Sitting of 26 October 1993

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

  Standing Orders (Private Business)
  Ordered,
  That the Amendments to Standing Orders relating Private Business set out in the Schedule be made.

  SCHEDULE
  Standing Order 27

  line 14, leave out 'in duplicate'.

  line 18, leave out 'in duplicate'.

  line 64, leave out paragraph (5).

  Standing Order 39.

  line 10, leave out 'Energy' and insert 'National Heritage'.

  Standing Order 191

  line 9, leave out 'community charge' and insert 'council tax'.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

  BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 4) BILL
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Promoters of the British Railways (No. 4) Bill shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day before the close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That, on the fifth day on which the House sits in the next Session, the Bill shall be presented to the House;
  That there shall be deposited with the Bill a declaration signed by the Agents for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the present Session;
  That the Bill shall be laid upon the Table of the House by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office on the next meeting of the House after the day on which the Bill has been presented and, when so laid, shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);
  That since no Petitions remain against the Bill no Petitioners shall be heard before any committee on the Bill save those who complain of any amendment as proposed in the filled up Bill or of any matter which arises during the progress of the Bill before the Committee;
  That no further fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders by Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

  BRITISH WATERWAYS BILL [LORDS]
  Motion made, and Question proposed.
  That the Promoters of the British Waterways Bill [Lords] shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day before the
  672
  close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That, if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the next Session, the Agent for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by him, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the present Session;
  That, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office,that such a declaration has been so deposited has laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of the House as having been so read and committed);
  That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the present Session which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill, together with any minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill, shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;
  That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within the present Session or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business;
  That, in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against Bill)" were omitted;
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

  CROYDON TRAMLINK BILL [Lords]
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Promoters of the Croydon Tramlink Bill [Lords] shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day before the close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That, if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the next Session, the Agent for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by him, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the present Session;
  That, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office, that such a declaration has been so deposited, has been laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);
  That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the present Session which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;
  That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within the present Session or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business; That, in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against Bill)" were omitted;
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

  LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY HERITAGE FOUNDATION BILL
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Promoters of the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation Bill shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day

  673
  before the close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That on the fifth day on which the House sits in the next Session the Bill shall be presented to the House;
  That there shall be deposited with the Bill a declaration signed by the Agents for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the present Session;
  That the Bill shall be laid upon the Table of the House by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office on the next meeting of the House after the day on which the Bill has been presented and, when so laid, shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);
  That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the present Session which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill, together with any minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill, shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;
  That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within the present Session or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 1226 relating to Private Business;
  That in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against the Bill)" were omitted;
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

  LONDON LOCAL AUTHORITIES BILL [LORDS]
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Promoters of the London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day before the close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That, if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the next Session, the Agent for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by him, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the present Session;
  That, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office, that such a declaration has been so deposited, has been laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);
  That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in the present Session which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;
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  That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within the present Session or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business;
  That, in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against Bill)" were omitted:
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

  LONDON UNDERGROUND (GREEN PARK) BILL
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Promoters of the London Underground (Green Park) Bill shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office not later than the day before the close of the present Session of their intention to suspend further proceedings and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
  That on the fifth day on which the House sits in the next Session the Bill shall be presented to the House;
  That there shall be deposited with the Bill a declaration signed by the Agents for the Bill, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the present Session;
  That the Bill shall be laid upon the Table of the House by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office on the next meeting of the House after the day on which the Bill has been presented and, when so laid, shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed);
  That all Petitions relating to the Bill presented in Session 1991–92 or the present Session which stand referred to the Committee on the Bill, together with any minutes of evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill, shall stand referred to the Committee on the Bill in the next Session;
  That no Petitioners shall be heard before the Committee on the Bill, unless their Petition has been presented within the time limited within Session 1991–92 or deposited pursuant to paragraph (b) of Standing Order 126 relating to Private Business;
  That in relation to the Bill, Standing Order 127 relating to Private Business shall have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 126 (Reference to committee of petitions against Bill)" were omitted;
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
  That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  Hon. Members: Object.

Oral Answers to Questions
  HEALTH

    Regional Health Authorities
    Mr. Jim Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement about the future size, number and role of regional health authorities.
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mrs. Virginia Bottomley): I announced to the House last week my intention to abolish the 14 statutory regional health authorities. In advance of the necessary legislation, I propose to reduce the number of RHAs from 14 to eight by next April. These changes will help improve the management of the health service, reduce administration and overhead costs and support the continued drive towards a decentralised health service.
    Mr. Marshall: When I tabled the question, I hardly expected it to be the catalyst for the change announced by the Secretary of State last week. Will the right hon. Lady tell the House how many jobs will be lost and how many extra doctors are likely to work in the national health service as a consequence of the changes? She will recognise that the regional health authorities had as part of their responsibilities the encouragement of regional centres of excellence. Will she tell the House who or what will take over that responsibility?
    Mrs. Bottomley: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman should be a catalyst for change. We welcome a sinner who repents—even at a late stage—to the changes which we are introducing in the NHS. The hon. Gentleman makes some good points about the importance of safeguarding specialist centres. The management executive outposts will be working to ensure that there is a strategic role to safeguard precisely the units to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
    It is not possible to make a precise estimate of the numbers of jobs that are involved. We have stated previously that the number of staff in management outposts should be reduced from 570 to 200, and we expect a reduction in the number of regions from 14 to eight over the next few months. We have to work with the NHS to make sure that the necessary tasks are performed. No one wants needless duplication or unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. At the same time, NHS management is an important function which will continue in a new and slimlined style.
    Mrs. Roe: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House who will decide on the allocation of resources to the districts once the regional health authorities have been abolished?
    Mrs. Bottomley: The regional director of the management executive will of course be involved in the allocation of resources to the districts, but in line with policies that have been laid down and approved by Ministers.
    Mr. McCartney: In the Secretary of State's statement to the House last week, she avoided giving any details of
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    the future arrangements for the development of community health councils. Will she now tell the House what those arrangements will be?
    Will the right hon. Lady take some time out of her busy day's shopping at Marks and Spencer to comment on a community health council's report in south London on the continuing abuse of elderly people in accident and emergency units? In some units in south London, elderly people are lying for between 15 and 29 hours because no beds have been opened. Is not that a result of the disastrous cuts that have been caused by the Government's budgetary policies?
    Mrs. Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman makes two different points. With regard to his latter point about accident and emergency centres, he will know that the patients charter has set explicit targets for the time that it should take for people to be treated. Special issues concern the development of primary care in London so that all elderly people can have the services to which they are entitled.

