres. If there were no penalty and the overshoot had not taken place—
  Mr. Home Robertson: There was no overshoot.
  Sir Hector Monro: The hon. Gentleman should wait and listen.
  —the cereal income under the new payment scheme would have been £22,700, the oilseed income £17,100 and the set-aside £8,700. The farmer would have received £48,500 on a 600-acre arable farm.
  With the overshoot penalty—I will explain why it is there—the payment, subject to final approval from the Commission, would total £46,000, so there would be a loss under the present scheme of £2,500.
  Everyone must please remember that this is a new grant. We are talking about £46,000 that was not available last year, but is this year because of the change in the common agricultural policy. It is a very large sum indeed.
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: The Minister's measures will take £20 million out of Scottish agriculture. Can he explain why he is more constrained than the Germans? Will he make clear the basis of his figures in these calculations, which are in extreme doubt?
  Sir Hector Monro: That is what I am about to do, if the hon. Gentleman would contain himself.
  If there is no overshoot next year, the increase on the same farm for the same crops would be up to £56,800. If there is an overshoot, the farmer would receive £53,900. These large sums are coming under the arable aid payments scheme. I welcome that, and hon. Members must realise that the sums are so large that we must be extremely accurate about what we are talking. If farmers are receiving that sort of extra income, they must not go round saying that this is disastrous for the rural economy. It will not be so.
  The hon. Member for East Lothian made a valid point. To meet the overshoot next year there must be a 5·4 per cent. penalty that is uncompensated. That is why I have included that figure in the £53,900 that the farmer with 600 acres will receive. The calculation is simple. If the hon. Gentleman has a friend with 200 acres or 1,000 acres, the total is plus or minus on the £53,900. That is a big and important sum for farming. A good number of farmers in the east of Scotland will receive over £100,000, including some in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. Hon. Members should not be so critical of the sums that farmers will receive under this scheme.
  Under the penalty scheme that I have explained, income next year will be 17 per cent. up on this year.
  Mr. Welsh indicated dissent.
  Sir Hector Monro: It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. The figures have been carefully checked and are correct.
  The reductions in payment, in effect because of the overshoot, are due to one fact only, and that is the extra cropping this spring. That is the significance of the 23,000 hectares. This is brought out not only in the integrated administrative control system form but in this year's summer agricultural returns. There has been a substantial increase in cropping this year. That is why the baseline has been exceeded and overshot by the 5·4 per cent.
  Mr. Welsh: The figures are cooked.
  Sir Hector Monro: Will the hon. Gentleman stop saying that the figures are cooked? They are absolutely accurate.
  The increase in arable area payments will be combined with other increased payments to Scottish farmers so that the total direct agricultural support available in 1993–94 will be some £300 million, an increase of almost 60 per cent. on this year's support of £188 million.
  It is therefore true to say that there has been a substantial increase. Farmers have been on far too low an income for far too long, and I welcome the substantial increase this year. That should be acknowledged. With interest rates now down to 5·5 per cent. and inflation down, farmers should feel more confident about the future.
  I shall now go into the figures in more detail so that hon. Members can understand how they have been compiled and why they are accurate. I can give a categorical assurance that the figures used by my Department in relation to the overshoot are accurate. My officials take

  559
  considerable care and expend considerable efforts in their statistical work. I regret that others, sometimes in the press, misrepresent and misunderstand the figures.
  CAP reforms were introduced in May 1992, following vigorous opposition by the Government to the MacSharry proposals, which Opposition Members accepted. The reforms were a victory for my Department, which was much criticised over that event.
  During the summer of 1992, we discussed with the NFU and others how best to introduce the arable area payment scheme to the benefit of Scottish farmers. With the NFU's agreement and encouragement we secured an LFA/non-LFA split so that the grain-growing areas—non-LFA, represented by Opposition Members—would receive more grant, to reflect their higher yields, than grain growers in the LFAs.
  The compensation is substantially in excess of that required to overcome any fall in prices. The scheme was introduced to compensate for falling grain prices. I appreciate that there has been a bad harvest, but, on the whole, grain prices have remained remarkably steady, and far above expectations when the policy was introduced.
  The Commission required member states to submit their average cereal acreage for 1989, 1990 and 1991 by September 1992. The only means of knowing what the acreage had been was our agricultural returns. So we averaged them out, and that was what the Commission accepted and put into the regulation. That made a total base area of 551,192 hectares, which was split giving LFAs 160,348 hectares and the rest—390,944 hectares—to non-LFAs.
  A difficulty arose in the spring, because farmers have increased their cropping by 23,000 hectares over the base figure. That sounds an enormous sum, but by adding it on as five hectares here, 10 hectares there, over a large number of farms, it has brought the increase. The substantial increase in the cultivation of grassland and a switch to oilseed rape has made the difference between the base area and the accurate figure of what was actually sown this summer, which was proved by the IACS forms and backed up by the agricultural returns in the summer of 1993.
  Mr. Home Robertson: How can the Minister possibly say that there has been such a massive discrepancy as 23,000 hectares? That is a third of East Lothian. Is he saying that Scottish farmers failed to set aside their 15 per cent. as required? If so, he is right that they should be penalised. But as the accurate IACS figures plainly show what the real figures are, that is what we should be working on. It cannot be justified that Scottish farmers, alone in Europe, must face those penalties in uncompensated set-aside next year. Surely he must do something about it.
  Sir Hector Monro: I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that a number of other countries are in trouble with the Commission about overshooting the figures given. If we overshoot again in the coming cropping season, we shall be in worse trouble. It is important that farmers understand that they must either come out of the scheme and do what they like or stay in it and be responsible, not overshoot as much as they did last year.
  The difficulty has arisen this spring because of the increase in 23,000 hectares over the base figure. That has been backed up by the agricultural returns of this
  560
  mid-summer. That is a statement of fact. The only way that we could conceivably have obtained the figures in the autumn of 1992 was from the agricultural returns averaged over the previous three years. We have every reason to think that those figures were accurate, and that it was right to propose them as the baseline for this country. If we do not accept that, the position will get worse.
  The object of the CAP is that, in return for restricting grain acreage, large sums of compensation are offered. The object is to reduce the amount of grain grown. The compensation was designed both to counter that reduction, and to offset the fact that the price over three years was to drop by 30 per cent.
  Mr. Kirkwood: The Minister is talking about difficult technical matters. If I am following his argument, the Minister seems to be saying that he has some evidence that farmers have not been taking 15 per cent. set-aside out of production. Has he evidence of that? If he has no evidence, the farmers have not been breaking any rules.
  Sir Hector Monro: I am not saying that our farmers have not been setting aside land—they have been, and they have been compensated for doing so. But a great deal more grain has been put into the ground than was anticipated by the baseline of August 1992. England is different in that respect, because a number of farmers in England have decided that they can go by market forces and grow much more grain, particularly for malting, over and above the market price that they receive for feed barley, perhaps being grown ineffectively in Scotland.
  The system is entirely voluntary. If farmers do not wish to use it, they are entitled to grow as much as they wish. Farmers can even do both—they can apply for the compensation under set aside, and still grow more grain, uncompensated, if they wish to make up the tonnages that they feel are necessary, for sale or for stock feed.
  I am keen that we should resolve the problem. I have some sympathy for those with problems, but we must accept that the baseline is accurate. We have substantially increased our cropping. With the large sums of money that are coming to the farming community through the scheme, there will be no threat to the rural economy. The maltsters and the grain merchants will have adequate stocks of grain. There is every sign that the countryside and the farming industry will benefit substantially from the scheme and from the rest of the money, which has been put into the farming industry during the current year and is guaranteed for next year under the common agricultural policy.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have made clear our willingness to look at any hard information that the industry puts forward. We will watch our position in Brussels carefully. There is no sign yet that the Commission is considering a general dispensation for the application of penalties.
  The full position of all member states is not yet known. Six or seven member states are having difficulty convincing the Commission of the acceptability of their figures. I hope to have the Commission's final approval to pay the revised rates and to start making the payments next month. Even with the revised payment rates, considerable sums of money will go into both the LFA and the non-LFA sectors.
  It has been a successful scheme, and all the farmers who participate in it are glad that they do so. I know that they are cross that some of them are losing perhaps 5 per cent.

  561
  of the gain they obtain from the new grant that is available to them. But as the sums of money are so large, the farmers should be able to accept that the additional sowing of crops this spring has been the root cause of the trouble. We must be careful what we do next spring, so that we do not overshoot again, and then overshoot still further the next year.
  562
  As I have said, we are anxious to find a solution. But hon. Members should not be optimistic that the Commission has yet found a way forward to make——
  The motion having been made after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at ten minutes to Eleven o'clock.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Shop Leases
  Mr. Brazier
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what plans he has to modernise the law regarding shop leases in particular with regard to original tenant liability.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  As I announced in my answer on 31 March to my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Hendry),Official Report, column 197, the Government have, after careful consideration, decided to implement the recommendations in the Law Commission's report on Landlord and Tenant Law: Privity of Contract and Estate (Law Com. No. 174), for future leases but not for existing leases. The necessary legislation, which will apply to all leases including shop leases, will be introduced as soon as there is a suitable opportunity.

ENVIRONMENT

  Local Government Review
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the remit of the Local Government Commission includes making recommendations on changes in intervals for elections and on the creation of single-member wards; and whether such proposals could be implemented by statutory order alone.

  Mr. Baldry
  The policy guidance to the Local Government Commission for England, revised November 1993, invites the Commission, where it recominends structural changes, also to make recommendations about future electoral arrangements, including warding, number of councillors and electoral cycles.

  Such proposals could be implemented only by statutory order.

  Standard Spending Assessments
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will bring forward proposals to base local authority debt charge standard spending assessments on 1990–91 adjusted credit ceilings; and if he will make a statement on the discrepancies between the current notional debt figure and actual debt charge spending.

  Mr. Baldry
  We are at present considering the various representations which have been received in the course of the review of SSAs, including those for changes to the capital financing SSA, which were also discussed with the local authority associations.

  The Secretary of State will announce his proposals for the distribution of revenue support grant for 1994–95 shortly. The announcement will include any proposals for
  44
  the calculation of the capital financial element of SSAs for 1994–95. There will follow, as in previous years, a period of consultation.

  Local Authorities (Management)
  Mr. Clelland
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he plans to take following the publication of the report of the working party on the internal management of local authorities in England, entitled "Community Leadership and Representation: Unlocking the Potential".

  Mr. Baldry
  We are continuing to discuss the issues constructively with local government and will announce decisions as they are taken.

  Energy Efficiency
  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what new initiatives he is taking to promote energy efficiency for(a) households and (b) businesses; and what is his latest estimate of the expenditure involved in each of the above.

  Mr. Yeo
  On 26 July, my right hon. Friend announced the Government's proposals for completing Britain's CO, programme. The main energy efficiency elements include strengthening the Energy Efficiency Office's programmes of advice and information aimed at business, increasing the target for combined heat and power to 5,000 MW by the year 2000, increasing the resources devoted to the provision of information and encouragement to house-holds, and reinforcing the work of the Energy Saving Trust. The EEO's budget to run its existing programmes and take forward these proposals in 1993–94 is £69·1 million.

  Empty Property Purchases
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much was spent of the £750 million made available by the Treasury at the time of the November 1992 autumn statement to buy up empty owner-occupied properties before the end of the financial year 1992–93; how much of the total was spent by local authorities and how much by housing associations; and how much of this money has subsequently been clawed back by the Treasury through reductions in funds made available by central Government for investment in housing.

  Sir George Young
  On 12 November 1992 the Secretary of State announced a £627 million programme to boost the housing market. Housing associations in England spent £577·14 million to purchase new, empty and repossessed homes to use for families in housing need and £19·86 million by giving cash incentives to associations' tenants to buy homes on the open market. Local authorities in England spent a total of £29·94 million for similar cash incentives for their own tenants.

  These funds were made available and fully spent in 1992–93; the resources available for future years are determined annually in the public expenditure survey discussions.

  A further £123 million was divided between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for similar housing measures and other capital projects, for which respective Secretaries of States were responsible.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Civil Service College
  Mr. Forman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the Civil Service college.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  We have now completed an evaluation of the Civil Service College as a next steps executive agency and considered its future. I have today placed a copy of the evaluation report in the Libraries of both Houses.

  The college has had four very successful years since becoming an agency in 1989. Agency status within central Government has helped the college to provide top quality senior management and professional training focused on the particular needs of the civil service at a time of considerable change. We have concluded that this remains the best approach for a further period.

  We shall continue to seek improvements in the college's operation and will review it again in four years under the normal procedures for executive agencies. In particular, we have decided to put the college on to a fully commercial footing by phasing out the central payment of £1·8 million a year from the Office of Public Service and Science. From 1995–96 the college will be required fully to cover its costs by revenue from its operations. In addition we are mounting a study of the college's suitability for trading fund status.

  We are now reviewing the framework document of the college. When this is complete, it will then be presented to Parliament in the usual way.

EDUCATION

  School Admissions (Appeals)
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will give figures, in total and by local education authority, on the number of parental appeals on school admission for the last year for which figures are available.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  In the 1991–92 academic year 37,676 appeals were lodged by parents against the non-admission of their children to the maintained school of their choice. The figures requested, by LEA area, are given in the table. In many cases appeals were withdrawn or settled before being heard by an appeals committee.

  Local Education Authority Area—Number of appeals lodged

  Secondary

  Primary

  Total

  City

  —

  4

  4

  Camden

  218

  167

  385

  Greenwich

  196

  236

  432

  Hackney

  152

  154

  306

  Hammersmith

  150

  83

  233

  Islington

  132

  140

  272

  Kensington and Chelsea

  19

  24

  43

  Lambeth

  155

  349

  504

  Lewisham

  364

  275

  639

  Southwark

  132

  433

  565

  Tower Hamlets

  326

  219

  545

  Wandsworth

  108

  64

  172

  Westminster

  177

  7

  184

  Barking

  151

  72

  223

  Barnet

  477

  326

  803

  Bexley

  158

  258

  416

  Brent

  104

  29

  133

  Bromley

  399

  82

  481

  46

  Secondary

  Primary

  Total

  Croydon

  —

  —

  —

  Ealing

  43

  198

  241

  Enfield

  739

  186

  925

  Haringey

  76

  143

  219

  Harrow

  75

  418

  493

  Havering

  369

  96

  465

  Hilingdon

  71

  78

  149

  Hounslow

  230

  29

  259

  Kingston upon Thames

  58

  57

  115

  Merton

  76

  80

  156

  Newham

  329

  31

  360

  Redbridge

  223

  156

  379

  Richmond upon Thames

  141

  66

  207

  Sutton

  237

  111

  348

  Waltham Forest

  181

  32

  213

  Birmingham

  825

  1,126

  1,951

  Coventry

  235

  224

  459

  Dudley

  274

  55

  329

  Sandwell

  1,140

  149

  1,289

  Solihull

  249

  32

  281

  Walsall

  117

  17

  134

  Wolverhampton

  65

  10

  75

  Knowsley

  0

  3

  3

  Liverpool

  584

  171

  755

  St Helens

  57

  37

  94

  Sefton

  50

  54

  104

  Wirral

  492

  60

  552

  Bolton

  70

  71

  141

  Bury

  319

  318

  637

  Manchester

  437

  985

  1,422

  Oldham

  346

  60

  406

  Rochdale

  139

  120

  159

  Salford

  6

  54

  60

  Stockport

  118

  63

  181

  Thameside

  48

  48

  96

  Trafford

  83

  90

  173

  Wigan

  161

  90

  251

  Barnsley

  4

  24

  28

  Doncaster

  27

  13

  40

  Rotherham

  75

  48

  123

  Sheffield

  152

  170

  322

  Bradford

  848

  118

  966

  Calderdale

  97

  49

  146

  Kirklees

  90

  68

  158

  Leeds

  594

  1,560

  2,154

  Wakefield

  52

  47

  99

  Gateshead

  36

  42

  78

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  26

  84

  110

  North Tyneside

  9

  5

  5

  South Tyneside

  0

  5

  5

  Sunderland

  78

  50

  128

  Isles of Scilly

  0

  0

  0

  Avon

  262

  621

  863

  Bedfordshire

  76

  84

  160

  Berkshire

  570

  179

  749

  Buckinghamshire

  344

  56

  400

  Cambridgeshire

  —

  1

  1

  Cheshire

  47

  26

  73

  Cleveland

  70

  14

  84

  Cornwall

  0

  26

  26

  Cumbria

  69

  38

  107

  Derbyshire

  368

  134

  502

  Devon

  334

  45

  379

  Dorset

  153

  100

  253

  Durham

  69

  142

  211

  East Sussex

  114

  148

  262

  Essex

  224

  49

  273

  Gloucestershire

  331

  51

  382

  Hampshire

  24

  22

  46

  Hereford and Worcester

  131

  19

  150

  Hertfordshire

  702

  156

  858

  Humberside

  197

  211

  408

  Isle of Wight

  26

  1

  27

  Kent

  1,580

  42

  1,622

  Lancashire

  705

  1,353

  2,058

  Leicestershire

  299

  15

  314

  Lincolnshire

  185

  20

  205

  Norfolk

  124

  111

  135

  47

  Secondary

  Primary

  Total

  North Yorkshire

  175

  70

  245

  Northamptonshire

  66

  44

  110

  Northumberland

  8

  6

  14

  Nottinghamshire

  85

  190

  275

  Oxfordshire

  130

  46

  176

  Shropshire

  77

  110

  187

  Somerset

  75

  165

  240

  Staffordshire

  139

  37

  176

  Suffolk

  54

  35

  99

  Surrey

  185

  198

  383

  Warkwickshire

  50

  36

  86

  West Sussex

  33

  42

  75

  Wiltshire

  36

  24

  60

  Total

  22,286

  15,390

  37,676

  1 Figures based on incomplete data.

  2 No LEA return for 1991–92 year. The figures relate to the GM sector only.

  Grant-maintained Schools
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will give figures for the amount of transitional grant paid to date to each grant-maintained school in each local education authority area.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The information requested has been placed in the Library.

  Mrs. Ann Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list for each grant-maintained school which became grant maintained in September or October, the full-year value of(a) direct annual maintenance grant and (b) the central annual maintenance grant; and what is (b) as a percentage of (a) in each case.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The information requested is given in the table.

  School

  (a)Full year direct

  (b)Full year central

  Per cent. of (b) to (a)

  Abbey Grange CE VA High School

  2,085,428

  233,568

  11·2

  Appleby County Primary School

  325,710

  48,856

  15·0

  Astley High School

  1,356,315

  127,494

  9·4

  Our Lady of Fatima RC High School

  1,048,668

  102,770

  9·8

  St. Paul's CE Junior School

  167,698

  25,154

  15·0

  The Bishop Challoner RC School

  1,099,412

  152,818

  13·9

  Abraham Darby School

  2,189,160

  192,646

  8·8

  Albany School

  2,393,684

  246,549

  10·3

  Alder Coppice Primary

  530,300

  95,454

  18·0

  Aldridge School

  2,284,644

  281,011

  12·3

  All Saints CE Primary School

  283,699

  40,853

  14·4

  All Saints CE Primary School

  308,882

  46,951

  15·2

  All Saints RC School

  1,724,127

  168,965

  9·8

  Allington County Primary School

  276,143

  45,564

  16·5

  Alperton High School

  2,200,481

  195,843

  8·9

  Andoversford Primary School

  143,061

  19,742

  13·8

  Anglo European School

  2,260,111

  205,670

  9·1

  Applemore Technology School

  1,598,270

  163,024

  10·2

  Ashley County Junior School

  399,874

  61,980

  15·5

  Ashmole School

  2,230,959

  290,025

  13·0

  Ashton St. Peters Lower

  234,182

  42,855

  18·3

  Barnham Broom (VC) Primary School

  134,710

  16,839

  12·5

  Barton Court Grammar School

  1,047,520

  114,180

  10·9

  Beanfield Junior School

  471,819

  58,034

  12·3

  Beverley School

  1,524,617

  157,036

  10·3

  Bexley Erith Technical Boys

  1,481,498

  139,261

  9·4

  Blessed Edward Oldcorne RC High School

  1,345,022

  151,987

  11·3

  Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic High

  1,167,610

  120,264

  10·3

  48

  School

  (a) Full year direct

  (b) Full year central

  Per cent. of (b) to (a)

  Brampton Junior School

  261,608

  39,241

  15·0

  Branston School and Community College

  2,173,630

  313,016

  9·8

  Bromsgrove CE Middle School

  703,620

  79,509

  11·3

  Broomfield GM School

  2,370,832

  244,196

  10·3

  Brushwood Middle School

  276,431

  46,717

  16·9

  Cardinal Griffin RC School

  1,336,057

  150,974

  11·3

  Cardinal Hinsley High School

  1,632,572

  145,299

  8·9

  Cartmel Priory CE School

  566,799

  56,114

  9·9

  Castlefield Combined School

  736,771

  124,514

  16·9

  Castleview Combined School

  493,312

  58,704

  11·9

  Cecil Jones High School

  2,281,202

  207,589

  9·1

  Chadwell Heath High School

  2,393,551

  301,587

  12·6

  Chapel St. Leonards County Primary School

  264,050

  40,136

  15·2

  Charlton School

  1,326,665

  116,746

  8·8

  Charville Primary School

  624,501

  103,042

  16·5

  Chasetown High School

  1,471,129

  166,238

  11·3

  Chaucer Technology School

  2,557,253

  280,921

  10·9

  Chellaston Junior School

  367,563

  57,707

  15·7

  Cheltenham Bournside School and 6th Form

  2,561,407

  297,123

  11·6

  Cheyne Middle School

  1,206,923

  131,555

  10·9

  Chingford School

  1,772,433

  260,548

  14·7

  Cirencester Deer Park School

  1,584,917

  183,850

  11·6

  Cirencester Kingshill School

  1,109,923

  128,751

  11·6

  Clacton High School

  2,337,765

  212,737

  9·1

  Colbayns High School

  2,880,641

  262,138

  9·1

  Colchester Royal Grammar School

  1,540,825

  140,215

  9·1

  Collingtree CE Primary School

  100,320

  12,339

  12·3

  Coppins Green Primary

  539,422

  77,677

  14·4

  Cranwell County Primary School

  288,570

  43,863

  15·2

  Deanery Infant School

  298,524

  63,286

  21·2

  Deanery Junior School

  326,273

  69,170

  21·2

  Ditton CE Primary School

  286,742

  47,312

  16·5

  Dollis Junior School

  564,170

  104,935

  18·6

  Downton CE VC Primary School

  254,906

  50,726

  19·9

  Elmstead County Primary

  200,597

  28,886

  14·4

  Fairfield High School for Girls

  1,300,768

  139,182

  10·7

  Finchley Catholic High

  1,963,430

  255,246

  13·0

  Friesland School

  1,516,150

  150,099

  9·9

  Goffs School

  2,051,393

  217,448

  10·6

  Hassenbrook School

  1,225,225

  111,495

  9·1

  Herne Bay High School

  1,346,942

  146,817

  10·9

  Herne Bay Junior School

  467,864

  77,198

  16·5

  Hillside Infant School

  285,023

  47,029

  16·5

  Hillside Junior School

  315,323

  52,028

  16·5

  Hillview School for Girls

  1,257,027

  137,016

  10·9

  Holland Haven Primary

  274,328

  39,503

  14·4

  Holland Park Primary

  475,469

  68,468

  14·4

  Hollinsclough CE Primary School

  55,615

  8,787

  15·8

  Holly Hall School

  1,084,447

  139,894

  12·9

  Holy Cross CE Junior School

  362,580

  49,673

  13·7

  Holy Trinity CE Middle School

  420,392

  63,900

  15·2

  Holywell School

  693,674

  93,646

  13·5

  Hordle CE GM Primary School

  337,141

  52,257

  15·5

  Huttoft County Primary School

  115,580

  17,568

  15·2

  Jews Free School

  3,238,315

  352,977

  10·9

  John Bentley School

  2,156,780

  269,598

  12·5

  Killinghall First School

  376,187

  54,923

  14·6

  Kingsdown School

  1,758,422

  219,805

  12·5

  Knowles Hill School

  1,814,534

  166,937

  9·2

  La Sainte Union Convent School

  2,240,494

  244,214

  10·9

  Lady Elizabeth Hastings EC Primary School

  105,304

  15,164

  14·4

  Lady Manners School

  2,737,401

  271,003

  9·9

  Linton Primary School

  289,860

  45,508

  15·7

  Lowbourne GM Infants School

  345,922

  68,838

  19·9

  Lowbourne Junior School

  290,559

  57,821

  19·9

  Marlborough School (GM)

  1,616,827

  171,384

  10·6

  Millbrook Infant School

  400,500

  49,262

  12·3

  Millbrook Junior School

  500,050

  61,507

  12·3

  Millfields Primary School

  267,664

  38,544

  14·4

  Motram St. Andrew Primary

  116,296

  15,583

  13·4

  Newington Junior School

  469,075

  77,397

  16·5

  Nicholas Breakspear RC School

  1,781,133

  188,800

  10·6

  49

  School

  (a)Full year direct

  (b)Full year central

  Per cent. of (b) to (a)

  Ninestiles School

  2,074,119

  288,303

  13·9

  Notre Dame High School

  1,288,407

  256,393

  19·9

  Notre Dame School

  1,626,473

  159,394

  9·8

  Oakington Manor Primary School

  818,130

  110,447

  13·5

  Oaklands RC Comprehensive School

  2,033,314

  207,398

  10·2

  Orton Longeuville

  2,185,282

  181,378

  8·3

  Osidge Primary School

  591,954

  110,103

  18·6

  Park Mead County First School

  266,045

  40,439

  15·2

  Parkview School

  1,554,009

  153,847

  9·9

  Pewley Down County First School

  231,054

  35,120

  15·2

  Pewsey Vale School (GM)

  878,033

  109,754

  12·5

  Pittville School

  1,161,975

  134,789

  11·6

  Prince Henrys GM High School

  1,805,771

  204,052

  11·3

  Purbrook Park School

  1,166,797

  119,013

  10·2

  Queen Elizabeth School, Corby

  1,307,690

  109,846

  8·4

  Queen Elizabeth's School

  1,259,416

  137,276

  10·9

  Queen Mary's Grammar School

  1,184,918

  145,745

  12·3

  Queen Mary's High School

  1,143,987

  140,710

  12·3

  Rochester Grammar School for Girls

  1,181,334

  128,765

  10·9

  Rodings Central Primary School

  231,775

  33,376

  14·4

  Sacred Heart of Mary Girls' School

  1,550,752

  176,786

  11·4

  Salvatorian College

  1,071,349

  132,847

  12·4

  Sheldon School

  2,118,329

  264,791

  12·5

  Sir Charles Lucas School

  1,841,183

  167,548

  9·1

  Soham Village College

  1,808,674

  150,120

  8·3

  South Benfleet Primary School

  449,489

  64,726

  14·4

  Southend High School for Boys

  1,754,115

  159,624

  9·1

  Southfields School

  1,138,478

  124,-94

  10·9

  Spalding County Primary School

  280,220

  42,593

  15·2

  St. Andrew's CE Primary school (Hill)

  333,278

  54,991

  16·5

  St. Andrew's CE Primary School (Linc)

  274,950

  41,792

  15·2

  St. Anselm's RC School

  1,709,390

  186,324

  10·9

  St. Benedict's RC School

  932,427

  108,161

  11·6

  St. Botolph's CE Primary School

  293,401

  48,441

  16·5

  St. Catherines RC for Girls

  1,380,420

  129,759

  9·4

  St. Clare's RC Primary School

  280,632

  40,411

  14·4

  St. Edmunds RC Comprehensive School

  1,273,522

  138,814

  10·9

  St. Francis RC Primary School

  352,697

  58,195

  16·5

  St. George's CE High School

  1,698,320

  185,117

  10·9

  St. George's RC School

  1,185,240

  120,894

  10·2

  St. Giles CE Primary School

  156,419

  23,932

  15·3

  St. Helena School

  1,645,598

  149,750

  9·1

  St. Ignatius College

  2,163,709

  222,862

  10·3

  St. John Fisher RC (VA) Primary School

  250,655

  35,593

  14·2

  St. John Fisher RC Comprehensive

  1,334,060

  110,727

  8·3

  St. John the Evangelist Infant

  205,733

  24,482

  11·9

  St. John's School

  2,670,824

  333,853

  12·5

  St. Joseph's College

  2,363,832

  238,747

  10·1

  St. Katherine's CE VA Primary School

  295,975

  42,620

  14·4

  St. Laurence CE Junior School

  309,705

  51,101

  16·5

  St. Martin In The Field High School

  1,315,154

  230,151

  17·5

  St. Mary's CE High School

  2,125,520

  276,318

  13·0

  St. Mary's CE Primary School

  242,936

  34,983

  14·4

  St. Michael's Catholic Grammar School

  1,346,080

  174,990

  13·0

  St. Michael's RC School

  1,567,839

  166,191

  10·6

  St. Michael's School

  1,237,106

  246,183

  19·9

  St. Osyth CE Aided Primary School

  324,202

  46,685

  14·4

  St. Paul's RC Primary School

  435,331

  67,476

  15·5

  St. Peter and St. Paul RC High School

  895,570

  87,766

  9·8

  St. Peter's RC Primary School

  446,694

  69,238

  15·5

  St. Peter's RC School

  2,937,264

  331,911

  11·3

  St. Thomas More High School for Boys

  1,103,345

  100,404

  9·1

  St. Thomas More RC Primary School

  255,036

  36,725

  14·4

  St. Thomas the Apostle School

  1,314,406

  261,567

  19·9

  50

  School

  (a)Full year direct

  (b)Full year central

  Per cent. of (b) to (a)

  St. Wilfred's CE High School

  2,706,391

  278,758

  10·3

  St. Wulfram's CE High School

  845,120

  82,822

  9·8

  St. Gregory's RC High

  2,216,968

  197,310

  8·9

  St. Peter's School

  2,314,888

  192,136

  8·3

  Stropsley High School and College

  1,459,162

  196,987

  13·5

  Studley High School

  882,790

  89,162

  10·1

  Takeley Primary School

  237,592

  34,213

  14·4

  Testbourne Community School

  1,155,808

  117,892

  10·2

  The Bramston School

  2,274,506

  206,979

  9·1

  The Cottesloe School

  855,240

  99,208

  11·6

  The Fairfax School

  2,242,625

  311,726

  13·9

  The Frank Montgomery School

  1,136,151

  123,840

  10·9

  The Gilberd School

  1,570,611

  142,925

  9·1

  The High Arcal School

  1,417,413

  182,846

  12·9

  The Holy Family RC School

  272,506

  44,964

  16·5

  The John Henry Newman School

  1,209,224

  128,178

  10·6

  The Latymer School

  2,538,209

  261,436

  10·3

  The Leventhorpe School

  1,917,438

  203,248

  10·6

  The Pingle School

  2,458,745

  243,416

  9·9

  The St. Thomas Becket School

  1,400,862

  163,900

  11·7

  The Thomas Aveling School

  1,805,498

  196,799

  10·9

  Thomas More GM School

  1,288,054

  136,534

  10·6

  Thorpedene Infant School

  312,638

  45,020

  14·4

  Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls

  1,873,718

  204,235

  10·9

  Warwick Bridge Primary School

  254,769

  38,215

  15·0

  Washingborough School

  390,870

  59,412

  15·2

  West Park Community School

  2,657,619

  263,104

  9·9

  Westgate School

  1,000,908

  79,072

  7·9

  Wibsey School

  645,232

  74,846

  11·6

  William Gilbert Endowed

  250,114

  39,268

  15·7

  William Robertson School

  702,370

  68,832

  9·8

  Winchcombe Community School

  644,254

  74,734

  11·6

  Windsor High School

  1,675,956

  216,198

  12·9

  Wirral Grammar School for Boys

  1,723,730

  155,136

  9·0

  Woodville Primary School

  539,523

  77,691

  14·4

  Yattendon Middle School

  414,375

  62,985

  15·2

  Sex Education
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will arrange for his letter in answer to the questions listed in the Official Report, 5 November, column 493, to be published in the Official Report.

  Mr. Forth
  The text of the letter was as follows:"I promised to write to you in response to two recent Parliamentary Questions about sex education. I am sorry that the strict timetable imposed by prorogation of Parliament meant that I was unable to answer fully at the time.
  In Question No 296 you asked whether (a) abortion and (b) contraception will be considered as biological or other aspects of human sexual behaviour in our planned guidance to schools on sex education. That guidance will make clear that with effect from the beginning of the Autumn term 1994, the Order for National Curriculum science will require pupils at key stage 3 (aged 11-14) to study:
  "life processes … growth, reproduction … particularly as they relate to human beings;" and
  the physical and emotional changes that take place during adolescence".
  It follows that discussion of contraception or abortion will not be a statutory requirement of the National Curriculum in science. These topics would be candidates for inclusion instead in the programmes of sex education which all secondary schools will be required to provide. The detailed content of those programmmes will, however, be for the schools themselves to decide, in the light of the guidance we will be offering.
  Turning to Question 297, you asked what definition will be given in our planned guidance to schools to help teachers distinguish between biological and other aspects of human sexual behaviour. As I have already explained, the Circular will remind schools of the statutory requirements of National Curriculum

  51
  science. It will also offer schools advice and models of good practice to help them draw up their programmes of sex education. We will shortly be issuing a draft of the Circular for consultation.
  I hope this is helpful."

  Corporal Punishment
  Mr. Spellar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what cases are pending before the European Court of Human Rights regarding the inflicting of corporal punishment in private schools.

  Mr. Forth
  None.

  Refugees
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what action he is taking to increase the places for refugees in English as a second language classes.

  Mr. Boswell
  The provision of tuition to improve the knowledge of English of refugees and others for whom English is not the language spoken at home is a matter for individual further education colleges, schools and local education authorities. The Further Education Funding Council has a duty to secure the provision of adequate facilities for the education of part-time students over compulsory school age and for full-time students aged 19 or over in respect of such courses.

  Civil Servants
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list for each civil service grade in his Department(a) the total number of persons employed and (b) the total number of women employed.

  Mr. Boswell
  The figures are as follows:

  Female

  Male

  Total

  Grade 1

  0

  1

  1

  Grade 2

  0

  3

  3

  Grade 3

  0

  11

  11

  Grade 4

  0

  3

  3

  Grade 5

  16

  34

  50

  Grade 6

  3

  14

  17

  Grade 7

  47

  108

  155

  SEO and Equivalent

  38

  73

  111

  HEO and Equivalent

  173

  182

  355

  EO and Equivalent

  293

  189

  482

  AO and Equivalent

  460

  153

  613

  AA and Equivalent

  231

  111

  342

  Total

  1,261

  882

  2,143

  These figures reflect the number of staff in post and include 360 staff in the Teachers Pensions Agency.

PRIME MINISTER

  Queen's Speech
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Prime Minister how many copies of the background note on the Queen's Speech have been sold to the press.

  The Prime Minister
  The background notes on the Queen's Speech are available free of charge to the press.

  As part of the Government's drive to make information more available to the public, a system operated on behalf
  52
  of the Central Office of Information was initiated this year to enable individuals and organisations to obtain the background notes by facsimile transmission. Over 1,000 calls were made to the system.

  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make available to the hon. Members the background note to the Queen's Speech which was made available to the press before the Queen's Speech.

  The Prime Minister
  The notes have been placed in the Library of the House.

  Security Services
  Mr. Mark Robinson
  To ask the Prime Minister what plans he has to change the vote accounting arrangements for the security and intelligence agencies, following the announcement of the intention to introduce new statutory arrangements for the secret intelligence service and GCHQ.

  The Prime Minister
  As part of its policy towards greater openness in security and intelligence matters, the Government intend to bring on to a single published vote the aggregate expenditure of all three agencies, much of which, including all the expenditure of GCHQ, has previously been carried on MoD and FCO Votes.

  The new single intelligence vote will be fully open to scrutiny by the Comptroller and Auditor General, apart from limited restrictions to protect the identities of certain sources of information and the details of particularly sensitive operations.

  The first main estimate for the new vote will cover expenditure in 1994–95, and will be presented to Parliament in March 1994.

WALES

  Housing Association Rents
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his policy concerning rents for housing associations in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  It continues to be our policy to subsidise housing association rents by very considerable capital grants.

  Farm Holdings
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many farm holdings were registered with his Department in September.

  Mr. Redwood
  In September 1993 there were some 37,000 names and addresses on the farm holdings list maintained by the Welsh Office.

  Agriculture Agencies
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many staff were employed within his Department and within agencies accountable to him dealing with agriculture in September.

  Mr. Redwood
  At 30 September 1993 the number of staff dealing with agriculture in my Department and agencies was 808, including ADAS staff in Wales.

  Historic Buildings and Monuments
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when he intends to publish the Government's response to the second report from the Welsh Affairs Committee of Session 1992–93, House of Commons paper 403, on the preservation of historic buildings and ancient monuments.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  I am pleased to announce that a response to the Welsh Affairs Committee report on the preservation of historic buildings and ancient monuments has been published today as Command Paper 2416. Copies are available in the Vote Office.

  Valleys Programme
  Mr. Richards
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when he will publish the evaluation of the programme for the valleys.

  Mr. Redwood
  I have today published the report of the evaluation of the programme for the valleys 1988 to 1993 carried out by Victor Hausner and Associates, along with a statistical profile of the valleys produced by the Welsh Office. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House.

  1992

  Key: E = Establishment; S = Supernumerary posts.

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  Avon and Somerset

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  2

  Bedfordshire

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  Cambridgeshire

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  Cheshire

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  City of London

  798

  24

  798

  24

  798

  24

  798

  24

  798

  24

  798

  24

  798

  60

  798

  60

  798

  60

  Cleveland

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  Cumbria

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  Derbyshire

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  Devon and Cornwall

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  5

  Dorset

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  Durham

  1,389

  2

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  Dyfed Powys

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  Essex

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  Gloucestershire

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  Greater Manchester

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  Gwent

  1,010

  0

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  Hampshire

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  Hertfordshire

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  Humberside

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  Kent

  3,096

  1

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  3,096

  28

  Lancashire

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  Leicestershire

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  Lincolnshire

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  Merseyside

  4,706

  6

  4,706

  4

  4,706

  4

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  Metropolitan Police

  28,276

  0

  28,297

  0

  28,304

  0

  28,279

  0

  28,279

  0

  28,260

  0

  28,260

  0

  28,240

  0

  28,240

  0

  Norfolk

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  North Wales

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  North Yorkshire

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  Northamptonshire

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  Northumbria

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  1

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  Nottinghamshire

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  0

  2,344

  13

  South Wales

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  South Yorkshire

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  Staffordshire

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  Suffolk

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  1,233

  0

  Surrey

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  Sussex

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  Thames Valley

  3,812

  14

  3,812

  14

  3,812

  14

  3,812

  14

  3,812

  15

  3,812

  15

  3,812

  15

  3,812

  15

  3,812

  70

  Warwickshire

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  21

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

NORTHERN IRELND

  Sinn Fein
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by what means his Department apprises itself of the policies and views of Sinn Fein.

  Mr. Ancram:
  The main sources of information about the policies and views of Sinn Fein are public ones such as written documents and reports of interviews. The Department will also, from time to time, receive unsolicited second-hand accounts relevant to Sinn Fein's policies and views from members of the community, some of whom may have had contact with members of that party. Constituency matters from Sinn Fein councillors are dealt with on the same basis as inquiries from other elected representatives. There have been occasions when Ministers and/or officials have met council delegations which have included a Sinn Fein councillor to discuss constituency matters.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Police Establishment
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the police establishment for each police force area in England and Wales for April 1992 and for each month thereafter, including details of supernumerary posts.