    GP Fund Holding
    Sir Roger Moate: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what further plans she has to spread the benefits of fund holding to other practices.
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: The GP fund-holding scheme has empowered family doctors to improve services for patients. We wish to see more fund holding and more fund holders and we are pursuing several arrangements, such as consortia, to fulfil our manifesto commitment to extending the benefits of fund holding to all GPs.
    Sir Roger Moate: Does my right hon. Friend agree that GP fund holding is proving to be one of the great success stories of the health service? Does she agree that the best way to nail the lie that there is a two-tier service, so often put about by the Opposition, is to extend GP fund holding and the benefits thereof to all practices, including the smaller ones, as soon as possible? Will she confirm her support for consortium arrangements and the multi-fund applications that she is now receiving?
    Mrs. Bottomley: My hon. Friend is exactly right. We want to extend the benefits of fund holding to all GPs. We welcome the number of groups that are forming consortia. Of the 800 fund-holding practices that are coming forward for next April, about 350 are precisely for those smaller schemes. We are looking particularly to see further development in London, where the energising effect of GP fund holding on primary care in general could play an important part.
    Ms Lynne: Can the Secretary of State tell the House how she intends to fund the initiative that she announced last week whereby non-GP fund holders' patients will receive urgent treatment within six weeks? I welcome the announcement. I believe that it means that the Secretary of State has accepted that she created a two-tier health service. How does she intend to fund it?
    Mrs. Bottomley: Fifty per cent. of cases are now seen within five weeks. We must make sure that those are the most urgent cases. All emergency cases are, of course, seen immediately. It is clear that GP fund holding is leading to improvements in primary care generally. GPs are funded

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    on a comparable basis for their patients. Any new fund holders who join the scheme will have their budgets arranged on the basis of their referral patterns this year. There is no two-tier system. We are seeing a levelling up.
    Mr. Sims: Will my right hon. Friend take steps to contact directly non-fund-holding GPs who may have some doubts and acquaint them with the facts about the advantages of fund holding? That would offset some of the misleading impressions given until recently by the British Medical Association and which continue to be given by those who seem more interested in making party political points than in pointing out the benefits to patients.
    Mrs. Bottomley: My hon. Friend has it exactly right. There is no more effective advocate for GP fund holding than the fund holders themselves. GP fund holding is all about empowering the general practitioners. The GP is the most effective advocate on behalf of the patient. A party such as ours, the priorities of which are dominated by the interests of patients, not providers, wishes to see that further advanced. I strongly urge the Labour party to speak to many of its supporters who are active, innovative and energetic GP fund holders. They are showing the way to others.
    Mr. Robert Ainsworth: Is the Secretary of State aware of the blatant abuse of the two-tier system in the Coventry and Warwickshire area, and of the consequences of it on the Walsgrave hospital trust? The hospital has refused to operate a two-tier service. The nearby George Eliot hospital offers to fund holders' patients half the waiting time that it offers to health authority patients. As a result, the George Eliot hospital is undermining the Walsgrave hospital trust and is in danger of causing redundancies in the trust. Surely the Secretary of State is aware of this. The blatant introduction of a two-tier service and abuse of the service are causing redundancies within the system that would otherwise be unnecessary.
    Mrs. Bottomley: All hospitals are maintaining their patients charter standards. We are seeing a steady downward pressure on waiting times for all patients. The average was previously nine months. It is now down to five months. There has been a 20 per cent. fall in the number waiting more than a year in the past year alone.
    I repeat that fund holders are funded fairly and comparably. We want all GPs to come forward and have the benefits of fund holding. It is a voluntary scheme. I commend to the hon. Gentleman the comments of Professor Howard Glenister from the London School of Economics. He said:
    "GP fund holding shifts the balance of power away from hospitals towards GPs and primary care. It replaces a top-down model of the NHS resource allocation with a bottom-up model driven by GPs acting as purchasers on behalf of patients."
    I commend Professor Glenister's work to the hon. Gentleman.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: My right hon. Friend will recall that she was good enough to waive the requirement that there should be 7,000 patients for one practice in the southern end of my constituency, when it had already recruited every man, woman and child in its area. That practice is now going from strength to strength. It has extended its buildings and is an example to all others in the area. Will she help fund-holding practices to extend now to the north end of my constituency?
    Mrs. Bottomley: I thank my hon. Friend. Those general practitioners with practice sizes that did not reach the 7,000-patient limit are bringing to bear pressure that they should be able to join the scheme. That is why we so welcome the consortia that are developing, which make it possible to push through the preferences of general practitioners in the delivery of care for patients.
    Ms Primarolo: When will the Secretary of State accept the evidence that a two-tier system is being created by GP fund holders? The joint consultants committee has handed her a document which demonstrates that 70 per cent. of hospitals are fast-tracking GP fund holder patients. When will she act on that information? When will she make it impossible for GP fund holders to make profits for themselves instead of spending the money in the national health service where it is needed? When will she finally agree to prevent the payment of a £35,000 management fee to every GP fund holder to be spent on bureaucracy and instead give it to practice nurses, who are desperately needed in our community?
    Mrs. Bottomley: When a hospital has completed the contract that it has agreed with the district health authority to meet its patients' targets and to ensure that it improves the quality and quantity of care, if it has spare capacity it can give it to another health authority or to a GP fund holder. The hon. Lady should ask why the GP fund holders have been able to use comparable amounts of money so much more effectively. Let us learn from that. Let us level up and have good value for money, rather than look for the lowest common denominator.
    The hon. Lady resists no opportunity to take a swipe at any managers in the health service. The management allowance for GP fund holders is enabling resources to be used more effectively; it is about 2 per cent. of the cost. There have been benefits of about 4 per cent. These are ploughed into better patient care. They do not go into the GPs' pockets. They go to physiotherapists, chiropodists and—exactly what the hon. Lady wants—more practice nurses.

    Accident and Emergency Units
    Mr. French: To ask the Secretary of State for Health in how many hospital accident and emergency units medical staff are routinely made available to assess the seriousness of each case immediately on arrival.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville): I cannot give my hon. Friend the information that he seeks in numerical form, but I assure him that there has been excellent progress around the country, including in his local hospital, in achieving the targets set under the patients charter for accident and emergency units.
    Mr. French: Does my hon. Friend agree that, in addition to immediate assessments by medically qualified staff as to the seriousness of an accident, a patient at an emergency unit also wishes to know how long he or she is likely to wait and where he or she stands in the queue? As the latter seems to be capable of being achieved at the delicatessen counters of supermarkets, will he please ensure that it is also achieved in our hospitals?
    Mr. Sackville: I very much welcome my hon. Friend's advice, but he should remember that the giving out of

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    tickets in an accident and emergency unit would not necessarily be appropriate as patients are not necessarily seen in the order in which they arrive. In his hospital and many others, there is now a formal system of triage by which patients are prioritised and seen in order, depending on the seriousness of their condition.
    Mr. Alfred Morris: Will the emergency units be able to cope with more, clearly very urgent, cases of babies with neo-natal hypothermia when, as expertly forecast, more vulnerable babies in low-income families feel the effects of VAT on domestic heating? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that leading midwives have warned that there will be a sharp increase in deaths from that cause? What advice have Health Ministers given Treasury Ministers about that preventable tragedy?
    Mr. Sackville: I note what the right hon. Gentleman said about neo-natal intensive care. May I point out that accident and emergency units are now better equipped and better staffed to deal with all eventualities.
    Dame Jill Knight: May I press my hon. Friend to look again at the suggestion from the conference of royal medical colleges last week to the effect that all cancer and heart patients ought to be assessed expertly as to the urgency of their needs? After all, accident and emergency patients are seen on the same day while some other patients have to wait up to six months for an appointment with a consultant. Will my hon. Friend please try to do something about that?
    Mr. Sackville: I note what my hon. Friend says. Clearly, all urgent cases must be seen as a matter of priority. That must be sorted out between general practitioners and consultants.