  Mr. Wardle
  The information requested is set out in the tables.
  55

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  West Mercia

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  West Midlands

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  8

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  West Yorkshire

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  Wiltshire

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  1,181

  97

  Total

  126,977

  268

  126,998

  295

  127,005

  295

  126,980

  294

  126,980

  295

  126,961

  295

  126,961

  335

  126,941

  327

  126,941

  395

  1993

  Key: E = Establishment; S = Supernumerary posts.

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  E

  S

  Avon and Somerset

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  2

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  3,087

  3

  Bedfordshire

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  1,178

  0

  Cambridgeshire

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  1,241

  38

  Cheshire

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  1,920

  3

  City of London

  798

  60

  798

  60

  798

  60

  798

  63

  798

  63

  798

  63

  798

  90

  798

  90

  Cleveland

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  1,502

  0

  Cumbria

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  1,187

  1

  Derbyshire

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  1,850

  0

  Devon and Cornwall

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  5

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  2,928

  4

  Dorset

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  1,302

  2

  Durham

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  1,389

  1

  Dyfed Powys

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  969

  1

  Essex

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  2,950

  0

  Gloucestershire

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  1,184

  0

  Greater Manchester

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  7,077

  0

  Gwent

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  3

  1,010

  2

  1,010

  2

  Hampshire

  3,269

  2

  3,269

  2

  3,269

  2

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  3,269

  1

  Hertfordshire

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  1,684

  0

  Humberside

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  1

  2,034

  0

  2,034

  0

  Kent1

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  28

  3,136

  38

  Lancashire

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  4

  3,229

  3

  3,229

  3

  3,229

  3

  Leicestershire

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  4

  1,853

  1

  1,853

  1

  1,853

  1

  1,853

  1

  1,853

  1

  Lincolnshire

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  1,206

  0

  Merseyside

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  4,706

  3

  Metropolitan Police

  28,225

  0

  28,211

  0

  28,118

  0

  27,835

  0

  27,851

  0

  27,837

  0

  27,839

  0

  27,839

  0

  Norfolk

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  1,446

  1

  North Wales

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  1

  1,369

  2

  1,369

  2

  1,369

  2

  1,369

  2

  1,369

  2

  1,369

  2

  North Yorkshire

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  1,418

  0

  Northamptonshire

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  1,190

  1

  Northumbria

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  3,613

  0

  Nottinghamshire

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  2,344

  13

  South Wales

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  3,168

  3

  South Yorkshire

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  3,031

  0

  Staffordshire

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  2,215

  2

  Suffolk

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  1,233

  1

  Surrey

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  1,673

  17

  Sussex

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  3,014

  1

  Thames Valley

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  70

  3,812

  71

  Warwickshire

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  1,020

  25

  West Mercia

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  2,053

  3

  West Midlands

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  1

  6,977

  0

  6,977

  0

  West Yorkshire

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  3

  5,295

  2

  5,295

  2

  5,295

  2

  Wiltshire

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  1,181

  108

  Total

  126,966

  408

  126,952

  408

  126,859

  409

  126,576

  408

  126,592

  408

  126,578

  406

  126,580

  430

  126,580

  441

  1 40 reimbursable posts approved for Channel Tunnel on 1 January 1993.

  Asylum Seekers
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the effect of the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 on the number of asylum seekers whose claims he considers to be bogus.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  It is too early to assess the effect of the Act, but we are monitoring progress carefully.

  Sexual Offences
  Mr. Ashton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will list the number of kerb-crawling prosecutions and cautions under the Sexual Offences Act 1985, for each year since it came into operation;
  56
  (2) if he will list the number of prosecutions for street soliciting by prostitutes in each year since 1985.

  Mr. Maclean
  The information is given in the tables.

  Number of males cautioned and prosecuted at magistrates' courts for kerb crawling offences1 1985–19922

  England and Wales

  Year

  Cautions

  Prosecutions

  1985

  17

  19

  1986

  46

  191

  1987

  ..

  307

  1988

  ..

  574

  1989

  243

  992

  1990

  227

  1,360

  1991

  149

  1,314

  19922

  331

  1,003

  57
  1 An offence under Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 1985 which came into force on 16 September 1985.

  2 Provisional.

  .. Not available.

  Number of females cautioned and prosecuted at magistrates' courts for street soliciting by prostitutes1 1985–19922

  England and Wales

  Year

  Cautions

  Prosecutions

  1985

  4,191

  9,401

  1986

  4,855

  9,393

  1987

  ..

  8,474

  1988

  ..

  9,183

  1989

  5,014

  10,484

  1990

  4,187

  10,459

  1991

  3,840

  10,165

  19922

  3,653

  9,449

  1 An offence under Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959.

  2 Provisional.

  .. Not available.

  Human Rights
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the Government support the proposal that the European Community should become a signatory to the European convention of human rights; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  I have been asked to reply.

  All member states of the European Community are parties to the European convention on human rights. We see no need for the European Community, as a legal entity, to accede separately to the convention. The European Court of Justice applies the convention in cases coming before it which raise issues of human rights.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  EC Cultural Affairs Council
  Ms Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will make a statement on the outcome of the EC Cultural Affairs Council on 5 November.

  Mr. Brooke
  EC Ministers of Culture met on 5 November 1993 in Brussels. They designated Stockholm as European City of Culture for 1998 and Weimar for 1999. Ljubljana and Nicosia were chosen to host the European cultural month in 1995.

  Ministers held an exchange of views on the economic and job-creating aspects of culture. The Belgian Presidency made an oral report of the informal meeting of Culture Ministers in Antwerp on 19-20 September, and noted that the Commission would be looking again at the issue of fixed book pricing with the aim of finding pragmatic solutions for cross-border transactions within the same linguistic zone. It also noted that the Commission intended to set up an ad hoc group of representatives of the member states to assist it in inventorying the situation of the artist. Ministers also received information from the Commission about the campaign "Reading for Pleasure".

  The Council adopted a resolution concerning the first century of European cinema. It adopted conclusions noting the Commission's communication of 23 July on the subject of the evaluation report on the MEDIA programme. It also
  58
  held an exchange of views on GATT as it affected the audiovisual sector, after hearing information from the Commission about the most recent state of negotiations.

  Ministers agreed a communiqué expressing their concern that artists in Sarajevo continue to express themselves and take part in European cultural exchanges. They invited the Commission to make a financial contribution to the 10th Sarajevo winter festival, as well as noting with approval the intention of some member states to engage in cultural and artistic initiatives as an expression of solidarity with Sarajevo.

  Broadcasting Act 1990
  Mr. James Hill
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what plans he has to amend the Broadcasting Act 1990.

  Mr. Brooke
  I have today announced that, following careful consideration of the representations that I have received, I have concluded that the present regulations on the ownership of ITV companies should be relaxed. Subject to parliamentary approval, I propose to make an order to amend the rules, so that an ITV company could hold two regional licences in areas with the largest advertising revenue, except in London. No one would be able to own more than two ITV regional licences and the limits on other holdings would continue.

  The statutory provisions on regional broadcasting and the conditions on regional programmes attached to the Independent Television Commission's licences remain in force, even if there are changes in ownership. These provisions safeguard the interests of viewers and, in particular, regional programming, including news and current affairs, which will remain a valuable aspect of the ITV system.

  For the longer term, we shall keep the ownership restrictions under review, and look at the wider questions of cross-media ownership.

  Indemnity Undertakings
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage how many indemnity undertakings were given by Departments under section 16 of the National Heritage Act 1980 for the six-month period ended 30 September; and what was the value of contingent liabilities in respect of such undertakings given at any time and which remained outstanding at 30 September.

  Mr. Brooke
  The information my hon. Friend requests is as follows:

  In the six-month period ended 30 September 1993 the following undertakings to indemnify were given by the relevant Departments for items on loan to national and non-national institutions.

  Number

  Department of National Heritage

  601

  Scottish Office Education Department

  64

  Welsh Office Education Department

  26

  Department of Education Northern Ireland

  15

  The value of contingent liabilities in respect of such undertakings given at any time and outstanding at 30 September 1993 are:

  59

  £

  Department of National Heritage

  1,669,460,665

  Scottish Office Education Department

  34,314,647

  Welsh Office Education Department

  30,467,604

  Department of Education Northern Ireland

  12,487,361

TRANSPORT

  West Coast Main Line
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what response he has given to the report of the independent auditors in relation to the west coast main line.

  Mr. Freeman
  I expect to receive Hambros' report shortly on the scope for using private finance to renew the infrastructure of the west coast main line.

  Mr. George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he last met the director of the west coast main line to discuss investment and infrastructure requirements; and what was the outcome of these talks.

  Mr. Freeman
  I last met the director at the end of October. The study by consultants on the scope for using private finance to renew the infrastructure of the west coast main line was among the subjects discussed. Any decision on the way forward will be made in the light of Hambros' report, which I expect to receive shortly.

  Civil Servants
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list for each civil service grade in his Department(a) the total number of persons employed and (b) the total number of women employed.

  Mr. Norris
  The current total staff and the number of women in the central Department and its executive agencies is summarised in the table.

  London Underground Limited: Service performance since January 19921 2

  Trains in customer service (Percentage of scheduels trains running at peak hours3)

  Train service headways (Timed interval between trains)

  Train delays over 20 minutes (London Underground Limited attributable and non-attributable causes)

  Four weeks ending

  Performance Per cent.

  Target Per cent.

  Performance Per cent.

  Target Per cent.

  Performance

  Target

  31 January 1992

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  29 February 1992

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  28 March 1992

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  N/a

  25 April 1992

  98·6

  97·5

  95·5

  91·0

  126

  146

  23 May 1992

  97·3

  97·5

  95·4

  91·0

  114

  146

  20 June 1992

  98·0

  97·5

  95·9

  91·0

  140

  146

  18 July 1992

  98·4

  97·5

  95·9

  91·0

  131

  146

  18 August 1992

  98·2

  97·5

  96·5

  91·0

  91

  146

  12 September 1992

  98·4

  97·5

  95·9

  91·0

  107

  146

  10 October 1992

  98·3

  97·5

  96·6

  91·0

  105

  146

  7 November 1992

  97·7

  97·5

  95·0

  91·0

  128

  146

  5 December 1992

  97·9

  97·5

  95·0

  91·0

  149

  146

  2 January 1993

  97·8

  97·5

  94·4

  91·0

  177

  146

  30 January 1993

  97·6

  97·5

  95·0

  91·0

  137

  146

  27 February 1993

  97·0

  97·5

  93·5

  91·0

  162

  146

  31 March 1993

  97·2

  97·5

  94·8

  91·0

  172

  146

  24 April 1993

  97·7

  98·0

  95·2

  95·0

  458

  471

  22 May 1993

  97·8

  98·0

  95·5

  95·0

  57

  71

  19 June 1993

  98·0

  98·0

  95·4

  95·0

  71

  71

  17 July 1993

  98·1

  98·0

  95·7

  95·0

  86

  71

  60

  Administration staff

  Specialist staff

  Grade equivalents

  Total

  Women

  Total

  Women

  Grade 1

  1

  0

  0

  0

  Grade 2

  4

  0

  0

  0

  Grade 3

  20

  3

  5

  0

  Grade 4

  3

  0

  13

  0

  Grade 5

  78

  6

  42

  2

  Grade 6

  26

  0

  114

  6

  Grade 7

  292

  52

  495

  23

  Senior Executive Officer

  314

  63

  689

  22

  Higher Executive Officer

  866

  294

  519

  41

  Executive Officer

  1,670

  872

  2,225

  165

  Administrative Officer

  3,619

  2,552

  537

  36

  Administrative Assistant

  3,389

  2,695

  201

  68

  Others

  7

  0

  0

  0

  Total

  10,289

  6,537

  4,840

  1,363

  A418
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the effect which the EC's Tern programme will have on his Department's proposals for the east-west route and the A418 west of Aylesbury-Wing bypass.

  Mr. Key
  The east-west route was accepted as part of the trans-European road network, TERN, by the Council of Ministers on 29 October. The A418 west of Aylesbury-wing bypass forms part of the route.

  Inclusion in the TERN has no effect on the standards we propose for the route.

  Targets
  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish a table showing the targets and performance against targets in respect of(a) punctuality and (b) reliability of each of the divisions of British Rail serving the London area, and of London Underground and London Buses, in each month from January 1992.

  Mr. Norris
  The information requested is shown in the tables.
  61

  Trains in customer service (Percentage of scheduled trains running at peak hours3)

  Train service headways (Timed interval between trains)

  Train delays over 20 minutes (London Underground Limited attributable and non-attributable causes)

  Four weeks ending

  Performance Per cent.

  Target Per cent.

  Performance Per cent.

  Target Per cent.

  Performance

  Target

  14 August 1993

  98·2

  98·0

  95·6

  95·0

  63

  71

  11 September 1993

  98·1

  98·0

  96·4

  95·0

  62

  71

  9 October 1993

  97·9

  98·0

  96·3

  95·0

  66

  71

  Notes:

  1 Source: London Underground Performance Check.

  2 Current series of targets goes back only as far as April 1992. Direct comparison with other targets is not possible. The targets were revised in April 1993, for achievement by 31 March 1994.

  3 Peak measurement times: A.M.—08.50 and P.M.—17.30.

  4 From 24 April 1993 onwards, London Underground Limited attributable causes only.

  London Transport bus service performance since January 199212

  Low frequency services

  4 weeks ending

  Per cent. mileage operated (excluding miles lost due to traffic congestion)

  Target (per cent.)

  High frequency services (excess waiting time (minutes) a new target)

  Target (mins.)

  Per cent. on time3

  Target

  Per cent >2 mins. early

  Target

  1 February 1992

  98·8

  98·0

  n/a

  n/a

  68·8

  65

  8·0

  6·0

  29 February 1992

  99·0

  98·0

  n/a

  n/a

  69·3

  65

  7·4

  6·0

  28 March 1992

  98·1

  98·0

  n/a

  n/a

  68·0

  65

  7·4

  6·0

  25 April 1992

  99·1

  >98·5

  n/a

  n/a

  69·8

  >67

  6·9

  <5·5

  23 May 1992

  99·0

  >98·5

  n/a

  n/a

  68·7

  >67

  7·2

  <5·5

  20 June 1992

  98·9

  >98·5

  n/a

  n/a

  69·6

  >67

  6·9

  <5·5

  18 July 1992

  98·9

  >98·5

  1·58

  <1·75

  70·8

  >67

  7·1

  <5·5

  15 August 1992

  98·9

  >98·5

  1·39

  <1·75

  71·0

  >67

  7·0

  <5·5

  12 September 1992

  99·0

  >98·5

  1·43

  <1·75

  70·0

  >67

  6·9

  <5·5

  10 October 1992

  99·1

  >98·5

  1·71

  <1·75

  67·9

  >67

  6·0

  <5·5

  7 November 1992

  99·0

  >98·5

  1·81

  <1·75

  68·8

  >67

  5·6

  <5·5

  5 December 1992

  99·1

  >98·5

  1·96

  <1·75

  65·6

  67

  5·7

  <5·5

  2 January 1993

  99·1

  >98·5

  2·08

  <1·75

  62·9

  67

  5·4

  <5·5

  30 January 1993

  99·1

  >98·5

  1·60

  <1·75

  68·5

  67

  5·6

  <5·5

  27 February 1993

  99·2

  >98·5

  1·47

  <1·75

  7<1·6

  >67

  5·2

  <5·5

  27 March 1993

  494·1

  >98·5

  1·75

  <1·75

  69·0

  >67

  5·4

  <5·5

  24 April 1993

  595·2

  >98·5

  1·81

  <1·6

  68·9

  >68

  5·9

  <4·5

  23 May 1993

  93·9

  >98·5

  1·99

  <1·6

  >68·3

  >68

  5·5

  <4·5

  19 June 1993

  96·9

  >98·5

  1·94

  <1·6

  68·7

  >68

  4·7

  <4·5

  17 July 1993

  97·1

  >98·5

  1·94

  <1·6

  68·2

  >68

  5·4

  >4·5

  14 August 1993

  97·5

  >98·5

  1·80

  <1·6

  67·6

  >68

  5·6

  <4·5

  11 September 1993

  97·5

  >98·5

  1·78

  <1·6

  65·4

  >68

  5·9

  <4·5

  9 October 1993

  97·9

  >98·5

  2·12

  <1·6

  59·3

  >68

  5·7

  <4·5

  1 Figures are based on London Transport's 4 weekly financial periods.

  2 Previous targets were set in December 1989 for achievement by April 1992 at the latest. All current targets were set on 29 June 1992 and are to be achieved by March 1994.

  3 Defined as no more than 2 minutes early or 5 minutes late.

  4 Mileage operated figures relate to period ending 31 March 1993.

  5 Mileage operated figures exclude four days at the beginning of this period which are included in preceding period.

  British Rail—Network SouthEast: Service performance since January 1992

  Chiltern Line

  Great Eastern

  Great Northern

  Kent Coast

  Kent Link

  London Tilbury Southend

  North London Lines

  Northampton Line

  Solent and Wessex

  South London Lines

  South Western Lines

  Sussex Coast

  Thames Line

  Thameslink

  West Angila

  Punctuality (Percentage of trains arriving within 5 minutes of scheduled times)

  Target

  88·0

  86·0

  90·0

  82·0

  88·0

  85·0

  85·0

  90·0

  86·0

  88·0

  88·0

  83·0

  80·0

  89·0

  88·0

  Four weeks ending:

  31 January 1992

  88·0

  85·0

  93·0

  65·5

  78·0

  88·0

  88·5

  90·5

  82·5

  84·0

  86·5

  84·0

  82·0

  93·5

  89·5

  29 February 1992

  93·0

  87·0

  92·5

  75·0

  81·0

  94·5

  80·5

  91·0

  76·5

  87·5

  87·5

  85·0

  76·5

  90·5

  92·5

  28 March 1992

  93·0

  84·5

  94·0

  73·5

  83·5

  88·0

  87·5

  91·5

  88·5

  84·0

  92·0

  82·5

  89·5

  91·0

  92·5

  25 April 1992

  95·1

  91·6

  94·0

  83·3

  89·1

  87·6

  91·7

  94·8

  93·1

  91·2

  95·1

  88·1

  90·4

  86·1

  92·0

  23 May 1992

  90·7

  89·6

  94·3

  79·6

  86·8

  91·0

  95·3

  86·2

  92·3

  84·4

  92·2

  82·6

  85·2

  86·0

  89·2

  20 June 1992

  96·2

  91·0

  93·2

  78·4

  83·5

  88·1

  93·4

  88·5

  88·0

  89·9

  92·1

  89·2

  88·4

  89·3

  92·5

  18 July 1992

  97·9

  90·1

  95·1

  86·5

  86·4

  91·6

  91·1

  91·0

  83·9

  89·5

  88·3

  85·3

  84·4

  77·7

  89·0

  18 August 1992

  96·6

  93·4

  90·8

  83·3

  90·1

  92·7

  94·3

  89·6

  91·8

  89·4

  92·5

  89·6

  83·6

  89·7

  93·6

  12 September 1992

  98·2

  93·4

  94·5

  88·3

  92·6

  91·7

  98·6

  94·7

  97·1

  92·8

  96·7

  92·3

  86·9

  90·2

  95·1

  10 October 1992

  95·7

  93·2

  88·2

  80·3

  91·4

  90·3

  98·6

  94·7

  97·1

  92·8

  96·7

  92·3

  86·9

  90·2

  95·1

  7 November 1992

  84·7

  89·3

  86·7

  66·4

  77·8

  89·4

  87·5

  90·3

  84·3

  78·3

  86·2

  77·7

  69·1

  76·4

  89·2

  5 December 1992

  86·9

  85·7

  90·1

  68·8

  76·6

  85·6

  87·5

  89·6

  84·2

  82·3

  85·7

  78·7

  72·5

  79·8

  88·5

  2 January 1993

  94·3

  84·1

  89·1

  81·3

  85·3

  93·3

  89·5

  82·7

  85·4

  87·6

  91·1

  78·6

  84·4

  87·1

  89·9

  30 January 1993

  94·0

  88·3

  90·6

  83·5

  86·0

  90·7

  89·5

  89·2

  86·0

  91·4

  92·4

  85·0

  76·5

  87·8

  90·5

  62 63

  Chiltern Line

  Great Eastern

  Great Northern

  Kent Coast

  Kent Link

  London Tilbury Southend

  North London Lines

  Northampton Line

  Solent and Wessex

  South London Lines

  South Western Lines

  Sussex Coast

  Thames Line

  Thameslink

  West Angila

  27 February 1993

  93·4

  91·2

  93·0

  76·5

  78·8

  94·3

  91·4

  91·4

  90·9

  94·4

  95·5

  89·2

  85·9

  90·6

  93·9

  31 March 1993

  95·2

  92·6

  95·3

  63·5

  82·5

  95·2

  91·8

  91·7

  90·3

  91·7

  93·0

  91·3

  74·1

  89·1

  93·2

  New target

  90·0

  86·0

  90·0

  82·0

  88·0

  85·0

  87·0

  90·0

  86·0

  88·0

  88·0

  83·0

  85·0

  89·0

  90·0

  24 April 1993

  96·3

  93·4

  94·4

  84·0

  89·2

  93·8

  92·2

  97·3

  88·3

  95·1

  95·0

  92·3

  83·0

  96·4

  93·5

  22 May 1993

  97·1

  91·8

  93·8

  86·4

  88·5

  89·7

  91·4

  93·2

  88·9

  92·6

  93·3

  88·5

  84·6

  93·4

  93·7

  19 June 1993

  95·9

  89·0

  93·8

  78·4

  88·3

  94·4

  87·3

  89·9

  86·7

  93·0

  92·2

  87·9

  78·0

  92·4

  90·8

  17 July 1993

  97·8

  94·7

  93·8

  87·3

  88·8

  97·9

  91·7

  94·7

  93·1

  93·2

  94·0

  84·6

  68·6

  92·0

  96·0

  14 August 1993

  97·3

  94·2

  93·7

  83·1

  85·8

  96·9

  94·2

  91·7

  91·3

  96·2

  94·1

  95·7

  80·3

  95·2

  98·2

  11 September 1993

  96·2

  90·5

  96·0

  85·4

  86·9

  94·4

  94·3

  93·8

  92·0

  96·0

  97·5

  92·2

  84·1

  92·7

  99·0

  9 October 1993

  97·2

  94·7

  93·9

  85·1

  85·5

  89·0

  90·8

  92·9

  90·7

  88·2

  95·1

  83·0

  84·8

  90·4

  95·9

  5 November 1993

  93·3

  87·1

  88·8

  79·9

  78·2

  90·4

  86·0

  88·9

  76·2

  85·8

  88·1

  84·5

  81·9

  85·1

  93·6

  Reliability (percentage of trains run on weekdays)

  Target

  99·0

  99·0

  99·0

  98·0

  98·0

  97·0

  97·0

  99·0

  98·0

  97·0

  98·0

  99·0

  98·0

  99·0

  98·0

  Four weeks ending:

  31 January 1992

  98·2

  99·4

  99·2

  99·0

  98·6

  97·2

  97·4

  99·6

  99·7

  99·2

  99·7

  99·9

  99·1

  98·7

  98·7

  29 February 1992

  98·9

  98·3

  98·9

  99·3

  98·7

  97·7

  97·5

  99·3

  99·5

  99·0

  99·0

  99·8

  98·4

  98·9

  98·8

  28 March 1992

  99·4

  98·8

  99·5

  98·9

  98·2

  97·8

  97·6

  99·1

  99·7

  98·4

  99·6

  99·9

  98·8

  98·5

  98·9

  25 April 1992

  98·7

  99·0

  99·5

  99·5

  98·7

  95·9

  95·6

  99·6

  99·6

  98·4

  99·5

  99·8

  98·6

  96·3

  98·0

  23 May 1992

  98·7

  99·1

  99·4

  99·3

  98·9

  98·0

  97·8

  99·4

  99·5

  97·4

  99·6

  99·5

  98·8

  98·5

  99·1

  20 June 1992

  98·7

  99·2

  99·1

  99·5

  98·3

  98·3

  98·2

  98·4

  99·6

  98·0

  99·7

  99·6

  99·1

  99·7

  98·8

  18 July 1992

  99·1

  99·0

  99·3

  99·3

  98·2

  95·8

  96·4

  99·5

  99·6

  97·5

  99·1

  99·3

  98·7

  98·2

  98·7

  18 August 1992

  99·7

  98·9

  98·4

  99·4

  98·8

  96·7

  95·7

  99·6

  99·7

  97·4

  99·3

  99·5

  98·1

  98·7

  99·0

  12 September 1992

  99·5

  99·3

  98·7

  99·4

  98·6

  98·2

  97·9

  99·9

  99·5

  96·1

  99·7

  99·4

  97·6

  98·8

  99·2

  10 October 1992

  99·4

  99·2

  97·8

  99·5

  97·9

  97·5

  96·6

  99·8

  99·7

  97·0

  99·7

  99·7

  98·9

  98·8

  98·7

  7 November 1992

  97·9

  98·8

  99·3

  99·5

  98·1

  98·5

  96·8

  99·1

  99·2

  96·7

  99·5

  99·1

  95·5

  99·4

  99·0

  5 December 1992

  99·3

  98·6

  99·4

  98·4

  96·2

  97·8

  97·0

  99·7

  99·4

  97·8

  99·2

  99·6

  98·6

  98·9

  99·2

  2 January 1993

  99·7

  98·5

  98·7

  99·4

  96·5

  98·2

  95·7

  99·3

  98·6

  97·6

  98·3

  99·8

  97·9

  99·4

  98·7

  30 January 1993

  99·2

  99·3

  98·9

  99·6

  98·6

  98·1

  97·1

  98·8

  99·3

  99·0

  99·6

  99·8

  98·4

  99·4

  98·9

  27 February 1993

  99·3

  99·1

  99·1

  99·6

  96·1

  98·2

  96·2

  99·7

  99·6

  98·7

  99·5

  99·5

  98·5

  98·9

  98·9

  31 March 1993

  99·8

  99·6

  99·6

  99·6

  97·5

  98·1

  93·5

  98·1

  99·6

  98·4

  99·6

  99·9

  97·0

  99·3

  99·1

  24 April 1993

  99·5

  99·6

  99·4

  99·7

  98·4

  98·4

  95·6

  100·0

  99·5

  99·0

  99·7

  99·9

  198·5

  99·5

  99·2

  22 May 1993

  99·6

  99·3

  99·3

  99·8

  97·8

  97·8

  96·0

  99·7

  99·8

  98·6

  99·8

  99·8

  98·9

  99·6

  99·2

  19 June 1993

  99·5

  99·1

  98·3

  99·4

  97·4

  98·7

  95·4

  98·7

  99·3

  99·1

  99·6

  99·3

  95·1

  97·5

  98·3

  17 July 1993

  99·5

  99·6

  98·9

  99·7

  97·4

  99·3

  98·8

  99·3

  99·8

  99·2

  98·0

  99·7

  97·8

  99·4

  98·7

  14 August 1993

  99·4

  99·5

  98·6

  99·8

  98·5

  99·4

  96·6

  99·8

  99·4

  99·4

  99·6

  99·8

  98·8

  99·2

  99·5

  11 September 1993

  99·7

  99·1

  99·4

  99·0

  97·1

  99·2

  98·3

  99·7

  99·6

  99·2

  99·5

  99·7

  98·6

  99·3

  99·5

  9 October 1993

  99·8

  99·6

  99·5

  99·7

  97·9

  97·9

  97·0

  99·4

  99·7

  98·5

  99·6

  99·7

  98·3

  98·5

  99·4

  5 November 1993

  99·2

  99·1

  98·7

  99·5

  97·8

  97·6

  97·4

  99·6

  99·4

  98·3

  99·5

  99·7

  97·8

  98·7

  98·5

  Note:

  1 New target of 98·5 per cent, set in April 1993.

  Road Contracts
  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps he has taken to improve control and project management of road contracts.

  Mr. Key
  A number of initiatives is in hand ranging from training in the techniques necessary for effective project management to the wider use of design and build forms of contract.

  Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has received the seventh annual report of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee.

  Mr. Freeman
  The report has now been formally received by my right hon. Friend. Copies have today been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

  Marine Safety
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to receive from Lord Donaldson the report of the inquiry set up by him into aspects of marine safety.
  64
  Mr. Norris
  My right hon. Friend expects to receive the report of the inquiry chaired by Lord Donaldson in the early part of next year.

  MV Braer
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has yet received the report from the Marine Accident Investigation Bureau on the grounding of the MV Braer off Shetland on 5 January; and when he expects the publication of the report.

  Mr. Norris
  The Secretary of State has not yet received the report of the chief inspector of marine accidents into the grounding of the Braer, but expects to do so before the end of the year. Publication will follow as soon as practicable thereafter.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Sheep Dips
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when she expects to be able to make a response to the Veterinary Products Committee report on organophosphorus sheep dips; and if she will make a statement.
  65
  Mr. Soames
  The Veterinary Products Committee met on 21 October to consider the future authorisation of organophosphorus sheep dip products. A statement will be made shortly about the committee's advice and the Government's response.

  Civil Servants
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will list for each civil service grade in her Department(a) the total number of persons employed and (b) the total number of women employed.

  Mr. Jack
  The information set out as at 22 November 1993 relates to non-industrial staff in MAFF and its agencies.

  Total staff

  Total number of women

  Grade 1

  1

  0

  Grade 2

  6

  1

  Grade 3

  27

  2

  Grade 4

  12

  0

  Grade 5

  119

  12

  Grade 6

  163

  16

  Grade 7

  927

  162

  SEO

  983

  177

  HEO

  1,923

  575

  EO

  1,942

  890

  AO

  2,798

  1,796

  AA

  2,768

  1,960

  Total

  11,669

  5,591

  The figures are given by grade equivalent and include all permanent staff, casuals and staff on temporary release. Part-time staff are counted as 1·0.

  Live Animals (Transport)
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what discussions she is having to ensure a maximum eight-hour journey for the transport of live animals.

  Mr. Soames
  Negotiations are proceeding on Commission proposals for additional rules for the protection of animals during transport. The Commission examined the case for journey limits but concluded that they would be unenforceable.

  Whales
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make a statement on progress towards a southern ocean sanctuary for whales.

  Mr. Jack
  At the 45th meeting of the International Whaling Commission, held in Japan in May this year, the United Kingdom made clear its support for the concept of a whale sanctuary in the Southern ocean. A number of the IWC contracting parties argued that they needed more time to study some of the detailed aspects of the sanctuary approach, such as the definition of boundaries, matters of jurisdiction and future research plans for such a sanctuary. The Commission decided to endorse the concept of the sanctuary and agreed to work to resolve outstanding issues at a special intersessional working group with a view to taking a final decision at the 46th meeting of the 66
  Commission next May. The intersessional working group is to take place in Australia in February next year. The United Kingdom will attend and will play a full and positive part in the group's deliberations.

  Farms
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many farm holdings were registered with her Department in September.

  Mr. Jack
  A total of 194,000 farms, names and addresses were on the farm holdings list maintained by the Department in 1993.

  Agriculture Staff
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many staff were employed in her Department and within agencies accountable to her dealing with agriculture in September.

  Mr. Jack
  Approximately 8,000 of the staff employed by the Department and its agencies deal with agriculture-related matters. This figure excludes ADAS staff working in Wales who are covered by the Welsh Office Agricultural Department's reply.

  Farm-saved Seeds
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations she has received on liability for royalty payments for farm-saved seeds in preparation for the November meeting of the EC Council of Agriculture Ministers; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: I have received a number of representations both from individual farmers and from some local branches of the National Farmers Union. The question of farm-saved seed is under current consideration as part of the draft EC proposal for a European plant variety rights scheme. The current proposals include a five-year, renewable, derogation that will enable farmers to continue saving seed of the varieties they use in this way at present without the payment of any royalty. For farm-saved seed of varieties not saved at present by individual farmers, a sensibly lower royalty will apply. Our aim in the negotiations will be to ensure that this principle is retained in the final regulation.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Welfare Benefits
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the taxation of welfare benefits, with particular reference to invalidity benefit.

  Mr. Dorrell
  It remains the Government's intention to bring invalidity benefit into taxation at a suitable opportunity.

  Value Added Tax
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish a table showing for each member state of the European Economic Community the rates levied by value added tax on food in shops, household fuel,
  67
  children's clothing, books, newspapers and magazines, public transport, water and sewage services, newly constructed homes, second-hand homes and the standard of

  VAT rates on various supplies in the EC

  Rate of VAT

  Household purchase

  Country

  Food in shops4

  Household fuel

  Children's clothing

  Books18

  Newspapers and magazines18

  Public transport

  Water and sewage supplies

  New34

  Second-hand

  Standard rate

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Belgium

  6

  12, 1119·5

  19·5

  6

  0, 206

  6

  296, 19·5

  6,12,19·5

  36Exempt

  19·5

  Denmark

  25

  25

  25

  25

  0,2125

  22Exempt, 25

  30Exempt, 25

  25

  Exempt

  25

  France1

  5·5, 518·6

  5·5, 1218·6

  18·6

  5·5

  2·1

  230, 5·5

  18·6, 315·5

  18·6

  Exempt

  18·6

  Germany

  7

  15

  15

  7

  7

  247, 15

  7, 2915

  36Exempt

  36Exempt

  15

  Greece2

  8 (6)

  8 13(6), 18, (13)

  18 (13)

  4 (3)

  4 (3)

  8 (6)

  18 (13), 8 (6)

  18, 36(13)

  36Exempt

  18 (13)

  Ireland

  0, 612·5

  12·5

  0

  0

  12·5

  Exempt

  21

  12·5

  Exempt, 4112·5

  21

  Italy

  4, 9, 712

  9, 12, 1419

  12

  4

  4

  25Exempt, 9,12,19

  19

  4, 3719

  4, 3719

  19

  Luxembourg

  3

  6,1512

  3

  3

  3

  15

  32Exempt, 15

  36Exempt

  36Exempt

  15

  Netherlands

  6

  17·5

  17·5

  6

  6

  266, 17·5

  6, 2917·5

  3617·5

  36Exempt

  17·5

  Portugal3

  5 (4), 16 8(12)

  5 16(4), 16(12)

  16 (12)

  5 19(4)

  5 19(4)

  270,5

  5 (4), 16 29(12)

  36Exempt, 5 38(4)

  36Exempt

  16 (12)

  Spain

  3, 96

  15

  15

  3

  3

  6

  6

  3, 6, 3915

  Exempt

  15

  United Kingdom

  0,1017·5

  0,1717·5

  0

  0

  0

  280, 17·5

  330, 17·5

  0, 4017·5

  Exempt, 420

  17·5

  Notes to table showing VAT rates applied to various supplies in the EC

  1. The following rates apply generally in Corsica: 0·9 per cent., 2·1 per cent., 8 per cent. and 13 per cent.

  2. The rate in brackets applies in the departments of Lesbos, Chios, the Dodecanese and the Cyclades, and in the island of Thasos, the Northern Sporades, Samothrace and Skyros. These special rates do not apply to goods sold from the rest of Greece to the Dodecanese, industrial-tobacco products, ready petroleum products, electricity or the supply of services.

  3. The rates in brackets apply in the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores Archipelagoes.

  4. Excluding luxury foods.

  5. Sweets, ice-cream and margarine are subject to the standard rate of 18·6 per cent.

  6. Cakes, crackers and wafers as well as biscuits and chocolate biscuits are subject to the reduced rate of 12 per cent. Alcohol and soft drinks other than fruit juices are subject to 21 per cent. VAT in all circumstances, as is all food and drink supplied through a vending machine.

  7. The lowest rate applies to essential foodstuffs such as bread and pasta. 12 per cent. applies to lobsters and oysters, lobster and oyster preserve, puffed cereal, meat extracts and meat juices, sauces, condiments, soup and broth.

  8. The lower rate applies to unprepared foodstuffs.

  9. 3 per cent applies to ordinary bread, breadmaking flour and cereals, milk, cheese, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables.

  10. Food such as ice-cream, chocolate and confectionery, alcoholic and soft drinks, potato crisps are subject to the standard rate of 17·5 per cent.

  11. The reduced rate applies coal and peat.

  12. The standing charge is subject to <5·5 per cent and the actual supply of heating to 18·6 per cent.

  13. Wood is subject to the reduced rate.

  14. The following are subject to 9 per cent.: wood; electricity and gas for domestic and some industrial uses (excluding gas for domestic heating) and oil. Coal is subject to 12 per cent.

  15. The 6 per cent. rate applies to gas and electricity; wood, oil and coal are subject to 12 per cent.

  16. 5 per cent. applied to electricity and oil.

  17. Fuel for business use is subject to the standard rate of 17·5 per cent. Domestic fuel will be subject to a temporary rate of 8 per cent. from 1 April 1994 and then to the standard rate from 1 April 1995.

  18. Obscene and pornographic material is generally standard rated except in Portugal, where the increased rate applies (30 per cent. in the mainland and 21 per cent. in the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores archipelagoes).

  19. Providing they are considered in the legislation covering these items to be of a cultural, education, recreational or sporting nature.

  20. Magazines and newspapers which appear at least 50 times a year and whose aim is to educate or entertain the general public are subject to the zero rate.

  21. 25 per cent. applies to magazines; 0 per cent. to newspapers.

  22. Transport on regular services is exempt, but on chartered buses is taxable at 25 per cent.

  23 0 per cent. applies to transport in one of the French overseas departments, including Corsica, or overseas territories, by ship or plane.

  24. 7 per cent. applies to transport by rail (excluding funicular railways), in overhead system electric coaches in licensed passenger road transport services and taxis, and on ferries, provided that such transport either takes place within a town or does not exceed 50 kilometres in length. The reduced rate also applies to the transport of employees between their home and work place by employers in their own name and for their own account.
  68
  tax most recently adopted together with notes that outline the most important distinctions where different rates are charged within each category.

  Sir John Cope
  The information requested is shown in the table.
  69
  25. Exemption applies to transport between towns and less than 50 kilometres apart; 9 per cent. applies to transportation in certain vehicles; 12 per cent. applies to air passenger transport.

  26. 6 per cent. applies to transport by rail, tramway or trolleybus, or on ships or ferries, as well as by means of taxi, and aircraft (if the place of departure and arrival are both in the Netherlands).

  27. 0 per cent. applies to transport between Madeira, the Azores and mainland Portugal.

  28. 0 per cent. applies to the following passenger transport: in any vehicle, ship or aircraft designed or adapted to carry not less than twelve passengers; by the Post Office; or on any scheduled flight.

  29. The reduced rate applies to the supply of water; the standard rate to sewage services.

  30. Exempt applies to supplies of water in connection with the letting of a house or premises.

  31. The standard rate applies to the supply of water; the reduced rate to sewage services.

  32. Exemption applies if supplied to joint owners or lessees of apartment buildings by a union of joint owners for the management of property.

  33. 17·5 per cent. applies to supplies made to industry.

  34. In general, sales of new housing are exempt except where they are sold by a building contractor.

  35. 6 per cent. applies to housing for the handicapped; 12 per cent. applies to social housing.

  36. There is the option to tax under certain conditions.

  37. 4 per cent. applies to certain social housing.

  38. 5 per cent. applies to certain constructions of housing by housing associations or local government bodies.

  39. 3 per cent. applies to certain buildings defined as having official protection status; 6 per cent. applies to the joint supply dwellings and their garages and outbuildings.

  40. The zero rate applies if sold by the constructor.

  41. 12·5 per cent. applies if the property was developed since 31 October 1972 and if the input tax was entitled to be reclaimed.

  42. The zero rate applies providing the building is listed and has been substantially reconstructed.

  Charities
  Mr. Burden
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what response he has made to the report of the Charities Tax Reform Group regarding the tax paid by charities in 1992; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir John Cope
  The hon. Member would not expect me to make a statement on taxation matters at this time.

  Community Duties
  Mr. Kinnock
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the policy of Her Majesty's Government towards encouraging employers to allow employees paid time off from work to permit them to fulfil elected and non-elected public and community duties on statutory bodies.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Employees who serve in a public capacity as specified in section 29 of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 are generally entitled to reasonable time off work to carry out their duties. Whether they should be paid for such time off is for employers and employees to agree between themselves. However, we encourage employers who are able to assist employees to undertake these important duties by whatever means are appropriate to their circumstances.

  Tax Fraud
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many prosecutions were brought in each of the last five years as the result of tax fraud; and how many of these related to false accounts and income returns.

  Mr. Dorrell
  I refer the hon. Member to the annual report of the board of Inland Revenue for 1992–93·Appendix 1, table 6·copies of which were laid before Parliament on 29 September 1993.

  Manufacturing
  Dr. Howells
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the latest gross domestic product figures for manufacturing in England, Scotland and Wales.

  Mr. Nelson
  Gross domestic product figures for manufacturing for England, Scotland and Wales for 1991 were published in the December 1992 issue of "Economic Trends".
  70
  More recent figures for United Kingdom manufacturing are available from the CSO database and can be accessed by the House of Commons Library.

  The Scottish Office and Welsh Office publish their own quarterly series for manufacturing output. The latest Welsh figures were published on 13 October in a news release "Welsh Index of Production and Construction 2nd quarter 1993". Scottish figures were published on 10 November in a news release "Index of Production and Construction for Scotland for the second quarter 1993". These are also available from the House of Commons Library.

  Similar information for England is not available.

  Capital Allowances
  Mrs. Beckett
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much the increase in first-year capital allowances for investment in plant and machinery which was announced in the autumn statement of 1992 to cover the period 1 November 1992 to the end of October 1993 cost in 1992–93; and how much it has cost so far in 1993–94.

  Mr. Dorrell
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: Available estimates of the direct revenue effects of enhanced capital allowances announced in the 1992 autumn statement are as follows:

  £ million

  1992–93

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96 (yield +ve/cost -ve)

  nil

  -200

  -700

  +50

  The effects include enhanced allowances for industrial and agricultural buildings but the majority is accounted for by allowances for plant and machinery. The estimates are provisional. Information is not yet available from tax assessments for the relevant period.

EMPLOYMENT

  Disabled People
  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what plans the Government have to improve the employment prospects of disabled people.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The Government will continue to seek improved employment prospects for disabled
  71
  people through a programme of educating and persuading employers as well as by providing wide-ranging and effective practical help. Specific plans include the introduction of "Access to Work" on 1 April 1994, which will provide more flexible employment help for a greater range of disabled people, for example, communication support for deaf people, and support workers for people with severe physical disabilities, mental illness or learning disabilities. We have also published a consultation document with proposals for improving the way in which the sheltered employment programme can help severely disabled people.

  London University (Redundancies)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list those colleges which are full schools of the university of London and have declined to pay redundant employees statutory redundancy pay in 1992 and 1993; and what action he proposes to take against colleges which have refused to reimburse his Department.

  Miss Widdecombe
  Disputes about entitlement to statutory redundancy payments are matters for the employer and employee(s) concerned, for determination by an industrial tribunal if necessary.

  A statutory redundancy payment was made by the Department to a former employee of Goldsmiths' college in March 1993 following an award by an industrial tribunal. The provisions of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 enable the Department to seek recovery of the payment from the employer. The Department takes all reasonable steps to recover such debts.

  ABB Transportation Ltd.
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many people made redundant by ABB Transportation Ltd. in York in the past three months have(a) claimed unemployment benefit, (b) been paid unemployment benefit, (c) had their unemployment benefit suspended and (d) had their unemployment benefit reinstated without loss of benefit.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service Agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from M. E. G. Fogden to Mr. Hugh Bayley, dated 24 November 1993:
  As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency, the Secretary of State has asked me to write to you direct to respond to your Parliamentary Question to him about people made redundant by ABB Transportation Ltd. who had claimed unemployment benefit, been paid unemployment benefit, been suspended from payment of unemployment benefit, and whose unemployment benefit had been reinstated. This is something which falls within the responsibilities he has delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.
  Unfortunately, the information is not available. No records are kept on the number of clients claiming benefit who have been made redundant from a particular firm, or about the status of their claim. This information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
  I am sorry I cannot be of help on this occasion.
  As decided by the Administration Committee of the House of Commons, Chief Executive replies to written Parliamentary Questions will now be published in the Official Report. I will also place a copy of this letter in the Library of the House.

  Social Affairs Council
  Mr. Duncan-Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the outcome of the EC Social Affairs Council held on 23 November.

  Mr. David Hunt
  I and the Minister of State for Employment attended the meeting of the Labour and Social Affairs Council held on 23 November.

  Final agreement was reached on the draft directive on working time. The agreement retains all the key changes which the United Kingdom had secured in the earlier common position. In particular:
  the right for individual workers to work more than 48 hours a week if they wish;
  that Sunday working should remain a matter for national law; and
  provision to allow company and plant agreements to derogate from the main provisions of the directive.

  In the Government's view, however, the directive represents a misuse of the health and safety provisions of the Single European Act and accordingly the Government will be challenging the legal base of the directive in the European Court of Justice.

  Final agreement was also reached on the draft directive on the protection of workers on board fishing vessels, following consideration of the European Parliament's comments.

  The Council also reached a common position on the draft directive on the protection of young workers on which a political agreement to meet our concerns had been reached at the last Council. The common position confirms the United Kingdom's renewable option not to implement the key parts of articles 8 and 9 of the draft directive dealing with daily and weekly hours of work and restrictions on night work for 16 and 17-year-olds and ensures that young people below school leaving age can continue, as now, to undertake light work such as newspaper deliveries from the age of 13 on the same basis as at present.

  The Council also discussed the draft directives on parental leave and on the burden of proof in the area of equal pay and equal treatment for women and men. On neither was an agreement reached. A number of member states, including the United Kingdom, continue to have difficulties with the proposals.

  The Council also heard presentations from the Social Affairs Commissioner on his Green Paper on European social policy and on progress with the Commission's draft White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment. He also reported that, on the draft directive on European works councils, the Commission had initiated the process of consultation under the agreement of the Eleven set out in the protocol to the Maastricht treaty. The Council was also given brief progress reports on the draft directives on non-standard employment and the posting of workers.

  There was also a discussion on a proposed Community programme on social exclusion, to follow the current Poverty 3 programme. Opinions were divided on the timing of any new programme and the size of its budget.

  Finally a declaration was agreed to mark the end of the European Year of Older People and Solidarity between Generations.

SCOTLAND

  Farm Holdings
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many farm holdings were registered with his Department in September.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Including common grazings, the total of farm holdings recorded with the Scottish Office Agriculture and Fisheries Department on the agricultural census file on 22 November 1993 is 52,383. Since this file is continuously updated it is not possible to provide figures as at September. However, the September total is unlikely to be significantly different from the above quoted figure.

  Agriculture Agencies
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many staff were employed within his Department and within agencies accountable to him dealing with agriculture in September.

  Education authority schools (including nursery and special schools)

  1992

  1993

  Number

  As percentage of pupils present

  Number

  As percentage of pupils present

  Pupils present on census day

  695,201

  —

  687,081

  —

  Pupils taking school meals

  —on payment

  227,740

  32·8

  238,493

  34·7

  —free

  107,186

  15·4

  107,709

  15·7

  —Total

  334,926

  48·2

  346,202

  50·4

  Pupils bringing their own food to school 1

  132,263

  19·0

  122,812

  17·9

  1 A number of pupils took neither school meals nor brought food to school. These pupils would generally either have gone home for lunch or have eaten out locally.

  A detailed statement of the returns from education authorities from which these national figures are derived is being placed in the Library.

  Primary

  Secondary

  11992 Per cent.

  21993 Per cent.

  31992 Per cent.

  41993 Per cent.

  Pupils taking school meals

  52·9

  55·2

  46·1

  47·8

  Pupils bringing own food

  27·6

  26·9

  8·4

  6·2

  1Includes 14 special departments where data have been included in primary school figures.

  2Includes 3 special and 3 nursery departments where data has been included in primary school figures.

  3Includes 17 special departments where special data have been included in secondary school figures.

  4Includes 1 primary and 9 special departments where data has been included in secondary school figures.

  Sixty seven per cent. of all meals served are cafeteria style:

  1992

  1993

  Paid

  Free

  Total

  Percentage of pupils present

  Paid

  Free

  Total

  Percentage of pupils present

  Pupils taking fixed meals

  71,824

  35,260

  107,084

  15·4

  77,690

  37,047

  114,737

  16·7

  Pupils taking cafeteria meals

  155,916

  71,926

  227,842

  32·7

  160,803

  70,662

  231,465

  33·7

  Council Tax
  Mr. Hutton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many appeals against liability for the council tax have been made this year in Scotland; what is the average length of time taken to hear these appeals; and what proportion of appeals was successful.
  74
  Mr. Lang
  At 1 October 1993 the number of staff employed within my Department and executive agencies dealing with agriculture was 1,046.

  School Meals
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what are the results of the annual census of school meals in Scotland held in January 1993; and what were the corresponding 1992 results.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information is set out in the table. The number of pupils taking school meals has continued to increase, despite a fall in the number of pupils present on census day. Just over half the pupils present on census day took school meals with a further estimated 17·9 per cent. bringing their own food to school. Free meals formed 31 per cent. of the total meals provided. Cafeteria style meals remain more popular than two-course fixed meals.

  The following table shows, as a percentage of pupils attending their respective sectors, those primary and secondary pupils taking meals or bringing their own food.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: Scottish local authority finance departments have notified the Scottish Office of a total of six appeals against liability for the council tax, lodged in the period up to September 1993. All these appeals were withdrawn by the appellants.

  Amkor Anam Europe Ltd.
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much money his Department has recovered in grant assistance from Amkor Anam Europe Ltd. following the closure of its Irvine plant in November 1992.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: I refer the hon. Member to my answer on 5 November, c. 241.

  Maternity Benefits
  Mr. Connarty
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will extend the provision of statutory maternity benefits to adoptive mothers.

  Mr. Hague
  I have been asked to reply.

  Statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance provide a measure of earnings replacement to help working women give up work around the time of the birth in the interests of their own and their unborn baby's health. There are no plans to extend maternity benefits to mothers of adopted children.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Nuclear Reprocessing
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make it his policy to place on the agenda of the meeting between the European Community Foreign Affairs Council and the United States Government the proliferation consequences for global security policies of the planned expansion of reprocessing capacity at nuclear facilities in the EC.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The date and the agenda for the next meeting of the European Union Foreign Affairs Council and the United States Government have not yet been fixed.

  Nuclear Weapons
  Mr. Chisholm
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what pressure was exerted by United Kingdom representatives at the United Nations on delegates of the non-aligned movement in order to dissuade them from supporting that movement's resolution of November on the legality of nuclear weapons.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  None. We spoke to representatives of various countries about the proposed resolution and put to them our arguments against it.

  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs by what means his Department keeps under review the prospects for entering British strategic nuclear weapons into multilateral disarmament negotiations.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  This is a matter primarily for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. Our policy takes continually into account developments in the strategic environment, the effectiveness of measures designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the need to maintain force levels sufficient to provide a credible minimum deterrent.
  76
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what is his Department's position on the adoption of a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons by the United Kingdom;

  (2) what consideration his Department is giving to the implications for (a) the United Kingdom and (b) NATO of the declaration of a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons by the United States of America.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said in a speech on 16 November, we are deeply sceptical about the value of any such declaration, the implication of which would be that conventional aggression could be undertaken without fear of crossing the nuclear threshold.

  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his assessment of the prospects of the Government entering British strategic nuclear weapons into multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We see no immediate prospect of United Kingdom strategic nuclear weapons being entered into multilateral disarmament negotiations.

  European Union
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to publish a consolidated version of the treaty of Rome, as amended by the treaty of European Union, either together with or separate from the remaining parts of that treaty.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  A consolidated text of the treaty of Rome incorporating the amendments made by the treaty on European Union was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities (C244 Volume 35) on 31 August 1992. It has been available through HMSO outlets since that time. We have no present plans ourselves to publish a consolidated version of the treaty.

  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the ways in which the United Kingdom has sought to honour its obligations under article VI of the non-proliferation treaty.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We have already announced significant reductions in our sub-strategic nuclear capability, including ending our role in deployment of Lance missile and nuclear artillery in Europe, ending our maritime tactical nuclear capability and a reduction of about 50 per cent. in the number of our nuclear free-fall bombs. In addition my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence announced on 16 November that each Trident submarine would carry no more than 96 warheads compared with the previous intention to carry no more than 128, and that the actual number might be significantly fewer. We believe that a comprehensive test ban and a convention prohibiting the production of fissile material for weapons purposes could, if widely applicable and effectively verifiable, make a valuable contribution to non-proliferation and we have made clear that we are prepared to work for the conclusion of such agreements.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards countries seeking to develop and deploy nuclear weapons for their own national self-defence.
  77
  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  A total of 157 countries have already committed themselves to non-nuclear weapon status by acceding to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as non-nuclear weapon states. We look to these states to honour their obligations under the treaty. We continue to urge the remaining 28 non-parties to the treaty to accede at the earliest possible date.

  Mr. Chisholm
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the Government's attitude to the non-aligned movement's resolution on the legality of nuclear weapons submitted this month to the Disarmament Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  The resolution was, in the end, not put to a vote. We believe anyway that the use of nuclear weapons would have to be judged as lawful or not in the light of the particular circumstances in which they were used and that therefore it would be wrong to burden the International Court of Justice with this hypothetical question.

  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs by what means the declaration on the entry into force of the treaty on European Union made by the General Council of the European Community has been officially published and publicised in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  A copy of the declaration made by the European Council on the entry into force of the treaty on European Union has been deposited in the Library of the House, as has a copy of the report of the General Affairs Council on implementation of the treaty.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Scretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how he intends to implement the common foreign and security policy of the European Union in the interest of the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We will work with other member states to build on European political co-operation and ensure that intergovernmental co-operation under the common foreign and security policy works effectively. We will continue to press for an active common foreign and security policy in areas in which member states have important interests in common.

  Argentina
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations his Department has received from(a) overseas Governments and (b) commercial companies with regard to the relaxation of the embargo on the sale of military equipment to Argentina.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  Any discussions that take place with overseas Governments on the question of the sale of military equipment to Argentina are confidential. We are not aware of any approaches to the Department from commercial companies about a relaxation of the embargo on the sale of military equipment to Argentina.

  Pakistan
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further information he has received about Mr. Ghazanfer Ali in prison in Pakistan.
  78
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  I wrote to the hon. Member for Bradford, West on 27 October with information on the three cases involving two murder charges and an illegal possession of firearms charge against Ghazanfer Ali. The cases have been further adjourned until 23 November, 7 and 11 December.

  Government Communications Headquarters
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the situation at GCHQ arising from his recent meeting with civil service union leaders.

  Mr. Hurd
  I have had no such meeting. On 10 November, officials, including Sir Robin Butler, had a further meeting with the civil service unions. Various suggestions from both sides were discussed, but no agreement was reached.

  Saudi Arabia
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations have been made to the Saudi Government to allow the same freedom of religion internally as that enjoyed by Saudi nationals in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We and our European Community partners consistently seek opportunities to discuss human rights, including freedom of worship, with the Saudi authorities, who can be in no doubt of the strength of our views on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs last did so during his visit to Saudi Arabia in September this year.

  India
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next intends to meet the Indian Foreign Minister to discuss human rights in India.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  My right honourable Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs last met the Indian Foreign Minister in New Delhi on 15 November, when he discussed bilateral issues. There are no definite plans for their next meeting. He discussed human rights during meetings with the Indian Prime Minister and Home Minister in New Delhi on 15 November.

  Hong Kong
  Mr. Gale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if Her Majesty's Government will give their support for the establishment of an endangered species task force in Hong Kong, under the auspices of the police and customs, to enforce domestic and international bans on trade in rhinoceros products; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  As a result of a recent review, the Hong Kong Government have decided to establish an endangered species protection liaison group with responsibility for information gathering, planning and co-ordination of enforcement operations and co-ordinating liaison with national and international agencies including non-governmental organisations.
  79
  We fully support these efforts by the Hong Kong Government to improve the enforcement of their endangered species legislation which includes a ban in trade in rhino products.

  Human Rights
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to issue his five-yearly report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee on British human rights; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The United Kingdom is due to submit its next report to the Human Rights Committee in August 1994.

  European Institutes
  Ms Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will give estimates for the number of jobs which will be created directly by each of the European institutes whose location was agreed at the European summit on 29 October.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  Reliable estimates do not exist for staffing levels of all the institutions in question, although staff numbers will be constrained by budgetary limits. Jobs will not in all cases be fitted by new staff. We understand the position to be as follows:

  European Environment Agency

  The agency's first work programme will be agreed in mid-1994 and organisations will then be chosen as topic centres to carry out specific projects. Until then, it is not possible to estimate the number of jobs which could be created by the agency.

  European Training Foundation

  There is no information currently available about the likely staffing level of the European Training Foundation.

  Office for Veterinary and Plant-health Inspection and Control

  There is no information currently available about the likely staffing level of the Office for Veterinary and Plant-Health Inspection and Control.

  European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction

  The Commission anticipates that the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction will create approximately 30 posts.

  European Medicines Evaluation Agency

  A report prepared for the Commission by independent consultants estimated that staffing levels would be up to 150 full-time staff in 1995 when the EMEA begins business, rising to some 250 by 1999.

  Agency for Health and Safety at Work

  There is no information currently available about the likely staffing level of the Agency for Health and Safety at Work.

  European Monetary Institute/European Central Bank

  It will be for the Council of the European Monetary Institute to decide on the number of staff employed in the Institute. The EMI's Council has not yet met to consider its staffing level.

  Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market

  In 1990 the Commission, based on a study by consultants, estimated staff numbers at about 300.
  80
  Europol (and Europol Drugs Unit)

  The Europol Drugs Unit is the pre-convention phase of Europol. Staffing numbers are still only estimates and cannot be clarified until 1 April 1994 when the Europol Drugs Unit moves out of its start-up phase. Estimates are that the Unit will start with about 30 members of staff, including support staff. This will be augmented by additional analysts, liaison officers and support staff as the work demands but is not expected to go beyond 60 to 70 in the pre-convention phase.

  European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP)

  Seventy six people are currently employed in CEDEFOP's Berlin seat. At the European Council on 29 October 1993 it was decided that CEDEFOP's seat should move to Thessaloniki. No change in staffing level is envisaged as a result of the move.

  Plutonium Smuggling
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has received from his German counterpart on the evidence held against British citizen Albert Derbyshire on trial in Flensburg for smuggling plutonium from Russia.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Evidence against Mr. Derbyshire is available only to the prosecuting authorities and his defence lawyer. It is not available to foreign Governments. Mr. Derbyshire's guilt or innocence is a matter for the German courts and Mr. Derbyshire's lawyer.

  COCOM
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) if he will make a statement on the future of COCOM;

  (2) if he will make a statement on the matters discussed and decisions taken at the meeting of the co-ordinating committee on multilateral export controls held in The Hague on 16 November.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Representatives of the Governments participating in COCOM met in The Hague on 16 November. They agreed that COCOM should be terminated as soon as possible, but no later than 31 March 1994. There was also broad agreement that at the same time, new arrangements should be established to promote transparency and responsibility in the transfer of armaments and related dual use goods: the details of the new arrangements remain to be decided.

  Civil Servants
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list for each civil service grade in his Department(a) the total number of persons employed and (b) the total number of women employed.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  As at 1 April 1993, the number of persons and the number of women employed in each grade within this Department, including agencies, was:

  Total number of persons employed

  Total number of women employed

  Open structure

  Grade 1

  1

  —

  Grade 2

  2

  —

  81

  Total number of persons employed

  Total number of women employed

  Grade 3

  14

  1

  Grade 4

  2

  —

  Grade 5

  8>4·5

  <5·5

  Grade 6

  102

  9

  Grade 7

  373

  53

  Occupational groups

  Senior Executive Officer

  217

  26

  Higher Executive Officer (D)

  9

  3

  Higher Executive Officer

  536·5

  109

  Executive Officer

  1,10<5·5

  322

  Administrative Officer

  928

  55>4·5

  Administrative Assistant

  318

  171·5

  Senior Economic Assistant

  13

  —

  Economic Assistant

  2

  1

  Senior Assistant Statistician

  2

  1

  Assistant Statistician

  1

  1

  Senior Information Officer

  14

  9

  Information Officer

  33

  21

  Assistant Information Officer

  12

  7

  Senior Librarian

  4

  4

  Librarian

  7

  7

  Assistant Librarian

  21·5

  15·5

  Museum Curatorial Grade D

  3

  3

  Museum Curatorial Grade E

  1

  1

  Museum Curatorial Grade F

  2

  —

  Senior P and T Officer

  51

  2

  Higher P and T Officer

  51

  1

  P and T Officer

  22

  —

  Technical Grade 1

  8

  —

  Higher Mapping and Charting Officer

  1

  —

  Mapping and Charting Officer

  1

  —

  Mapping and Charting Officer Technical Grade 1

  1

  1

  Senior Research Officer (R)

  10

  1

  Typing Manager

  4·5

  4·5

  Senior Personal Secretary

  7·5

  7·5

  Personal Secretary 142·5

  142·5

  Typist

  76

  75

  Senior Scientific Officer

  7>4·5

  1>4·5

  Higher Scientific Officer

  53

  18

  Scientific Officer

  33

  11

  Assistant Scientific Officer

  18·5

  9·5

  Catering Manager 1

  1

  —

  Catering Manager 2

  1

  —

  Catering Manager 3

  2

  —

  Higher Photographic Officer

  1

  —

  Photographic Officer

  1

  —

  P and GS Grade B

  3

  —

  P and GS Grade C

  5

  —

  P and GS Grade D

  11

  —

  P and GS Grade E

  16

  —

  Stores Officer Grade B

  1

  —

  Stores Officer Grade C

  3

  —

  Stores Officer Grade D

  6

  1

  Support Manager 1

  5

  —

  Support Manager 2

  10

  6

  Support Manager 3

  45

  20

  Support Grade Band 1

  225

  85

  Support Grade Band 2

  324

  140·5

  Senior TTO

  21

  —

  Higher TTO

  78

  1

  TTO

  105

  1

  Assistant TTO

  98

  3

  Trainee TTO

  18

  2

  Communications Officer IV

  1

  1

  Industrial grades

  56

  23·5

  Departmental Groups

  Senior Grade

  145

  5

  Diplomatic Service Grade 4

  275

  10

  Diplomatic Service Grade 5

  439·5

  55

  Diplomatic Service Grade 6

  272·5

  29

  82

  Total number of persons employed

  Total number of women employed

  Diplomatic Service Grade 7M

  414

  94

  Diplomatic Service Grade 7D

  122·5

  37·5

  Diplomatic Service Grade 8

  45

  11

  Diplomatic Service Grade 9

  792·5

  397·5

  Diplomatic Service Grade 10

  558

  227

  Legal Adviser

  1

  —

  Second Legal Adviser

  1

  —

  Deputy Legal Adviser

  2

  —

  Legal Counsellor

  7

  3

  Senior Assistant Legal Adviser

  8

  2

  Assistant Legal Adviser

  7

  3

  Research Counsellor

  3

  —

  Senior Principal Research Officer

  13

  3

  Principal Research Officer

  27·5

  13·5

  Senior Research Officer

  10·5

  1·5

  Research Officer

  2

  2

  Diplomatic Service Grade 6C

  1

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 8C

  21

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 9C

  14

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 5T

  1

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 6T

  1

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 7T

  26

  —

  Diplomatic Service Grade 8T

  50

  1

  Diplomatic Service Grade 9T

  17

  1

  Secretary 1

  120

  120

  Secretary 2

  465·5

  464·5

  Secretary 3

  7·5

  6·5

  Chief Overseas Security Officer

  40

  —

  Overseas Security Officer

  171

  2

  Nurse

  4

  4

  Doctor

  5

  1

  Senior Lecturer

  10

  7

  Senior Field Investigating Officer

  1

  —

  Field Investigating Officer 2

  16

  3

  Translator 1

  1

  —

  Translator 2

  3·5

  3·5

  Translator 3

  3

  3

  Chief Cypher Superintendent

  3

  —

  Cypher Superintendent

  19

  —

  Cypher Supervisor

  45

  3

  Telecommunications & Cypher Officer

  118

  10

  Operator Technician

  1

  —

  Queen's Messenger

  29

  —

  Queen's Messenger Escort

  3

  —

  El Salvador
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what monitoring his Department is undertaking of the election process in El Salvador.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We have appointed Dr. David Browning as the British Government's observer of the elections in El Salvador in March. He is there now, observing preparations, and will return for the elections. Our ambassador continues to monitor all aspects of the electoral process.

  Western Sahara
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action his Department is undertaking to ensure the compliance of the relevant parties to the United States resolutions on the western Sahara.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We will continue to urge both sides to co-operate with the UN Secretary-General in implementing the UN settlement plan.

  Indonesia
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations have been made to the Government of Indonesia concerning human rights in East Timor.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  In our contacts with the Indonesian authorities, and in the relevant international bodies, we and our European Community partners have, on numerous occasions, underlined our concern that human rights should be respected in East Timor. The matter was raised most recently on 23 November with the Indonesian Minister for Research and Technology during his visit to the United Kingdom.

  Antarctica
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to bring forward legislation to repeal the Antarctic Minerals Act 1989 and to ratify the Antarctic environmental protocol; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We intend that a provision to repeal the Antarctic Minerals Act 1989 should be included in a Bill to give effect to the environmental protection protocol to the Antarctic treaty. We hope that this Bill can be introduced at an early opportunity.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Fraud
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) if he will give(a) the number of staff engaged in his Department on fraud prevention work, (b) the amount of money saved as a result, (c) the unit cost ratio of cost to benefit and (d) the number of cases in which fraud was detected and the number of prosecutions which resulted in each of the last 10 years;

  (2) if he will give (a) the number of people arrested for DSS fraud or abuse, (b) the number of cases where no further action was taken, (c) the number cautioned, (d) the number of people charged by the police, (e) the number of cases sent to the Crown prosecution service, (f) the number of cases discontinued by the Crown prosecution service, (g) the number of cases completed in the magistrates court,
  (h) the number of convictions and (i) the number acquitted at court, for each year since 1979;

  (3) what is the target for fraud savings in his Department for 1993–94 and 1994–95; how these figures are arrived at; if he will break them down into amounts of (a) sector fraud and (b) organised fraud, and give the amounts for each of the main benefits, the multiplier used and any other relevant factors contributing to the target figure; and what percentage and amount of the figure will come from housing benefit payments;

  (4) if he will give details of the various multipliers used by his Department in calculating fraud savings and the circumstances in which these are applied.

  Mr. Hague
  The administration of benefit fraud is a matter for Mr. Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member with such information as is available.
  84
  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Donald Dewar, dated 24 November 1993:
  As Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency, it is my responsibility to answer questions about relevant operational matters. I am therefore replying to your recent Parliamentary Questions to the Secretary of State for Social Security asking about benefit fraud.
  The full range of information requested is not available in every instance but I hope that you will find the following helpful. It may be helpful if I deal with each question in turn.
  Your first question asks about the number of staff employed on fraud prevention and the results achieved.
  From October this year I have established a new security Branch in Leeds with a responsibility to ensure a co-ordinated and strategic approach to fraud and security matters, and to protect programme expenditure against fraud and abuse.
  The Department of Social Security's strategy for combatting fraud is based on three principles:
  PREVENTION minimising/eliminating opportunities for Fraud
  DETECTION catching those who try to cheat the system
  DETERRENCE persuading potential fraudsters that it is wrong and not worth the risk.
  Along with their other duties, staff in many parts of the Department and its Agencies are concerned with fraud prevention. For example, the way in which claims for benefit are processed, or payments are made, can help to protect the system against abuse. Resources devoted to this general anti-fraud work are not separately identified.
  However, figures for the specialist fraud commands within the Benefits Agency are available. As at 31 March 1993 Sector Fraud employed 2,837 staff in the prevention and detection of fraud and abuse. Organised Fraud, a specialist unit set up to investigate suspected organised fraud, employed about 240.
  In the year ending 31 March 1993 sector Fraud recorded total savings of £516 million, made up of weekly benefit savings of £491 million, and instrument of payment savings of £25 million, at a cost of £64·7 million. In the same period Organised Fraud recorded total savings of £42 million and cost £7·7 million.
  The fraud organisation was set up in its present form only in January 1991 and although it is constantly refining the way in which statistics are maintained, figures for the number of cases in which fraud was detected. However, I am able to tell you from the sector fraud figures available that in the year ending 31 March 1992 approximately 250,000 cases were successfully investigated and resulted in a saving of public funds. In the same year 4,379 prosecutions were undertaken. In the year ending 31 March 1993 the figures were approximately 270,000 investigations and 5,239 prosecutions.
  The prosecutions undertaken in the last ten years are as follows:

  Number

  1983–84

  8,997

  1984–85

  6,702

  1985–86

  6,679

  1986–87

  6,603

  1987–88

  7,231

  1988–89

  8,222

  1989–90

  8,671

  1990–91

  7,911

  1991–92

  14,379

  1992–93

  5,814

  1 Figures are not available for organised fraud for 1991–92.

  The Department operates a selective and humane prosecution policy. It is felt that it is more important to check the abuse of the system than to mount expensive prosecutions where, having full regard to the nature of the offence and the debt involved, it would not be cost effective to do so. Steps are being taken to strike a better balance between the benefit savings achieved and the prosecutions undertaken.
  Your second question asks about cases which were considered for prosecution by the Department or the Police.
  In the year ending 31 March 1993 Organised Fraud's activities led to the arrest of 1,400 people, of whom 575 were subsequently

  85
  prosecuted. Of these 575 prosecutions, 556 (97 per cent.) were successful with over 200 receiving custodial sentences ranging from six months to eight years.
  Police arrest is a very extreme measure normally used only in dealing with criminals involved in organised fraud, and has little or no relevance to the work of sector fraud and the customers of the Benefits Agency with whom they come into contact in the course of their investigations.
  The Department's policy towards fraud is to detect it rapidly, investigate it efficiently and to prosecute offenders where appropriate. Prosecutions are handled by the laying of information and summons. I have quoted our prosecution figures since 1983–84 above.
  I regret that statistics on arrests are not kept in a way which would enable me to answer your detailed enquiry.
  Your third and fourth questions ask about the targets set for fraud savings, how these figures have been arrived at and details of the multipliers used in calculating them.
  Instrument of Payment savings are not subject to any multiplier and all such savings are recorded at face value.
  A multiplier of 32 weeks is applied to the amount of weekly Benefit Savings recorded as a result of other successful fraud investigations or interventions. This single multiplier is currently applied to all benefits payable by the Department and reflects the anticipated average period for which claims could be expected to run in the absence of a successful fraud intervention.
  Given the nature of the work of Organised Fraud, no formal target is set for that organisation. Although Organised Fraud do achieve and record benefit savings its role has a large element of prevention and a target in monetary terms is not appropriate.
  The target set for the Sector Fraud organisation is based mainly on previous years' achievements using empirical data and is set by the Secretary of State taking into account the resources which are available for the anti-fraud effort.
  The target for 1993–94 is £557 million and early indications are that the target will be achieved. The target for 1994–95 has not been finalised but is likely to be higher than this year.
  The targets are set as a global figure and are not broken down into the various benefits.
  I would draw your attention to the Report "Fighting Fraud in 1992–93" which gives fuller detail of the fraud effort for that year.
  I hope you find this reply helpful. A copy will appear in the Official Report and a copy will be placed in the Library.

  Maxwell Insolvency Practitioners
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when the Government will respond to the Fourth Report of the Social Security Select Committee of Session 1992–93 on the work of the Maxwell insolvency practitioners, HC 835; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hague
  The Government's response to the Select Committee's report is published today. We welcome the Committee's continued interest in the Maxwell affair and share its view that this is an exceptional case. We also welcome the Committee's recognition of the value of the measures we have taken in response to the plight of the Maxwell pensioners, which have ensured that pensions have been kept in payment while work to recover the missing pension fund assets continues.

  The Government recognise that the pension scheme trustees and the liquidators of Bishopsgate Investment Management Ltd. have had to undertaken a vast amount of work in unravelling the huge amount of complex information surrounding pension scheme transactions in order to establish claims against employers and others. This work has now been largely completed. Writs have been issued against some financial institutions.

  The Government strongly support the initiative taken by the Maxwell Pensioners Trust to promote an overall settlement to the disputes. A speedy settlement must be in everyone's best interests, especially the pensioners.

  Chief Adjudication Officer
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when he will publish the ninth annual report of the Chief Adjudication Officer; and if he will make a statment.

  Mr. Lilley
  The report is being published today. The report's findings point to an improvement in some areas of adjudication, particularly on many of the benefits administered in Benefits Agency districts. Standards of adjudication within the child benefit centre, the Newcastle pensions directorate and the overseas benefit directorate remain high. The report also acknowledges the contribution that the Employment Service's quality control package has made to initiatives aimed at improving adjudication.

  But in other areas standards are disappointing. I have accordingly sought assurances from the chief executives of the Employment Service Agency and the Benefits Agency that work is in hand urgently to address the weaknesses identified. I am pleased to note that numerous initiatives are already in place, including, in the Employment Service, a working group on the evidence needed to establish entitlement and, in the Benefits Agency, the requirement that district business plans are specific about adjudication standards.

  I am satisfied that both the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency are committed to better standards of adjudication and the increased emphasis on quality in agency business plans for 1993–94 and I look forward to progress in coming years. The chief adjudication officer has commented in his report on the commitment of senior management to improving adjudication standards and welcomes all measures designed to effect such improvements.

  Eleven recommendations to address certain of the problems identified in the report have been made by the chief adjudication officer. These recommendations are being considered and a formal response will be made in due course.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Nominal Rental Charges
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chairman of the Finance and Services Committee what consideration has been given to calculating nominal rental charges for hon. Members' offices and for the rifle range; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Channon
  None.

  Members' Rooms
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Chairman of the Accommodation and Works Committee how many hon. Members have more than one room in the parliamentary precincts.

  Mr. Ray Powell
  Five.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Business (Ethnic Minorities)
  Ms Abbott
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans he has to help ethnic minority business.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  All the schemes and support funded by my Department to assist businesses are available to ethnic minority businesses.

  Exports
  Mr. Evennett
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he last met the Confederation of British Industry to discuss exports; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Needham
  When my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade addressed the CBI's annual conference on 15 November he outlined the major improvements he has been making to the Department's export promotion efforts.

  Deregulation
  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the progress of his deregulation proposals.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Hendry).

  Mr. Steen
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many officials are employed in deregulation duties in his Department.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  At present 50 people, including secondees from the private sector, are employed in the deregulation unit. In addition, officials in all Government Departments are reviewing regulations for which they are responsible.

  Exports (Japan)
  Dr. Spink
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the current level of exports to Japan.

  Mr. Needham
  I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers).

  Paper Recycling
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what proposals his Department has for supporting the recycling paper and cardboard industry.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The producer responsibility initiative launched by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and myself is beginning to result in actions which should help to sustain the recycling infrastructure for paper and board. We are continuing to press the EC Commission to expedite consideration of industries' complaints concerning the German packaging ordinance.

  Steel Subsidies
  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what recent discussions he has had with his EC counterparts with a view to eliminating state subsidies throughout the steel industry.
  88
  Mr. Sainsbury
  At the Industry Council on 18 November, I stressed the importance of eliminating operating cost subsidies throughout the EC steel industry. The Council was unable to reach agreement on six requests for derogations from the steel state aids code. The formal conclusions of the 21 September Industry Council had confirmed the obligation to apply this code, and made particular reference to eliminating cost subsidies.

  Trade (Eastern Europe)
  Ms Quin
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what new measures he is proposing to take to increase trade between the United Kingdom and eastern Europe.

  Mr. Needham
  My Department already provides a range of services to encourage greater trade between the United Kingdom and eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union. The measures include support for outward missions—sometimes led ministerially—and participation in overseas trade fairs as well as the provision of general and specific information and advice about the markets and the opportunities in them.

  The major reorganisation of DTI export services earlier this year has enhanced the services provided by the Department. Each of the six major markets in eastern Europe—those in the United Kingdom's list of the top 80 United Kingdom export markets—is now served by a dedicated desk officer. In addition, five of the export promoters—private sector secondees—taken on by the Department are already working closely with the relevant market branch to help United Kingdom companies find business in the region.

  A detailed list of all DTI assistance to exporters is included in the British Overseas Trade Board annual report 1992–93. A copy has been placed in the Library of the House.

  Manufacturing Industry
  Mr. Corbett
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans he has to meet the Engineering Employers Federation to discuss policies designed to improve capital investment in manufacturing industry; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heseltine
  I met representatives of the EEF earlier this year to discuss their proposals for improving the competitiveness of United Kingdom manufacturing. The federation continues to have frequent contact with Ministers and senior officials in my Department.

  Recession
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is his Department's assessment of the effects of the recent recession on business and employment in south-east England.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  The recession affected all parts of the country, including the south-east. Its impact on the service sector was noticeable in the south-east where service industries are a significant element in the regional economy.

  Exports (Non-tariff Barriers)
  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what action he is taking to protect British companies against non-tariff barriers to their exports.

  Mr. Needham
  A prime objective of the current GATT Uruguay round market access negotiations is the substantial reduction or elimination of non-tariff barriers by all participants. The Government fully support this objective and the European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the European Community, continues to press trading partners for major concessions on non-tariff barriers.

  Small Businesses (Regulation)
  Mr. Deva
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what assessment has been made of the damage to small companies by excessive regulation.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  This is impossible to quantify at the moment. Our analysis of existing regulations is not yet complete. We have, however, received a great deal of evidence showing that the cumulative burden of regulation diverts the money and time of small firms management into unproductive channels.

  Business Link
  Mr. Trend
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made with business link; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Business links are open in Birmingham and Leicester, where local companies have a single point of access to a wide range of business support services. Plans have been approved in principle for the development of business links in 17 areas which will lead to a further 50 business link outlets. By the end of this Parliament I expect to see in place a national network of more than 200 business links.

  Telecommunications Licences
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is his policy on the issue of new licences for telecommunications operations.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The Government's policy on the issue of new licences for telecommunications operations continues to be based on the 1991 White Paper "Competition and Choice: Telecommunications Policy for the 1990s" (Cm 1461). Class licences, which do not require an individual application, cover the provision of a wide range of telecoms services, while applications for individual licences are considered on their merits.

  Aerospace Industry
  Mr. Gallie
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to achieve open and fair markets for the British aerospace industry.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  My Department is liaising actively with the Commission, our European partners, and the United Kingdom aerospace industry on the GATT civil aerospace negotiations in order to bring about a more open international market for civil aircraft, engines, and equipment.