    Contact Lenses
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the Government's policy on charging for contact lenses prescribed and supplied by national health service hospital eye clinics.
    The Minister for Health (Dr. Brian Mawhinney): Contact lenses may be prescribed through the hospital eye service if the patient has clinical need for them. A charge is made, although there are a number of categories of patient who are exempt.
    Mr. Prentice: Will the Minister give the House an assurance that my 70-year-old pensioner constituent, Dorothy Shanley, and 20 or 30 other people like her in my area will not have to pay £300 a year for the contact lenses that they need? Is it not a fact that the regulations are about as clear as mud and that hundreds of anomalies need to be ironed out if my pensioner constituents are not to face such disgraceful treatment?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I am aware that the hon. Gentleman's constituent had a problem with the Burnley trust. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), the Under-Secretary of State, wrote about that case to the hon. Gentleman on 29 July. I am happy to repeat what was said in the letter, which is that I regret the fact that there was a misinterpretation of the guidelines at Burnley which caused a degree of distress to the hon. Gentleman's constituent. The guidelines are not "clear as mud" but are perfectly clear and are operating in the rest of the country.
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    There was a misinterpretation in Burnley which has been resolved. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said in his letter, Mrs. Shanley's case can now be carried forward under the proper guidelines and in line with the advice of her consultant.
    Mr. Matthew Banks: My hon. Friend is aware that the number of eye tests carried out is broadly similar to that before charges were imposed. Will my hon. Friend give the House an assurance that he will continue to ensure that we provide the most help in respect of charges where the need is greatest?
    Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend makes a good point in both regards. As he said, the number of sight tests has come back to the original level. We are concerned to ensure that needs are met and, as my hon. Friend will know, a significant number of people are entitled to help as a consequence of those need and exemption arrangements.
    Mr. Blunkett: In the light of the discussions between BUPA and GP fund holders about the sale of private insurance through GP practices and the words of the Chief Secretary—I use his words—that charges will be needed to offer comfort and choice to people in hospitals as part of cutting back on NHS spending, will the Minister give an assurance to the House that all existing free prescription charges will remain, including for categories such as pregnant women and nursing mothers, and that no new charges will be introduced in the NHS for all of us who pay our taxes for a free and equal service?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I would not want any element of discord to arise between the hon. Gentleman and myself, but his question went considerably wider than the one that we were discussing.
    Mr. Blunkett: Answer the question.
    Dr. Mawhinney: If the hon. Gentleman will give his lungs a rest, I might have a chance to do so.
    I encourage the hon. Gentleman to read again the speech that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made at the Blackpool conference. It was an excellent speech and contained much that the hon. Gentleman ought to learn, mark and inwardly digest, including comments about this subject.

    General Practices
    Mr. Rowe: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to ensure the continuance of satisfactory deputising/on-call services for general practice.
    Dr. Mawhinney: The Government remain committed to ensuring the continuance of a good quality out-of-hours service. To this end, we are currently discussing with the medical profession how best to take forward this commitment.
    Mr. Rowe: My hon. Friend is well aware of the high regard in which services such as Maidstone doctors on call —MAIDDOC—and Medway doctors on call—MEDDOC—in my constituency are held, and the anxiety with which MAIDDOC views the new formula because of the difficulties that patients have in rural areas. Can my hon. Friend offer words of comfort to the committed doctors, that they will be able to continue in those services after he has completed his negotiations?
    Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is right, I am aware of those issues, not least because of the eloquent advocacy with which my hon. Friend expresses the concern of his constituents. I am further aware that his constituents hold the services that they receive in high regard, and those services form part of the discussions that I am having with the general medical services committee. We need to look at a number of issues, not least the use of the cash-limited funds of the family health services authority. We want to do that against a background of ensuring that decisions are devolved as closely towards the patient as possible.

    Paramedics
    Mr. Bates: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on progress towards the target of placing a paramedic on each frontline emergency ambulance.
    Mr. Sackville: There has been excellent progress in paramedic training in all ambulance services.
    Mr. Bates: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Cleveland ambulance trust on achieving its target of having a paramedic on each of its 18 frontline ambulances three years ahead of target? It was the first ambulance service to do so. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is another example of how the new ambulance trusts are delivering improvements in health care and emergency cover to the communities that they serve?
    Mr. Sackville: Indeed. After my visit to the Cleveland ambulance service—I thank my hon. Friend for his invitation—I said to myself that if Cleveland can do it, why not the rest of the country? At that time, Cleveland was four years ahead of target, and I decided to bring forward to 1995 the target date by which there would be a fully trained paramedic on every frontline ambulance. The manner in which my hon. Friend's local ambulance service has achieved its target is a tribute to it, and I hope that he will pass on my congratulations.
    Mr. Spearing: Will not the Minister agree that, irrespective of the importance of paramedics, it is even more important to get an ambulance to the scene in the first place, within the limits laid down by the patients charter? Is the Minister aware that in London in the summer there was an average of 50 occasions a day when ambulances arrived more than 26 minutes after they were called? Does the Minister not realise, from the answers that were given last Friday, that all ambulance authorities in the country comply with the 90 per cent. standard of response times, other than the London ambulance service, which achieved 58 per cent? Will he persuade the Secretary of State for Health to see the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to assure him that it costs more to run an ambulance service in London and to tell him that more money should be made available to the London ambulance service to enable it to meet the standards of the patients charter?
    Mr. Sackville: I am aware of the sad fact that, almost uniquely in the country, the London ambulance service has not managed to come near the targets set down in the patients charter. I appreciate that there are special problems in London. There is a new management structure for the central area—where many of the problems occur—which will receive extra resources. With good will on all sides,
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    there is no reason why the London ambulance service should not meet the targets achieved elsewhere in the country.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: Is not one of the advantages of putting a paramedic on every frontline emergency ambulance that he can assess the case and take the patient to the most appropriate trauma centre, particularly to local casualty units such as the Gravesend and North Kent hospital?
    Mr. Sackville: My hon. Friend is right to point to the possibility of trauma units. We have funded centrally the trauma unit at Stoke so that ambulance paramedics can pre-assess the most serious cases, bypass certain district accident and emergency units and take patients to a hospital where a special trauma team can be assembled. We are fairly certain that that experiment will show that it is possible greatly to increase the chances of survival after the most serious accidents.

    Wakefield and Pontefract Hospitals
    Mr. William O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received on the future provision of health services by the Wakefield and Pontefract trust hospitals; and if she will make a statement.
    Mr. Sackville: We have received a number of letters, including one from the hon. Member.
    Mr. O'Brien: The Minister is aware of the concerns and complaints that have been registered by the relatives and friends of elderly people who have been treated at the Pontefract and Pinderfields hospitals. When will he persuade his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to commence the public inquiry, which the right hon. Lady promised the people in my area, to investigate the allegations of mistreatment of the elderly at Pinderfields hospital? When will she also agree to the request that I made many months ago for a meeting to discuss the future of the hospitals and the medical care provided in the Wakefield area? Will the Minister investigate future provision for the mentally ill and the mentally disabled in the Pontefract and Wakefield areas?
    Mr. Sackville: The hon. Gentleman is aware that I visited Pontefract twice in the past year. I am aware of three incidents involving elderly people in which care fell well below the standard we would expect. He is also aware, however, that the Nuffield Institute is investigating those cases and has contacted the families of patients of the past few years. An internal inquiry into those cases is also being led by two consultants from Manchester and Cornwall. If there are lessons to be learnt, we shall act on them, but if the hon. Gentleman visits the geriatric department now he will find little cause for concern.
    Mr. Hinchliffe: Is the Minister aware that a great deal of concern is felt within the Wakefield and Pontefract areas, and throughout the country, about the impact of trust status and fund holding on community care? Has the Minister had the opportunity to read the reply published this morning by Values into Action, entitled "The Resettlement Game", which reveals conclusively that trust status is obstructing the process of providing community care for people with learning difficulties? Has the hon. Gentleman also had an opportunity to talk to Dr. David

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    Tod, the president of the National Association of Fund Holding GPs, a prominent Tory who spoke at the Conservative conference in Blackpool about the value of fund holding? Has the Minister asked that doctor why he, along with certain other GPs has refused to take patients from mental handicap hospitals? Where does that leave the Government's community care policies?
    Mr. Sackville: I am aware that there are a great number of GP fund holders in the hon. Gentleman's area, but that is nothing to be scared of and I would thank him for not putting around scare stories. I have no reason to believe that GP fund holders would take decisions that are not in the interests of their patients overall.

    Hormone Replacement Therapy Clinics
    Mrs. Gorman: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what measures are available for health authorities to set up dedicated hormone replacement therapy clinics.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Bowis): Health authorities are required to assess local needs and place contracts for services accordingly. These services may include clinics specialising in the menopause and hormone replacement therapy.
    Mrs. Gorman: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that there are still relatively few specialist units around the country and that most are in the private sector? That means that women who rely on the national health service do not have access to such treatment unless they can afford to pay for it. Given the amazing benefit from that treatment, of which I am an amazing example—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"] and the fact that this treatment could save the health service millions of pounds, because without it women are currently likely to suffer from osteoporosis, strokes and other terrible diseases, does my hon. Friend agree with me that the health service should be encouraged to dedicate funds to it so that lots more women can grow old gracefully?
    Mr. Bowis: I know, and the world knows, of my hon. Friend's interest in this matter. She knows, as I know, that such therapy is available from the national health service in all its forms. The number of prescriptions for such treatment has quadrupled in the past decade. My hon. Friend will also be aware, as I am, that although HRT is one of the answers to diseases such as osteoporosis, there are many other ways in which to ensure that women grow old gracefully, as my hon. Friend said, and that brittle bones and other problems are avoided. My hon. Friend will be aware that one such alternative is exercise. Having seen my hon. Friend work out with her pompoms, I can assure the House that she takes that side of the argument as seriously as that in favour of HRT.
    Mr. Tony Banks: The hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) is radiant proof of the efficacy of hormone replacement therapy. Will the Minister acknowledge that HRT is not help for women only, but many men could benefit from it—certainly an awful lot of men in this place?
    Mr. Bowis: To be fair, I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman would benefit from remedies for problems related to the menopause, but I rely on him to assure me about that. Men and women benefit from better women's
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    health, and women's health can be helped by that therapy. That is why in the past year we spent £61 million supporting it.

    Hospital Treatment, Hampshire
    Mr. Milligan: To ask the Secretary of State for Health by how much long waits for hospital treatment have been reduced in Hampshire over the past two years.
    Mr. Bowis: Since 31 March 1991, the number of patients waiting for in-patient and day case treatment for more than a year in the four health districts in Hampshire has fallen from 3,489 to 1,033. At 31 March 1991, more than 950 patients were waiting more than two years for treatment. Now no one in Hampshire has to wait for more than two years.
    Mr. Milligan: That is exceptionally good news, especially for those people—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may jeer, but for those waiting many years for hip replacements that is especially good news. Does my hon. Friend agree that if further action is to be taken to reduce waiting lists one course would be to complete the reorganisation of London hospitals so that areas such as Hampshire get a fairer share of the budget? Given that Southampton general hospital has a greater success rate in general surgery than any London hospital, is it not right that the system by which London hospitals receive the lion's share of resources should be ended as soon as possible?
    Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend makes important points about resources and the spreading of them across the country, about the reforms that we have put in place and about the review that is going on in London. I can assure him that the progress that has been made in his part of the world is being made in other parts of the country, including London. Overall, 50 per cent. of patients needing hospital treatment are immediately admitted—98 per cent. in under one year. My hon. Friend drew attention to the number of hip replacements. There have been 50,000 such operations in the past year, as well as 60,000 varicose vein operations, and 90,000 people have had cataract operations. It is a pity that those figures are not sometimes recognised by Opposition Members.
    Mrs. Wise: Do people in Hampshire have to wait two or three years for referral to a pain relief clinic, as they do in Preston? I am informed by the Preston health authority that people in Preston—[HON. MEMBERS: "Reading."] I am quoting—
    Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady is aware that quotations are not allowed during Question Time.
    Mrs. Wise: Do people in Hampshire have to wait until the end of 1996—three years—for reference to a pain relief clinic for chronic pain?
    Mr. Bowis: We shall certainly look at any particular problem in Preston. As the hon. Lady is aware, Preston is not in Hampshire, but in both Hampshire and Preston we have great progress. The decisons on planning for meeting the needs of the hon. Lady's area are down to the health authorities there, and I must not second guess their clinical health decisions. I am sure that the health authorities for the Preston area are doing their best to ensure that people get their treatment on time as set out in the patients charter.

    GP Fund Holders
    Mr. Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner practices are now participating in the fund-holding initiative; and what was the figure in April 1991.
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: The number of fund-holding practices is more than double what it was in 1991. It now includes 6,000 family doctors in 1,235 practices. The growing success of the scheme is shown by the fact that we expect a further 800 practices to join from next April.
    Mr. Heald: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the rapid expansion that she has just announced, together with the fact that north Hertfordshire has more GP fund holders than any other district in the North West Thames region, shows the popularity of the scheme with ordinary family doctors? Does she agree that the next battle is to persuade the remaining doctors to join the scheme and to enable them to do so?
    Mrs. Bottomley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It looks as though, from next April, 99 per cent. of patients in his area will have a GP fund holder. It is a voluntary scheme for consenting adults. We believe that more GPs should see the advantages of fund holding. The best way in which they can do that is for them to talk to someone who has already taken forward the scheme, which now provides care for 12 million patients.
    Mr. Flynn: Is the right hon. Lady aware that she is correct to say that we do not have a two-tier health service? In fact, we have a three-tier health service, with private patients jumping the queue and getting their treatment within days, fund-holding GPs' patients getting their treatment within months and non-fund-holding GPs' patients getting their treatment only within years. Is she proud to have increased privilege in the health service?
    Mrs. Bottomley: Once again, the hon. Gentleman shows a bitter, blinkered and rather vindictive approach to the delivery of health care. I suggest that he talks to David Colin-Thome, who was previously a Labour candiate and who said that GP fund holding was the most energising thing to have happened to general practice in his 20 years as a doctor. We must not only set the national standards that the Labour party said we would never meet—we have not only met them, but beaten them—but find ways in which to encourage the rest to do as well as the best. The scheme is voluntary and we want more fund holders to come forward.
    Mr. Hayes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that GP fund holding is very popular with patients, because it improves patient services, and also with GPs, who are voting with their feet? Can my right hon. Friend offer any psychoanalysis to explain why the Labour party is intent on abolishing this popular reform?
    Mrs. Bottomley: I am afraid that the Labour party, which constantly looks backwards rather than forwards, cannot bear to devolve power: it all has to be command and control. The whole point about GP fund holding is that it empowers the GP. It is the GP who is the agent of the patient and when he has control over the budget, which would otherwise have been spent for him, he makes shrewd and wise decisions which are sensitive to patients' needs.
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    That is the distinction between our party and the Labour party. The Labour party wants to tell people what to do; we want to empower them.