  Single Market
  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what discussions he has had with the Confederation of British Industry about progress of the single market.

  Mr. Needham
  The President of the Board of Trade attended and addresed the CBI national conference on 15 November. Officials have frequent and intensive discussions with the CBI about ensuring the proper functioning of the single market.

  Foam-filled Furniture
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received further representations from firms manufacturing foam and foam-filled furniture about the dangers of low-quality imports.

  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what representations he has had from United Kingdom furniture manufacturers about the risks from imported foam-filled furniture.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Three identifiable businesses responding to the recent consultation on the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, as amended, as part of my Department's deregulation initiative review alleged that some imported foam-filled furniture does not comply with the regulations. The regulations apply to all domestic upholstered furniture intended for supply to the United Kingdom market, and accordingly local authority trading standards officers, who have day-to-day responsibility for enforcement of the legislation, have powers to deal with any non-complying furniture, whatever its country of manufacture.

  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what changes his Department is considering to existing legislation on the use of fire-retardant foam in furniture.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, as amended, which include requirements for the use of fire retardant foam in domestic upholstered furniture, are being considered as part of the overall review of legislation under the deregulation initiative announced by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade in February this year. In considering whether any changes to these regulations are necessary my Department will take account of the responses to the recently completed consultation with individual businesses, trade associations, local authorities, fire prevention, medical and consumer interests.

  RECHAR 2
  Mr. William O'Brien
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the Government's approach to Rechar 2.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  The European Commission circulated a Green Paper in June this year on the "Future of European Structural Funds Community Initiatives". We anticipate discussion will take place on this in a forthcoming Council of Ministers.

  Gas (Competition)
  Mr. Jon Owen Jones
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he last met the Director General of Gas Supply to discuss competition in the gas industry.

  Mr. Eggar
  I last met the new Director General on 28 October to discuss a range of issues.

  Car Dealing
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when the trading practices of car manufacturers with regard to car dealerships and car retailing were last reviewed by his Department; what conclusions were reached; and when he next proposes to review this matter again.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  These matters were investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in its report on the supply of new motor cars within the United Kingdom, published in February 1992.

  The report concluded, inter alia, that a complex monopoly situation existed, arising from the selective and exclusive distribution system used by most car suppliers in the United Kingdom. The MMC identified a number of restrictions imposed by suppliers in their agreements with dealers which might be expected to operate against the public interest.

  The Director General of Fair Trading and Department of Trade and Industry have negotiated with the major car suppliers with a view to concluding an undertaking on the MMC's recommendations. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is currently considering options for taking forward action on this report.

  Anthrax Vaccine
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the volume and value of anthrax vaccine exports each year from 1987.

  Mr. Needham
  The information requested is not available from official sources because the United Kingdom trade classification does not separately identify anthrax vaccines. The manufacturers of anthrax vaccines in the United Kingdom report no exports during the last five years. Information prior to that could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Sellafield
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when his Department received a copy of the environmental statement for the proposed Sellafield mixed oxide nuclear fuel plant from British Nuclear Fuels plc.

  Mr. Eggar
  My Department receives communications from British Nuclear Fuels plc on a wide range of issues. These have included a copy of the published environmental statement for the proposed plant referred to by the hon. Member.

  Energy Policy
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will place in the Library a copy of the speech on energy policy made to a conference in London on 17 November by the Minister of Energy.
  92
  Mr. Eggar
  I have today placed a copy of my speech of 17 November in the Library of the House.

  EC Internal Market Council
  Ms Quin
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the outcome of the EC Internal Market Council of 11 November.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the matters discussed and the decisions taken, indicating the voting record of member states, at the European Trade Council on 11 November.

  Mr. Needham
  My noble Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs and Small Firms attended the second Internal Market Council of the Belgian Presidency in Brussels on 11 November.

  The Council formally adopted without change all three food additive common positions—colours, additives and sweeteners—agreed at the Internal Market Council on 27 September. It also agreed a common position on equipment for use in explosive atmospheres.

  A common position was adopted unanimously on the amendment to directive 83/189/EEC on the provision of information on technical standards and regulations.

  A common position was adopted on the footwear labelling directive which will allow manufacturers a choice between pictograms and textual labelling. Germany voted against and the Netherlands abstained.

  A resolution for a more global approach to the problems of small and medium-sized enterprises was agreed in principle. The resolution also commits the Council to hold an annual debate on enterprise policy in the Community, particularly with regard to SMEs. A wide-ranging televised open debate included discussion on improving SMEs' access to finance and Community R and D programmes.

  The Council was unable to reach agreement on a Presidency compromise proposal on the language regime for the Community Trade Mark Office to implement the European Council decision on a five language regime. The Presidency is to reflect further on the matter.

  The Commission presented a proposal for a new regulation laying down improved measures to prohibit the import, transit or export of counterfeit or pirated goods. The Presidency agreed that the regulation would, if possible, be discussed at the 16 December Internal Market Council.

  The Commission circulated new implementation figures and highlighted the overall improvement in implementation of single market measures this year. The United Kingdom is in second place with implementation of 91·5 per cent., two points behind Denmark.

  The next formal meeting of the Council will take place on 16 December.

  Wind Power
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how his Department's energy technology support unit was represented at the conference on wind power development in rural areas held in Stoneleigh on 11 November.

  Mr. Eggar
  The "Wind Energy On Your Farm" conference, held at Stoneleigh on 11 November 1993, was sponsored by the energy technology support unit on behalf of this Department.
  93
  One of the presentations to the conference was given by an ETSU representative.

  Civil Servants
  Mrs. Clwyd
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list for each civil service grade in his Department(a) the total number of persons employed and (b) the total number of women employed.

  Mr. Eggar
  The figures for the Department, including its executive agencies and the former Department of Energy, as at 2 October 1993, are:

  Grade level

  Total number of employees

  Total number of women

  Grade 1

  2

  0

  Grade 2

  13

  0

  Grade 3

  54

  6

  Grade 4

  15

  2

  Grade 5

  284

  38

  Grade 6

  384

  44

  Grade 7

  1,155

  168

  SEO

  1,073

  170

  HEO

  2,028

  586

  EO

  2,324

  1,004

  AO

  3,187

  2,035

  AA

  2,573

  1,755

  Industrial

  157

  10

  Total

  13,249

  5,818

  Copper
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will publish a table to show the volume and value of(a) copper tubing and (b) copper pipe connectors imported into the United Kingdom in each of the last three years for which figures are available.

  Mr. Needham
  The available information is given in the following table.

  United Kingdom imports of copper tubing and copper pipe connectors

  1990

  1991

  1992

  Copper tubing1

  Volume (thousand metric tonnes)

  41·4

  40·6

  40·5

  Value (£ million)

  104·8

  93·0

  87·9

  Copper pipe connectors2

  Volume (thousand metric tonnes)

  3·5

  3·7

  3·9

  Value (£ million)

  15·6

  18·6

  18·1

  1 Copper tubes and pipes, defined as item 682.71 of the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC).

  2 Copper tube or pipe fittings, defined as item 682.72 of the SITC.

  Source: Business Monitors MA20, Overseas Trade Statistics of the United Kingdom, CSO.

  National Newspapers
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will refer the concentration of ownership of national newspapers to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  No. The Director General of Fair Trading recently considered the structure and characteristics of the market for newspapers in the context of allegations of predatory pricing and abuse of market power by News International. He announced on 14 October that he would not be initiating formal action under the competition legislation.

  Fireworks
  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of fireworks sold in Britain was manufactured abroad for each year since 1980; and which countries are the main exporters of fireworks to Britain.

  Mr. Needham
  The information requested is not available.

  Bills (Payment)
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many representations have been received by his Department urging him to legislate for the payment of bills by fixed dates.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  This information is not available. Representations have been received from individual small businesses and from other interested organisations seeking action to reduce the incidence of late payment, including legislation for a statutory maximum credit period, a statutory right to interest on overdue commercial debt or a combination of these.

  Manufacturing
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what are the current growth areas in manufacturing industry; what volume of business is involved; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  Manufacturing output in the third quarter of 1993 was <1·6 per cent. higher than in the same period of 1992. The performance of individual broad sectors, and their relative sizes, is shown in the table.

  Sector

  Weights in Index of Production1

  Change in output Q3/92 to Q3/93 (Per cent.)

  DF:

  Coke, ref petrol and nuclear fuels

  23

  -0·4

  DG:

  Chemicals and manmade fibres

  86

  3·5

  DJ:

  Basic metals and metal products

  74

  -2·4

  DK DM:

  Engineering and allied industries

  302

  2·5

  DA:

  Food, drink and tobacco

  110

  -1·0

  DB DC:

  Textiles, leather and clothing

  47

  0·7

  DD DN:

  Other manufacturing

  202

  2·9

  D:

  ALL MANUFACTURING

  844

  <1·6

  1 An indicator of the relative size of each sector.

  Source: Central Statistical Office, press release CSO(93)167 and amendment (93)172.

  Fire Safety
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what changes his Department is considering to existing legislation on the need for children's nightwear to be fire retardant.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  [holding answer 23 November 1993]: The Nightwear (Safety) Regulations 1985, which include requirements for children's nightwear to be fire retardant, are being considered as part of the overall review of legislation under the deregulation initiative announced by

  95
  my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade in February this year. In considering whether any changes to these regulations are necessary my Department will take account of the responses to the recently completed consultation with individual businesses, trade associations, local authorities, fire prevention, medical and consumer interests.

DEFENCE

  Equipment Contracts
  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list all orders for fuses, ammunition and other equipment placed by or on behalf of his Department with Gebruder Junshans of Germany, A. S. Raufoss of Norway, Fratelli Borletti of Italy and the royal ordnance factory, Blackburn, from 1975 to date, giving in each case the value of the order, the type of fuse, ammunition, or other equipment concerned whether the order had been subject to competitive tendering, allocation or negotiation without competitive tendering, the dates on which the orders were placed, when they were completed and if any part of the order has still to be delivered.

  Mr. Aitken
  I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what steps are taken by his Department to cancel contracts and otherwise to discipline suppliers and manufacturers of equipment where there is evidence that such contracts have been gained by bribery, corruption or other breaches of procurement rules.

  Mr. Aitken
  If it is proven that the award of any MOD contract has resulted directly from bribery, corruption or other irregular practices, my Department has the legal right to cancel it if it is still in existence, and would normally do so. My Department would also take any other action against the contractor concerned which was appropriate to the circumstances of the case, including seeking full financial restitution and considering the basis of any future dealings with them.

  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the posts held by Mr. Gordon Foxley, with dates and the responsibilities which each post entailed.

  Mr. Aitken
  I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

  Indonesia
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what representations he has made to the Government of Indonesia in regard to the restrictions on movement of indigenous people imposed by the Indonesian authorities prior to and during the visit by the United Kingdom military attaché in Jakarta to East Timor in early November.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  I have been asked to reply.

  We are not aware of any restrictions on movement of the indigenous people imposed in connection, with the recent visit to East Timor of defence attachés based in Jakarta.

HEALTH

  NHS Estate
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the total number of acres owned by the national health service estate for each year since 1979.

  Mr. Sackville
  The available information is shown in the table:

  Estimated acres owned by the national health service

  Land area Acres

  1988–89

  41,654

  1989–90

  41,617

  1990–91

  41,296

  1991–92

  40,508

  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the total value of the national health service estate for each year since 1979 at 1993 prices.

  Mr. Sackville
  The following valuations for the total value of the national health service estate are the only figures available, based on exercises undertaken by the Valuation Office Agency. Figures for 1987 and 1989 have been converted to price levels prevailing at the time of the 1 April 1992 valuation.

  Valuation date

  Amount £

  25 June 1987

  22,260,000,000

  31 December 1989

  22,770,000,000

  1 April 1992

  21,447,463,000

  Source: Valuation Office Agency.

  Note: Figures for 1987 and 1989 are represented at 1992 prices.

  Hospital Waiting Lists
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients for each of the four regional health authorities covering the Greater London area have been waiting for over 12 months, 18 months and 24 months for in-patient hospital treatment at the latest available date.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Information on waiting times for the four Thames regional health authorities which cover the London area is given in "Hospital Waiting List Statistics: England", published twice yearly. The latest published figures are for March 1993. In addition provisional figures for the quarter ending 30 September 1993 were published on 1 November, in press release H93/1036. Copies of both documents are available in the Library.

  Midwives
  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received from the Royal College of Midwives about midwives travelling alone at night to clients' houses; and what steps are being taken to ensure that employing health authorities adopt safe working procedures.

  Mr. Sackville
  We have received no such representations.

  Food Safety
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether regulations on food safety are being reconsidered under the Government's new proposals for deregulation.

  Mr. Sackville
  Yes. As part of the Government's deregulation initiative and in conjunction with the Department, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food issued the "Food Law Deregulation Plan" on 14 September, copies of which are available in the Library. The plan was drawn up following consultation with industry, enforcers and consumers. Its aim is to move to a less regulatory system of food law by removing from business, requirements that are no longer justified, whilst maintaining essential standards of food safety and consumer protection.

  Bureaucracy
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps she intends to take to reduce bureaucracy within NHS hospitals and trusts.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  It is expected that after 1 April 1995 virtually all national health service hospital care will be provided by trusts. As trusts have to compete for contracts from purchasing authorities for the provision of care, their management should have the most cost-effective structure possible which is compatible with the proper discharge of their function.

  Creuzfeldt Jakob Dementia
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will establish a scheme of no fault compensation for those who have contracted Creuzfeldt Jakob disease as a result of human growth hormone treatment, and for their families; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Sackville
  No. I refer the hon. Member to the reply that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate) on 27 May at column 671.

  "Making London Worse"
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what action she proposes to take in respect of the publication "Making London Worse" by the Greater London Association of Community Health Councils.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The Greater London Association of Community Health Councils recently published a report. We welcome the views of any informed contributor such as the association on the process of developing London's health services through positive change. The Government policy framework is set out in "Making London Better."

  Adoptive Mothers
  Mrs. Bridget Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to extend the provision of statutory maternity benefits to adoptive mothers.

  Mr. Hague
  I ahve been asked to reply. Statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance provide a measure of earnings replacement to help working women give up work around the time of the birth in the interests of their own and their unborn baby's health. There are no plans to extend maternity benefits to mothers of adopted children.

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

Motor Vehicles: Crime Prevention
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What further measures they are taking to reduce crime affecting motor vehicles.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the Home Office is continuing with its car crime prevention campaign during 1993 to build on the progress which was made last year. We are also continuing to press for further improvements in the security both of new cars and of those which are already on the road.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. As horrifying reports continue in the press of death and injury caused by drivers of stolen cars, will the Government do what they can to accelerate the introduction of the methods which are now available for tracking a car from the moment that it is stolen? The most effective deterrent is a greatly increased likelihood of being caught.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Ferrers said in a reply to a similar Question from my noble friend in October, concealed tracking devices are, indeed, a valuable weapon against car theft. All mainland United Kingdom police forces are currently making use of that new technology and the companies involved are now beginning to market those devices fairly robustly to motorists in this country.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept from me, as chairman of the Motor Cycle Industry Theft Action Group, that there has been a significant and encouraging drop recently of about 5 per cent. in the number of thefts of motor cycles and that although that is largely due to the application of new technology, it is due more importantly to owners' awareness of the need to lock up their motor cycles with primary and secondary devices? They are doing that except, strangely enough, the owners of Lambrettas, Vespas and small motor cycles who, for some reason, cannot get it into their minds that those small vehicles are very easy to steal and that they really must lock them up.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Viscount underlines one of the important aspects of the car theft prevention campaign last year and this year; namely, to increase the awareness of vehicle owners of the need to look after their vehicles properly, to lock them and to install security devices. I am delighted to hear from the noble Viscount that motor
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cycle thefts are down. I should like to be able to say that car thefts are equally down, but the best that I can do is to say that the increase has certainly been markedly less in the past 12 months than it was in the previous 12 months.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord has answered my first question because I was going to ask what he meant by "progress" and I feared that the answer would be that the increase was down rather than that car thefts were down. In view of the fact that a very high proportion of car thefts are from locked cars and by teenagers, can the noble Lord tell the House what progress is being made in motor projects that are designed to encourage young people to lawful activities with motor cars because experience shows—does it not?—that those are very effective in preventing car crime?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Lord has asked me a number of questions. The progress that we made last year was monitored and we discovered that two-thirds of the people surveyed said that as a result of the campaign they were more vigilant about security. The sale of security equipment increased by 20 per cent. and more manufacturers are now building improved security systems into their new cars. All that is very important. As far as motor schemes are concerned, I can tell the noble Lord that last year the Home Office gave grants of £450,000 to such schemes which, as the noble Lord points out, are helpful in encouraging youngsters not to indulge in that kind of crime.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, while locking up vehicles, as was suggested by my noble friend, may be a very good precept, is it not a fact that many owners of motor cars are misled by thinking that their security systems are more efficacious than they really are? I live in central London and keep on being woken up by security systems, and I am quite sure that potential or actual thieves are not put off in the least. Therefore, can the noble Lord assure the House that the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in his supplementary question will be vigorously pursued?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I noticed that the noble Lord asked a similar question on the last occasion that this matter was raised. He makes the point that if too many car alarms go off pointlessly it is the equivalent of crying wolf. However, I do believe that car alarms are a useful deterrent although obviously not an entirely 100 per cent. deterrent. There is, however, no question but that when someone is looking for a car to steal (unless it is a classic car that is being stolen to order) a car without an alarm device is more likely to be picked than a car with one.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many insurance companies now require owners to have adequate security devices fitted to their motor cars? Could not that be encouraged in the insurance industry so that it is made more difficult for people to insure cars without such devices? Is he further aware that I have just bought a motor car myself which

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has the most amazing number of gadgets and that I find extreme difficulty in getting into the thing, but no doubt I shall learn?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, making it more difficult for owners to get into their cars is not part and parcel of our road safety campaign. My noble friend made the valid point that the insurance industry has a key role to play in encouraging the use of security devices, including those raised initially by my noble friend. I am happy to say that the industry is establishing its own criteria for vehicle security which identify cars and security equipment and which meet its acceptable standards. I hope that that will give the insurance companies the confidence to consider offering discounts to motorists who install those devices.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that often cars are stolen to be used in crimes; for example, as getaway cars or in ram raids? Real progress made in the area that we are discussing might in addition reduce those crimes.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, my noble friend is right. If a car is stolen to be used in a crime and if the device is activated the police would be greatly assisted in tracking down that car, perhaps even before the crime is committed. There is, of course, one slight problem. Before the device can be triggered the owner must know that the car has been stolen. Therefore, the device is not so useful in apprehending a stolen car as my noble friend suggested.

Overseas Aid: Single Budget
2.45 p.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they have taken to ensure that work by the Overseas Development Administration in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is always financed by additional resources and not from the budget intended, and presented as being, for work in the third world.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, as I have already announced, from next year we plan to consolidate our external assistance programmes, including those for eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, into a single budget line. This does not mean any lessening of our commitment to the poorer developing countries. They are, and will continue to be, by far the main recipients of our concessional financial assistance.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister accept that that is taking money from the poorer countries to give to the former Soviet Union? Does she also accept that she has presided over a disastrous decline in the aid programme, which is down from 0.51 per cent. of GNP in 1979 to a projected 0.28 per cent. next year? Will she give the House a categorical undertaking that she personally will accept nothing less in next week's
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Budget than a reversal of that trend and a significant move towards the 0.7 per cent. of GNP to which she and the Prime Minister are committed?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord should not expect me to say anything about next week's Budget. Putting up the budget for 1993–94 to more than £2,200 million from £1,900 million shows exactly what we have done in adding the two sums together. That is how it now looks. It is perfectly sensible to manage our external assistance programmes as a whole because in that way we can make better use of our resources and therefore spend more effectively in response to countries' individual needs. There are many lessons which we have learnt from developing country assistance which we have put into the Know-How Funds and vice versa. What we have done in the Know-How Funds is becoming increasingly used in the development assistance programmes in the third world countries.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the Minister give the assurance that in examining the budget it will still be possible to distinguish between the two sums? If one consolidates them in a single budget line, which is what I understood her to say, it will no longer be possible to do that. Surely, there can be no reason why a separate, if necessary, sub-budget line cannot be created in relation to the different types of aid?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, need have no fear. Expenditure will be shown in our annual British aid statistics by country and by region so that comparisons can continue to be made. I would not have it otherwise.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does not the Minister think it obnoxious that we are spending far less on aid to third world and poor countries while at the same time, through our net contribution to the EC, we are spending more subsidising the comparatively rich countries of western Europe?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, from the figures that my department gave to the Select Committees the House already knows that we are spending more through the EC in the aid programme. But that does not mean that it is not being spent on the poorest countries. More than 80 per cent. of our total budget in 1992–93 went to the poorest countries; that is, those with incomes of less than 700 dollars per capita per annum. We shall continue to concentrate our bilateral aid on the poorest countries.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, as the Minister is aware, I have a particular interest in population matters. Will the noble Baroness assure the House that the percentage of aid at present devoted to population services and family planning, even after those peculiar alterations to the sums of money, will remain at least the same and preferably will be increased?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, they are not peculiar changes. However, I assure the noble

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Baroness that not only are we already doing more to increase our spending on population and family planning-focused activities and mother and child health care but also that we intend to see that that continues.
Lord Rea: My Lords, does not the first Answer which the noble Baroness gave to my noble friend conflict with evidence given by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place earlier this year? The evidence showed that over the next three years assistance to the former Soviet Union countries will rise by 85 per cent.—I admit that that is from a low base—whereas the aid for overseas development will stay steady at £1,900 million and bilateral aid to those countries will fall by 12 per cent. How does the Minister explain that?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, there is nothing contradictory in what I said. What is important is not only the amount of money to be spent but how it is spent. We are finding that from a very low base we can do a very great deal by investing a little more money in the former Soviet Union and some eastern European countries. Even so, that money does not compare with what we spend in the developing world. We need to do both. For my part, I should like to see a steadily growing bilateral programme. However, because of the way in which our affairs are organised, I cannot achieve that at present. I intend to see that we get even better value from all the money that we put through the multilateral channels.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister accept that she will be judged not by her sentiments, which nobody in this House questions, but by what she delivers on the aid programme? Does she appreciate that the House is deeply disturbed that today we have heard that, at the expense of programmes for the third world, as we understand it, funds will go to the former Soviet Union, and that in place of the Prime Minister's commitment in Rio to 0.7 per cent. we continue to move towards a declining proportion of our GNP on aid?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we still maintain that we should work towards a target of 0.7 per cent. of GNP, but it is perfectly clear that the resources of this country are not there to achieve that in the next year or two. I believe that what is important is what we deliver in the developing countries and in the emerging countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. I intend to go on making sure that that is the best targeted and best quality of any aid programme.
Lord Annan: My Lords, in the light of the melancholy account which the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, gave last Monday of our economic standing in Europe and after the castigation which the Minister's right honourable friend Mr. Heseltine gave to the management of industry in this country about its low level of productivity, is it not a miracle that we can give aid to anybody?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I hope that I do not describe spending taxpayers' money wisely as a miracle. It takes an enormous amount of ingenuity
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to make sure that we get the very best value for money. I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he said. I assure him that the quality of what we are delivering in different countries and sectors is still second to none. That is what we have reason to be proud of, even if the sums are not as large as my noble friends on this side of the House and certainly noble Lords opposite would like them to be.

Aid Funds and Arms Purchase
2.55 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe Lord Taylor of Gryfe asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether funds made available from the United Kingdom's overseas aid budget cannot be used for the purchase of arms, and whether the economic viability of overseas aid projects has to be approved before funds are released.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, aid funds cannot be used for the purchase of arms. All bilateral project proposals are subject to careful appraisal of economic, financial, institutional, social and environmental aspects before they can be approved.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful assurance. Is she aware that in a recent report in The Times, it was alleged that aid funds had been used to assist in securing a £1 billion contract for defence equipment for Malaysia? Secondly, will she confirm also that despite the advice of the World Bank and the experts of her own department, the Government proceeded to use aid funds to support the Pergau hydro-electric scheme in Malaysia? What happened in that case? Does the Minister take the advice of her own experts, or have aid funds which might be profitably and usefully spent elsewhere found their way into supporting that contract?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord's last question is no. As regards the first question, it is a convention, as a courtesy to Parliament, that the Government limit their comments on National Audit Office reports until the Public Accounts Committee has had the opportunity to consider them. Therefore, I cannot add further to what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said on 28th October at col. 732 in another place. He stated there that we had decided to incur the expenditure on the project to which the noble Lord referred because we had given an undertaking at the highest level to support the project; because the Malaysians wanted to proceed; and because of wider considerations, including Britain's interests in Malaysia.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister not feel any personal responsibility for what has happened as regards the hydro-electric scheme? Does she appreciate that Parliament looks to her to protect the integrity of the aid programme? What specific steps did she take to support the principled stand of her Permanent Secretary? Does

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not that whole sorry saga illustrate the folly of leaving the aid and development programme ultimately in the hands of the policy-orientated Foreign Office?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I have already told the House that as a courtesy to Parliament, the Government limit their comments on NAO reports until the Public Accounts Committee has had the opportunity to consider them. I do not believe that it is right for me to go beyond that. Therefore, I have nothing further to add.
Lord Richard: My Lords, the Minister said that assurances were given at the highest level in relation to that project. Will she tell us who gave those assurances, to whom they were given and in what terms?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: No, my Lords. In common with my answer to the last question, I have nothing further to add.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is a very good idea to use the aid programme in pursuance of British interests abroad, and in particular the interests of British industry abroad?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the only way in which the aid programme is used in pursuance of British interests abroad is if we are considering a proposal for the Aid and Trade Provision. That proposal must be in the interests of the developing country and must lead to commercial work in the long term for that developing country. Then, we should use the Aid and Trade Provision.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I speak as a former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. I am sure that the Minister is absolutely right not to comment on National Audit Office reports. On the other hand, departments are able to take action on National Audit Office reports without waiting for the Public Accounts Committee to investigate. Is the Minister saying that nothing has been done about the National Audit Office report?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, no; but I shall wait for the Public Accounts Committee before I say what action we should take because I believe it is right that it should examine that detail.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, as another former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I ask my noble friend not to be led into comments of any kind as regards the questions put to her by noble Lords opposite. I ask her to maintain the line that she has so sensibly taken so far.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am sorry to keep coming back to this, but, with great respect to the noble Lord who has just sat down, the issue as to whether or not an assurance was given at the highest level came from the Minister. It did not come from this side of the House as an allegation. It came from the Minister in her original
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Answer. If she says that an assurance was given at the highest level, are we not entitled to ask who gave the assurance, in what terms and when?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I simply repeated to another noble Lord who questioned me earlier on the matter the answer which the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs gave on 28th October last. It was he who said that the undertaking had been given at the highest level.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, I accept the Minister's difficulty in commenting on the report which has now been referred to the National Audit Office. But can she as a general principle in the administration of her department agree that on her limited budget it is much more sensible to use aid funds in supporting countries that are in great need rather than spending such money on propositions that are regarded as totally uneconomic?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord knows that that is my view. We must spend on projects that are economically sensible and in the interests of the countries that we are seeking to assist, as well as in the interests of the British taxpayer.
Lord Rea: My Lords, can the Minister categorically deny that the Pergau hydroelectric project, which was supported against the advice of her Permanent Secretary, was not part of a deal which involved arms sales?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I have nothing further to add. I believe that we should wait to hear from the Public Accounts Committee.

Export of Live Sheep to Spain
3.1 p.m.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth Lord Elliott of Morpeth asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will re-introduce the ban on the export of live sheep to Spain.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe): My Lords, a ban on the export of live sheep would not be compatible with our membership of the European Community. The Government have a formal agreement with the Spanish authorities that sheep exported from the UK for slaughter will be sent only to slaughterhouses which the Spanish authorities have confirmed as complying with Community welfare standards.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I believe that my noble friend will recall the guarantee given to his right honourable friend in January when he was Minister of Agriculture that the Community directive on slaughtering would be strictly adhered to in Spain. Indeed, my noble friend may recall that he referred to that guarantee himself in a debate in this House in March. But is he now aware that the directive has been blatantly ignored in Spain and that the recent work of

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RSPCA inspectors, which I strongly commend, has illustrated that the most frightful cruelty is being practised in abattoirs in Spain at this very time? Even in a single market, is there not a case for a temporary ban until all abattoirs in Spain are brought up to the standards required in the directive?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the scenes depicted in the RSPCA video are extremely distressing and wholly reprehensible. We have encouraged the RSPCA to make the video available to the Spanish authorities, who are already aware of its contents. However, there is no suggestion that the abattoirs filmed by the society are ones to which British sheep may be exported for slaughter under the formal agreement.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that our country has a very high reputation for its treatment of animals? Is he further aware that the argument that he has just put forward—namely, that we might upset someone else—was put forward from that Dispatch Box when we debated the cruel treatment of horses going to France and Belgium? However, that debate in this House (which was echoed in another place) resulted in a complete change of heart on the part of the French and Belgian authorities over the manner in which they treat horses. Why can we not now do the same in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, has told us?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the Government take such issues very seriously. My right honourable friend has raised the issue with the Spanish Agriculture Minister, who has promised to investigate it urgently. She has also expressed her grave concern to Commissioner Steichen, who is responsible for ensuring that the slaughter directive is enforced in all member states.
Lord Harvington: My Lords, I am pleased that my noble friend raised the matter this afternoon. It is possible that some noble Lords may remember that I raised the issue in a debate in March which produced what I thought was, on the whole, a satisfactory result; that is, as far as was possible at the time. However, can my noble friend the Minister now repeat what he said then—namely, that the Commission will be producing a directive stipulating what should be done in all such matters and that the whole question is one of policing? My noble friend also said in March that prosecution was taking place at that time against some carriers who had behaved in an outrageously cruel way. Has he anything further to say in addition to what he said to the House then?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. During the UK presidency we initiated discussions on proposals for the welfare of animals at slaughter to update the 1974 regulations. We are working hard both in Council working groups and with the EC Commission to achieve agreement on a directive to be applied in all member states, with provision for the Commission to monitor enforcement.
With regard to my noble friend's latter question, there has recently been a successful prosecution of an exporter for failing to feed, water and rest animals during journeys to Southern Europe. The exporter was
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fined £4,200, plus £3,500 costs. It is the Government's policy to support local authorities whenever prosecutions are brought under welfare legislation.
Lord Gallacher: My Lords, a Community agreement may be reached on the problem of transporting live animals from this country to Spain—but it seems to me doubtful—and the slaughterhouse problem may be capable of solution, but is not the final answer likely to lie in developing a trade with Spain in sheepmeat on the hook? Further, will the noble Earl ask the Food from Britain organisation, in conjunction with the Meat and Livestock Commission, to have a look at the possibility of a promotion campaign towards that end?
Earl Howe: My Lords, If am grateful to the noble Lord. I do know that Food from Britain, in conjunction with the MLC, promotes British meat in Spain. In fact, live animal exports to Spain are small in number in relation to our total exports of live animals.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, should not the fact that the directive relating to the slaughter of animals has not been implemented in Spain be a matter for the whole of the Community and not just for the United Kingdom? Further, under European law at present, is it not the case that a member state can be heavily fined for not obeying a directive; and can the Minister tell the House whether the Government are pursuing that sanction?
Earl Howe: My Lords, enforcement of EC law is up to each individual member state. The Commission's role is to ensure that member states are up to the mark. We are keen to see that the agreement within the Maastricht Treaty on such matters is pursued vigorously.

Trade Marks Bill [H.L.]
3.9 p.m.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, I beg to introduce a Bill to make new provision for registered trade marks, implementing Council Directive No. 89/104/EEC of 21st December 1988 to approximate the laws of the member states relating to trademarks; to make provision in connection with the Council Regulation (EEC) on the Community trade mark; to give effect to the Madrid Protocol Relating to the International Registration of Trademarks of 27th June 1989, and to certain provisions of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 20th March 1883, as revised and amended; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Viscount Goschen.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

British Nationality (Hong Kong) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for the acquisition of British citizenship by certain of the British nationals of Hong Kong. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Bonham-Carter.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Inshore Fishing (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Inshore Fishing (Scotland) Act 1984 to make provision for the control of fishing in Scottish inshore waters by vehicles or equipment. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Campbell of Croy.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech
Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Thursday last by Viscount Montgomery of Alamein—namely, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."
3.10 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, we will today be debating the important issues of local government, the environment and education. Each of those topics has been given a high priority in the Government's coming legislative programme and I have no doubt that the House will have many interesting discussions on them in the coming year. Indeed, I suspect that our debate today will be fairly wide ranging.
Perhaps I may begin by saying something briefly about the Education Bill which was introduced to this House yesterday. That Bill gives effect to the Government's proposals on student union reform which were published in July and carries forward our proposals in respect of teacher training in England and Wales, announced in September. We have consulted extensively on both topics.
It is intended that the Education Bill should, through the creation of a teacher training agency in England and by extending the powers of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, secure greater coordination and more effective deployment of existing resources for the training of teachers; for related higher education and research; and for the promotion of teaching as a career.
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The Bill should also implement the voluntary principle for students' unions. It is intended to limit the provision of public funds to students' unions to specified services, and to require universities and colleges to establish codes of practice governing the conduct of student unions.
So far as concerns the environment, the Government's main piece of legislation will be a Bill providing for work to begin on the setting up of environment agencies for England and Wales and also for Scotland. The 1990 Environmental Protection Act introduced integrated pollution control for a range of industrial processes. Instead of different bodies regulating the discharges of waste to each environmental medium—air, land and water—IPC brings all of those together. This marks a significant change in our method of controlling pollution. By integrating our regulatory approach we have now established a coherent framework for controlling releases from our most potentially polluting industries and for minimising their effects on the environment as a whole.
Nevertheless, the organisations responsible for pollution control are still to a large extent organised so that they are primarily concerned with control of only one medium and thus are significantly limited in the way that they can take that holistic approach forward. The Government now plan to bring together the main organisations responsible for regulating industrial pollution, to form a single, integrated environment agency for England and Wales and a similar body for Scotland, the Scottish environment protection agency. Not only will that offer a more effective framework for consistent pollution control; it will also reduce the number of regulators with whom industry will have to deal, so reducing the burdens on them.
There are many other benefits which that approach would offer when compared with the existing arrangements. For example, as pollution abatement technology continues to develop, so the technical burden and cost of applying the necessary controls rises, requiring access to the most modern and comprehensive range of specialist expertise and equipment. Those demands can put severe pressure on the existing separate regulators, but by pooling the expertise the two new agencies will be far better placed to meet the challenge.
We shall introduce paving provisions during this Session which will allow preparatory work to take place on the establishment of the new agencies. We recognise the crucial role that the bodies will play in protecting our environment and we want to make sure that their introduction is properly planned. The paving provisions will give my right honourable friends and the affected organisations—the National Rivers Authority and the waste regulation authorities in England and Wales, and the river purification boards and the district and islands councils in Scotland—powers to plan for the establishment of the agencies. There is no need to make any similar provision for Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and Her Majesty's Industrial Pollution Inspectorate as they are already part of the Department of the Environment and the Scottish Office respectively.

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The pledges to establish the new agencies are important manifesto commitments which the Government are keen to take forward. By planning ahead in that way it should be possible to establish the agencies in a much shorter time after the passage of substantive legislation than would otherwise be the case.
I move on now to local government. Before considering in some detail the Government's proposals for reforming the structure of local government in Scotland and Wales, should like to say something briefly about the forthcoming Deregulation Bill and its effect on local government.
The Government intend to bring forward a Bill giving further impetus to their deregulation initiative. Among other things, it will provide for the removal of statutory obstacles to market testing and contracting out by central and local government. The aim of the deregulation initiative is to remove unnecessary regulation and to lighten the burden on industry and commerce. On market testing and contracting out, the Bill will give the Government the power to enable local authorities in appropriate cases to employ contractors to carry out their functions if the authorities themselves so wish.
Moving now to local government reform in Scotland and Wales, both of the Government's proposed Bills come after long periods of discussion and debate on the best way forward for local government. By its nature, local government is never going to be a topic on which everyone will agree. Nevertheless, the Government believe that the result of that extensive debate is proposals which will stand the test of time and be of considerable benefit to the people of both Scotland and Wales.
In the case of Wales, the forthcoming Bill is intended as a response to the widespread concerns that exist about the present structure of local government in that country. The present system is not widely understood by local people. Nor does it sufficiently reflect those people's identification with their own communities and localities.
The two-tier structure introduced in 1974 in Wales represents a significant advance on the complex set of arrangements which emerged during the last century. However, it is clear that the replacement of the old counties by local government areas which do not always reflect people's traditional loyalties has not secured wholehearted public support. The people of south west Wales, for example, still feel that they belong to Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire or Carmarthenshire, not to the artificial county of Dyfed created in 1974. A structure of local government that cannot command the loyalties of local people cannot be as effective as it must be if it is to meet the challenges of the coming century.
The Government's case does not rest on sentiment alone. There are practical reasons for making the changes which my right honourable friend will propose in the Bill which he will be bringing before Parliament.
A two-tier system of counties and districts contains within it the seeds of dispute between authorities, especially in matters such as planning and economic development where both levels have responsibilities for
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the same functions. The structure also leads to duplication of administration and central services such as finance and personnel. Those difficulties reduce the ability of the system to deliver services to local people in an economic, efficient and effective manner. Moreover, even after all the years since that change, there is little public understanding of the responsibilities of each tier. That undermines the direct accountability to local people upon which all good local government is based.
The Government are committed to the creation of good local government which will be close to the people it serves. We aim to establish authorities, based on a strong sense of community identity, which will be clearly accountable to local people. By taking full advantage of the enabling role of local government, they will be able to operate in an efficient and responsive way. They will work with each other and with other agencies to promote the wellbeing of the people they serve. Building on those foundations, the new authorities will enjoy, and will deserve to enjoy, strong local support.
It is a reform for which the Government have made the most careful preparations. My right honourable friends have proceeded at every stage with thorough consultation throughout the past two years. Thousands of members of the public in Wales have submitted their views. The local authorities have been involved at both member and officer level throughout the process.
The linchpin of the reforms—the creation of unitary authorities—is common ground among all the political parties in Wales. The Government believe that it is an idea which has found its time.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord moves to Scotland, perhaps I may intervene. He will he aware that his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales, in the last sentence of his speech in another place on Monday evening, indicated that the Government were not proposing at this time to proceed with the Welsh local government reform Bill. He did not explain why the postponement was to take place. We are aware of the reason for the lack of explanation; namely, that he did not have the time. However, the noble and learned Lord has not told this House why the deferment has taken place. The people of Wales are anxious to know the reason, given the Government's commitment to the Bill which in part the noble and learned Lord has now repeated. It will help the House and the debate if he will go further and tell us the reason for the Government's decision.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if the noble Lord considers what the Secretary of State for Wales said in the debate in another place, he will realise that it was a rather confused final 15 minutes. It seems to me more appropriate, despite the rather unseemly interruptions in another place, to allow the Secretary of State for Wales to have an opportunity fully to set out his position on the matter.
Baroness White: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord be more precise? We are confused. Is it the

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implementation of the Bill which will be postponed, as is my understanding, or the Bill? That is quite a different matter. One can understand that the Secretary of State for Wales does not quite know where he is going; but we could at least be told whether the postponement relates to the implementation of the Bill or the Bill itself.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I have at some length explained what is to be contained within a Bill which the Government propose to bring forward. As the noble Baroness indicated, and as I have explained, there was some considerable confusion in another place. The Secretary of State for Wales was given no opportunity in the 12 minutes to explain his position.
I have indicated that the issue does not relate to a postponement of the Bill but to implementation. If Members in another place had given the Secretary of State for Wales a greater opportunity, he would have been able to spell out exactly what the position was. In fact, there was considerable confusion in the last 20 minutes of the debate.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, perhaps the noble and learned Lord will allow me to intervene. We do not wish to continue the battles of another place in this House. However, I must point out to the noble and learned Lord that requests were made at the very beginning of the debate in another place for the Secretary of State to make clear what he proposed to do and what deferment he intended. That request was repeated several times during the course of the whole day's debate, but it was not until the very last minute, in the middle of the confusion to which the noble and learned Lord referred, that the Secretary of State made his announcement. It is not good enough for the noble and learned Lord to say that the issue was not made clear because of the confusion at the end of the debate. The Secretary of State could have made his statement at any time. We still do not know the answer to the noble Baroness's question.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, for the third time, I have indicated that it is not a delay in the introduction of a Bill but in the implementation of it. As I understand it, it is proposed to delay the implementation for some 12 months. However, with the noble Lord's long experience in another place—he was the Father of the House—I defy him to find a winding up speech by a Secretary of State that has been quite so frequently interrupted in the final 20 minutes as was the speech of the Secretary of State for Wales. It is possibly not surprising that he was not able to convey his point as clearly as he wished.
At the fourth time of trying, perhaps I may turn to the position in Scotland, which is very similar to that I have just described for Wales. The Government propose that the existing structure of 53 districts, nine regions and three islands authorities should be replaced by 28 single-tier councils. The reasons for moving to
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single-tier authorities are similar to those in Wales but to understand fully the background to the change it is necessary to go back some years.
While ultimately recommending a two-tier system, the Wheatley Commission, which reported on the future of local government in Scotland in 1969, found that a system of all-purpose authorities "has many advantages", being the simplest to understand and to operate. The commission also stated that,
"evidence from all sides convinces us that the structure of local government cannot afford to remain static".
As early as 1980, only five years after the introduction of the two-tier structure, some councils—the four cities, Argyll, Bute and Moray—were asking the committee of inquiry into local government in Scotland, which had been set up under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Stodart, to consider their case for single-tier status. Thus the legitimacy of the present structure was called into question from the moment its creators recognised the merits of the single-tier option and has consistently been the subject of criticism subsequently.
That is not to say that the two-tier structure was wrong. To paraphrase what I have said about the Welsh proposals, two-tier councils were a reasonable idea for their time. In the 1960s and 1970s we had a different view of the role of local government. Those were the days of central planning and of the growth of the public sector into more and more areas of life. Today is different and, I suggest, needs a different system of local government. Today we take the view that the public sector need not always be the best provider of services. There remains a very important role for government—both central and local—but it need not be one which requires large, remote and unaccountable bureaucracy. What we believe our proposals represent and what local people want therefore is a move towards more democratic, accountable and efficient councils which will deliver high quality services to local taxpayers. What we do not want are large regional authorities covering half of the mainland of Scotland, as is the case at present with Strathclyde.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord will give way for a moment perhaps I may ask this question about the reforms in Scotland. What is the smallest population figure for which unitary authority status is being granted in Scotland if the Bill is passed? Is he satisfied that that authority can provide the necessary services?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, the smallest authority will represent a population of under 100,000. The view of the Secretary of State and myself is that, yes, indeed, that is possible. However, it will require local government to be rather more adaptable in the matter than it has hitherto been. It will require local government to understand that it does not always have to be the provider of services and could resort to alternative devices by which service is delivered.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord referred to a population of under 100,000. Am I not correct in thinking that the population of the Western Isles is about 20,000? Is that not the smallest authority?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to develop my speech. If the noble Lord knew anything about Scotland, he would appreciate that the authority for the Western Isles is already a single tier authority. That authority will not be subjected to reform under the Bill that we propose to introduce.
When I was in the House recently, a woman from Scotland rang me in tears. Although there had been agreement, approved by the social work department and by the housing department that she should have certain alterations made to the heating in her house, after three months no installation had been undertaken because two authorities were still at loggerheads over who should pick up the bill for those improvements. If our changes to unitary authority are introduced, that sort of unnecessary conflict should disappear.
It was very clear from the extensive consultation carried out that the people of Scotland not only value their local government but want some change. Over 3,000 organisations, businesses and individuals took the trouble to respond to the invitation to submit views on the future structure of local government.
Those responses ranged from large submissions contributed by the local authorities themselves to briefer, sometimes handwritten, responses from individuals. Each respondent, to a greater or lesser extent, sought to address the same issues: what structure would best meet their need for a council while, at the same time, ensuring that they received efficient and effective services.
The difficulties inherent in the two-tier system identified in Wales were also obvious in Scotland. Those responding to the consultation exercises complained of having difficulty in understanding which tier of local government was responsible for what and they objected to the obvious waste of having two sets of councillors, two management teams and two finance departments for each area of the country.
Single-tier councils will address those issues. They will also, I hope, act as a catalyst, injecting renewed energy and enthusiasm into local government. It is possibly natural that many authorities have until now been preoccupied with the status quo and with arguing for the retention of the existing system and boundaries.
The Government believe that the reorganisation offers huge opportunities to local councils. For the first time in Scotland, all local authorities will be multi-purpose bodies with responsibility for all local government services. With my own ministerial responsibilities for care in the community I particularly welcome that social work and housing will for the first time be contained within the same authority. I know that many in local government are looking forward to that change, and I hope that with the introduction of the Government's proposals, everyone working and serving in local government will now turn their minds actively to the opportunities and benefits which the new system can offer.
Scotland already had examples of single-tier councils. The three islands councils of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles have been all-purpose authorities since 1975. It is worth noting that during the recent debate on local government in Scotland, not one single
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person argued that the islands areas should be incorporated in any way into a two-tier system. Surely that is as encouraging a sign as anyone could wish for. The islands councils act as a focus and a voice for their people on numerous occasions and contribute greatly to the identity and energy of those communities. That is the kind of council that we would like to see developed on the mainland. I believe that the authorities which will be proposed by the Government in the forthcoming Bill will be capable of achieving that aim.
Given what is contained within the subject matters for debate, this has necessarily been a somewhat discursive tour around some of the proposals. The subject of our debate necessitated that. What we are discussing though is a range of measures that will affect large numbers of the population, be they schoolchildren, teachers, students or indeed anyone who comes into contact with local government and its services. I suspect that that means almost all of us. We shall have ample opportunity over the coming year to discuss all these issues in great depth. Meanwhile, I am very much looking forward to hearing your Lordships' first views on these important measures.
3.34 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, for his speech on Scottish local government reorganisation; though perhaps not so grateful for his remarks on other forms of local government reorganisation.
As the noble and learned Lord quite rightly said, today we are studying what the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, described when introducing the Motion as a mixed menu. The debate this afternoon is wide-ranging. Indeed, some noble Lords call this day the "sweep up" day. I would prefer to call it the "long-term day". We are dealing, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, rightly said in his closing paragraph, with issues that will have a long-term effect on many of the citizens of the United Kingdom. In what I have to say I shall allude to the Government's programme. I hope that noble Lords will also allow me to dwell somewhat on matters which are relevant to this debate and relevant to the Government's proposals, but which go rather beyond what I would call the somewhat thin gruel in the gracious Speech.
Although the debate today is advertised as being on local government, the environment and education, I propose to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, in dealing first with education. I assure noble Lords that I shall not spend long on the subject because my noble friend Lord Judd, who will wind up from this Dispatch Box, will have much more to say on the matter than I can. From there I propose to move on to local government; not least, it can be argued, because there is a natural relationship between education and local government. From that point, since there is a further local authority link which needs exploring, I shall go on to what are generally known as green issues; in other words, the environment. Lastly, I

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should like to point noble Lords to two basic principles which could and should, and in our view, must, govern all the matters that we are debating today.
I do not believe that there is any Member of this House, apart perhaps from the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, about whom I am not entirely certain, who does not realise that the education system in England and Wales is in a state of what I would call trauma. After all, reforms have been introduced over the past few years which, for better or worse—and I put it no more contentiously than that—have undermined the principles of the 1944 Education Act. There is still confusion—I speak as a grandparent who has four grandchildren at state schools—about the real objectives of education. In many schools there is low teacher morale, a shortage of proper teaching equipment and a nagging fear that, unless schools opt out of local authority control, they will gradually deteriorate into "sink" establishments trying only to do their best with what they receive as residue from those pupils unable to gain places in grant-maintained schools. In higher education the trauma is perhaps just as bad; not least because so few of those coming out with even half respectable degrees cannot at the moment find jobs.
I do not wish to be alarmist in using the expression "trauma". Any system of any sort which has been through such upsets as has the education system in England and Wales over the past few years is bound to be in a state of trauma. But when a patient is in trauma, it is usual (so I am told) to offer counselling and rest, and perhaps the odd tablet or two. That all seems perfectly sensible. However, far from being sensible about the poor old system's trauma, the Government have now embarked upon another anti-union crusade, this time against the students. Furthermore, far from wishing to fill an obvious gap in nursery education, they tell us brusquely that they cannot afford it. At least I say "they", since those were the words of the Secretary of State and not of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, who, for all I know, may disagree fundamentally with the Secretary of State.
If we cannot afford nursery education, how on earth does it happen that we can afford the local government reorganisation that the Government now propose? The proposals for Scotland and Wales involve what will certainly turn out to be hideous expense. Not only that, but they are, to say the very least, highly controversial, and seem to me—I shall be perfectly frank about it—designed primarily to maximise the number of councils under the control of a rapidly disappearing group of Conservative councillors.
Taken together with a similar process in England for which enabling legislation is already on the statute book, the total cost of creating that confusion in local government—which if previous experience is any guide will take years to sort out—will run into many millions of pounds. I must remind the noble and learned Lord that it was the Conservative Government who reorganised local government in England and Wales in early 1976. It has taken years to get used to it. It is another Conservative Government who are trying to undo the reforms that they made 20-odd years ago.
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If that money—this is a question of government priorities —were to be put into nursery education instead of being frittered away in messing up local councils, we could perhaps start, and only start, to believe that the Government put a higher priority on the future of our three to five year-olds than they do on their own electoral advantage. But since that is obviously not the case, we shall all have to live for years to come with the consequences and effects of the Government's choices.
Your Lordships have already expressed the view that so far as Wales is concerned there is total confusion. Nobody knows whether there will be shadow authorities elected and nobody knows how the new last-20-second assurance of the Secretary of State for Wales will work. We understand that the Bill will come to this House, as the noble Lord the Leader of the House explained. I shall leave to my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies, who will speak for these Benches on the matter, the detailed critique that we have of the Bill.
However, I have a sneaking sympathy for the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate, who will take the Bill through this House. Why it should be him rather than anybody else is something of a conundrum. Why of all people should it be a Scottish Law Officer of the Crown? I must tell the Government and the noble and learned Lord—and I mean no disrespect, for indeed I have the greatest respect for him—that his appointment has not gone down particularly well in Wales. There have been questions raised in the press and on television. The valleys have not exactly been ringing with cheers. If the Government would like an idea of the reaction, they might consider what the reaction of Scotsmen would be if the Bill for Scottish local government were introduced by the Secretary of State for Wales—but since he talks about everything under the sun, I suppose that it would come as no surprise. But I am sure that Scotsmen would resent it bitterly—not, if I may say so, that my Scottish friends show any enthusiasm for what the noble and learned Lord proposed today. He spent a good deal of his speech on the matter.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, may I perhaps ask the noble Lord who he thinks I am?
Lord Williams of Elvel: The noble and learned Lord has asked me a question but I am afraid I cannot answer it. I do not know whether he speaks for the Secretary of State for Wales or is the Minister of State speaking for Scotland, for the environment or for anything else. I understood that he was speaking as an environment spokesman. He also speaks as education spokesman. All I can say is that until further notice I believe that he is a Minister of Her Majesty's Government and as such speaks for Her Majesty's Government. Is that a clear answer for him?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, it may have been some unnecessary confusion but at one point in his speech the noble Lord seemed to suffer under the delusion that I remained the Lord Advocate. I think he now appreciates that in fact I am not.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I try to bring myself up to date with the numerous government changes. I am well aware that the noble and learned Lord is not the Lord Advocate and that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rodger, is the Lord Advocate. I am also aware that the noble Lord the Leader of the House said that the Lord Advocate would take the Bill through this House. Does that answer the noble and learned Lord's question? In the meantime, he is the spokesman for the Government as a whole and not just for his department.
I do not intend to engage the noble and learned Lord the Minister of State at the Scottish Office in debate about Scottish local government reorganisation. My noble friend Lord Macaulay of Bragar will deal later with that matter from the Benches behind me. I shall not intrude on arguments which the noble Lord will put forward and which I confess—I believe that he would confess the same about Wales—that I imperfectly understand. At risk of wearying your Lordships I simply say again that the money that will be spent on the whole exercise could be much better spent on nursery education. I cannot say fairer than that.
We should be grateful that the Government have not presented us with another Bill attacking local democracy on a general front. We have had many such Bills in the past few years and the results, alas, are beginning to show. It is not just the collapse in morale among local authority officers —I speak as president of an organisation that has nearly 100 district councils as mernbers—and the ever creeping centralisation of decisions. The real phenomenon of the past few years has been the rise in the quango state.
The quango state is no joke. This is not a laughing matter. By 1996 quangos will control nearly one quarter of all government spending. Already there are some 2,900 of these bodies, which is well in excess of the 2,200 or so that caused so much concern to noble Lords opposite in 1979. But given the Government's plans to encourage schools and hospitals to opt out of local authority control, in addition to the new style police authorities, TECs and urban development corporations, that number is expected to rise to over 7,700 in three years' time.
It is not just a matter of bypassing elected local authorities. I have to say to the noble and learned Lord the Minister of State at the Scottish Office that there is direct evidence that those who are appointed—by a Conservative Government—to high positions on those quangos are to a large extent Conservative sympathisers or even representatives of businesses which have been donors to Conservative Party funds. In passing, I note that a number of noble Lords opposite figure among those appointees, some of them at levels of remuneration that old-age pensioners would find more than generous.
Should your Lordships have any doubts about what I say, let me give the example of Wales. At the last general election, the Conservatives won only six of 38 Welsh constituencies. Two of them were won by margins of 19 and 157 votes respectively. Seventy-one per cent. of Welsh voters voted against the Conservatives. Nevertheless, the number of quangos in
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Wales has doubled in the past 14 years and, as of now, £2.1 billion will be dispensed this year by those quangos compared with £2.5 billion by the properly elected Welsh local authorities. The Secretary of State for Wales was in 1991 responsible for 1,400 appointments to the 100 or so quangos that exist and those quangos themselves employed over 57,000 people. As the Department of City and Regional Planning of the University of Wales recently wrote:
"the Welsh Office and its quango network constitutes a formidable system of power, influence and patronage, a system which is controlled by a minority party".
There is no doubt that such a system is not only a source of mischief—witness the recent scandals at the Welsh Development Agency—but is a clear negation of democracy itself. That is the main burden of our charge, not just in Wales, but throughout the United. Kingdom. If they cannot win power in local authorities by fair electoral means—and they cannot—the Conservative Party constructs an elaborate system first to emasculate local authorities and then to transfer their powers of expenditure to unelected bodies manned by their own placemen. It is no wonder that Wales—and I come back again to Wales—has now become known as "Quangoland".
Having said all that, there is one quango—or perhaps two quangos—which we would welcome, to which the noble Lord referred, provided that any such quangos are mergers of existing bodies and are properly set up. I refer of course to the proposed environment agency and, in Scotland, the proposed Scottish environmental protection agency. These are not to be new quangos; they are designed, as I understand it, to bring together the functions of the National Rivers Authority, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and the waste regulation functions of local authorities. We have been—
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, will my noble friend allow me to intervene for just one moment before he leaves the question of Wales for the time being? Is it not the case that the number of members appointed to quangos by the Secretary of State for Wales now exceeds the number of local councillors in Wales? Is it not also the case that this proliferation of patronage, without being accountable, is going to lead to much stronger demands for a parliament for Wales and more constitutional consequences than people have foreseen, especially as the work of local councillors is diminishing in quality? Is it not the case that this may be true of Scotland, too?
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend. That is exactly what is happening. My noble friend is right in what he says about the number of appointees as against those who are elected democratically. Furthermore, in that situation you cannot get properly qualified people or sensible people to stand for local councils. They go off, they jump ship and they want to be appointed by the Secretary of State for Wales. So my noble friend makes a perfectly valid point.
When we look at the question of new quangos, we see that we have a paving Bill, and of course we shall

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deal with that paving Bill when it comes in due course. I have to say to the noble Lord, the Minister of State at the Scottish Office, that we were expecting other environmental legislation of which perhaps he was not aware. The gracious Speech was silent on these. Where, for instance, is the legislation, promised in January 1992, to implement the recommendations of the Edwards Panel on National Parks? Where is the legislation to protect important hedgerows, promised in the 1990 environment White Paper and on which a Private Member's Bill in another place was unceremoniously talked out? Where is the legislation to give the New Forest equivalent status to a national park? That was also promised. None of those appear to be on the Government's programme. All we have is an elliptical statement in the gracious Speech that:
"Bills will be introduced to take forward Environment Agency planning …"
The real problem, as I see it, is that for environmental issues to be anywhere near the top of the political agenda there must be a sense of communal values—values about our society, our planet and the future for our children and our grandchildren. These values must be communal, for the simple reason that no individual by himself or herself is able to see the larger picture of the damage that he or she can and does do to the environment in exercising his or her rights to individual freedom. Unpleasant as it may sound to noble Lords opposite, there is no escaping that conclusion.
So I conclude with a very simple message. If we are to go back to basics, there are two basics that I wish we could go back to. The first is "communal values". I have tried to demonstrate that the problems of the environment cannot be solved by the unfettered exercise of individual enterprise. They can only be solved by a sense of community, and I wish with all my heart that we could get back to that.
The second basic is quite simply "democracy". Democracy means a pluralistic society; it means that power cannot and should not be concentrated in one central authority or in unaccountable quangos but should be diffuse. It means that ordinary people should have the maximum possible say in the decisions that affect their lives, not only as consumers but as voters, and that their electoral verdicts should be respected. Communal values and democracy: these are the basics to which we should return
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? Is he suggesting that the members of these quangos are not ordinary people? They may have different political views from him, but they are ordinary people and they fulfil the needs of a democracy as he has described them.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, as always, for intervening; but the point I was making—and I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, has quite understood it—is that these people may be ordinary. Noble Lords opposite are "ordinary"; we are all "ordinary"; but they are not elected. This is an affront to democracy. These are the basics that we should return to, and if the
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Government follow that course we shall support them. But if they pursue their present course, which is contrary to communal values and to democracy, I have no doubt that we shall fight them and I have absolutely no doubt at all that we shall win.
3.57 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I had not anticipated the rather philosophical turn of the debate and I am afraid that I cannot add much to any identification of who or what the noble and learned Lord the Minister may have in mind. Nobody called out "Pooh-Bah"; and whether he encompasses those attributes or not, I do not know. However, everything he does I know he does with energy, whatever it may be and whoever he may be.
I too had identified the issue of democracy as being an important one to discuss today. The Government would be the first, I think, to say that if something is "not broke" we should not aim to fix it. I think I should like to extend that to "if it isn't broke, do not break it". In applying that maxim, although I appreciate that it was not in the gracious Speech because we already have legislation, I appreciate that it is very much a current issue. I would apply that to the local government review in England. The review has become increasingly surrounded by concern and confusion, with the guidance to the commission being revised part way through or, as those who are of a more sporting turn of mind than I am might say, "the goal posts being moved." It seems that a fast-tracking procedure has been put into place. I hope that may hear some reassurances today that the commission will be allowed to get on with its work and that the Government may cease their noises off-stage, and there will be no more interference.
Alternatively, if this is the fact, perhaps we should hear that the Government have made up their minds how they want local government to be structured in England and will tell us what is the purpose, in that case, of an independent commission. I hope that is not the case, because I should like to see weight being given to the views of the public, and I hope the commission will not be led away from recommending no change, if that were to be the commission's view in certain areas. There should be no alterations if the commission feels they are not necessary. In other words, if the structure is not broken or only slightly fractured, let us not break it further.
I have always had some difficulty with the concept of the review, because of the separation of local authority functions from structure. I was encouraged to hear the Minister refer to the issues of social services and housing, because I too believe, as with other functions, that they need to be looked at together. One cannot provide services of that type in separate pockets. However, any review which fails to address the fundamental issues of the role, purpose and function of local government will not create a new and enduring structure, and we shall find that we have to revisit the issue again in too short a time. After all, it is true to say that time and again public opinion polling has shown that the public by and large are satisfied with the services that are received from local government.

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Certainly there are higher satisfaction levels for local government than for central government. It is always entertaining to those on this side of the Chamber to look at how well local authorities score when the same group of people are asked what their views are about the Prime Minister and central government. Though my own local authority did not come out top of the MORI league in its opinion polling on local authorities, I was pleased that our near neighbour, Sutton—which is run by my political colleagues—did.
The Local Government Commission supports decentralised structures, and commented on that during the course of its work. I hope that the Government will take that on board. Innovative arrangements are being considered and introduced in their different ways. It is right that they should be different in different places; for instance, neighbourhood councils. Those innovative arrangements and new structures cannot operate unless they are recognised and, for instance, able to be part of the HIPS process of bidding for housing funds.
I conclude my comments on the local government review by expressing my anxiety that, in reducing the number of councils and therefore of councillors—giving them larger responsibility for larger numbers of people more geographically dispersed—there must be a danger of losing local and effective democracy. During the next few months we shall be considering the proposed structures for Scotland and Wales, which are to be restructured without their own commissions but, one hopes, not without objective external scrutiny and all the necessary consultation. I checked with my noble friend Lord. Hooson whether he would be speaking this afternoon about Wales and he tells me that these days he speaks about little else. I shall therefore leave that topic to him. No doubt my noble friend Lord Mackie will bring a Scottish perspective into the debate, though I suspect that it may be an agricultural one.
The Minister referred to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. I was not surprised to hear him say that there had been no call there for a further tier of government; each of those islands or sets of islands is a community. The whole exercise must reflect a genuine community of interests. Therefore, by addressing our minds to communities and to community of interest, I hope that the Government will help us to scotch any suggestion that boundaries may be gerrymandered for any other purpose. Local government is not supposed to be administratively tidy and uniform. We should be enabling local people to run their own communities and, rather than acting on their behalf, allowing them to be the local people.
We welcome the contribution to the debate to be made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, who will bring his own specific experience to bear. We read in recent press reports that all the counties are to be abolished. It may be that all the unitary authorities are to be abolished if there is to be only one tier. I was not surprised to have comments made to me that, with the electoral events of earlier this year, the Conservative Party does not now control county councils in the way that it used to, and perhaps has lost faith in them. Coming from London one must draw, if not a conclusion at least a suspicion, of that. The overall
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strategic London government—which I would not support being reintroduced in precisely the same form, but nevertheless it was an overall London-wide form of government, which I believe we badly need—was not controlled by the Government and was abolished.
This afternoon it may be appropriate to refer to and welcome the wide discussion on activities in London instigated this week by the Secretary of State. When the exercise was first announced, my reaction was that it would not be difficult for all the interested parties to agree on what needs to be done; there would be a great deal of difficulty, however, in persuading them to agree how it needs to be done. I appreciate that the "how" is not on the agenda in the glossy booklet now being circulated.
In local government we welcome partnerships with other sectors. As councillors we do not have the monopoly on wisdom or experience. However, the partnerships are no substitute for democracy. The consultation on what London is and should be is extremely wide, though it is interesting that the Evening Standard seems to be the major vehicle for it. It has perhaps a limited readership in some ways—the complaint was made to me that the consultation booklet was available only in central London. However, I hope that the book and the glossy booklet are accurate. Having only just received it—though I received three copies at the same time from different sources—I was concerned to see that the course of the Thames is shown wrongly. If that cannot be accurately portrayed in a book about London, one wonders about the accuracy of the rest of it.
We are asked by the Secretary of State to tell him what the prospectus for London should be. I do riot understand that term. Are we being asked to find a strategy, a list of short or medium-term objectives or an action plan? I fear that the response may be confused. There will be confusion as to what is the object of the exercise. I applaud the Government's attempts to establish views from Londoners, but the questionnaire cannot be used. It contains six questions; one is a closed question. It asks what people most appreciate about London. It then gives three categories, ranging from the Thames Barrier and rock music to health services. It is not clear whether people are meant to tick one of these or put them in some sort of ranking order. The other five questions are entirely open-ended. For instance, they ask what London can learn from other cities, and whether any other suggestions can be made for improving London.
They are admirable questions. But 250,000 questionnaires are being printed. Should only 25,000 people respond, how will their responses be analysed? If the Government have ignored—as I believe they did—professional advice as to how properly ro structure a questionnaire of this kind in order to obtain useful responses, I hope that they will take professional advice on how to deal with the responses. We all know how surveys can be distorted and how difficult it is to deal with structured answers.
I referred to government structures in England. Perhaps I may mention one which will be a little outside these shores; that is, the Committee of the Regions. I

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take the opportunity today to mention that, although I understand the difficulties that there have been in arriving at a list of nominees to the committee, I believe there are some oddities in the failure to recognise some urban concentrations and political representation as it applies to specific geographical areas. My specific request—I appreciate that it is an esoteric point—is that when the list of members is sent to the Council of Ministers, the Government will urge that each member state be allowed to make its own arrangements for the members and the alternate members. I am sure that the Minister will know the detail to which I refer. An arrangement which provides a pooling of alternates, and thus a pool of deputies rather than a pairing arrangement, would give the flexibility and balance of regional and political interests that we should like to see.
I have concentrated on structures because I, like the noble Lord, Lord Williams, am concerned about the proliferation of quangos—"the new magistracy" as it has been termed by an eminent professor of local government. I do not believe that the public likes these bodies any more than we do as politicians. I do not raise the matter out of a sense of pique. On Monday I attended a public meeting in my area. The issue was the closure of most of the services at a local hospital. However, what rapidly became the subject of discussion was how the local community could make known its views and have a local dialogue with those taking the decisions, who they were, how they were appointed, by whom they were appointed and why people could not talk to them.
We shall look with interest at the deregulation Bill and the fact that so much has been taken out of the democratic arena. Deregulation appears to be applied when it suits the Government but not perhaps at other times.
I am also interested to see this afternoon the Education Bill that has recently been published, in particular about the teacher training agency. I believe that my noble friends Lord Addington and Lord Redesdale, who are closer in age to members of student unions than I am, may refer to the subject. But I cannot help thinking that in these days of word processors there must be a real temptation, which has not been resisted, to cut and paste into new legislation provisions such as, "Members will be appointed by the Secretary of State, and so will the chairman: see Schedule 1 for the other members", and so on. It has the same format as the other quangos that have been established in increasing numbers over the past months and years.
The teacher training agency is a new body to administer central funds, and will be another unaccountable and undemocratic quango. There is already widespread criticism of it, not just by those directly involved in the training of teachers for schools. To refer to only one such body, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals has said that it sees no logical need for the agency. It is concerned about the threat to academic freedom, because research funded by it can be directly influenced by the Government. The committee also comments on the separation of education research from other higher education research, which it believes to be a dangerous precedent.
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Having said that, it would be discourteous if I did not say how much I welcomed yesterday's announcement—with which the noble Baroness was concerned—about the discontinuance of the proposals for the mums' army of teachers. We shall look with interest at the detail of the new proposals. We understand the wish to ensure that there is sufficient practical experience in the training of teachers, but I hope we can see evidence from the pilot schemes before we are committed to change. The Government must recognise the complexity of teachers' work and the resources which will be needed if the responsibility for training is passed to schools. I also hope that the noble Baroness will bring to bear her good sense on the question of nursery education. Many times we have discussed the educational and economic benefits of investment in the early years.
I turn now to environmental issues. The gracious Speech tantalisingly held out the prospect, still at one remove, of one new structure which would be widely welcomed, the Environmental Protection Agency. The paving Bill is rather like a carrot on the end of the Government's nose. We never quite get to it because, as we move forward each year, it is the same distance ahead. While there have been headlong rushes to make changes in education—the need for stability has been referred to this afternoon, as on so many occasions—we do not seem to have got on to even the slow track on the question of the environment. It may be a super-quango but at least it is one that we look forward to discussing with more enthusiasm when it comes. I was struck by the Minister's references to it, which all seemed to be about controlling pollution after it had been created. I believe that there will be a good deal of discussion about avoiding the incidence of pollution in the first place.
The gracious Speech made reference to sustainable development in the context of overseas aid. It would be wrong not to refer to that question as an issue in Britain, too. I hope that there will be some debate today—I dare say that my noble friend Lord Beaumont will ensure that there is—on the criteria used for decision-making. For instance, what measures are there to encourage the use of public transport? How can we ensure that all forms of transport are assessed equally as regards their economic, social and environmental costs? We have today heard the findings of the National Audit Office on the economic cost of motorways. That may make your Lordships feel, "Well, we knew that a huge amount of money was going into the roads programme. It was probably even more than we knew about".
I believe that subjects like air quality are rising very fast on the public agenda. I hope that there will be opportunities to discuss them and to make real achievements in those areas, not primarily for their intrinsic worth but because environmental quality in itself has an economic benefit. There is plenty of research to show that if a place in its geographical sense is environmentally friendly it will attract investment.
I do not wish to tax your Lordships' patience this afternoon. The gracious Speech did not refer to housing, and I appreciate that that may be an issue for the Budget process which will start next week. However, I hope that

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Ministers here today will pass on our concerns about the need for the Budget to address the lack of housing, and very often the lack of appropriate, affordable housing.
I have talked about quangos; others have done so and will do so. They are quasi-autonomous but not really autonomous, and they are non-governmental; in other words, they are non-accountable, non-democratic organisations. I hope that we may see fewer of them.
Last night I attended the prize-giving at a secondary school. The head of the school reported on the work being done within the school to assess its progress. It was a critical self-review process. I was impressed by the way that he discussed it, but I took issue with him on one phrase that he used. Having described the process to the assembled pupils, teachers and parents, he said, "I hope that it will please our masters". I believe that he was referring to the Department for Education. I took issue with him because I believe that both central and local government must be the servants, not the masters, of those who are delivering the service.
I thought that I might have to apologise to your Lordships if, as part of providing that service, I had to leave before the closing speeches this afternoon. I had a school governors' meeting to attend. But I hope that one of the benefits of a short list of speakers today—a question of, "Never mind the length, look at the quality"—is that I shall be able to be present for both events. If that is not the case, I apologise to your Lordships and to the Government Front Bench. It is not out of any sense of discourtesy but more a matter of being pulled in too many directions. I am sure they will understand the wish to be active and to do things elsewhere as part of the service.
4.19 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: My Lords, I intend to address my remarks to the sentence in the gracious Speech which refers to the new arrangements for funding teacher training in England and Wales. I begin by adding my voice to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Ham wee, in offering congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and her right honourable friend the Secretary of State on their announcement yesterday that one-year courses in teacher training for non-graduates will lead not to a teacher's certificate but to a qualification as a teaching assistant. That is good news. Those of us who find ourselves frequently in classrooms—I have to say that, probably once a week, I am in a series of classrooms in a school somewhere in my diocese—know the strength, especially in primary schools, of a team helping and supporting children, hearing them read and monitoring their work. To have them as support and not as replacements for teachers will be a strengthening of good practice.
I believe, along with others in your Lordships' House, that strengthening of resources in the early years of learning is key to an improvement in educational standards. The word I would focus on is "learning". It is not teaching, sometimes parodied as the stuffing of knowledge into an unwilling mind, but learning which is at the heart of education. Learning is a natural function of the brain, and the brain is an amazing organ performing prodigious feats in the early years of life.
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The chief educators in those early years are parents. One change which, I believe, would shift radically our educational performance is the involvement of parents as educators, not so much the provision of nursery schools but rather the provision of home early learning schemes professionally staffed. They enable parents to have the materials, to acquire the skills and to have the support to teach their own children, with the added advantage that in so teaching they are themselves continuing to learn. The notion of parent as educator is one which can continue throughout a child's development.
Vietnamese children learn well. The reason is that the whole family sits round the table to learn together. It was Jesse Jackson who said that no parent is too poor to switch off the television and sit down to read a book with his child. It is in the context of the significance of education as a learning activity that I wish to turn to the proposals for a funding agency for teacher training.
It is not immediately obvious to me that the proposal for a funding agency will raise the morale or improve the calibre of those who come into teaching. Of course it is the case that learning takes place in the context of good teaching; teaching which motivates, excites and empowers. But it appears that the proposals before us are designed to separate the training of teachers from the educational provision for others in higher education. The proposals appear to drive a wedge between higher education and teacher training. I am one who believes that that will be harmful in its effect. Surely it is not the way to attract those of real calibre to a profession whose status is of enormous significance to our future. At an academic level, a similar wedge driven between research in this field and research in other fields would surely not be for the health of education as a whole. However, it is clear that whatever hesitations there may be about the proposals—and they are very considerable—those proposals are to be brought forward. Indeed, the Bill has already been published.
I do not intend to make a speech which would be more appropriate to a Second Reading but I wish to raise two specific matters on the proposals. We shall be returning to them when we come to debate the Bill in your Lordships' House. The first is the matter of standards and accreditation. The teacher training agency will be a funding body. As such it is surely inappropriate that it should also be a validating body. The maintenance of standards and the giving of accreditation is surely a matter for a body independent of the funding agency. We shall be scrutinising the Bill carefully; indeed, at a first reading, it looks as if that is not the case.
My second concern relates to colleges of education, many of which are denominational. Those colleges largely began their lives as teacher training colleges. The denominational colleges were set up by Churches with an intention to fill both denominational and state schools with committed teachers grounded in the Christian tradition. Some colleges have diversified and are confident of their ability to survive the changes proposed. Others are more dependent on the teacher training component of the courses they offer and are unsure of their future under proposals which will mean funding drawn from two sources.

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There is much talk today of moral and spiritual values. These colleges are institutions which were founded specifically to nurture students in the religious traditions from which such values are derived. Some of the institutions make explicit in their prospectuses the value basis upon which their curriculum is grounded. Others undertake research into the content of such value bases. Teacher training is at the heart of their work. If that is taken from them, so is the chief justification for their existence. They have built up excellent partnerships with schools in the provision of teacher training: it is of great importance that that partnership should be strengthened and not eroded. It is also worth pointing out that if such institutions withered, the provision of religious education teachers and of in-service training would be severely affected.
The Government's reference, in documents so far available, to denominational provision has been slight, requiring the new agency to have regard to the desirability of maintaining what appears to it to be an appropriate balance in the support it gives to institutions of a denominational character and to other institutions. That leaves the denominational colleges in an exposed position. The Minister, I know, accepts the implications of partnership. Is she prepared, in due course, to strengthen that reference by saying that one of the agency's roles will be to determine the appropriate balance and not simply to have regard to the desirability of doing so? The acceptance of such a role would also have implications for the membership of the teacher training agency.
The involvement of the Church denominations, particularly, but not exclusively, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, in education is huge. Perhaps one-third of the schools in this country have a denominational character. The provision of committed, professional teaching staff for those schools and for all schools is a major concern for the Churches. I trust that in the debates on the Bill which will create the teacher training agency we shall strengthen that partnership in education between Church and state which has been so fruitful in the past and which will be effective in the future.
4.28 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, you will understand that I feel some fear and trepidation in rising to speak in this place where I had never expected to be other than the most occasional rare and casual tourist. Much has been made of the change that may go on in the structure of local government. I wish to discuss something that I regard as more significant because, although the pattern in the kaleidoscope may be changed, when the parts have stopped moving local government will still be present. I have every confidence in the future of local government, whatever, dare one say it, governments may do.
I served on a county council for 28 years. When I was first a member there appeared to be in place an unwritten convention that local government, which gets its functions as a result of legislation from government and therefore is itself a part of government, could undertake
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its functions as it pleased but within overall parameters decided by the national government of the day. Indeed, one of my first tasks was to put in place a major reduction in expenditure just before the county council's budget went to press at the behest of a government who were not of my political persuasion. I might add that it was a task that I enjoyed because I have always been anxious to spare the taxpayers' money.
Governments come and go—a sensation, I suppose, enjoyed more in this House than in another place. But a continuous theme over time has been the inexorable rise of local government expenditure as a result both of legislative pressure and pressure from the communities served. In the middle to late 1970s that led to a famous national speech which those of us who were in local government at the time remember as, "The party is over". Events moved forward and the convention, if it existed, was finally dispersed completely shortly after the 1979 election when some local authorities decided to go entirely their own way.
The inexorable and logical march of events has brought us to the present time. The attempt to find a new financial regime failed, not just because of the administrative and political weakness of the community charge, but in part also because some local authorities (of all political persuasions) saw in the advent of a new financial regime, a new tax, the excuse to raise their expenditure unreasonably. They thus ensured, and were in part responsible for the fact, that the new tax came in at a level that was politically unacceptable.
I make no excuses for reviewing the background because I find that all too often this matter is discussed without regard to the context and I have never found that to be particularly helpful. Today local government faces a problem. It is required to face in two directions. Its electoral accountability is clear. It is responsible to the community it serves. If one has the privilege to serve, as I did, in a great county council, one still exercises a very real executive power as a member of a local authority with the ability, by switching priority between services and by switching the allocation of moneys for those services, enormously to influence and aid the development of the community. On the other hand, the line of financial accountability now comes straight and squarely to the Government.
The question that I wish to ask is whether the divergence of accountability cannot be brought back more into parallel. The creation of the new unified regional offices, recently announced, seems to me to provide an opportunity for partnership. If those offices can develop a genuine partnership between themselves and the councils in the regions that they serve, there is hope for change.
Local government over the past two years has undergone a cultural change. Schemes such as City Challenge have demonstrated to local government the virtue of using all aspects of the community—business, government agencies and other agencies—in concert to help to bring forward the total development of the community. If that has taken place—and I suggest that it has—I have to ask the House whether the time has not

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come when we might consider how far we can begin to dismantle the over-rigid controls which exist at present in the financial area.
I turn to a second aspect of today's debate. I come from a region that is known by the name "East Anglia" although it is rather ill-defined as a region with three unusual characteristics. It was the most rapidly developing economic region of the country, with the most rapidly rising population. At the same time, it was the region that exported more of its students than any other in the country. The reason for that was simple. It had no institutional basis on which public sector higher education could develop. When, in the mid-1980s, it became clear that the Government were considering the incorporation of higher education, my then director of what was an institute of higher education, came to me for support because he saw the change as an opportunity for development. It was not possible at that time to see where the change would lead. An original amalgamation of two small institutions in 1988 and co-operation with a number of other institutions created a polytechnic. That in itself was not very significant, but the catalytic effect created a situation where the number of students in the institution rose from 4,000 full-time equivalents to 7,000 full-time equivalents four years later. In addition, there was a rapid expansion across the whole region of public sector higher education as a result of co-operative arrangements with other existing institutions.
The director who came to me at the start of that process is now the vice-chancellor—he did not expect that—of a university that is in the middle rank and still growing rapidly. It is a university that is changing the way that universities work. It is taking university degree education to the community instead of expecting the community to come to it for education. I am aware that the Open University does that, but it does it in a very different way. That development is something that I expect to see increasingly across a wider field. I know that it is happening elsewhere in the country. Criticism has been made of the inflexibility of educational institutions to meet the needs of changing times and of modern development. Today I have the opportunity to thank publicly all those who made that development possible. It could not have taken place without solid political backing from all quarters. It could not have taken place if the Civil Service, the funding authorities and the late academic authorities had not taken every opportunity to diminish obstacles and to help us on our way. The result is an institution which today can make a real contribution to the region. It is a hope for the future.
I note the conventions on maiden speeches, and it seems to me that I have taken sufficient of your Lordships' time. I am grateful for your attention.
4.40 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, on behalf of the whole House I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on an excellent speech. Its contents were good and its delivery excellent. We look forward to having the benefit of the noble Lord's knowledge, in particular on education and local government.
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For a long time as a member of local government in Birmingham I was involved in housing. I became involved because the area that I represented surrounded the gas works of the city of Birmingham, One does not find many salubrious mansions in such areas. I learnt the hard way that it was difficult to bring up a family and to achieve good practices in what were called "slum clearance" houses. All those houses have now gone.
When I heard the Prime Minister say that we should get back to basics I hoped that he would get back to what was my first basic rule regarding people. It was the provision of good family housing at affordable rents. There is no way in which the education of a child can prosper if the family is living in a bedsit or in temporary accommodation as a result of homelessness. Difficult living conditions and facilities such as two rooms in some lodging house are not conducive to enabling any parent to show good practice. Families have to share bathrooms and toilets and there is nowhere for the children to play or, in many cases, to sit, except on the bed. Therefore, in looking at housing we must look also at the broader aspect of the education of children.
Increasing housing investment is a good way of boosting output and bringing down unemployment. We all know that housing projects can be started quickly. They are labour intensive and use few imported goods. Local authorities are the largest providers of houses for rent. But houses must be available at affordable rents. if say to those noble Lords who supported the Government in the abolition of wages councils that after doing so and bringing down wages generally it becomes necessary to provide houses at affordable rents or to ensure that there is sufficient in the budget to provide housing benefit. If people cannot afford to pay the rent for the properties that are being built they have no alternative but to claim housing benefit. In many local authorities 75 per cent. of the tenants receive housing or social security benefits to help to pay the rent.
I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has left the Chamber because he was a member of the Government during Harold Macmillan's era. Mr. Macmillan later came to this House as the Earl of Stockton. I recall his visit to the area of Birmingham which I represented first on the local authority and then in the other place. He opened the first multi-storey block of flats there. In his speech, he said, "The impact of housing on economic and social development in Britain is as important as ever". I wish that Lord Stockton was sitting on the Benches opposite smiling at me, remembering the words that he spoke on that day. They are still valid after 30 or 40 years.
The Government constantly tell us that government expenditure cannot create jobs. I do not accept that argument. They recently announced that the Jubilee Line was to be extended using public money. In proclaiming that, the Minister paused and, with great pride, said, "And, of course, this will boost and create 23,000 new jobs". The Government cannot have both: they cannot say that public expenditure will not boost jobs and then, when they start to spend, say that it will. Does that mean that it is only when the Government, and not local authorities, spend money that the number of jobs is boosted?