    Community Care
    Mr. Purchase: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to meet the Spastics Society to discuss community care.
    Mr. Bowis: My right hon. Friend met the society when she opened its Ruth Garwood lodge in the summer. I have not been approached for a meeting, but I am always ready to consider any such request. I personally very much value the contribution of the Spastics Society to community care.
    Mr. Purchase: Does the Minister realise that such is the shortage of funds in local authorities that they cannot afford the level of occupational therapists needed? The Spastics Society is now having to divert its funds into that employment, and the local authority assessment services using occupational therapists now cannot get round to the people desperately in need of assistance and adaptations in their homes. What does he intend to do about that?
    Mr. Bowis: The whole question of assessment of need is central to our community care policy. We have in place a system which assesses each individual's needs, both in terms of residential needs where that is appropriate and in terms of any medical treatments and therapies. Those needs are assessed and they are then put out to be met by the providers. The Spastics Society makes excellent provision, although some of that provision has proved costly. The society needs to look at efficiency and savings within its own organisation. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the money that has been put into community care is more than sufficient, as has been recognised by the Association of Directors of Social Services, which has said that in the early months of community care the system is up and running and that it is optimistic about the future.
    Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. Friend ensure that as much as possible of the £565 million for community care goes to efficient voluntary groups and not to town hall bureaucracies, which do not deliver an efficient and fair service?
    Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend is right. As he knows, we have encouraged local authorities to work closely in both the planning and execution of community care with the voluntary and the independent sector. Voluntary and private providers have an important part to play. We have made a requirement that 85 per cent. of the transitional grant be allocated to that sector. That requirement is being met in most parts of the country. There is a great willingness among social services departments to meet it. I am confident that we can go forward with community care in partnership with the public, private and voluntary sectors.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Meale: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Meale: In relation to the Bilsthorpe colliery disaster, in the light of new photographic evidence which refutes the report of the health and safety inspectorate into that disaster, will the Prime Minister now agree to a full public inquiry, as soon as possible, that is open to the public so that we can get over the whole of this nonsense which shows the difficulties that are hitting the coalfield communities of Britain?
    Mr. Major: I have not seen the photographic evidence to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I will certainly look at that photographic evidence and examine it. I believe that there has been a substantial inquiry. None the less, I will examine it and be in touch with the hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Butcher: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the major impediments to reducing unemployment across Europe is high wage costs—not to be confused with high wages? We must continually draw a distinction between the high cost of employment loaded on top of paying high wages. Will he continue his efforts diplomatically within Europe to ensure that we in Britain win the argument that there is no contradiction between paying people high wages and seeking to reduce the costs of employing people generally?
    Mr. Major: I agree with my hon. Friend about that. I believe that that view is increasingly being taken by Governments and by employers right the way across western Europe and elsewhere. There is no doubt that the higher the sum total of costs, the larger the resultant level of unemployment will be both in Europe and elsewhere. At present, there are 18 million citizens unemployed across Europe. Estimates are that in Europe as a whole that may be 20 million in a year or so. We all need to look to see how we can get those costs down and people back in work.
    Mr. John Smith: I am sure that the Prime Minister is well aware of the revulsion and outrage felt throughout the whole of the nation when it learned of the appalling tragedy of Saturday's bombing in Belfast. The violent and horrific aftermath, which has cost even more lives today, can only deepen and reinforce those feelings. Is it not absolutely clear that the response that the House of Commons must give to those who seek to impose their will by the bomb or the bullet is that they will not succeed in undermining this nation's total commitment to the democratic process?
    Mr. Major: I am grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for making that clear. The whole House will agree with him in those sentiments, as I do without reservation. The perpetrators of sectarian violence have committed cold-blooded and premeditated murder. Let me say to the House that they will be hunted down and they will be subject to the full severity of the law. That applies equally to those responsible for the outrage in the Shankill
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    road and to those responsible for the murders in west Belfast just a few hours ago. Such murders will have one effect and one effect only: they will deepen the bloodshed through revenge killings, and there will be more deaths, more misery and more years before Northern Ireland can return to the peaceful democratic future that everyone in the House wishes to see it have.
    Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave a few moments ago.
    Mr. Bellingham: Is the Prime Minister aware that many Conservative Members were extremely pleased that he raised the question of the general agreement on tariffs and trade during the recent Cyprus summit? Will he find time today to contact the French members of the European Commission and tell them to spend less time worrying about creating a federal Europe and more time trying to persuade their Government to sign up to GATT?
    The Prime Minister: We had a substantial discussion on the Uruguay round at the Heads of Government meeting in Cyprus over the past few days. What was striking about it was that with some 50 countries there—some large and some small, some agricultural and some industrial—from every part of the globe, there was total unanimity on the desirability of agreement in the trade talks, and agreement by 15 December this year. We agreed at the summit to dispatch a small mission of Ministers from countries in different parts of the Commonwealth to call in on a number of capitals and make it clear how important we consider the trade talks to be.
    Mr. Ashdown: The Prime Minister will know that he has the backing of those in all parts of the House in his call for restraint to break the vicious cycle of tragedy and violence in Northern Ireland. He is right in saying that no British Government should ever be prepared to speak to those who will not abandon the bullet and the bomb. But does not effective action against terrorism also depend on the proper co-ordination of intelligence? Does the Prime Minister recognise that confusion between intelligence gatherers in Northern Ireland, and the fact that there are two lead agencies, on the mainland and in Northern Ireland, may lead—as it has in the past—to rivalry and squabbling, which undermine the battle against terrorism? Will the Prime Minister address that matter?
    The Prime Minister: We keep our counter-terrorist arrangements under very close review. The Security Service now devotes around 40 per cent. of its total effort specifically to countering Irish terrorism. There have been considerable successes, although it is in the nature of these matters that the successes are not often public, whereas the failures are all too public.
    I have looked at the question again in recent months, and I must say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am not persuaded that the creation of a new single national authority would of itself enhance the fight against terrorism. There is, I think, a danger that it would add yet another link in the chain of command. But I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I consider the effectiveness of our counter-intelligence to be vital and keep it constantly under review.
    Mr. French: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. French: Does. my right hon. Friend agree that police officers should not be hampered in their fight against crime by the burden of excessive bureaucracy and paperwork? Will he join me in congratulating the Home Secretary on his announcement that the amount of form filling will be seriously cut?
    The Prime Minister: I can agree not only with my hon. Friend and my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, but with the recommendations of the Sheehy report in this respect. Like all right hon. and hon. Members, I want to see police officers fighting crime on the streets, not dealing with paperwork in their offices. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary last week accepted proposals which, once fully implemented, will cut paperwork in half. They will also put something like 2,300 policemen back on the streets, where all of us wish to see them.
    Mr. Donohoe: Will the Prime Minister explain why the Government are this week to announce the winding up of the development corporation in my constituency, at a cost of £16·5 million, given that we have had announcements of some 700 job losses at Jetstream in Prestwick this month and of some 320 job losses in my constituency today? What logic is there behind the Government's decision?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman will know that, uniquely in western Europe at the moment, we are now in a position where unemployment has stabilised and is gently beginning to fall. In case the hon. Gentleman has not noticed, unemployment has fallen in six of the last eight months, by a total of 84,000. It is falling against a trend of rising unemployment elsewhere across the European Community and it is now below the European average, despite the predictions of some Opposition Members some months ago. The hon. Gentleman might have addressed the reality of what is happening for once.

    Fishing Industry
    Mr. Steen: To ask the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to Brixham, south Devon, to discuss the future of the fishing and shellfish industry.
    The Prime Minister: I have no immediate plans to do so. However, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has made widespread visits to ports, including Brixham, to consult fishermen.
    Mr. Steen: The people of Brixham are well aware of the Government's commitment to the west country, what with assisted area status for Torbay and an application to the European fund for 5b status for Brixham. But when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister comes to Brixham, will he meet fishermen and assure them that he will not be pushed around by the Portuguese or Spanish, who want to seize our fishing stock and want more fish from our sovereign waters? Will he tell fishermen that he will not introduce a conservation measure until other European countries have similar conservation measures and until their policing of them is as good as ours? Finally, will he
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    take a cup of tea at the Melville hotel so that he hear from Brixham's hoteliers that if he reduced rules and regulations on the hotel industry it would do more for tourism than anything else?
    The Prime Minister: I will look forward not only to a cup of tea but, I suspect, something stronger by the time we have dealt with that agenda. I recognise the industry's concern about access for Spanish and Portuguese vessels. The Commission's proposals for rules from 1996 have now been announced, and we have made it clear that they must not lead to an increase in fishing effort. I attach great importance to strict observance of Community rules, including quotas. We therefore welcome the control regulations, which will help to ensure consistent enforcement. One of the areas of the Maastricht treaty perhaps not generally recognised by everyone is that it now gives greater power to ensure that everyone across the Community obeys Community regulations and can face substantial fines if they do not do so. [Interruption.] Hon. Members below the Gangway may scoff. They simply prove, as I have always suspected, that they have never read or understood the Maastricht treaty.
    Madam Speaker: I now call Mr. Jim Marshall: it is a closed question.
    Mr. Jim Marshall: Does the Prime Minister recall the speech that the right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) made on 9 November 1990, in which he said that the British Government have no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I indicated to the hon. Gentleman that it is a closed question. It deals with Brixham, south Devon and the fishing industry. We must move on to Mr. David Sumberg.