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I wish that the Government would get closer to local authorities. I say that in particular as one who comes from Birmingham. I am glad that the Minister for Education is sitting on the Front Bench. We in Birmingham have on occasions been a little upset about the way our schools are derided. There have been perhaps unfair and unpleasant remarks made about the schools in the city and the officers in charge of them. In the schools in Birmingham we are getting only one type of pupil, and that can be related to housing. If more houses could be built and spread around perhaps we should be able to uplift many of the school results because the mixture of pupils would be better. The figures relating to education reflect the areas in which the schools operate.
We thank the Government for allowing us to spend capital receipts on housing. They thought that the local authorities would receive £1 billion in expenditure but unfortunately nowhere near that amount of money has been found in capital receipts for housing. We are only in receipt of £700 million. Would it be possible for the Government to continue that holiday for perhaps another year so that local authorities can complete the refurbishment of many highly desirable dwellings?
When examining the provision of housing we must consider housing associations. They receive the majority of government money to provide houses for sale or for rent. In considering housing associations and their government funding we must note that their rents are going sky high—anything up to £10 or £15 a week higher than local authority rents. Obviously, those rents make a bigger impact on the housing benefit system than local authority rents. It is a matter of concern and worry to the banks, building societies and so forth, which lend money to the housing associations. It is not a healthy situation for financial institutions who invest money if the collateral is in housing benefits. The Government should think seriously about housing benefit rents and housing association prices.
I turn to the important part that the Government's business expansion scheme has rightly played in getting private properties back into circulation. However, one must say to the Government that if they decide to spend more public money on private renting they must take into account the interests of the community as a whole, including the tenants who occupy the properties. Subsidy should be conditional on landlords bringing their property up to a basic standard of repair, introducing adequate management standards, and, of course, keeping rents within limits determined by rent officers for housing benefit eligibility.
The booklet Refurbishment Contracts, published under the provisions of the Citizen's Charter, uses the word "landlord". On reading the booklet, one would think that it is aimed primarily at local authorities. Does the word "landlord" apply to the people I have mentioned who are receiving benefits from the business expansion scheme? I ask the Minister that, because some of the properties I have seen could be described as appalling.
Like others, I wonder whether local government reorganisation is a party political issue. If I were a
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Conservative, I might say that it arises because of the unfortunate results in the Tory shire counties. It may be a method of altering the boundaries in the north to lessen Labour majorities on councils. I do not trust the Government further than I can see them but I have not decided on which of those alternatives the idea is based.
There seems to be no shortage of well qualified people in the media, research organisations and universities who can bring forth reasoned, well-researched policy documents as a contribution to thinking or any new role which the Government believe to be desirable for local authorities. However, we do not use those kinds of people. The Home Office does; I know because I receive its publications. Some of the research carried out for the Home Office on certain aspects should be taken much more seriously by the Government.
In examining the new role for local authorities—and there must be a new role—we must look at the placemen who now occupy positions in local government. I can do no better than use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, who said that when businessmen take up posts of public responsibility, they are constricted in their interpretation of ideas. He defined that as "authoritative thinking". No doubt that is why the Government like those people to hold such posts. I do not want to go into details of unelected placemen holding those jobs, whether they are the unknown governors of our local community, or whether they are there because of political patronage. We know that they do their jobs behind closed doors.
Yesterday I attended a function at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and for the first time I met in the flesh the chairman of a water authority. I had to say to him, "I have never met one of your species before." Such people do not mix. I receive many invitations to functions in Birmingham where I may see the chairman of the police authority, chief officers and businessmen who are in the manufacturing industry. However, I never see a water authority manager. I sometimes see a British Telecom manager. I never see anybody from the hospitals either. They do not wish to be seen or to be known because they do not wish to be asked questions. That is why they do not attend those functions. They become a closed shop to themselves.
What I object to more seriously is the fact that someone can earn £40,000 or £60,000 per year for two days' work per week. Normally that would be two mornings or two afternoons because successful businessmen do not work 9 to 5 jobs. They can then look around and find something else to do for the other two days if they are lucky. Many of them have two or three jobs. I mention wages councils again. If those people were paid at that rate, perhaps we should not be quite so narked about them.
I turn now to the real problem which local authorities face and their involvement in business methods, cost accountability and market forces. I raise no objection to that. I should not know how to be a councillor in Birmingham because the authority now does its job in an entirely different way. It is a large local authority which used to have its own works department. It had the finest water authority in Great Britain. I should tell my

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noble friend on the Front Bench that the water came straight from Wales: it was the best water that you could possibly get. Of course, we lost all that. We lost the gas, the electricity and all those resources which were initially provided by local authorities. Every hospital in Birmingham was provided by the local authority. The local authority knew what provision was needed by the people in its area. Unfortunately, we have lost all that.
Local authorities are now looking for new roles. I see admirable work taking place in Birmingham. We are getting very much closer to the community by offering facilities in all areas of the city. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, will be interested to know that many of the libraries in Birmingham have reading sections for small children. The children sit on carpets and stories are read to them by the library staff. Their mothers are present. Special places are provided for children up to six years of age. That is taking place from one end of the city to the other; it is admirable.
I am concerned about all the new quangos. There are noble Lords in the Chamber who know more about the legal process than I do. However, if we look at many of the Acts now on the statute book we see the words that "the Secretary of State shall" and "the Secretary of State will take responsibility". If the Secretary of State has his placemen all around the country, we shall become very close to losing what I call real democracy for local authorities. Yesterday my noble friend on the Front Bench illustrated that by saying that there could be a placeman in charge of the police service. I know that we shall debate such matters at another stage but we see clearly that the role of local government must be defended. We cannot become a centralist state when that is contrary to what is expected of us in Europe; namely, getting back to the regions. Unfortunately, this Government believe that everything should be done by the state.
I am concerned that not only do we not know who those people are but I am not sure that I am happy about the way in which they use public money. I know that my noble friend Lord Dean has, on two or three occasions, raised questions about hospital trusts. Certain parts of the National Health Service are not using their funds correctly. I go no further than that. I know that, unfortunately, in the West Midlands, there have been two or three catastrophes concerned with computers. It seems strange to me that computers cannot be made to work properly in a health authority. Local government was called upon to put all the work concerning the poll tax on computers. I do not believe that a single local authority was charged with not being able to do that. It was clone on time. And then, within less than two years, it was called upon to change the whole computer programme again.
We have not had local authorities criticised about their computers. But, somehow or other, computers operating the health service do not seem to function correctly. Either it is not known how many patients there are, or, if that is known, the charge per patient is not known. We should not criticise local government computer systems; we should commend them.
If we are to have deregulation, perhaps I may make a special plea that the approach to consumer protection
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is not weakened. Consumer protection in local authorities is something of immediate benefit to all residents in the area. There are many difficulties. However, that is sometimes because the drafting of the legislation is perhaps not as clear as it should be to enable businesses to operate. Therefore, it has; to be spelt out on many occasions by trading standards officers. I believe that the trading standards departments, with their impartiality, their-accountability and their general respect for the public and for business, need to be carefully nurtured.
There is one further point about which I feel most strongly. There must be no relaxation of health and safety standards. At present, I am awaiting a reply from a government department regarding electrical standards that apply to building sites. Hazards in industry must be avoided at all costs. That also applies to motorways, when we consider recent events.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, from these Benches, we also proffer our congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on his maiden speech. He clearly has great experience of local government and we look forward to hearing from him on many occasions on that subject, as well as on others.
I have often thought—and my opinion is shared by many other people in the country—that the present; Government's view of local government is coloured too much by their experience of the high spending, authorities which, as the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, put it, went "their own way". That seems to have coloured their attitude towards the whole of local government. One of the things that the noble Lord might consider doing is to persuade the Government that most local government is not like that at all. Indeed, most local authorities (whatever parties they represent, or whether they represent no party) give great service to the country. They do so week after week and month after month in a very conscientious way. That is the best example of local government., and it is widespread.
As my noble friend Lady Hamwee defined correctly, I shall concentrate on the reform of local government in Wales which, like the reform of 1971–72 (embodied in the Local Government Act 1972), threatens another disaster; that is, unless the Bill which contains the Secretary of State's presently announced proposals is substantially amended. Most people in Wales are in favour of all-purpose authorities as such. The two-tier system has proved to be a huge and expensive mistake. Tragically, many MPs of all parties in 1971 wanted huge local authorities.
During the Second Reading debate in another place on 17th November 1971 (although I was not a spokesman on local government) I argued for small unitary authorities. I suggested that there should be a domestic parliament for Wales to take over regional responsibilities. It seems to me that some services ought to be organised regionally. However, local government must be local. The way to make it local is to have all-purpose or, as they are now called, unitary authorities.

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In those days the Labour Party in particular (which has now come round to the idea, for example, of a domestic parliament for Wales, with unitary authorities) was against both concepts. The party has obviously had a considerable change of heart since that time. However, I should like to concentrate my remarks today on the proposal to make the present Powys County Council area the unitary authority in that part of Wales. It is a huge mistake, bearing in mind the huge county that it is.
I do not know whether noble Lords are aware of this, but the present county council of Powys covers one-quarter of the land surface of Wales. It was a great mistake and was similarly disliked by people in Brecon, Radnor and Montgomery. The proposal today is that that county council should be made into a unitary authority. Perhaps I may quote from the principles set out in the Government's White Paper (Local Government in Wales: A Charter for the Future) of 1993. Paragraph 1.2 reads:
"The Government believes that the present system of local government in Wales is not widely understood; nor does it sufficiently reflect people's identification with their own communities and localities".
Certainly, Powys in no way relates in that respect. The paragraph continues,
"it is now clear that the replacement of the old counties (which had existed for over 400 years)"
which included Montgomery, Brecon and Radnor—
"by local government areas not always reflecting people's traditional loyalties has not secured wholehearted public support".
They can say that again. Then, paragraph 1.4 goes on to mention the aim of reorganisation:
"The Government is committed to the creation of good local government which is close to the communities it serves".
If one goes to Powys, it is 120 miles from one point to another. Indeed, one can spend hours in the car. In recent weather conditions one can imagine the difficulties experienced by councillors and officials getting from one part of the community to another.
Before I finish my quotations, perhaps I may refer to paragraph 2.1 of the White Paper, which reads:
"Local government is government for local people by local people".
I think that the Secretary of State should say that to himself every night before he goes to bed. One of the objectives of reorganisation is to establish authorities which, so far as possible, are based on the strong sense of community evidenced in Welsh life.
When I spoke during the debate in 1971 I was supported by the then Labour Member for Brecon and Radnor. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, who was the best of the post-1979 Secretaries of State for Wales, took part in the debate while fighting for Pembrokeshire. He agreed with me when I said that there was no real sense of community there as history, geography and habit had seen to that. As a county council it was unloved, save by its own councillors and staff. How can that be local government?
The total population of Powys now that the Secretary of State has put back into it Ystradgynlais (which is a great slice which was taken out before) is very close to
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120,000. Yet as the unitary authority it is more than two-and-a-quarter times the size of the nearest proposed unitary authority in Wales, which is Carmarthenshire.
I should like to concentrate on the case for Montgomeryshire. I make it clear that I am chairman of the committee which has been working to save Montgomeryshire. The chairmen of every political party in the constituency—the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cwmru and the Green Party—sit on my committee. We have raised a great deal of money to fund our campaign, unlike the county council, which has been spending ratepayers' money for its campaign.
I should like to put forward the following points for the Secretary of State to consider between now and publication of his Bill. Montgomeryshire fulfils the principles for change set out in the Government's White Paper of the spring of this year, from which I quoted, in every possible respect. In addition, local opinions and allegiances are entirely in favour. Recently I read with great interest the proposals of the commission looking at local government reform in England in respect of Cleveland and Durham and also of Derbyshire. It is interesting to note how much attention the commission paid to local feelings as expressed in the MORI polls which it had commissioned. An NOP was taken in Montgomeryshire between 10th and 18th July this year. It showed that 71 per cent. of the population of Montgomeryshire supported a unitary authority based on Montgomeryshire while only 16 per cent. supported a unitary authority based on Powys. No MORI poll conducted on behalf of the commission for England has produced figures which in any way approach those.
The previous Secretary of State for Wales, Mr. David Hunt, said in 1992 in the House of Commons that he intended to base his unitary authorities on the old county allegiances. He specifically named Montgomeryshire, after Pembrokeshire. At a Conservative Party meeting in Llanfechain, of which the Conservative delegates on my committee are for ever reminding me, in the course of the last election in 1992 he gave a categoric assurance that there would be a Montgomeryshire unitary authority. This is a grave breach of faith.
The old Montgomeryshire County Council had an excellent record in local government. It was the first county in Wales to comply with the requirements of the Education Act 1944. Likewise, it provided excellent services in other spheres. It is predicted that the population, which is growing, will amount to 60,000 by 1998. To that must be added the portion of Clwyd which the Secretary of State proposes to add to Montgomeryshire—another 2,500 people. That population is comparable with those of Cardiganshire and of Anglesey which are to become unitary authorities. The combined population of Brecon and Radnor is also comparable and justifies a separate unitary authority.
Powys is simply too big to be an acceptable county even under the old two-tier system, let alone as a unitary authority under the new system. It simply cannot provide local government, covering as it does a quarter of the land surface of Wales.
As for the Secretary of State's suggestion that Powys (or Mid-Wales, as I believe he now proposes to call it,

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although changing its name does not change its character, and there was no historical justification for calling it Powys) should have powerful sub-committees for Montgomeryshire, Brecon and Radnor, that seems to create a modified form of two-tier system. Powys, or a Mid Wales council, would have to have all its committees serviced, and there would have to be powerful local Montgomery, Brecon and Radnor committees which would also have to be serviced. That is a recipe for additional costs and bureaucracy. Just as there is a Montgomeryshire defence committee, there are also Brecon and Radnor defence committees. To put together what is virtually a new and complicated two-tier system when one is trying to get rid of such systems makes no sense at all.
I am greatly disappointed by the approach of Mr. John Redwood, the new Secretary of State for Wales. We have to bear in mind that he inherited the present situation. However, I expected him to be man enough to bite the bullet, but so far he has proved to be much better at criticising his fellow Ministers in the Cabinet than doing anything himself. Recently, rightly in my view, he exposed the growth of bureaucracy in the National Health Service trusts in Wales, and got a shot in sideways at what was happening in the Department of Health over in England. However, he does not practise what he preaches. The devolved committee system for the three component parts of the new Mid Wales county is simply an open invitation to the kind of bureaucracy which he criticises elsewhere.
Because I had known of him previously and I have met him once, in a different role and have been impressed by his considerable intellectual capacity, I thought that he would have had the courage to reverse the fatal political somersault of his predecessor, Mr. Hunt, and would now establish Montgomeryshire as a unitary authority.
As a Liberal Democrat, I am bound to say that no one has worked harder in my campaign than the Conservative representatives on the committee. One of them is the chairman of the Conservative Association. The other is the former chairman of the Mid-Wales Development Corporation, who was himself a Conservative candidate, not against me but against my predecessor, Clement Davies. For many years he has been president of the Conservative Association. I am amazed that Mr. Redwood is paying such scant attention to their views, which I know have been expressed very forcefully. It seems to me, and to many people of all political complexions, that Montgomeryshire is being sacrificed for purely political reasons.
I would create three unitary authorities, one each for Brecon, Radnor and Montgomery. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, was surprised when I interrupted him to ask what was the population of the Western Isles. It is less than the population of Radnorshire. If the Western Isles can provide services, so can Radnorshire. Orkney and Shetland can do so, yet they have about half the population of Montgomeryshire. The Secretary of State might take advice from the Secretary of State for Scotland about how such things are achieved in Scotland.
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I know that the good sense of the representatives concerned would ensure that those three authorities would co-operate and work closely together. If that solution is unacceptable to the Secretary of State, there could be one unitary authority for Montgomeryshire and one for Brecon and Radnorshire. In 1991 the Government produced their consultation paper, The Structure of Local Government in Wales. If the noble Baroness has time to study it before she replies she will find in the document the Secretary of State's preferred option for Wales. He gave three different options, but stated that 20 unitary authorities was his preferred option. In that option one finds Montgomeryshire as a separate unitary authority and Brecon and Radnor as a separate unitary authority. The alternative of 24 unitary authorities again has Montgomeryshire as a unitary authority, Radnorshire as a unitary authority and Breconshire as a unitary authority. Why on earth have there been so many changes between 1991 and 1993? What on earth has made the Secretary of State go back on his undertaking and his solemn promise to a Conservative Party meeting in Montgomeryshire on this matter? Even the status quo is better than what he now proposes for Montgomeryshire.
So far it appears that Mr. Redwood is a man who, listens patiently. Delegates from my organisation went to see him. I did not accompany them because I had the opportunity to speak in this debate. He listened to them very patiently, and interesting questions were asked. However, he gives the impression so far of a. man who listens but does not heed. There is a world of difference between someone who listens and someone who heeds. I hope that that judgment is not correct, but it is my present judgment. I urge the Secretary of State to think again on this matter, to re-assess the facts and, most importantly, to appreciate the depth of feeling.
As the noble and learned Lord said in opening, we are dealing with long-term matters. The people of Montgomeryshire have to live with the new organisation, as have the people of Breconshire and. Radnorshire. If in 20 years of existence Powys can stir up no more support in an opinion poll than 17 per cent., it indicates the depth of feeling about the matter. I hope that when the Secretary of State reappraises the issue, he will find that the factors undoubtedly point to the viability and desirability of a Montgomeryshire unitary authority.
5.21 p.m.
Lord Cooke of Islandreagb: My Lords, I hope that the Minister and Members of your Lordships' House will forgive me if I leave before the end of the debate. I have an unavoidable appointment in Northern Ireland this evening.
I wish to direct my remarks to local government in Northern Ireland. I found today's debate very interesting. In Northern Ireland we think that we have a monopoly of quangos. We think that only we have a surfeit of hospital boards which cannot be got at. It is comforting to learn that we are in good company.
In another place yesterday, the Prime Minister gave an assurance that he is not in the business of securing the breakup of the United Kingdom. Most of us know that well; but I welcome the assurance because there is great

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unease throughout the Province. There is a confusion of strong emotions: high expectations, doubt, uncertainty and fear. That is not a recipe for stability. The leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr. Molyneaux, in a balanced speech in another place yesterday, described the feelings in Northern Ireland very accurately. I can confirm that business people and many others who do not normally take an active interest in politics are disturbed and alarmed to an extent that I have not seen for years.
One of the difficulties has been the use and misuse of words. For instance, we are supposed to be longing for peace. There has been much hype about the word "peace". We are not at war; but we are being attacked by terrorists. What we want and long for is for the attackers to stop. The reason for all the uncertainty is that in recent weeks the initiative has passed to others—to the IRA and its peace proposals as yet undisclosed but well guessed. We read of constantly changing statements from Dublin, plus leaked documents which have a genuine ring and do not help. To the man in the street it seems that the proposals from Dublin for our future are the demands of the IRA little disguised.
Our Government do not appear to be doing anything except wait and make reassuring statements. The Secretary of State made such a statement on Monday and the Prime Minister did so yesterday. One might think that those are enough, but in Northern Ireland we cannot forget the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was announced as the panacea for all our problems but gave much and achieved little except to encourage the IRA to step up its violence—a not unexpected reaction. We have a deep suspicion of the faceless men in back offices who think they can solve our problems by fudging words. I can hardly wait for the announcement that those gentlemen are to be privatised.
I pray that our Government take control, are seen to take control, and make clear by actions that the constitution of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland is not a subject for discussion at any table. The Secretary of State and his Ministers have been making good progress in recent discussions with the political parties in Northern Ireland. But it is time that the Secretary of State came forward with his proposals for the development of devolved government in Northern Ireland. We badly need the restoration of democracy in Government in Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister yesterday asked the IRA this direct question: are they going to end violence for good? All in Northern Ireland wish for a positive answer. We hope that it is, "Yes". However, if the answer is, "No", or if it is, "No, unless you give us this, that and the other", then I hope that the Prime Minister will feel that he has done his best and can then turn his attention to other issues.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cooke of Islandreagh, was a useful contribution to our debate touching on local government in Northern Ireland. I am very grateful for that contribution as I am sure are other noble Lords.
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We are today discussing local government, education and the environment. I should like to think that we were debating good government, democracy, freedom, integrity, and economic sense in relation to long term effects. However, the problem is that we are faced with a Government who do not appear to share those high objectives for such areas of social activity. It appears that the Government wish to centralise and control rather than confer freedom and democracy.
Although it is not a subject for debate today, one issue was discussed fairly extensively yesterday; it has a bearing on local government. I refer to the changes which the Government envisage for police authorities. It looks as though we shall have police commissioners; I almost used the word commissars. The powers of the new chairs of the police authorities as government nominees, paid people—some people refer to them as paid placemen—will be very great with regard to the direction of our police forces.
We all recognise that the social strains on the fabric of our society were engendered by the policies of the Government. The economic madness inflicted on the country by the Government in the early 1980s led to social instability, with riots in Toxteth, Moss Side and inner London. Authoritarian police methods kept control. We again saw authoritarian police activity during the miners' strikes in 1984–85. Since then I believe that the police have learnt the lesson of those situations. Local communities have learnt that that is no way for the police to operate effectively. To use a police force as an instrument of national social control does nothing for the problems of crime or for law and order in our society. I am very glad that police forces throughout the country are learning the lessons of recent history and are working closely with local communities, building positive relations with them. Where that has been successfully achieved, those forces are tackling the rise in crime and are reducing the incidence of crime. I believe that the government proposals for police forces will do nothing for problems relating to law and order and will be bad for local government.
Another aspect which has been alluded to by only one speaker today is the introduction of regional commissars. Those people will be given the task of pulling together the actions of government agencies at regional level. Over many years there has been much talk in the Labour Party about the introduction of regional government. But the introduction of regional commissars is not the introduction of the regional government that we had hoped to see in a democratic society.
I turn to the reforms relating to local government in Wales and Scotland. One has to ask why the Government are engaged in the process of local government reform. Why do they seek to introduce what is effectively, in the broad pattern, single-tier authorities? We are led to the inescapable conclusion that wherever the results of the democratic process are such as to throw Conservatives out of office, Conservative government effectively tries to destroy that element of local government. We saw it in 1985

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with the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties, which over a 10-year period had gone solidly against the Governrnent.
We have seen the results of county council elections in England, and in what are effectively the same sort of authorities in Wales and Scotland. Conservative control has been almost eradicated. I believe that the Conservatives are left with one county council. As a consequence, the Conservative Government appear to want to get rid of county councils. We are left with the inescapable conclusion that the Conservative Party will adhere to the concepts of democracy only if that democracy gives them power. When it does not give them power, they are prepared to abandon it.
I turn for a moment to the subject of student unions. Yes, they were a thorn in the flesh of (dare I say it?) Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s. But student unions under the present period of Conservative rule have spent their time and energy protecting their members in various different ways. It is quite reasonable that that is the case. One of the points that the Conservative Party does not seem to appreciate is that student unions are democratic institutions. They reflect the wishes of their members, and they have mechanisms of democracy that ensure that they do so. If one looks up and down the country at the different student campuses and student unions, broadly speaking there has been a development over the years of support services for students in a whole range of ways that reflect the local anxieties and difficulties of the members of those unions. We run the risk that if we effectively take the attitude that "nanny will know best", we shall lose out—or rather our young people will lose out. Those young people are not some amorphous body of students who do not belong to us. They are our sons and daughters who are studying at universities and colleges. They will lose out.
Perhaps I may touch on teacher training. Here I have to go back in history a little further than anyone has yet done in the debate today. If we look at the situation of the education and training of teachers prior to 1939, we can see that a large proportion were what is generically described as "uncertificated"; namely, teachers who learnt on the job; who sat in with another teacher and then took a class of their own. They may even have been pitched in to take a class straight away on their own without any training whatsoever.
During the war, one task of the Armed Forces was to set up extensive education and training programmes. The standard of education of people drafted into the Armed Forces was inadequate to provide their fighting needs. That is not surprising, if one considers the make-up of the working population before the war. We had millions of agricultural workers and coalminers, and hundreds of thousands of domestic servants, all of whom required the very rudiments of education and who could almost be classed as acquiring virtually no education whatsoever in the sense in which we know it: reading, writing, arithmetic, science and modern languages.
However, society has changed. We now have fewer than 200,000 mineworkers. Even those mineworkers are technocrats compared with their labouring forefathers.
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We have very few agricultural workers; and again, they are technocrats compared with their forefathers. We have very few domestic servants. We have instead a heavily urbanised industrial-commercial society which requires its members to be well educated; able to communicate and live among each other; and able to contribute in an economically effective manner. To do that, they need education; and to get that education they need teachers. The most important ingredient in education is those who teach our young people.
Before the war, as I said, a large proportion of teachers were uncertificated and virtually untrained. The results were as could be expected. After the war, following the introduction of the Rab Butler Education Act, there was a recognition of the need to train teachers effectively. By the 1950s, virtually all teachers were required to have done a three-year teacher training course. That minimum requirement has unfortunately not held. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a tendency for the teaching profession to become one of graduate entry. One of the effects was that the profession took in graduates in a subject which may have had no relevance to what they would teach, gave those graduates one year's teacher training and said in effect that they were qualified as teachers. It is not my job this afternoon to denigrate the abilities, commitment and contribution that those PGCE teachers have made to our education system. But the thought that the Government might whittle away at teacher training even further is one about which we must be very, very concerned. We do not allow doctors or lawyers to practise after only three or four years' training. We ought to ask whether we are prepared to allow the people on whom the future of our young people is so dependent to practise the highly professional skill of teaching without at least, I would argue, three years' training.
In conclusion, I wish to look at how we can help ourselves go forward. I pick on two points: the first is freedom; the second is finance. To enable local government to provide effectively for the people in its area, it needs to have access to the necessary finance. It needs finance to make the capital provision to build schools and homes for the needy and it needs the revenue income to provide for the payment of teachers, social workers and others. I hope that the current capital regime that the Government have allowed for this year until December can be relaxed for at least another year or two, and it is to be hoped for the foreseeable future, so that the local authorities are able to use all the capital receipts that they receive from selling assets to finance their activities. While I hold out very little hope, I make a plea that we introduce a fair rates system and do not allow the very rich in our society to alleviate their tax burden with the banding system in the current council tax and also that we include local business rates. One of the most problematic events that has happened with the universal business rate is the separation of local businesses from their local communities. It has meant that there is no longer that synergy, the coming together of local businesses and local authorities working together because it is to their mutual advantage. We have lost that tie. I make a plea to get it back.
5.40 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, I wish to direct virtually all my remarks to the issue of student unions, a subject that was briefly touched on by the previous speaker. The Government propose to reform the way in which student unions work and how they affiliate themselves to outside bodies. The primary effect will be to produce a change in the role of the student union. From an all-embracing organisation looking after student welfare as a whole and connected to one overall body —namely, the National Union of Students—it will change to become one which deals with a series of four key areas. That will happen, if we are to take the consultative documents seriously.
The Bill published today that deals with this matter is, I am afraid, one that contains the ultimate Henry VIII clause. Perhaps I may briefly read from Clause 20:
"The governing body of an establishment to which this Part applies shall take all practicable steps to secure
(a) that financial support provided by them to a students' union out of public money is used only for services of such descriptions as may be specified by regulations by the Secretary of State".
The Bill does not offer any great insight into what those services will be. No doubt we shall hear more about this matter when we discuss it at Second Reading in about three weeks' time.
Apparently the four key services are: internal representation; welfare; catering; and sport. We would all agree that those are important areas of concern to student unions. For instance, in order to support students, internal representation is almost vital. That is something that a student union should do. With regard to welfare, it seems to me, having read the definition of "welfare", that it covers most of the basic needs. Catering too is an important part of the student union's activity for the simple reason that most catering facilities are within student union buildings. So far as sport is concerned, I have thumped the tub for sport on many occasions in your Lordships' House.
But why are various other activities missed out? Sports of various descriptions are allowed. Does "sport" include physical education generally? Does physical education include dance and movement? If dance and movement are included, why not drama or debating skills? They all follow from each other. I can carry the argument further. Unions are allowed to offer welfare provisions which include introductory seminars and parties in Freshers' Week but not after that. We are told that our society is returning to Victorian values. The unions were set up as social units and provide facilities such as bars and support services. Students are not well off—a subject which this House has discussed on numerous occasions. The current maintenance figures for the classic undergraduate—a student outside London, under 24 years old—mean that if the student does not find a job in the summer (there is still not a wonderful employment situation, to put it mildly), he will have the sum of £48.94 a week on which to live. It is fairly safe to say that a similar working person who is unemployed will get something in excess of £65 a week, if not slightly more. Students have higher living costs because they have to purchase books, if nothing else.
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The student is being told: "You are going to lose aspects of your student union". The Government say that many of the union's social functions can be done through a process of funding outside the parent group but possibly through the union—it will have to be done that way because the union is the body which has the original facilities, the bars and so on. Also other social groups can be provided for through the same route. I do not speak of the political groups but groups such as (when I was a student) the Clanger Appreciation Society or the Magic Roundabout to Roll Again Society. Those were the ones which there was a rush to join. Such functions provide some of the fun aspects to being a student. As I have said before, I am not aware that it has ever been the Government's policy that students should have three or four years of wearing sackcloth and throwing ashes over their heads because of financial hardship.
So although student groups are allowed to play sport, they are not allowed to meet on a social basis to indulge in some other pastimes—for instance, a musical appreciation group. Even if the Government do work out a system and the individual units establish a system whereby they are funded through the main body, through the student union or even independently of it, they will create more bureaucracy. So, should we waste some money?
We should also take into account the fact that a university is by definition an independent body which grants degrees. Surely we should leave much more to the independence of unions.
Perhaps we should now direct some thought to the issue of the National Union of Students. It is one which probably finds the least support on the Benches opposite and at times on the Benches around me. Most of the sins of the National Union of Students come from taking people on board who say, "We represent all students and we shall undertake a certain cause". Such are the sins of the past. They are the sins of the days when student unions had fewer financial worries. They felt more secure and could spend more time shouting. Moreover, over a period the institution will change dramatically. The simple fact is that students are not members of the union for very long. Even with a sabbatical year or two, six years should see out most of the student representation.
Most of the problems that we are talking about—the days of heckling Ministers and so on—happened a good few years ago. The students' union has become an effective and powerful lobby group. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised when I started dealing with it in connection with the work of this House. Students' unions are up-to-date and aware of what is going on around them.
The Government are determined to make sure that there is no compulsory membership—perhaps because the organisation of which a student happens to be a member has decided to join the other organisation. But why not have an opt-out to stop students being attached to political views? It would be just a simple opt-out. There would still be central funding which can take into account the issues directly concerned with matters such as internal representation and welfare. There will still be

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a national body speaking about problems which may be varied in their manifestation but have the same theme; namely, access to good housing, books, internal representation, and so on.
Surely an outside central body has expertise at the very least to give. Surely more consideration should be given to that body. It may even be beneficial for the union to be depoliticised. I quite understand that people dislike those who stand on a national political ticket for internal seats. I always thought that it was a little questionable. Regardless of how effective such people were when they were in place, it was always possibly superfluous to what they in fact did. I can remember as a first-year undergraduate sitting in a cafeteria somewhere with a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee desperately trying to mug up some notes with a great tirade going on in the background about bringing down the Government and striking a blow for whatever. I cannot remember very much about it because it all merged into the general background—the shouting and so on. Somebody else was getting a cheese sandwich. However, I remember that the punchline was:
"I agree with the Motion that the cafeteria should be opened for an extra half-hour on Wednesdays".
This was a dying art even then, but it will still go on. Students at that age are searching for political ideals. Under the present system there is a danger of this sort of organisation, which has acquired considerable influence—and some participants have been talking sense recently—being hijacked by political groups. Of course there have been other political groups which make equally good sense. except that the rhetoric is Right-wing. Nobody has a monopoly on good sense or bad sense in this field and I think it has always been thus.
I should like to say one or two things about this proposal. First, I should like to know what really is being proposed, and I hope that we shall have some clearer idea before we reach Second Reading. Secondly, is it not the case that regulations can be made from the centre relating to the individual status of the university? They are individual units, and saying what those individual units can and cannot support for students, or even what students can or cannot do in their areas of activity, is something that we should look at very closely. Possibly we should discuss this and think very much more clearly about what we are actually trying to do, and then try to eradicate some of these totally absurd demarcation lines.
5.52 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I must begin by apologising to the noble Baroness the Minister. I must ask whether I can withdraw, with her permission, from the House for a short while before the debate comes to an end because I have to attend a meeting about health education. However, I shall be back. Secondly, I should like to say how sony I am that another matter prevented my hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. I hear from all sides that it was a most excellent presentation. I should like to congratulate him in absentia.
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I too would like to speak about student unions. The gracious Speech says that the Government will introduce legislation to reform them. I too am very concerned about the absence of clarity over what reforms are fully incorporated in the Bill which we have got our hands on today. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that we would hope to know more before we begin debating it. In Cambridge, for example, we heard that the object of the legislation was to limit the purposes for which universities can pass money received from public sources to their campus unions; to avoid public funds being used for affiliation to the NUS and other campaigning organisations; and to ensure by means of codes of practice, developed and implemented by institutions, that the student unions were more accountable and more fully representative.
We heard that the proposals included the idea of the core functions, such as those touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Addington: welfare, sport, catering and internal representation. We heard that all the other activities, including those of cultural and academic societies, the organisation of concerts and theatre productions and the funding of activities about television, newspapers and video facilities would be classified as non-core facilities. These would have to be supported by the students themselves or by the college or university.
I think I can assure your Lordships that in my own university at Cambridge we found that the college authorities were entirely happy with the way that the amalgamated clubs, as we called them, organised their affairs and the way they were watched over by senior tutors who were members of the academic staff. Indeed, our vice-chancellor wrote to the Secretary of State saying that if the core/non-core basis which I have just described was adopted, it was felt to be very important that all the activities involved were clearly defined and that we were very anxious that many of the societies of academic importance should be included as part of the activities of the university.
We were also very concerned because in some universities—indeed many universities; at Nottingham it was certainly true—there were two levels of activity involving students. There was the university activity and there was the hall of residence or college activity. I shall return to that presently because this two-tier activity has to be thought out when we come to consider the financial controls or the monitoring of student unions, their branches and their societies.
We felt in Cambridge that charging for services—for example, money being charged for rooms where people would hold debates or concerts—was obviously a use of a resource which was supported in terms of heating, lighting and, indeed, janitor services from public funds. However, we are beginning to get very concerned about the diversity of things students will need to worry about when they are going to their chess clubs or any other meetings.
Let me put it to your Lordships in this way. Most colleges have about 30 societies which are affiliated to the clubs or the student union activities of that college, which is also part of the university. At. Cambridge we not only have all the university activities in the core

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activities, including all the different university sports, but we also have 30 colleges, each with 30 subsidiary union activities. This means that Cambridge has nearly 1,000 student union activities of one sort or another. Our worry is this. We do not want the students or their senior bursars, who have other things to do, spending time each term, and more time each year when new students take up responsibilities as president or secretary, poring over the regulations to work out all the factors of accounting and auditing the money that is involved. In fact we are hoping that the reaction of universities to all this—which has been adverse, certainly in Cambridge—will be met by some kind of clear decision by government as to how they can delegate these small sums of money at college level to the responsibility of the bursar, say, as the accounting officer, so that it does not have to be gone through all around.
I agree that it is good for students to learn about accounts and for them to realise they are handling public money. It would be a wonderful thing if every undergraduate in this university system of ours understood what a balance sheet was, how to work out the assets of a society and so on. However, I think I am speaking for students as a whole when I say that they do not think, if they are doing statistics, that they are naturally coming up to do accountancy. If they are doing engineering they will understand that they need to do a little more accountancy perhaps than those doing Classics. But they do not feel that they want to have practical lessons in accounting and auditing and have to face up to whether they are spending money appropriately.
I hope—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, shares the hope—that somehow or other the Government will be able to improve the image of the relationship between central authority and the students out there. As has been mentioned, they feel that there is a creeping tendency for the central authorities to try to control the peripheries. Students have great imaginations, and they are all wondering, first of all, whether this will be applicable to money. They also ask: will it be applicable to thinking? Obviously it will not; but it would be a good thing if we could find some better way to convey what the message is all about and perhaps try to point out to them how good it would be if they understood what a balance sheet was. They are beginning to realise that they are going into a world where accounting, auditing and balance sheets matter.
Let me conclude by reading the remarks made only last Saturday by a mature student who is president of the students' association at our smallest new college. It perhaps is not yet a college; it is called Lucy Cavendish. It is an important place in Cambridge. It is a college which accepts mature women students and, through extremely clever work by successive government officials in Brussels, it does not have to take men in equal numbers to women. As they say, and as one would appreciate on seeing them in action, they are unique.
The president made a speech in which it became clear that she was a mature mother of grown-up children and had been elected to be president of the union because the members respected her as a person. I believe that she
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was reflecting the present mood—a mood that I hope the noble Baroness and her colleagues will be able to take on and dissolve. When the House hears what she said, it will be seen that I am concerned with the breakdown of the understanding of what public money is all about and what the responsibilities of the college on the one hand and the Government on the other are towards students. She said—and I wish I could give it in her very firm, maternal feminine tones
"Following the Queen's Speech two days ago we wait with some trepidation to see what the Government intends to do to Student Unions".
It may be noted that she said "intends to do to"; that is unfortunate. She continued,
"Many of us here have written to the Minister"—
I do not know whether the noble Baroness also received a letter—
"and to our own MPs and I suggest we continue to do so. The notion that a student body such as ours might be misusing public funds would be laughable were it not so deeply offensive".
I see that our Convener of the Cross-Benches is at the Bar. She tells me that one of our political purposes is to try to improve the situation. I am trying to improve the relationship between the men and women at the top of the Civil Service in the Department for Education and the student body, who should appreciate what those people are doing for them and not be so resentful.
6.3 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, before embarking on my remarks in this short debate, perhaps I can ask the noble Baroness, when she is winding up, not to become engulfed in the cloud of unknowing which seemed to engulf the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, when he was asked what the situation was to be in Wales, what the Minister for Wales actually said and, if he said it, what it meant. For the record, perhaps I can state that, in closing, the Secretary of State for Wales said,
"It is a great pity that we have had this interruption. I will give the House the news that it wanted, as I see that my time is now up".
That may be a prophetic observation so far as he is concerned. He goes on to say,
"I will propose that we delay implementation by one year in order to give sufficient parliamentary time so that all good debate can be had—".—[Official Report, Commons, 22/11/93; col. 300.]
He was then cut down in his prime and it was said that, it being 10 o'clock, the debate stood adjourned. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, indicated that Scotland and Wales were broadly in the same position. In so far as the statement made by the Secretary of State for Wales is intelligible and capable of implementation, do the same observations therefore apply to Scotland?
In introducing the Scottish dimension to the Bill, the noble and learned Lord talked of consultation; he said that a long debate had taken place. I hold a puny document in my hand which represents a summary of the responses to the Government's paper on the structure of local government in Scotland which had already decided that there was to be no choice in the matter and that there were to be single-tier authorities throughout Scotland, whatever their number.