    Engagements
    Mr. Sumberg: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Sumberg: Is my right hon. Friend aware of a proposal by the Department of Transport to build a new six-lane motorway adjacent to the existing eight-lane M62, which cuts through my constituency? This proposal would involve the demolition of more than 350 homes. It is creating widespread housing and planning blight and is regarded by me and the whole community as an environmental disaster. Will my right hon. Friend tell the Department of Transport to withdraw the proposals forthwith?
    The Prime Minister: I understand the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend and I know how vigorous he has been in expressing them on behalf of his constituents. I can undertake that the Department of Transport will take into account the views that have been expressed to me by my hon. Friend, and those of his constituents.
    Q7. Sir John Hannam: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Sir John Hannam: Given my right hon. Friend's support and commitment to the people of the south-west, can he give any encouragement to our wish to see a slowing down in the programme of implementation of EC water directives and a lowering of future water charges for the hard-pressed people of Devon and Cornwall?
    The Prime Minister: As I think my hon. Friend knows, we are seeing what scope there is to apply the directives more flexibly and to minimise the cost that would otherwise fall on the water user in the south-west. We are therefore inviting our Community partners to re-examine priorities in the detailed implementation of the urban waste water treatment directive and also to consider whether the timetable for meeting the obligations is consistent with the current economic conditions in the Community. There is no quick or simple answer to this matter, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we are continuing to explore all avenues to try to minimise the costs that would otherwise arise.
    Mr. Boyce: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 26 October.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Boyce: The Prime Minister talks about a recovery being under way, led by this country. How can he tell us that we must face reality when, in reality, jobs are haemorrhaging in our constituencies every day? The Primė Minister is aware that a steel works is to close in my constituency, with the loss of 260 jobs carried out by the most flexible operatives in the country, if not the world. What words of comfort has the Prime Minister for those people who have been thrown on the scrap heap?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman needs to understand that unemployment is falling in this country, whereas it is not falling in other countries. Unemployment fell last month among both men and women in every region and in every part of the country. That month's decrease confirms the underlying strength of the economy. As the hon. Gentleman perhaps does not know, long-term unemployment has fallen over the last six months; long-term unemployment over longer periods has fallen; vacancies have risen; and the work force in employment have also risen. There is still a long way to go to get unemployment at the levels we would wish to see, but those Opposition Members who were keen to forecast 3·5 million unemployment just a few months ago had better stand up and admit now that it is under 3 million and falling.

Points of Order
3.31 pm
Mr. Tony Benn: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It has been the custom and practice of the House, certainly while I have been here and, I believe, from time immemorial, that former hon. Members are able to come to the Members' Lobby so that hon. Members may have the opportunity to meet them. You will know that in the recess I invited the president of Sinn Fein to come so that hon. Members could hear directly his proposals— [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. Hon. Members have to be heard, however unpopular it is thought that their views might be. That will continue to be the case so long as I am Speaker.
Mr. Benn: I invited him so that hon. Members would have the opportunity to hear directly from him the proposals that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) had been discussing during the recess.
You will recall, Madam Speaker, that I came to see you on Monday last week, at your request, and was able to ascertain, as I expected, that there would be no difficulty from the Chair's point of view in his following the practice to which I referred. On Tuesday, immediately following our meeting, and without telling the House, the Home Secretary issued an exclusion order, which was not disclosed to the House, on the day of the debate on Northern Ireland, which was very poorly attended, with only a handful of hon. Members present.
I am not referring to the order, which is a matter for the Government for which they are accountable, but is it not right that the rights of former hon. Members should be respected for the benefit of current hon. Members as there are many who think—and I am one—that we should explore every avenue to end the killing and the horrors which have occurred in Northern Ireland?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I can deal with this point of order, thank you very much. What the right hon. Gentleman is confirming is that arrangements have been made to give former hon. Members a right of access to
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certain parts of the Palace. This right does not of course apply to former Members who, for one reason or another, do not have the right to travel as far as the Palace.
The right hon. Gentleman is really complaining about the actions of the Home Secretary in the performance of his duties. Like all Ministers, the Home Secretary is answerable to the House for everything that he does in his official capacity. The Home Secretary is not responsible to me, and it is not my intention to make any comment on any action that he decides to take.
Mr. Alan Duncan: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Order. No further point of order on that matter arises. I have dealt with it.
Mr. Duncan rose—
Madam Speaker: There is no further point of order on that matter. Is it a totally different point of order? No, I do not think that it is.
Mr. Duncan rose—
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. Let me make it quite clear. If it is a different point of order, I must hear the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan). Is it different?
Mr. Duncan indicated assent.
Madam Speaker: In that case I shall hear the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Duncan: I was merely seeking your guidance, Madam Speaker, on the question whether, had the Home Secretary not issued the exclusion order, the privileges would have been extended to Gerry Adams, given the fact that he did not take the oath and never took his seat in the House.
Madam Speaker: I am saying that it is the Home Secretary who is responsible, and I shall make no further comment on that matter.
We shall now move on to a ten-minute rule motion and again to Mr. Anthony Steen.

Deregulation (No. 3)
3.36 pm
Mr. Anthony Steen: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to reduce the numbr of rules and regulations emanating from Next Steps agencies.
Thank you, Madam Speaker, for your kindness in calling me to address the House. I seek the leave of the House to introduce the last in a trilogy of ten-minute Bills in order to draw attention to the onward march of the new bureaucracy, which has developed the knack of interpreting directives from Brussels so as to cause the maximum disruption to our business culture and to divert business energies away from job creation and towards dealing instead with bureaucrats whose principal aim is the over-zealous enforcement of rules and regulations.
It is the interaction between our established civil service at Westminster and the over-zealous application by officials at local level that is delaying the upturn in our economy, and blocking those who desire to make this nation more successful.
Like Dutch elm disease, the new phenomenon strikes at the root of public service culture, whether with the 1,422 quangos in this country or with the next steps agencies. Officialdom is pushing businesses to the brink, and many go under, which in turn creates additional unemployment and further burdens on the benefits system.
John Perrett owns and runs his own boat construction company in Galmpton, not far from Brixham. For nearly half a century his "Western Ladies", former rescue motor launches from the second world war, have safely plied between Brixham and Torquay carrying thousands of passengers. Now, because of new safety legislation, all potential passengers must have, in addition to the buoyancy aids and lifebelts that they currently enjoy, lifejackets, not to mention inflatable liferafts. The requirements are so demanding that Mr. Perrett tells me that his boats will be crammed so full of lifesaving equipment that there will be little room for passengers. He also has to find room for an additional 12 flares, two additional hand-held VHF radios—in plastic bags, of course—and four hand-held smoke flares. Furthermore, all the lifebelts will have to be fitted with radar-reflective tapes. The cost will be more than £18,000.
Mr. Perrett is a reasonable man. It is only 4·5 miles across Torbay, and his boats are hardly more than half a mile away from the shore. Yet his boats are expected to maintain the same safety standards as ocean-going liners. If the unflinching chiselled face of bureaucracy does not mellow, Mr. Perrett will be put out of business after 45 years.
So it is with furniture. The regulations demand fire-resistant furniture in holiday homes but, oddly enough, that requirement does not apply to furniture in hotels, guest houses or bed-and-breakfast accommodation. The rationale is that guests staying in flats are in control of their furniture while hotel and bed-and-breakfast guests are not —as if the furniture has an independent will and wanders about on its own. As a consequence, holiday flat owners must fund replacement furniture. Many just do not have the money for that and are closing down.
Preventive legislation is all very well when there is plenty of money about. However, after four years of recession, people just cannot do what the public officials want them to. Devon county council found £160,000 of
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public money to spend on preventive measures. It built two roundabouts just outside Kingsbridge in the middle of nowhere in order to reduce the likelihood of accidents, and it straightened roads to make them less dangerous. The council then approved an additional £1 million of traffic-calming measures to slow traffic.
Officialdom is not discriminating. It will hound the public sector as well as swipe at the private sector. Take the 2½ ft paddling pool in Stoke Gabriel village primary school on the banks of the Dart. Suddenly, after 25 years of the paddling pool's existence, the school received a bill for £1,800 from the National Rivers Authority. "If it is water, we'll charge you for it", said the NRA. The fact that the water is removed by buckets and the pool is refilled with rainwater every year is irrelevant. The NRA demanded payment. If I may say so, it was my exposure of the NRA's bullying tactics which caused it to change its mind.
We live in a Kafkaesque society which penalises the law-abiding and rewards offenders. Just take a look at village halls in rural communities which are run by volunteers—something that the Conservative party supports. Those people give their time voluntarily. The village hall is the pivotal point for the community. It provides for playgroups, over-sixties' lunches, badminton groups and youth clubs as well as a place for public meetings.
If the village hall community wishes to improve its hall by adding an extension, it must raise additional money from the private sources to pay the VAT. No wonder village hall extensions are now being built without interconnecting doors. Without interconnecting doors, the extension is considered to be new build and therefore no VAT is payable.
People who want to go from the old hall to the new extension when it is pouring with rain must dive out of one door and they arrive, soaked to the skin, through another door in the new extension. You may think that that is a little mad, Madam Speaker. If the village hall kitchen is to be improved, the environmental health officer arrives on the scene. Every year, a fire officer comes around and each fire officer interprets the regulations differently.
If a public entertainment licence is required, the village hall community must satisfy the magistrate that there are sufficient loos. To have a public entertainment licence, there must be a loo for the physically handicapped. There is one concession. Not surprisingly, the provision of a loo for the physically handicapped or disabled does not attract VAT. Not surprisingly, all village halls are now building loos only for the physically handicapped.
Quangos, next steps agencies and self-financing regulatory agencies are all forcing people to retrench and step back to look inwards rather than to look outwards optimistically to the future. Take my experience. Two weeks ago I parked my car in Waterloo place near Pall Mall to take a constituent to meet a Minister from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I paid my money and put my ticket on the windscreen. I am told that five minutes later my car was lifted off the road and taken to a pound. Inside was my seven-year-old West Highland terrier who was left in the pound for over an hour, frightened, cold and unattended. Apparently, one of the car's wheels may have intruded into the adjoining parking place in spite of the fact that it was nearly 6 pm and there were more than a dozen empty parking spaces either side of the car.

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The police say that the contractors are a law unto themselves. The more vehicles they take away, the more they earn. They rely on most victims not having the energy, money or determination to pursue them. Many of the teams prowl around the capital seizing people's cars—the modern equivalent of highway men, over-zealously interpreting rules and regulations for their own financial gain.
The unrestrained growth of rules and regulations has become a scourge of this country and a kind of creeping paralysis that threatens the fabric of our lives and invades the quality and freedom of our very existence. It is a menace which has, for far too long, been allowed to fester. It attacks the individual and wipes out small firms. It hampers recovery and inhibits enterprise. It causes hostility and creates anger, despair and exasperation. It inspires anti-social behaviour. It attacks the very fabric of our society.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Anthony Steen, Sir Michael Grylls, Sir Marcus Fox, Sir Michael Neubert, Sir Anthony Durant, Sir Donald Thompson, Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith, Sir Keith Speed, Mr. Roger Evans and Mr. John Sykes.

DEREGULATION (No. 3)
Mr. Anthony Steen accordingly presented a Bill to reduce the number of rules and regulations emanating from Next Steps agencies: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 29 October and to be printed. [Bill 257.]

Mines (Health and Safety)
3.44 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I understand that arrangements have been made by the Government to provide an extra hour and a half for this debate. However, you will notice from the Order Paper that the instrument has not yet been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which is a matter of considerable regret. Indeed, the Committee would normally consider the instrument this afternoon and therefore it would be impossible to report to the House.
It should be recorded that the Committee is there to do a job and that it cannot possibly do that job if the debate takes place before the report is made, particularly in view of the fact that the Committee, when it considers the instrument, will consider a report from our counsel that the instrument is defectively drafted and makes unexpected use of powers. Obviously, I cannot predict the outcome of the Committee, but those elements are under consideration and, unfortunately, the House cannot consider that because of the rush to undertake the debate, which is at the insistence of the Government and not of the Opposition.
Madam Speaker: Hon. Members will have noticed the item on the Order Paper which the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) has referred to and has elaborated on. I am sure that the House is grateful for his comments.
3.46 pm
Mr. Frank Dobson: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations 1993 (S.I., 1993, No. 1897), dated 28th July 1993, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th August, be annulled.
These new regulations were published on 6 August after the House adjourned. They and the code of practice were supposed to come into operation on 1 October before the House resumed. That prevented Members of Parliament from mining areas from making representations on behalf of their constituents before the regulations came into operation, but it is not clear to people in the mining industry whether the new regulations are in operation at this moment or whether they are being implemented. I wonder whether the Minister would tell us what the situation is.
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Forsyth): The regulations came into force on 1 October. The coal board and other operators of mines are obviously covered by the regulations.
Mr. Dobson: Perhaps the Minister will tell us which rules now apply below ground. British Coal has written to the industry's trade unions, saying that the necessary consultations for bringing the rules into operation could not be achieved by 1 October. In its letter it stated:
"so in the meantime we intend to maintain the existing structures pending the outcome of such consultations."
Which laws now apply in Britain's mines below ground? Are they the old ones or the new ones? If they are the new ones, could the Minister tell British Coal?
Mr. Forsyth: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, if he understands this subject, should ask such a question. The regulations apply. There is no evidence to suggest that British Coal is not complying with them. The point which is being made by British Coal is that the existing structures —that is, where deputies carry out both the supervision and the inspection roles—will continue, and the regulations provide for that.
Mr. Dobson: A large number of people are risking their lives working below ground today and they are confused about the situation. Certainly those responsible for the supervision of safety are confused about the situation. It is worth reminding the House that, on a previous occasion when there were substantial changes in the laws applying to safety under ground, those whose lives would be affected and the managements concerned were given a year in which to make the necessary changes in the arrangements, not a squalid little period in the middle of the summer, as was the case this time.
Under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, any changes to health and safety regulations must maintain or improve standards of health and safety. We believe that the new regulations produced by the Government will not maintain or improve safety standards—they will reduce safety. That is why the regulations are being challenged in the courts and why they should not be passed by the House today.
Basically, mines run by British Coal are the safest in the world. They are twice as safe as those in west Germany, and three or four times safer than deep mines in the United States and other parts of the developed world. That proud British record has resulted from the detailed safety regulations laid down by law, the uniquely powerful and effective position of pit deputies and, until recently, a culture in British mining that put safety first.
Clearly that is a good case for the Government to leave well alone. However, they do not intend to leave well alone. Nor do they intend to build on the sound foundations of the British way of doing things that has made Britain's mines the safest in the world. The new proposals will replace the detailed regulations which have served so well in the past, with codes of practice. The new regulations will dispense with the unique role of the deputies, reducing them to the subordinate position of safety inspectors.
The new regulations are intended to produce a new culture underground with paramount attention given to production rather than safety. Not content with that, the new regulations will permit the Health and Safety Executive to exempt any mine or mine owner from any or all of the regulations without reference to Parliament or the Health and Safety Commission. The new regulations are likely to result in more deaths and injury, more grief and anger and more sanctimonious Tory Ministers coming to the Dispatch Box to express sympathy for the victims and praise for the emergency services.
The Government are introducing the regulations to promote deregulation and privatisation. The Tories are addicted to deregulation and privatisation. Like all addicts, they cannot be deflected by rational argument or concern for others. They will sacrifice anyone to feed their stupid addiction. This time, it is the turn of the miners.
Mr. John Marshall: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dobson: No.
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The Tory Government are determined to privatise what is left of the British coal industry. They got their friends in the City to tout Britain's mines and miners around the foreign coal companies, asking those companies what they wanted done to make the British assets even more attractive. They were told by the foreign coal owners that the safety standards in Britain's mines were too high, high safety standards cost money and more coal could be produced more cheaply if standards were reduced. Ever willing to oblige, the Government have set about doing what the foreign coal owners requested. The new regulations will change the rules to allow foreign coal owners to come to our country and to kill and maim as many miners in Britain as they have done in their mines abroad. They may reduce the cost of coal, but there will be a price to pay, and that price will be paid by British miners and their next of kin.
Mr. John Marshall: Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House whether the regulations will be similar to, or markedly different from, those that prevail elsewhere in the European Community?
Mr. Dobson: The regulations will be remarkably similar to those that prevail elsewhere in the European Community. If the hon. Gentleman had bothered to listen to what I was saying, he would know that all of the mines in the European Community are at least twice as dangerous as British mines, and many of them are three or four times more dangerous. We do not want useless foreign regulations. We want to stick to British regulations which have worked and which are the best in the world.
The changes to the regulations have been justified by some people on the ground that there has been technological change in the mining industry. However, some technological changes have made mining more complex and have increased the scale or operational size of the faces and the need for more human inspection.
At one stage in its formulation of the new regulations the Health and Safety Executive, which is supposed to be responsible for promoting safety, suggested that monitoring devices could be used to reduce the need for human inspections. One of the hazards that the executive had in mind was fires. It was then pointed out to the Health and Safety Executive that in 1987–88 only three out of 96 fires were spotted by monitoring devices. The other 93 were spotted by human beings; and the figures have been broadly similar ever since. In the light of those facts, the HSE had to abandon that line of argument, but persisted in pushing ahead with the regulations that it had formulated on the basis of its original false and sloppy assumptions.
It is also argued that fewer accidents occur at the coal face, where the law is stricter. There is some dispute about that, but the Government, British Coal and the HSE argue that there is no connection between contractors and the use of roof bolts, on the one hand, and accidents on the other. They claim that it is all a question of supervision. If it is all a question of supervision, surely the answer is to extend the stricter authority of the deputy to areas away from the face, as that authority is so successful in keeping down accidents at the face. That would be a common sense answer, but that is not what the regulations propose.
The real impetus for the new regulations is not concern about technological change, or some high-minded desire on the part of the Tories to reduce accidents away from the