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The Western Isles Island Council was cited, along with Orkney and Shetland, as being good single-tier authorities. But they are purpose made for being single tier. They are islands surrounded by water. The United Kingdom is surrounded by water but there can be no comparison between the large areas with which local government has to deal on the mainland and the self-contained units in the islands of Scotland.
In this document it is observed that over half of the responses came from individuals. It should be noted that the number of responses was 3,317. Out of a population of 4.5 million people, 1,500 individuals responded and that is what the Government care to call "consultation" and "long debate". It beggars belief that the Minister can seriously present such a proposition to your Lordships' House.
From this side of your Lordships' Chamber we welcome a constructive approach to the reform in the broad sense of local authorities. No system is perfect and every system is capable of improvement. We are not against change; we are not against constructive change. But we challenge—perhaps we pay the Government a compliment in so doing—the social philosophy and methodology behind the Government's approach to the matter.
The gracious Speech contained only one reference to Scotland, and that was in relation to local government reform. That is a pathetic reflection of the Government's sense of priorities for Scotland and its people. It ignores every other urgent aspect of life in the Scottish community requiring urgent legislative attention.
To some extent this debate is not a debate; it is being held in a vacuum. The Bill has not yet been published. It has been foreshadowed in the government document and we are told that it will contain 160 clauses and goodness knows how many schedules. It is only when the Bill is published that the flesh will be put on the bones of the Government's proposals for the restructuring of local government in Scotland.
As the noble and learned Lord said, it is plain that much debate will follow. In particular, the Government will have to demonstrate and prove the need for radical reconstruction of Scotland in the proposed form as opposed to an in-depth study of the identifiable deficiencies and weaknesses in the present structure which, after all, has been on the go for almost 20 years. Those deficiencies—such as that mentioned by the noble and learned Lord regarding the lady who could not get her house repaired—can be dealt with by discussion and co-operation between the authorities without the need for a review of this nature.
I pose this question to the Government: can they guarantee that the Bill, at whatever cost, once it becomes an Act, will produce a more efficient, more effective quality of service for the citizens of Scotland? I use the word "guarantee" advisedly. There will not—I emphasise "not" —be another opportunity for many years to come to repeat the exercise. The Government cannot throw away millions of pounds and waste parliamentary time chasing local government shadows. I believe that that is what they are doing. While they are chasing shadows, the philosophy behind the approach to local government is quite plain; that is, that local
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authorities in Scotland are dominated by Labour Party councils which the Government abhor, detest arid treat with contempt. They are determined to batter the life out of existing local authorities to make inroads into the constitution of local democracy by this, form of legislation which they pretend is for the good of the people and the administration of Scotland.
Can the citizens of Scotland be assured of a change so fundamental and radical that it will create an indestructible structure of a cost-efficient, well-informed and tiering system to meet all the local needs on an accountable basis and which will see Scotland into the 21st century without any further fundamental expensive and disruptive changes? On a cost scrutiny it is highly unlikely that this will be achieved. Far too much is left to speculation. First, there is speculation as to how the authorities will carry out the duties imposed upon them by the proposed legislation. As was said by my noble friend Lady Fisher, mention has been made of the intervention of the Secretary of State for Scotland. He is the long-stop who can bang heads together and say, "If you do not do it, I will do it and you will carry the cost of it". Secondly, no one knows at what cost all this will be achieved.
In the debate in another place the Secretary of State for Scotland, dealing with the question of costing, said blithely that in any one year it would cost £30 million, or possibly £35 million. One just took £5 million here and there, threw it about and arrived at the correct figure. You cannot arrive at an arithmetical sum unless the components of the sum can be defined. In the exercise that the Government propose to carry out they have no figures with which to do the adding-up process. That is one of the main defects in the set up.
A good example of how this cannot be done and how the Government will not face up to it when they look at the changes in local government is the question of transitional costs. This matter was referred to by my noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel. I quote from the Government's own document. Under the heading of transitional costs, it says:
"The initial costs arising from the move to the new councils are likely to be largely connected with staffing. These costs however depend on decisions, including those on the terms of any severance package which may be available to staff, which have yet to be taken. This, together with the difficulty of not knowing at this stage how the new local authorities will go about slimming down their staffing numbers and the ages and seniority of the staff likely to be involved, means that it is only possible to make relatively broad-brush estimates of costs".
The Government are asking people to swallow this package of reform at what is perceived by others to be a monumental cost. If one takes a broad brush to a canvas it produces nothing as fat as detail is concerned. That is precisely the exercise that the Government are pursuing. They are quite prepared to place financial responsibility on the shoulders of local authorities to carry out the exercise. But one thing they do not say—it would be interesting to know the Government's view on it—is whether, if the costing exercise goes wrong, the taxpayer or community chargepayer—whatever payer it may be at the time—is to carry the additional burden of an expensive error. To put it colloquially, will the Government pick up the tab for something that has gone wrong at their behest?

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The debate in another place underlined that once the political rhetoric of government was removed, the Government could not demonstrate that their ship would ever be on an even keel. The likelihood is that it will founder on the rocks. There is a real danger that the ship which founders on the rocks will take with it the crew, who are presently running the administration of local government in Scotland, and the people of Scotland will suffer.
Somewhere in the public mind there is an image of public demand for these changes. I move around in various strands of the community. From Monday to Sunday I have yet to hear one person say to me, "By the way, what is happening to the change in local government? Is it not time that we had a change?" It does not feature even marginally in everyday conversation or discussion in Scotland. To suggest that there is any public demand for it is a fiction of the Government's imagination.
The other misconception by the Government is that nobody knows what services are involved. I quote briefly from an independent poll carried out on behalf of Lothian region about area identity, and so on. Under the heading of public understanding of roles and functions, it says:
"The survey asked respondents to identify which organisations are responsible for providing a number of key local services.
Contrary to the views expressed by the Secretary of State, the survey revealed a very good level of understanding amongst the public. In terms of education, 68 per cent. of respondents correctly identified this service as a Regional Council responsibility. Other services which had high recognition scores included: social work, 62 per cent; housing, 71 per cent; libraries, 62 per cent; street cleaning, 72 per cent; and refuse collection, 71 per cent."
That is scarcely indicative of a state of ignorance on the part of those who responded to that particular poll. The Government may find it an interesting exercise to carry out a poll of their own. The mere fact that someone has a complaint about part of a local authority organisation does not mean that the organisation is itself inherently bad. It is important to remember that in Scotland over the years an understanding has developed between industry and the local authorities which will be fragmented by the implementation of the new single-tier authorities. Staff will disappear. You can bet your bottom dollar that, as has happened in other places, those who will disappear will be the best people in the local government. They will not hang about if there is a decent package to be got elsewhere. Industry will have to start all over again with new staff in the new single-tier local government. Chances will be lost at a time when the economy is sliding down the hill pretty quickly anyway.
I give an example. I go back to Lothian region because I happen to stay there. With the co-operation of Lothian region, a local railway line has been opened up to Bathgate, which used to be an industrial centre. In the nature of things, Lothian region were able to shift £800,000 to assist the implementation of this line. As a result, they managed to create one of the most successful railway lines in Scotland. It is doubtful whether that could have been done under the new system, or at least done very quickly.
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Although the Government pay lip service to the question of an elected single-tier authority, it is clear from what the Minister has said that running alongside the elected authority will be a second layer of administrative government. Whether or not it is elected does not matter. Quangos have already been referred to by my noble friend, Lord Williams of Elvel. The Tory Party are very keen on slogans at their annual conferences. Perhaps they could bear in mind the old song "It takes two to tango". For the next conference, they can put at the back of the platform "It takes two to quango"—the Government being one and the recipients or their largess being the other part of the equation.
Whatever may be the deficiencies in local government in Scotland—it is recognised that there are many—they are capable of being repaired short of this expensive and needless exercise. Voices have been raised against it in business. I close with the words of Mr. Eric Milligan, former chairman of the Council of Scottish Local Authorities and chairman of Lothian Region. He puts it in this way:
"Meeting the costs of change in Lothian will put at risk many essential projects that people need. The Government structure itself is more appropriate for the past than for the future. We do not wish to go backwards. We wish to go forward—forward into the future with a structure sufficiently flexible and robust for the challenges that lie ahead".
I only hope that for once this Government will be flexible and robust and have another look at what they are embarking upon and give proper time for debate of the whole matter.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I want to concentrate on that part of the Queen's Speech which says,
"Other measures will be laid before you."
The reason for doing so is that there is no mention of agriculture. Agriculture will go through an extremely trying time over the next three years. One hopes that by then the Government will go away. Nevertheless, it is a subject that they must think about.
Before I turn to that matter I must take up a point on local government raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie. He gave a telling example of the difficulties of two tiers. In general, the Liberal Democrats are in, favour of a single tier topped by a Scottish Parliament. The example was of housing and the difficulty between social work in one compartment and housing in another. That is extremely important. However, the noble and learned Lord knows that in the county of Angus, where we both live, the local authority had a most admirable scheme for building retirement houses. Where a lot of farm workers were living all their lives in tied houses it was an admirable use of public money to build homes for their retirement. I hope and trust that the Tory Government, if they ever come to implement this proposal, will see that single tier authorities have money in order to build houses in rural areas. There is a great need for affordable housing because people are being driven out by more prosperous people who want to live in the country. The natives

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cannot afford to live there. I hope that the noble Baroness will take that into account. It is a small but important point.
I turn now to agriculture. The CAP reforms are far-reaching and enormously expensive and complicated. The length of their life is, in the opinion of many people, very limited. The cries from economists and others about the expense of the CAP grow louder and louder. Who can blame them for looking at it in that light, although in actual fact agriculture has delivered affordable food in the Community? The biggest rise in expense is in the distribution and retailing of the food. Those costs have risen far more than the cost of farming. Nevertheless, we have to have reform of the CAP.
I have spent a good deal of time in Eastern Europe recently looking at the problem. The countries there have made terrible mistakes by introducing change too quickly. They have ruined their extravagant state farms by making them financially responsible; so much so that they went broke and they could not even buy fertiliser or afford the fuel to sow the crops, with the result that in 1992 Poland, to take one example, had for the first time in its history to import food. The problem was exacerbated by a drought but nevertheless the failure of the state system was responsible to a large degree.
In Albania, so angry were the 60 per cent. of the people who live in the country areas and depend on agriculture that they seized the land and broke it into small units. I think it is going to work, in that they will grow their own food and they will support their families. One hopes that with our help they will then be able to build up their industries and gradually employ the 60 per cent. in useful work instead of in the rather wasteful small farming sector. I can see no other way for them to get on. The point is that in Eastern Europe—in Hungary, a very fertile country, in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Bulgaria and elsewhere—there will be a competent, unsubsidised agriculture. We have to get towards that without ruining the countryside. It is an environmental and social problem as much as an agricultural one. It is one that we have to face up to.
I do not have time to go into all the complexities of the present reform scheme, which broadly seeks to reduce prices by 30 per cent. over three years and at the same time to compensate farmers by area direct payments. Unfortunately, it has no ending. Instead of that scheme, the Government should have looked at and put forward the coupon scheme whereby farmers might receive a coupon for 10 years at so much a year which they could cash in the market if they wanted to. There is a simplicity about it which the present scheme does not have. The scheme is so complicated that bullocks have to have passports and every bullock must be registered. The bureaucracy attendant on it is quite ludicrous. I cannot see it carrying on without breaking down.
I raise this matter because it will be an on-going factor which the Government will have to attend to in the next few years. I also raise it because of one particular anomaly which is of great interest to the farmers of Scotland. It is a most extraordinary case. I am retired now but all my family farm. There is a new forrnat for collecting information called the integrated
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administrative control system, or IACS, which is perhaps a better name for it as it is a beast of burden to the farmers who have to fill in the forms. They all have to buy new editions of the ordnance survey maps in order to complete them correctly. It was an excellent exercise, in that they all had to work enormously hard at it and for the first time they really obtained a picture of the area of their farms. In many farms the information had previously been based not so much on fact as traditionally on what was called a 20-acre field.
The forms were filled in and sent off to the Scottish Office. In the middle of this summer a great panic arose in agriculture in Scotland in that it was found that there appeared to be a 16 per cent. overshoot; in other words, Scottish farmers had planted 16 per cent. more acreage than they were supposed to. The NFU was told about. it in private —there was a great bustling about—and it was found that the department had made a slight mistake of some thousands of hectares. It had put the less favoured area arable land into the wrong section and when that was corrected there was only a 5 per cent. overshoot.
There was a great sigh of relief that the figure had dropped to 5 per cent., because the penalty for farmers with a 16 per cent. overshoot would have been to set aside without compensation 16 per cent. more of their acres. I am glad to see the Minister nodding his head.
It breaks my heart to see good arable land which should be producing to the full producing at that level. But when one looks at the figure of 30 per cent. one begins to greet, which means cry. Then, with great relief, the Scottish Office thought how clever it was that it had reduced the figure to 5 per cent. But that means £20 million off a small industry in Scotland. The NFU approached the Government again as to what they could do about correcting this immense anomaly. The Government, in the form of a man who should know much better—and does know better, I dare say—Sir Hector Monro—said that they had done well to get it to 5 per cent. and that the farmers were receiving a lot of extra money anyhow. That is a scandalous attitude, because Scotland has the biggest farms in Europe and the best result in reducing the production of grain.
One of the main faults of the EC is that we produce so much that we ruin other countries by dumping it on their market. Scotland has reduced average yields—the yields are below average this year—by 4.50,000 tonnes. With this year's harvest, the figure will be 600,000 tonnes. It is estimated that in Scotland, where the grain crop estimates are down 20 per cent., there will be an extra set-aside penalty of 5.4 per cent. In Germany, where the estimate is up 4.7 per cent., there will be a penalty of 0.97 per cent. The estimate for France is down 8.9 per cent., with nothing happening and no announcement. Spain's is up 18 per cent.; Denmark's is up 33 per cent. and Italy's is down 3.5 per cent., but I would not trust statistics from Italy for anything in the world. The estimate for the Community as a whole is down only 1.2 per cent.
Unfortunately, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, is not replying to the debate, so I put this point to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, for whom I have the most enormous respect. I hope that she

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will take this injustice to heart. The point is that the Scottish Office is refusing to do anything about it. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food got it right in England. It had the same difficulties about assessing the previous method and the 1989–91 census, but it got it right. The Scottish Office got it wrong. All the figures show that the position is wholly unjust. There is little doubt in my mind but that the Scottish Office must go to all possible lengths and enlist the help of the more competent Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in England and go to the Commission and the Council of Ministers to get this anomaly —this gross injustice—put right. It is an example of the sort of thing that can happen under the present system. It is up to the Government to try to put it right.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I too must first apologise for having been absent at the start of the debate this afternoon. I hope that I shall not be covering ground that has already been covered, but, if I do, I hope that one of your Lordships will be kind enough to tell me to sit down.
There is an old saying that a cobbler should stick to his last and, in my case, that means that a lawyer should stick to his law books. However, there is another subject which lies rather closer to my heart than the law—and that subject is the opera. It is a subject on which I have to declare an interest because I have had the honour for many years now of being the chairman of the Glyndebourne Arts Trust.
Before the war, England—and here I deliberately exclude Wales—had the reputation of being the most unmusical nation in Europe. Anyone who ever heard or played in a school band either before or after the war will know exactly what I mean. But since the war—and in particular in the past 30 years or so—there has been a remarkable change. It now takes a trained ear to tell the difference between a good school orchestra and an orchestra of professionals. From being at the very bottom of the musical league, England must now be somewhere near the top. How or why that change has come about I do not profess to know, but come about it undoubtedly has.
There has been another change. Between the wars, when Glyndebourne Festival Opera was founded, opera was widely regarded as a somewhat elitist taste, but now, by contrast, love of the opera seems to be nationwide. Classic FM, to which many of your Lordships may have listened, now has an audience of some 4.5 million. Your Lordships will know that the fare on offer on Classic FM often consists of opera—either excerpts or whole operas. Indeed, there cannot now be anybody in the entire kingdom who would not recognise Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma".
The result of all this is that more and more people want to hear opera in the flesh, so to speak. That is where touring opera companies come in—and it is about them that I should like to say just a few words. Before the war, there was only one major touring opera company—the Carl Rosa. There are now four: Scottish
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Opera; Welsh National Opera; Opera North and Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Between us, we visit more than 20 centres up and down the country and play everywhere to full houses. The great majority of all our singers are native-born.
But opera is notoriously expensive to put on, especially touring opera. It would be impossible to meet the cost of a tour out of box office revenue without excluding the very people whom we most want to attract. Inevitably, therefore, we are dependent to a greater or lesser extent on the Arts Council. I should make it clear that I am talking about Glyndebourne Touring Opera—not about the festival which takes place in Sussex and operates without any subsidy at all.
Last year, the four major touring opera companies received a total subsidy of £16.5 million. That may seem quite a large figure, but it is almost nothing compared with the sort of subsidies which equivalent bodies receive in France, Germany and Italy. We are now told that the Arts Council is to have a cut of £5 million in its budget. Glyndebourne Touring Opera has been warned that it will be cut out altogether in 1995.
This is not the time or the place—and I am certainly not the person—to say that the Arts Council should have more money, but the effect of that cutback, which will have what may well prove to be a disastrous result for touring opera generally will surely be this: it will mean that the young audiences which we have built up over the years and which we most want to continue to attract will be disappointed and that many young singers will go abroad and seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Last week a letter in The Times pointed out that the performing arts should be encouraged if only because they provide a major tourist attraction. I would put it in another way. The extent to which a country is prepared to support the arts is one measure—and I would suggest that it is a good measure—of that country's claim to call itself "civilised". I hope that my fears about the effect on touring opera may prove to be misplaced, but having expressed those fears, perhaps I had better now return to my law books.
6.40 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, I apologise to the House for my absences, which are due to my membership of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme of which I am a trustee. I hesitate to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on his maiden speech. I do so, not out of a spirit of churlishness or because I did not enjoy it and look forward to hearing from him again. However, the Procedure Committee of this House recommended that the convention of every following speaker congratulating a maiden speaker should cease. As we are essentially self-regulating we must start somewhere; otherwise it is pointless to have the committees working on our behalf and bringing forward recommendations.
Had I spoken yesterday I should have joined noble Lords who expressed anxiety about the radical changes which are suggested to the composition of police authorities and the suggestions relating to the change in the conditions of service of magistrates' clerks. I am glad that those points were made frequently and

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effectively. I am sure that my colleagues on this side of the House will understand if I delicately side-step the issue of quangos about which a great deal has been said.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned student facilities. The Minister will know that frequently in this House I have pressed the case for more students in higher education to be based at home. Until that happens—and I look forward to the day, should I live long enough—those who move away from home need the kind of facilities that have been mentioned by other Members.
I wish to dwell on legislation which is not in the gracious Speech but which ought to be. I shall not be tempted down the path of suggesting which pieces of the gracious Speech should be dropped in order to accommodate that. The Local Government Act 1992 established the Local Government Commission with the remit of reviewing specific areas which were put to it by the Secretary of State, to recommend structural and boundary changes taking account of the identities and interests of local communities and the need to secure effective and efficient local government. The independent commission, chaired by Sir John Banham, was given guidance by the Government on key factors to be considered in deciding whether new unitary authorities should replace the current two-tier system of county and district councils.
Beginning its work in July 1992, a programme of reviews was started, dividing shire areas into five tranches. During the past 16 months the commission has considered the likely costs and savings of different structures, the implications for the major delivery of services, community care and education, links with community and where people feel that they belong, and the need for elected members to be democratically accountable to the communities that they serve. The House will know that the commission has already made final recommendations in respect of the number of counties. Those for Avon, Gloucestershire and Somerset, where my own particular interest lies, are expected in the new year.
I should have thought that the key issues for local government structure must be the need for local authorities to deliver the most cost-effective quality public services in response to the needs of the local community, to minimise administrative and other central costs and, in particular, to be accountable and to take notice of what the people desire in the locality. That is confirmed by the commission's own opinion surveys. The structure of local government must ensure that authorities have effective strategic capacity for all services, delivered cost-effectively and locally with proper specialist back-up. The local authorities must also relate well to local communities and work in effective partnership with local businesses, the voluntary sector and other public sector agencies. They should also not need to depend on complex and non-accountable joint arrangements between local authorities.
I was in at the birth of the county of Avon because some 20 years ago I served on the Committee stage of the local government reorganisation Bill in another place. That was a case for a parliamentary long-service
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medal if ever there was one. My suggestion for a reorganisation of the Bristol area was rejected only by some five votes at the Report stage.
The commission has suggested for Avon that there should be four new unitary authorities to work jointly on structure plans, waste and minerals and major highways. There are problems of accountability and potential conflict of interests in the suggestions. Any advantages that the four new unitary authorities may create could well be offset by the disadvantages of the break-up of the existing strategic authority and the destruction of services that that would entail. Some noble Lords may believe that this is a potential microcosm of the problems that have arisen in London since the break-up and disappearance of the Greater London Council.
In order to avoid the mistakes of the past, the case for change has to be made positively. New structures must be shown to be better than the present structure in securing proper strategic planning for personal services as well as for the environment. Local people arid organisations should be able to say, first, whether they want change and, secondly, what they want the change to be. There should be no central prescription. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to a report in the Independent about the plan for abolishing all county councils irrespective of the commission's recommendations, and so I shall not dwell on that matter. However, I support her plea that where questionnaires are issued they are properly structured and statistically sound, I have drawn your Lordships' attention to a questionnaire issued by the director of water regulation through Ofwat and the bills sent to water users. It was not statistically sound, and directed and steered people towards the answer that Ofwat wanted; namely, that people favoured metering as a method of paying for water.
Clearly, the costs of local services are a major concern to people. If we are to change the structure of local government and that costs more, it is likely to, prejudice people from the start. We know that there are substantial costs in changing from one system to another. These transitional costs will include redundancy and relocation payments, premises costs and, in particular, substantial changes to communications systems. The commission has made its estimates based on its experience of the first tranche of 10 counties. It states that the transitional costs will be not less than £500 million and could well exceed £1 billion. Separate estimates by the 'Association of County Councils put that figure at more than £l billion.
I was fortunate to be in contact not only with the chairman of Avon County Council, Mr. Terry Walker, but also the chief executive. They drew my attention to a grave situation, and that is why I want the Government to introduce new legislation. It is essential that any new unitary authorities created, even if they have the same boundaries as the existing authorities, should be genuinely new authorities with new members, officers, policies, and so forth. Unfortunately, in writing to the ACC on 4th August, the Minister for Local Government and Planning contradicted his predecessor's commitment made in the previous year that there would be elected shadow authorities in virtually all areas where unitary authorities are created.

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The result will be that where there is no significant boundary change, as in the proposed Bristol authority, there will not be a genuinely new shadow authority to plan for the introduction of the authority. Current councillors on the continuing authority may well be "sitting tenants" in terms of selection for the new unitary authority. Yet unitary shire authorities must be able to draw heavily on the experience of councillors and officers from both tiers. The signs are that where continuing authorities are concerned, one set of councillors will be planning the services, setting up the new structure and so forth.
Even more serious is that on the operations side the continuing authorities will presumably be serviced and advised from the beginning by their existing staff and governed by their existing processes and procedures. That will not be a genuine, fresh start. Efficient and effective planning for the new authorities will happen only if members are able to appoint and draw on the experience of people from authorities in both tiers—in my own area, from the County of Avon as well as the districts of Woodspring and Bristol—particularly at key management levels.
If the Government are keen to encourage closer working among authorities in the review processes, these proposals are precisely the wrong way to go about it. The constitutional, staffing and other implications make it imperative that all new authorities are truly new authorities. If that requires amendment to a badly drafted 1992 Act, so be it.
I buttress my arguments by using a letter from Councillor Dennis Pettitt, chairman of the executive council of the ACC, writing to the Minister on 7th September. He expressed the association's grave concern about this question. He urged the introduction of new legislation if necessary so that,
"any unitary authorities created in the shires are genuinely new authorities".
He added that if that was not done it would be,
"potentially disastrous in undermining the success of the entire structure review. There are especially serious constitutional and staffing implications".
He referred to staff facing extremely serious demoralisation if they were not able to compete effectively for jobs on offer.
My colleagues in Avon county tell me that already the staff there are extremely worried. People are looking around for possible appointments and considering other ways of giving service to the community. It is extremely unsettling. Nothing undermines people more than anxiety about their jobs on which their families, standards of living and entire well being depend.
I quote also a letter dated 12th November 1993 to Mr. Atherton, chairman of the Local Government Staff Commission (England), from the chairman of the South West branch of SOLACE, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. The chairman says that he is writing,
"on behalf of 22 Chief Executives meeting over the last two days in Dartington at the Autumn Seminar … The Seminar noted the Government's view"—
I believe that it is freely admitted by the Government—
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"that the Local Government Act 1992 is defective in not permitting shadow authorities where a proposed unitary authority follows largely the same boundaries as an existing authority".
It goes on to say—and as a former party manager in another place, I can only agree—that where there is an anomaly of this nature, a Bill introduced to remedy an obvious defect would command all-party support. In fact, if properly drafted, it would go through almost on the nod. This is a serious situation and I do not believe that a great deal of government time would be taken up by putting through the legislation to deal with it. I cannot imagine that noble Lords on either side of the House would wish that situation to continue. Again, the letter stresses the problems of staff and goes on to say that even at this late stage the Government should bring in amending legislation.
As we know, the review has been accelerated to complete its work by the end of 1994. While it may reduce uncertainty in one way, in another way it makes the commission's task very much harder. We have experienced reorganisations in the past. I have mentioned one in which I was an active participant elsewhere, but we have seen them in the health service and so on. They frequently cost substantially more than estimated. We complain in this House from time to time about too much legislation. However, I am tempted to say to the Government that I do not believe that there would be too many tears shed if the entire local government reorganisation were dropped. If that is not to be, then I ask the Government to enter into consultation through the usual channels as to whether or not we could not have an all party effort to nip through a small piece of legislation to remedy that defect in the 1992 Act.
6.55 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I begin by apologising to the House for missing the start of the debate. I was carrying out some research on the recently published Education Bill concerning student legislation.
I listened to the gracious Speech with some trepidation as I was hoping fervently that the student legislation would be left out of the speech. I believe that I can claim to be the most recent student in the Chamber at present. Also, I was active in Newcastle University's student union. That piece of legislation will be objected to plainly and simply because it is not needed as a piece of legislation. There are many other routes by which regulation for student unions can be introduced without taking up the time of Parliament.
Also, I should like to express my anxiety as regards the major flaw in the legislation; that is the way in which the Government plan to regulate student unions through the system of core and non-core activities. I wonder whether the Minister can say when the Government will table the regulations which set out what is core and what is non-core. One problem with stipulating core and non-core is that it is being done in the wrong way. It would be far easier to restrict student unions and to say that they are not allowed to do certain things rather than imposing a rather stifling straitjacket and say that only certain activities are permitted. That would lead to a

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situation in which student unions are forever looking at their activities and wondering whether they are overstepping the mark.
One area that I should like to address is that when I looked at what was suggested for core and non-core, I saw that student community actions were not seen as core activities. Your Lordships may not realise that student community actions are groups of volunteer students who go out into the community and take part in activities which range from painting and decorating, to working with mentally handicapped groups. Many of those activities give students an education in areas which they would not normally come across. I know that to be so as I took part in a student community action in Newcastle. I ran two projects there: one for a severely disabled group; and one for children with hearing difficulties.
Many people in the country see the introduction of legislation in this area as a mistake. I should like to read from a letter to the Daily Telegraph by Dr. Kenneth Edwards, who is chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors. He said:
"The Government could achieve all its intended goals more effectively and more easily.
First, it could achieve the safeguards it wants by clarifying the legal status of campus student unions as charities with elected governing councils. They would then be subject to the same political constraints as other charities. That would also answer the Government's concerns about ensuring democracy.
Second, the Government need not set up costly bureaucracies to account separately for publicly and privately financed union activities. The universities' own auditors could institute regular checks to see that no public funds were being used for activities outside the union's charitable purposes".
Student unions realise that they must change their roles; indeed, over the past few years, the National Union of Students has been trying to reform itself. At present, it is looking at the possibility of gaining charitable status which would mean that it would be regulated without the necessity of legislation. I believe that some Members of the other place see the matter as a side issue and not one which requires legislation. I should like to paraphrase the remarks made by Mr. Forman who was, until recently, a Government Minister. He said that against the background of the longer term, and although set out in the Queen's Speech, reform of student unions is a small issue which may well detract from bigger issues.
When we consider the fact that there are growing and considerable problems in higher education regarding the increased number of students, student poverty, over-full lecture theatres and so on, it seems to me that the legislation proposed is being introduced as a political measure rather than something which is strictly necessary for legislation. I hope that it is not being introduced merely to give the impression that a union is, once again, being restricted by the Government. I say that because the National Union of Students is not really a union. The idea that students are a political body is way past the mark. Indeed, I think that it would be difficult to find many politically active students around the country. They are very apathetic concerning politics.
I should like to conclude by referring to an area which I believe needs further consideration. I have in mind the restrictions on student campaigning which
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may well infringe on the freedom of speech provisions in the l986 Act. I hope that the legislation will not mean that such provisions will be countermanded.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I do not wish to enter into the debate about the Government's recently published truancy figures. However, I believe that they disclose something that those of us who are interested in education already knew; namely, that there is a significant number of children slipping through the net. In today's society, which is so technologically competitive, and with the threat of cheap, skilled and industrious labour from South-East Asia, it is becoming increasingly a fact that low skills will mean low wages or unemployment. A basic education is more important to our children than it has ever been before.
Therefore, I ask myself: what can be done to stop children slipping through the net? The Government have done many things, including publishing the truancy tables to which I referred. However, there is one important area that they seem so far to have totally ignored. A small but significant number of children—a minority, but a growing minority—reach the age of five without the emotional equipment that they need for school.
Recent research in the United States and in this country—or perhaps I should put it the other way round, because I believe that the research was initiated here—has shown that a specific set of social and emotional characteristics is essential to school readiness. When children are very young they learn through the simple every-day actions in the family. They learn whether their needs are important to their parents; they learn whether their effort to communicate or achieve something is supported; they learn whether promises are kept; and they learn whether they are loved. The latter are called the emotional foundations for learning, and they are laid in the first three years of a child's life.
The characteristics which enable a child to learn at school are quite well known. They include self-confidence, curiosity, the capacity to set a goal and to work at it, the ability to communicate with others and the ability to get along with other children and grown-ups. Children who have those characteristics will learn quickly and easily; but children who lack them will tend to fall behind and then become discouraged and resentful, which may lead to their becoming disruptive, dropping out and becoming truants.
The recent research that I mentioned has shown quite clearly that the impact of children being unready to do well in school is long lasting and can be pennanent. Our whole society is affected by the capacities of our children to develop or to fail to develop. Emotional school readiness is of fundamental importance to the success of our children and, therefore, to our society.
Why is it that some parents—indeed, a small number of parents—seem not to be able to give their children the support that they need in the early years of their lives? In many cases it is not the fault of the parents and in most cases it is not helpful to blame the parents. There are many reasons involved. The first and most important

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is that very often the parents themselves have not had the benefit or the experience of a good enough standard of parenting. That is the downward cycle of inadequate parenting which was referred to so many times and so fluently by many noble Lords in the debate instituted earlier this year by the noble Lord, Lord Joseph. Of course, there are other reasons why parents cannot achieve. Sometimes there is unacceptable stress in the family; sometimes they may be suffering from sickness or depression; or sometimes they are just inadequate to the task of coping with debt, violence or the deprivation in which they are living.
There is much that can be done to help improve the situation and reduce the number of children who enter primary school without the emotional foundation of school readiness that they need. I submit that none of the remedies needs to be terribly expensive—certainly not expensive in the context of the enormous savings that would be made in public expenditure if only those children who might fail in later life could be looked after at that stage. For example, we could educate all children in secondary school about parenting, the needs of children, the sacrifices involved, the responsibilities of parenting and about sustaining stable relationships. There is a need for significantly more support for organisations like Home-Start which is going out and supporting young, inexperienced parents in their homes. There is the need for more support for organisations which are providing family centres and playgroups. Indeed, there is also a need for support for organisations of every kind, especially the citizens advice bureaux, which are helping parents to cope with the problem of debt.
Finally, I believe that there is a need for a change in public attitudes. I urge upon your Lordships that it is not impossible to change public attitudes. For example, if I had said "green" to noble Lords 20 years ago, the response would probably have been "blue". Today, however, the response would probably be something quite different. I believe that we in this House should press the Government on all those issues.
As noble Lords will know, there are no fewer than six or seven departments responsible for the affairs of children. I could have raised the issue on Monday in the Home Office debate or on Tuesday in the social services debate. However, I chose to raise the matter today because I believe that it is an educational issue for two reasons. First, it will affect the entire education system if fewer children go into schools unprepared and unable to accept the schooling which is offered to them. Secondly, I am afraid that in future education for parenting which is provided in school will for some young people have to substitute for the education in parenting that some decades ago they would have received at their parents' knees. Finally, my great respect for the noble Baroness leads me to hope that she may be prepared to take up this issue and run with it.
I propose to devote myself to mounting a campaign on this issue. I should very much welcome the support of and to hear from any noble Lords who believe as I do that this is an issue of fundamental importance to some of our children and to our society.
7.10 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should certainly like to say a word in support of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I have great sympathy for his cause but I shall not pursue that theme tonight because it is getting rather late. I shall concentrate on what was said in the gracious Speech about teacher training and student unions.
The proposals have been looked on with dismay and hostility by the educational world. Although the Government have paid lip-service to consultation, the time allowed has been too short. In the case of the student unions it was mostly during the vacation, although an extra month was allowed. For the rest, their observations had to be received by the beginning of November. The First Reading of the Bill was yesterday and the Bill was available only today. The consultation period was really only three weeks and that is an incredibly short time.
So far as I can see from a necessarily hurried reading of the Bill this morning, because of other commitments, no notice seems to have been taken of the responsible views expressed by those involved in higher education, teachers, students or LEAs. The trend towards centralised control which we have seen in so many Bills that have come pouring out of the department will continue. This is the fifteenth Bill in 14 years. That says a good deal about the incompetence of various Secretaries of State. We were told by Mr. Patten last year that the 1992 Education Act would last for 25 years. It seems to have lasted for one.
I turn to the subject of teacher training. There has been general acceptance that more of the training should take place in schools. Excellent partnerships have been built up between higher education institutions and schools in many areas. Oxford and Sussex have led in that regard, but it is now happening across the country. However, to propose that the proportion of training in schools should be two-thirds or three-quarters is unrealistic and totally unsatisfactory. School-based training is one thing, school-centred training is quite another. Perhaps the Minister will tell me whether the proportions which are now proposed, which one cannot find in the Bill, will be as they were.
The proposal to set up a Teacher Training Agency has attracted universal criticism. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers are profoundly unhappy at the risk of the disassociation of teacher training from the rest of higher education and in particular the research aspect. The Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education appears a little more compliant than it would have been under its previous chairman, Sir William Taylor. The timing of his resignation seems to me to have significance. When I spoke to him he was certainly very angry about what was happening. His feelings are made very clear in the article which he wrote which appeared in The Times Higher Education Supplement on 22nd October.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She has made a very

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serious point. Is she suggesting that Sir William Taylor did not go of his own volition and that in some way he was pressed to leave at that time?
Baroness David: My Lords, I am not suggesting that at all. I do not pretend that this is true, but I am suggesting what I guess happened, namely that he did not like the proposals being made and therefore resigned. Perhaps the Minister may wish to contradict me when she replies.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I may not have time to pick up the point later, given the number of points raised in the course of the debate to which I have to respond. It is important for the record that I say that Sir William Taylor's time at the council had naturally come to an end and he gave us a good deal of warning that he would be going at that date, long before the proposals were in print.
Baroness David: My Lords, in that case, I apologise for what I said. I totally accept what the Minister says. Even so, I should like to repeat that I do not believe that Sir William liked what was happening. I shall quote from his article, which expresses what I feel rather better than I could. The article stated:
"Selective and misleading use is made of Her Majesty's Inspectorate's findings on quality. To identify the 'two distinct ways' in which teacher education is arranged and funded as university and college courses on the one hand, and 'pioneering school-centred courses' on the other, omits to mention that the first provides some 60,000 places and the second only 250 …
School-centred training hands over everything to untried and untested consortia of schools, funded by a new Teacher Training Agency (TTA) of eight to 12 members, chosen by the Secretary of State. Higher education institutions are only to be involved to the extent that schools wish to contract with them for the provision of services …
To fund teacher education separately from higher education … to shorten the BEd course from four to three years, will send clear messages to potential recruits about the status and attractiveness of teaching".
The divorce of teacher education and training from the rest of higher education is worrying. Students do not now come to the higher education institutions well prepared. Their educational performance is modest in many cases. They need the four years to equip themselves with the necessary subject knowledge and to acquire confidence and skills to work in difficult conditions. What guarantee of quality can there be if these plans go forward?
Will students be attracted to the teaching profession? Students like to be in a higher education establishment and meet a much wider selection of their peer group. I suspect that women students will suffer. I fear that the status of teaching will be devalued. Will it be back to the monitors and pupil teachers of a century ago?
The Government's intention is to allow people to receive from the Secretary of State qualified teacher status without any intervention from higher education. It would put this country in a unique position in Europe, and nearly all the developing countries of the Pacific rim are busily upgrading their teacher education and relating it closely to higher education. The Government's proposals are a retrograde step for the profession in England and contradict developments in other professional areas where integration is actively being provided. Nursing provides an extremely good example.
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The teacher training agency will be yet another quango. The chairman and the eight to 12 members will all be appointed by the Secretary of State. What justification can there be for setting up this specialised funding body when no similar body is being set up for other professions with substantial public sector involvement? That no such body is considered feasible in Wales suggests that whatever problems are perceived in giving the HEFC responsibility for allocating funds to schools are seen as being soluble within the existing framework there. Will the Minister please explain the reasons for the different treatment for Wales?
Is it not ironic that in the very week of the Queen's Speech we should have the launch of the report of the national commission under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, the result of two years' intensive study by the education world? The report puts forward very different proposals for raising standards and quality and for more professionalism. I wish to refer specifically to the commission's support for a general teaching council. That would give the teaching profession a standing body to safeguard standards and to provide them with a body such as most professions have in order to fight their cause.
I turn now to student unions. The Government's aim is purely political. They wish to prevent taxpayers' money being used for political purposes. That could easily have been stopped without going to such enormous lengths and legislation, thereby risking the destruction of a quantity of excellent work that the unions undertake in the universities. The Government's objectives could have been met by clearly defining those activities which are ultra vires for student unions, by developing national codes of practice for the democratic control of student unions and by codifying good practice based on existing procedures on the accounting and auditing of funds. Why waste all this parliamentary time? The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, also made that point.
The list of core services in the proposed documents—I know that they do not appear in the Bill but they will be produced by regulation—omits an astonishing range of positive and legitimate functions undertaken by student unions: cultural and academic activity, religious and ethnic societies and information and communication services, including newspapers and radio, which form a key element in the provision of welfare services. How many successful journalists have started their careers writing or editing university papers? There is too the organisation of entertainments, concerts, theatre, visiting troops and bands. Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn are two stars who started their marvellous careers in university societies. In his speech the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, spoke of the great contribution to the arts which university student unions can provide.
The activities of student unions have a very real value for students as part of the educational process. Students do not learn only in the lecture hall, library or laboratory but from a range of more active experiences in which they develop both confidence and the organisational

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skills which are vital for their careers with future employers. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made the point about the fun that students enjoy from such events.
I have discovered from my own college at Cambridge that among the clubs whose financial basis will be swept away are the Law Society, the Engineering Society, the Medics and Vets Society, the History Society, the Geography Society, the Music Society and the Drama Society. Is it not ridiculous that one can have a lacrosse club but not a law society, and a boat club but not a music society?
The proposal to exclude external representation from core activities will produce difficulties both for universities and for Government. As a briefing to MPs or Peers is external representation, would an MP or Peer have to pay to cover the costs of producing such representation? Would an MP or Peer have to pay to cover costs if he has a meeting with the president of a student union? One can see the ridiculousness of the whole situation. We do not know from the Bill exactly what will happen since so much is to be done, as usual, by regulation.
The proposals are totally misconceived. The Government's aims could be achieved more simply. I hope that Ministers will be prepared to listen to this debate and the debate on Second Reading. There is also the point as to whether the legislation is in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has given an opinion. He thinks that Articles 10, 11 and 14 could produce difficulties for the Government. I cannot pretend to have knowledge about that, but I hope that the Government will consider the point when we debate the Second Reading of the Bill.
7.25 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, we have had an extremely good debate. Although it was a short list of speakers, the length of speeches expanded to accommodate the short list. That has produced considerable richness in and gain for the debate.
It has been a wide-ranging debate. I am delighted to welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, to this House; he is an old personal friend. He was able to argue about a matter that was not in the Queen's Speech. He said that it was not the time and place and he was not the person to argue that the Arts Council should have more money. It may not have been the time and place, but he went on to prove that he was the person to argue it, and argue it rather well. The noble Lord, Lord Cocks, managed to congratulate the maiden speaker upon his admirable speech by reminding all other noble Lords that we were forbidden to do so. It is a process that your Lordships will notice I have taken one remove further in the past minute.
I propose to address briefly the three main subjects of the debate. I shall not say much about local government. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has spoken from these Benches; she is an expert on the subject. However, I wish to comment that it is the 15th Queen's Speech since I entered your Lordships' House. I remember the Government coming into office; and one now has to be
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fairly old to remember that. When they came into office, I remember that they were going to devolve power from the state. They were going to abolish quangos. Do your Lordships remember those days? We now have more quangos than we have ever had before, more centralisation of powers to the state and less democracy, because most of the people who have been put in to do jobs in place of councillors are not accountable to anyone except the Secretary of State. That is a sad factor, and sooner or later we shall have to hand back powers to the people who benefit or suffer from them. They must have the power to decide for themselves. We need more devolution.
We all know that the Government were afraid of local government bodies being taken over by extremists. In those days it was not considered likely that the Government would be taken over by extremists. But no one faced up to the answer. We on these Benches have always known the answer and are tired of giving it. Your Lordships are tired of hearing us say it. If one devolves power to local government and has proportional representation, one has local government which is virtually guaranteed not to have extremists in charge.
We still look for the provision of universal nursery education. I shall certainly join the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in his campaign for nursery education. I listened with great interest to the debate on the subject led by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, to which my noble friend Lady Seear contributed memorably. Universal availability of education at a very early age for all children will pay off in human and in economic terms. To say that we cannot afford it is nonsense.
I hope that the Government may do a U turn on this matter. I was very interested to see that the Daily Express carried a story saying that they had done so. It filled the front page of that newspaper on Monday, 22nd November. It said that Mr. Major had changed his mind and we were to get, "nursery schools for all". If that is so, it will be a wonderful thing. There is no reason why it should not be so. We all know what it needs; namely, one penny on income tax. That will more than cover the cost, and it will pay us back over a long period of time.
On the question of student unions, much has been said, and by two Members on these Benches who know a lot about the subject. Much of what was said was very worthwhile. But no one stood up and said that what should really be encouraged in regard to student unions is politics, and that our children and our youth ought to be taught from a very early age the importance of engaging in politics at all levels. If we lost community action, as the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said, it would be a great pity. If that is to be the case, it is to be hoped that any such provision will be changed. We should encourage politics—and no one more so than noble Lords on the Government Benches. If I remember correctly, the folklore of the Conservative Party says that young people get radical when they are young and learn better as they get old: they all become Conservatives then. That is what used to be said. I am afraid that in my case it has not worked. I move further to the Left with every year that I age. If the Government believe that is so, then it should be to their benefit that people learn how to handle politics at a fairly early age.

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More should have been said on the subject of the environment—although my noble friend Lord Mackie spoke on it at length when he dealt with the question of agriculture. There is a question to be asked about how accountable will be the new bodies which will be produced by the new environment agency.
Finally, I should like to talk very briefly about the apparent lack of government interest in a number of firms and experiments that are going on in producing the engines, schemes and technology which will help the environment and all the attainment of a sustainable economy. If I mention two firms, I can assure noble Lords, as they would expect, that I have no pecuniary interest of any kind in them. At the moment there is a firm called Parry People Movers Ltd of Birmingham which, as we speak, has laid down some tramlines in Birmingham particularly to show off its non-polluting, low-cost, energy efficient, extremely cheap tram technology, which could be used as feeders in the countryside as well as in major towns. On a day when we read in the evening papers that a 100,000 people were trapped in the Underground, it might be as well to think about simple, above-ground, cheap, non-polluting transport systems.
Another small British company, Environmental Reclamation International Ltd., has developed a unique integrated system for the treatment of municipal solid waste. It has the largest national stand at the New Earth Exhibition in Osaka next month and is attracting widespread foreign interest; as indeed is the trams project. I understand that the Government are sending a group to Japan to learn all about tram technology at the same time as the Japanese are visiting Birmingham to see what is being done by that very good company which nevertheless needs the kind of support which all small, innovative companies need.
It is time that the Government took these matters seriously. The trouble is that they tend to think in terms of large, massive areas. Even if they want to save money, they cannot help thinking in terms of projects which cost millions and billions of pounds. This has been a day when we have discussed a number of subjects, all of which should revolve round the idea that small is beautiful; that we should have small units of local government; that we should take our education to the smallest of children; and that we should concentrate in our environment on what happens on the small scale rather than what happens on the vast scale. I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say about the various matters that have been raised.
7.36 p.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, this has been a good, sometimes passionate, debate. My noble friend Lord Williams, followed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, set the tone, with his challenging survey of the brutal attack on accountable democracy by the Government's partisan packing of the rapidly growing force of centrally controlled quangos. That theme of deep concern about what is happening to democracy has been repeatedly underlined today. My noble friend Lady Fisher spoke tellingly about the anonymity of key personnel and the centralisation of ministerial power. I
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hope that the Minister will deal fully in her reply with the most significant points raised by my noble friend Lord Cocks in his important contribution.
I must pay a very special tribute to the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for a first-rate maiden speech. The noble Lord spoke with deep experience and insight, which this House always values. We shall look forward to his contributions in the future.
I am certainly not brave enough to venture into the Celtic dimensions this evening. But I hope that the Government will take the anxieties of my noble friend Lord Macaulay and those of the noble Lords, Lord Hooson and Lord Mackie, very seriously.
The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, spoke powerfully on music. He is right. Music can do a tremendous amount for national self-respect, identity and morale. It deserves the fullest possible Government support. The schools' Proms last week were a tonic for all of us who were able to attend. That is indeed what made that tragic accident on the M.40 all the sadder.
My noble friend Lord Williams indicated that I would concentrate on education this evening.
"Children have bad manners and contempt for authority. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannise their teachers".
Whose words are those? Are they the words of John Patten, John Major, or Kenneth Clarke? No, my Lords, they are the words of Aristotle. We need a sense of proportion and historical perspective in all our neurotic anxiety about the young. The frenzied activity of the Secretary of State, with all the inevitable consequential chaos, repeatedly reminds me of the words of Yeats:
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre;
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
… and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity".
As my noble friend Lady David reminded us, this education Bill will be the 15th in 14 years. In the consideration of each one there has been an avalanche of government amendments, more even than the number of clauses in the Bills, demonstrating the impetuous, alarming, half-baked style which has become the order of the day.
During our deliberations last summer, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, spoke persuasively about the need for consensus in our approach to education. He was right to do so and he remains right. But of course the brief period for consultation before the last Education Bill coincided with the summer holidays in 1992. For the impending legislation on student unions it would again have coincided with the summer vacation this year had it not been for the intervention of noble Lords and others who won at least a small extension. Now also we have the announcement of legislation on teacher training within days of the end of the consultation period and before Ministers and officials can possibly have had time to take stock of the response. So much for the spirit of consensus.
Amazingly—but, then, not amazingly; on reflection, absolutely predictably—the commitment to specific further legislation has now come before either House

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has had any opportunity to evaluate and debate the significant report by the National Commission on Education entitled Learning to Succeed, prepared under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, ably assisted by, as his deputy, John Raisman, the former chairman of Shell UK. It would have been a welcome reassertion of statesmanship and common sense if the Minister had been able to assure your Lordships this evening that there would be no question of legislation being introduced until the Government had had a proper opportunity to hear and consider the views of both Houses on the commission's report. But, no; the arrogance of the Secretary of State knows no bounds and the Bill is published today.
During this past August I began to take heart. There was an altogether uncharacteristic bout of billing and cooing by the Department for Education, apparently reflecting the sanity and good judgment being brought to bear by Sir Ron Dearing. Was it the Minister of State or was it the permanent secretary who momentarily made his influence felt? The news of the imminent departure to Exeter University of the permanent secretary—and we wish him well while lamenting his absence from Whitehall—suggests that it was probably he. For whatever the more gentle, reasonable summer breezes and despite the humiliating retreat on the mums' army, we now are back with a vengeance to the gales of megalomania and classic insecurity which have characterised the DfE in recent times. Nobody who witnessed the bizarre and ludicrously adolescent performance by the Secretary of State in the other place last night could have been left in any doubt whatsoever about that.
In the shadow of yet more legislation coupled with total confusion on issues such as how exactly Key Stage 4 and GCSE are to be harmonised in response to the Secretary of State's latest fixations, once again a cry of desperation is going up from the educational practitioners—those who are in the front line: "Not another Bill! Not more changes! Why, oh, why, cannot the Government just get off our backs and let us get on with the teaching?" Indeed, the Government's Stalinist zeal for centralised control is an extraordinary contradiction of the commitment to deregulation in the gracious Speech.
The gracious Speech gives us an opportunity to reflect. What are the purposes of education? Sir Walter Scott had a challenging perception:
"We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny unless we have taught ourselves to regard everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart".
Herbert Spencer ventured that:
"Education has for its object the formation of character".
Perhaps noble Lords will forgive me if, in all modesty, I suggest three intertwined priorities in more prosaic terms. The first is to enable people to live rather than merely to exist—to discover and exercise their capabilities, their rationality, their judgment and their creativity, enabling them to live out their lives fulfilled, having been what they had the potential to be. The indictment of our age is that, despite all our technological and material prowess, we still condone a situation in which too many people die without having
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had the opportunity to begin to be what they might have been. The second is to maximise the human potential of society as a whole—the potential which is its richest asset; skills, brainpower, talents, which we desperately need. The third is to prepare our youngsters for the demanding responsibilities of citizenship in an open, democratic society. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, was right to make that point.
If those purposes are to be fulfilled, we have to measure our educational systems against the challenges of the century ahead. Let me suggest a few of those challenges. I was interested in the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. We base our future on the market but it is clear that the driving force of capitalism is no longer exclusively in Europe, North America or even Japan. South East Asia as a whole, together with China, has become a force that could yet turn us into a 21st century version of a faded Mediterranean city state. Eminent scientists in the United Kingdom have joined with their colleagues in the United States to warn that, if we do not get a grip on management of the environment within the next 30 years, we could find ourself in an unnecessarily premature, terminal environmental crisis.
Already it is argued that the oceans may be working at 80 per cent. of their capacity to regenerate atmosphere while only 25 per cent. of the world's population have any opportunity to live as we in this House take living for granted. Single careers or jobs for life are no longer a certain prospect. Knowledge, which brings adaptability and flexibility, is essential. Narrow training alone is dangerous. For many, spells without orthodox employment will be an unavoidable reality. The self-reliance, imagination and resourcefulness to cope with that are vital.
Everywhere the spirit of community is under attack. It is small wonder that families, the basic communities, so often crumble. The culture—if that is not to misuse the word —of egocentric materialism dominates. Individual success is the role model. Down this road, how can the disintegration of society be avoided? Where will be the ethos of mutual interdependence and responsibility with which positively to defeat, as distinct from frantically endeavouring to contain, delinquency and crime?
The United Kingdom has become a multi-cultural society. To make a success of it will require tolerance and understanding, insights into and respect for different traditions and religions, as well as a realisation that truth is complex and has many dimensions. It is against such challenges that I suggest we shall have to measure the relevance and effectiveness of proposed legislation. Education, as the Walton Commission argues, should be flexibly available on a lifelong basis with equitable treatment for higher and further education and easy access to both. Whatever the solution to the developing crisis in the funding of higher education—which I unhesitatingly recognise challenges us on all sides of this House—it must never be applied at the expense of access.
Tonight is not the time to go into detail about the proposed new legislation. But the wording of the Bill fills me with foreboding. I believe that the Minister

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would do well to take most seriously the reflections of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon, which were echoed by my noble friend Lord Monkswell and indeed in the characteristically telling and powerful contribution of my noble friend Lady David.
On teacher training and higher education the myopic Secretary of State seems, by means of yet another quango, hell bent on substituting instruction for education, and institutionalised technicians for teachers. At this rate, in a decade or two our schools will be churning out robots rather than the lively, self-confident and inquiring youngsters upon whom the future of our democracy and economy depends. The Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals has put the issue very clearly. The Government's proposed reforms to initial teacher training not only pose a serious threat to quality but could lead to political control over teacher education. The Government's proposals imply that teacher education is the narrowest form of training. Teaching is a much more complex activity than the Government seem to appreciate, requiring self-awareness and self-assessment, which are qualities best nurtured in higher education. The proposals also risk damaging the status of teaching as a graduate level profession. Broadening access to the profession should not be achieved at the expense of quality.
On students' unions, the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Butterfield and Lord Redesdale, spoke significantly, together with other noble Lords. The preoccupation once more with ministerial diktat is again written all over the Bill. I fear Ministers are incapable of grasping the concept of a community of scholars. Everything has to be reduced to the limitations of the market. Customers and producers, indeed! I invite the House to listen to the heartfelt cry of a well-known and highly regarded college principal and the president of his student union in a joint statement:
"A college has a particular understanding of the relationship between its various members, whether they be students, tutors or support staff in the laboratories or libraries. In a most important and non-trivial sense, all are members of an intellectual and moral community concerned mutually to provide opportunity for learning and for personal maturity. Within such a community, the various associations, whether of students or tutors, also have a vital role in the democratic debate on purposes, processes and values. We therefore view with some trepidation the likely outcome of the reforms of Student Unions which are under discussion."
Beyond these areas of ill-conceived legislation, I suggest a number of priorities for urgent attention. The first is the need to enhance the status and self-regulating self-respect of the teaching profession so that it can play its full part responsibly in the development of education policy, not least on the topics of admission to the profession and teacher training. A general teaching council is essential; we shall continue to argue for it relentlessly. The constant demeaning of the profession by Ministers is outrageous. It is time we strengthened the role, standing and influence of the majority of teachers by celebrating and recognising them rather than by lumping them together with the inadequate minority. The inadequate minority is, of course, there. What the dedicated majority achieves on our behalf, frequently against grim odds, is incredible.
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Secondly, nursery education, as argued by the Walton commission and again tonight by the noble Lords, Lord Northbourne and Lord Beaumont, must progressively become available to all. This, together with improved primary facilities and smaller primary classes, especially in deprived areas, is probably the single most important and cost-effective contribution which could be made towards increasing the successful education of all our children and enabling them to realise more fully their potential. All the evidence—I repeat, all the evidence—demonstrates that the economic and social dividends for society will repay the outlay several times over. As a nation, we can no longer afford not to act.
Thirdly, as Sir Ron Dearing is already wisely indicating, testing and assessment should be relevant and school based and in a form which teachers can use flexibly and in the context of a creative approach to education and which measures the development of the child, not least in character and personality. The proposals of the Walton commission on the curriculum, with their emphasis on breadth and preparation for citizenship are wise and deserve careful consideration. They effectively challenge the eccentric and diverting preoccupations of the Secretary of State, with super grade A-levels-a highly damaging notion which is in conflict with virtually all informed opinion, not least that of the CBI. Simplistic, distorted league tables, whether on supposed achievement or on truancy, in the form in which they are currently being presented, remain a travesty. The damage they can do to the morale of teachers, students and parents alike in some of our most disadvantaged communities is cruel. Many of the teachers in such communities should in fact he regarded as national heroes.
Fourthly, schools should become dynamic centres of community life, encompassing music, the arts, outdoor activities and further education for adults. That helps to foster a sense of responsibility in the community for children and a sense of responsibility and involvement among youngsters for and in the community. Indeed, educational provision is central to the heart of any meaningful community-based local democracy. With all respect to the Walton commission, on this point I differ. The challenge is not to set up a new locally-based quango, any more than it is to bring in the CBI and the clearing banks to run the United Kingdom. The challenge is to make accountable democracy work.
Fifthly, a concern for values should permeate all that is central to education. Sex education should be part of the core curriculum, not just as technique but as part of the development of social responsibility., mutuality and respect for others.
Sixthly, resources must be adequate. Education is the most important investment of all in the United Kingdom's future. It must therefore be properly financed. The Walton commission is to be commended on having taken the matter so seriously. The Government's failure is appalling. Cuts in Section 11 grants, failure to implement school building regulations, inadequate funding for the introduction of their own curriculum—such economies are as mad as they are

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false. They smell of the all-pervading, self-defeating short-termism which is the hallmark of the Administration opposite.
No one on these Benches rejects the disciplines of market economics. They are indispensable, but they are not enough. The market is at best amoral. It is a short-term mechanism and in its application parameters are frequently too limited. Of itself it will never solve the strategic issues of humanity. To suppose that it will smacks of Stalinist materialism at its worst. The issues of environment and education demand vision and imagination. They are about long-term perspective and value judgments. They are about the recognition of interdependence in the family, the community, the nation and the world and the need for co-operation. It is the total inability of Ministers opposite to recognise all that which I find so terrifying. In the year ahead, as my noble friend said so powerfully in his introduction, we on these Benches will be fighting for a reassertion of rationality and social ethics in our communal affairs. We want to see community as central to our national characteristics and life. Of no realm of policy will this be more important than education.
7.57 p.m.
Baroness Blotch: My Lords, this has been a good debate: wide ranging, interesting and characteristically challenging. It will not be possible, of course, to do justice to all the speeches but I will do what I can under the normal time constraints. And of course I too shall live up to my usual reputation for speaking too fast.
The highlight for me was the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith, a very good friend and colleague over many years. Those of us who know him had the highest expectations of his maiden speech today and we are not the least surprised that he more than rose to the daunting challenge of addressing your Lordships' House. I join with all noble Lords who have already congratulated him on an excellent presentation today.
He embraced several points. First, he welcomed the City Challenge approach to addressing the problems of our more urban areas. Of course he gave the record of East Anglian higher education in particular: that is a sector in which he is personally involved. He mentioned the way in which the changes there have been managed in a very positive way. He also posed two questions about what I think he referred to as the two-faced accountability of local government: on the one hand facing the electorate and, on the other hand, facing government for finance.
Local government is primarily accountable to its electorate. It has to operate within statutory and financial frameworks which are specified by central government—and t'was ever thus under any political party. And of course the Audit Commission oversees that activity. Central government is sovereign and central government decides which functions to allocate to local authorities and, in the case of present funding, 80 per cent. of expenditure by grant. The new climate of performance-based delivery of service was mentioned by my noble friend, enabling rather than providing for public services—and now it is up to the public itself to
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make judgments about that. I note all that my noble friend says and I know he will certainly have more to say on these matters as time goes on.
I should just like to say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, opposite: talk is cheap. No Labour government —I repeat no Labour government—has funded education in real terms at the level provided by this government. The funding of education is up by 45 per cent. in real terms compared with 1979, and that cannot be matched by anything that the noble Lord and his Party have done in recent times.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, who opened for the Opposition, referred to the cost of local government reform and claimed that it was a waste of millions of pounds. Noble Lords opposite and their party—the Labour Party—are consistently and on slender evidence talking up the cost of reform. There will of course be initial transitional costs; everyone accepts that. But it will be an investment to achieve significant savings in the longer term. Indeed, there is a close relationship between costs and savings. Most costs are redundancy costs, and most savings come from reduced staff costs in the longer term. Thus, the higher the costs, the greater the amount of money that will be saved in the long term.
Noble Lords opposite—certainly the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Elvel and Lord Macaulay of Bragar—were extremely concerned about matters Scottish and Welsh, particularly Welsh. On Monday 22nd November the Secretary of State for Wales announced in the House of Commons that implementation of local government reorganisation in Wales would be delayed until 1996. That decision has no effect on the timing of legislation due to be introduced shortly in the House of Lords. No final decision has been taken on elections to shadow authorities; they are likely to be delayed until April 1995.
We listened to representations that the new authorities needed adequate time to prepare for reorganisation. The delay gives them that time. The late start to the Session plus the introduction in the Lords means that we cannot have elections by May or June 1994, and that would leave little time to prepare for reorganisation in 1995.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State was unable to make a proper statement to the House because of disruptive tactics by the MP for Montgomery. My noble friend Lord Ferrers earned the unqualified praise of the Welsh Members of your Lordships' House on the passing of the Welsh Language Act. I do not remember the kind of comments being made to him that have been made about my noble and learned friend the Lord Advocate today. I am sure that the House would wish my noble and learned friend the same success when he introduces the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Macaulay of Bragar, asked for information on the timetable for local government reform in Scotland. The Government have already indicated that, subject to the successful passage of the Bill, elections to the new shadow authorities will take place on 6th April 1995. Those councils will take over from the old councils on 1st April 1996. As my noble and learned friend said in his speech, Scottish legislation

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will be introduced in this Session. I can say also that the new date for Wales brings it into line with Scotland. The noble Lord went on to ask whether there was any significance in the delay. There is not. The two dates are now in line with each other. Of course there will be opportunities to challenge all those issues and the detail when the Bill comes before the House.
The noble Lord was disappointed that no further mention was made of Scotland in the Queen's Speech. I ask him not to judge the success of the Queen's Speech by the amount of legislation contained within it. I would regard the most successful Queen's Speech as being one that contained no measures at all, other than perhaps deregulation coupled with a wonderful account of the programme of visits and activities planned for the year ahead by Her Majesty and members of the Household. However, it is not correct to say that because there was no specific mention of Scotland, Scotland will not be part of other legislation. Certainly with regard to the Education Bill and the EPA paving Bill, Scotland will be involved.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for defining what she considers to be a proper gracious Speech. Is she defining that as something that we should have had but did not? Is the Minister now rebutting the whole of the gracious Speech?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I was making the point that simply because the Speech did not contain all the matters the noble Lord wished it to contain that somehow it is a cause for denigration. I am simply saying that that is not a measure of success.
The noble Lord, Lord Macaulay of Bragar, suggested also that the consultation exercise on local government reform was less widespread than the Government indicated. The consultation exercise was one of the largest undertaken in Scotland. The Scottish Office issued over 22,000 copies of the main consultation paper—an extensive and detailed document of 106 pages. For the first time also a video was produced and distributed widely. The indications are that it was seen by a large number of people and a wide range of people. Both the consultation paper and the video were available on request free of charge and given constant considerable publicity.
The noble Lord went on to argue that difficulties in the current local government system can be solved by discussion and agreement and it does not require restructuring. I am surprised at that suggestion as the Labour Party manifesto supports a move to single-tier councils. However, I accept that the proposals were in the context of a Scottish assembly.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness. The Labour Party said that it would support single-tier councils if there was a Scottish assembly. That is a rather different proposition from that which she is putting to the House.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Lord interrupts me precisely at the moment when I am saying that I accept that the proposal was in the context of a
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Scottish assembly—something that this Government consider to be a needless and extremely expensive layer of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I believe that all parties are committed to the single-tier councils.
A question was asked with regard to the hedgerows Bill. We remain committed to it and will introduce the necessary legislation as soon as time permits. The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, asked about national parks. We welcome the proposal of my noble friend Lord Norrie to introduce a Private Member's Bill to give independent status to national parks, and I hope to co-operate with him. There will be a meeting with Government Ministers shortly and no doubt my noble friend will report to the House the outcome of those meetings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to the Committee of the Regions and arrangements for linking Members' alternates. The Government have not made any pairs. It is for Members and alternate Members to decide for themselves how to pair either permanently or ad hoc. They could link by party, region or common interest. The committee will agree its working procedures when it meets for the first time, probably in January. There is no point in producing United Kingdom-only rules when other member states may have different ideas. European Community institutions are usually flexible in their arrangements.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, asked about the extension of releasing capital receipts—"capital receipt holidays" she called it. Extending the receipts concession will lead to additional unplanned public expenditure and therefore an increase in the PSBR or a need for reductions elsewhere. The receipts concession is a short-term and temporary boost to the economy and, of course, the construction industry.
The noble Baroness mentioned that she does not see the chairman of her water authority in the flesh. I hesitate to say that I see mine in the flesh—it may appear in Cross Bencher or some other newspaper column at the weekend. I certainly see the chairman of my water authority; I make it my business to see him. I also see members of the health authority and the chairman of the health authority. It is a two-way process. If one wishes to see them, I hope that they will make themselves available.
The noble Baroness mentioned also that she hoped that consumer protection would not be weakened by the reforms. I agree. There is an obligation on the part of those responsible for reforming local government to see that all functions are properly catered for in any new arrangements. The noble Baroness was concerned also about the Government's housing policy. The Government's priority aim is to bring a decent home within the reach of every family through promoting home ownership, securing better value for money in the public rented sector and promoting the private rented sector.
The noble Lord, Lord Cooke of Islandreagh, referred to the restoration of local democracy in Northern Ireland. I listened carefully to his speech and assure him that his remarks will be drawn to the attention of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to an interesting prizegiving which she attended. I attend them fairly frequently these days. She said that the head reported on progress and mentioned that his masters would be pleased with what he had to say. If it was a local education authority school, his masters would be the local authority —the very people the noble Baroness supports. If it was a grant-maintained school the masters would be his own governing body.
The noble Baroness referred also to the London booklet, and the objectives of the questionnaire. The purpose of the questionnaire in London—Making the Best Better—is to allow people to say what they think about London. It was designed with specialist advice from MORI and the Government's statistical service. The prospectus to which the noble Baroness referred is a separate initiative under London Pride. Seven bodies, including the London local authority associations, were invited by the Secretary of State to come up with a prospective of proposals to promote London.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, asked about the definition of "landlord" included in the business expansion scheme. There is no general distinction between types of private landlord. The BES companies enjoy a tax subsidy, not a grant. Landlords can apply for a renovation grant on a means-tested basis. The booklet referred to is guidance from the Department of the Environment on how tenants can become more effectively involved in the repair and improvement of housing association properties.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie,—slightly wide of the gracious Speech—spoke about Scottish farmers being penalised under the arable area payment scheme. The Government are well aware of farmers' concerns. Indeed, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland met the President of the NFU for Scotland, Mr. John Ross, only today to discuss that issue. I am not in a position to report on the outcome of the meeting tonight. However, I make the following points to the noble Lord. The figures arising from the integrated administration and control scheme (IACS) have been examined carefully. There is no doubt that there is an overshoot in the Scottish figures. The Government are watching the position in Brussels, but there is no indication that the Commission is considering a general dispensation as regards the application of penalties. We hope to have approval soon from the Commission for revised payment rates and to start making payments next month. Even with revised payments, I believe that over £90 million this year is going into the LFA and non-LFA sectors.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her full answer. However, perhaps she can tell me why the Scottish Office will not let the NFU examine the figures that it has produced. The whole point is that nobody really believes that the census figures are accurate.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not deal with the detail of that question. I will be in touch with him. I believe that
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there is an Adjournment Debate in another place on that very issue this evening. This is not my specific subject, and somebody will be in touch with the noble Lord.
The noble Lord also raised the question of the availability of funds to the new authorities for the provision of housing for retired agricultural workers. I have noted the concerns of the noble Lord. The funding of the new authorities will be the subject of discussion in due course between the Council of Scottish Local Authorities and the Secretary of State for Scotland in the usual way. I am sure that the local authorities will not be reticent in putting their case to my right honourable friend.
The noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, referred to the 1992 Act not permitting a shadow local authority if the boundaries of the new unitary authority are not substantially different. I agree that there is a weakness in the legislation; but there are no plans to change it. It is too early to say whether or not there will be real difficulty. Almost all of the commission's recommendations have yet to be made. The staff commission operations are parallel with those of the local government commission and they will address staffing difficulties during the transitional period.
The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, made very complimentary comments about the school orchestra, as did the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I absolutely concur with them. I constantly find myself wide-eyed while listening to this wonderful music. It is right to say that it takes a very tuned ear to enable a distinction to be made between that and professional playing. First, this is not a matter for this Minister, this debate or any department that is under discussion today. I shall pass on all that the noble Lord has said to the relevant department and Ministers. I also make the point that the making of grants is very much a matter of judgment by the Arts Council. That operates at arm's length from government.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in a characteristically sensitive speech, made reference to children under five coming into school without social skills. It is very difficult to deal with this in a sentence or two. No doubt it is a subject to which we shall return. The noble Lord made many points which I would find almost impossible to counter. But what I can say to him is that 56 per cent. of children in this country are in nursery education. In addition, 750,000 children are in playgroups up and down the land which serve some of those children very well. Day centres are also provided by local authorities. There is also private nursery schooling. Many of our children arrive at school in the year in which they are four. In this country we still have entry into statutory schooling one or two years ahead of most countries, including most of our European neighbours.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, was concerned about the restriction on campaigning for students. There is no such restriction. We are simply saying that public funds channelled through student unions should not be used for that purpose. It is a question of accounting for public money.
The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, was concerned about student unions not being democratic. Those who

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believe in democracy have absolutely nothing to fear from these reforms. They will increase democracy in student union representative structures and promote financial accountability, ensuring that good practice applies consistently. Those views were also shared by the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, commented on the definition of core and non-core activities and hoped for clarification. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced in July that he was minded to include welfare, internal representation, catering and sport as services for which public money should continue to be available. We are now finalising plans for implementation in the light of responses to consultations. We continue to see those four activities as legitimate areas for public funds which would be deployed through student unions. However, there is no reason why any service outside the core should cease to exist. Other funding channels will remain open, and students will need to decide what services they value. No money will disappear from the system. The money will be with the institutions. Those institutions are independent, and it will he for them to determine their own codes of practice, methods of working and forms of accountability. That has to be seen to be done as well as required to be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked why we should not allow students to opt out of activities. We do not believe that an opting-out provision will go far enough. Our proposal preserves access to core services while giving students a choice of whether to join in non-core activities. In an opt-out system students who opt out will be denied that choice and lose their access to core activities.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, was also anxious that student community action was not included in the core activities for which public funding would be available. Voluntary activity such as student community action is by definition voluntary. It is a matter for students whether they wish to support it using their own resources. It should not be a claim on the public purse. But there is no reason why student community action should not continue under our proposed reforms. Universities and colleges may continue to support these activities with public funds (although if they do so they may not use the student union channel) or they may use private funds.
The noble Lord asked when the regulations on student unions would be tabled. There is a good deal of interest in what the regulations will contain. We are considering that matter. The regulations in draft will be seen by this House as the Bill proceeds through the House.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked whether the student union proposals were in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. Our proposals have been framed with that convention very much in mind. In a democracy, freedom of association is a vital principle. Our proposals are intended to protect freedom of association and improve democracy and accountability in student unions.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, referred to legislation on student
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unions as being unnecessary because the goals could be achieved by clarifying student union status as charities. Building on charity law would not deliver the voluntary principle. It would also relieve universities and colleges of their responsibility for ensuring that student unions were fully accountable and democratic and operated according to a clear code of practice. Previous discussions about voluntary reform have yielded scant change on the ground. There is a need to make permanent structural change.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked whether the Local Government Commission would be allowed to get on with the job. She also referred to a mistake in the map in the booklet. The answer to the first point is that the final revised guidance issued on the 2nd November gives more weight to local consensus. An announcement on the revised timetable is due shortly. As to the mistake to which the noble Baroness referred, I believe that she will have to bring it specifically to the notice of the department. I promise that it will be looked into.
The noble Baroness and others were concerned about the split of responsibility for funding of research between the teacher training agency and higher education. We propose that the new agency should fund research to keep the valuable link between research into education and the training of teachers. I know there is anxiety about how the assessment of research by the new body will link with that now carried out by the funding council and I look forward to debating that issue in detail in due course. But funding for research in universities now comes from a variety of sources and I do not think that the new agency will disturb current practice as much as is feared.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon made a reference to the valuable partnership between Church and state in education. The Bill repeats the assurances given to the denominational colleges through the Further and Higher Education Act. The Higher Education Funding Council will be better placed to consider very carefully the place of denominational teacher training colleges and be sensitive to the points that the right reverend Prelate raises. But, again, we shall return to that in more detail during the course of the Bill.
The right reverend Prelate was also concerned about the linking of funding and accreditation. At present, the Higher Education Funding Council is responsible for funding and quality assessment in all higher education institutions for all higher education. For teacher training, three further bodies are also involved—Ofsted, inspecting courses; the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, judging their standards; and the Department for Education, approving courses. We propose on CATE's advice some sensible streamlining so that the agency can use Ofsted's advice on the relative merits of courses to fund the best and also to accredit providers who meet the necessary standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, talked about whittling away teacher training. I simply cannot agree with that. We endorse the need for the highest standard of teacher training. The criteria for primary and secondary courses are now set out clearly in circulars

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regarding what new teachers must be able to do. One-year training based on a good degree can be an effective way of training. We have lengthened the primary PGCE to 38 weeks to recognise wider curriculum needs under the national curriculum. Secondary teachers will be teaching a narrower range of subjects for which their first degree will fit them. The division of school-based and higher education-based training is addressed in the circulars. I shall make sure that the noble Lord receives one in the next day or two.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, made some reference to the consortia for initial teacher training. I invite the noble Baroness to go and see it actually happening on the ground. I have been immensely impressed with the professionalism of teachers in the classroom and head teachers in consortia of schools coming together to train those who will be their new peers in the system—young graduates, men as well as women, freely choosing to have school-based training in preference to being always and wholly in a higher education institution.
Baroness David: My Lords, I was interested in the percentage of time that is to be spent in schools and in the higher education establishment. What is to be the percentage now?
Baroness Blotch: My Lords, on a four year B.Ed degree course, the equivalent will be one year of the four years. I think that it is eight weeks in any year. It is graded down. About a third of a PGCE year is spent in schools. The noble Baroness made reference in her speech to the whole school-based training. That is extremely impressive in its early days. The noble Baroness also said that the achievements of young children going into school were modest. We should not tackle the problem at that level; we should be tackling the problem at the low level. That is what the national curriculum is in place to do.
Reference was made to the rather poor consultation period for student unions. Not only have there been
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considerable consultations by placing the proposals in the public domain, but I personally, my right honourable friend the Secretary for State and my honourable friend Mr. Boswell in another place have met student union representatives, the National Union of Students' representatives, the CVCP, the Standing Conference of Principals and many other interested groups. That is in addition to all the written representations we have had into the department.
The noble Baroness was concerned about the split between higher education and school courses. The Bill does not affect the criteria for teacher training courses set out by the Secretary of State in his published circulars. All secondary PGCEs must from 1994 have 24 weeks—two-thirds of the time—in schools; and for primary undergraduate courses the main routes into initial teacher training must have eight weeks in any year from 1996.
I cannot do, and have not done, justice to this debate. It was wide-ranging and the contributions have, as always, been of high quality. We shall no doubt return to many of the issues raised. We shall have an opportunity—I hope before too long—certainly in the case of the Education Bill, to discuss at Second Reading the issues of principle which have been raised by noble Lords. Our House will, in its inimitable and characteristic style, scrutinise with vigour and commitment to improve the legislation. I look forward at least to the part I shall play in those debates and I have no doubt that my noble friends on the Front Bench will look forward to the part that they will play.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned until tomorrow.
Moved, That the debate be now adjourned until tomorrow.—(Lord Strathclyde.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past eight o'clock.

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