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coal face; it comes from a desire to reduce production costs by deregulating mine safety, to promote what are called flexible working practices.
The existing regulations and their supervision by the deputies are the targets for those who call for flexible working practices. All the literature proves it. Mr. L. J. Mills, former deputy chairman of British Coal, asserted:
"changes in face management have all tended to founder on the overriding statutory authority of the deputy".
Mr. Albert Wheeler, something less than a hero in the Scottish coalfield and the present deputy chairman, claimed that
"The officials have the role of safety checks and supervision of workers. Over the years the numbers have grown to give more intensive supervision at each place of work".
He proposed getting rid of a quarter of that supervision. What he did not add was that, as supervision has increased, accidents have been reduced.
What he was really objecting to was the culture of safety that has, until now, predominated in Britain's mines. The Government wish to change that culture. As recently as 11 October the Minister with responsibility for coal told the Coal Industry Society lunch that he believed that the existing culture of British Coal placed it at a significant disadvantage compared with mines in the United States.
The culture of mines in the United States is different, I will grant him that; it is a culture that allows three or four times as many miners to be killed and injured, and a culture where crooked, multinational mining companies have systematically rigged the readings on dust monitors and put at risk the lives and health of people who work for them.
Those multinational mining companies showing an interest in our mining industry have been prosecuted and fined. Recently, much to their surprise, one mining official was sent to gaol, but that did not happen until the deregulating Republicans had been thrown out of office. That is the American culture that the Tories want to introduce into Britain's mines which, until now, have been the safest in the world.
The Government have been getting advice from Boyds, the American mining engineers. In a sane world, Boyds would put forward British ideas to make American mines more safe, not American ideas to make British mines more dangerous. For that is what Boyds is doing.
Boyds produced a report for the Government. The Government published it in January of this year. That was before the fatal roof fall at Bilsthorpe colliery which the HSE attributed not to the use of roof bolts, but to the collapse of a pillar of coal which was too narrow to take the weight bearing down on it or, even possibly, the absence of any pillar at all. So what did Boyds recommend in January in its report before that fatal fall? It recommended that the pillars between workings should be reduced to a quarter of the thickness presently required, even by British Coal. So much for the culture that the Government want to import from the United States. Unsafe for any depth: that is their culture.
The Government will no doubt argue that the new regulations have the support of the HSE, and so they have. But they do not have the support of the trade union members of the commission who made clear the view that the proposed regulations do not improve or maintain health
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and safety. The local authority member of the commission also questioned whether the regulations would, as required by law, improve or maintain safety.
The Government will also claim that the new regulations come from the HSE. I regret to say that these days the actions of the HSE are open to serious question. On mine safety the HSE has gone along with the management of British Coal and seems to see itself as having a duty to promote new working practices at the expense of its prime duty of promoting health and safety. It is ominous to note that in that self-same Boyds' report Boyds—the American mining engineers, accustomed to killing three or four times as many miners as are killed in Britain—says:
"We acknowledge the more progressive attitude of HMI in the last year and encourage their continued co-operation and participation in improvement of colliery operations."
That is an unusual example of a poacher praising a gamekeeper. Poachers seldom praise gamekeepers, except when a gamekeeper conveniently agrees to look the other way. As a result of this progressive attitude and the continued co-operation welcomed by Boyds, the mines inspectors' relations with British Coal have become far too cosy.
I revert to the earlier example of the roof fall at Bilsthorpe colliery which killed three people. At present, although many people seem to be unaware of it, the use of roof bolts as a primary support is unlawful. They can be made lawful only if the HSE issues an exemption certificate. It claims that it issues exemption certificates sparingly. Such exemptions are supposed to lay down in detail the conditions appropriate to each particular case and to involve site investigations.
Yet the HSE's own interim report into the Bilsthorpe roof fall makes no reference to an exemption certificate or the circumstances in which the HSE might have issue it, what conditions, if any, were laid down or whether any site investigation took place. The HSE report into the roof fall, needless to say, exonerates roof bolts and attributes the collapse to the narrowness of a pillar of coal.
Had the HSE looked carefully enough, if it had looked at all, before issuing the exemption certificate, it would have found that roof bolts were to be used next to an old working, separated only by a pillar of coal just one metre wide, if there was any pillar at all. If the HSE had done its job properly before it issued that exemption certificate, it would have been alerted to the danger of the collapse of a thin pillar. It should have been aware of that danger because when a roof collapsed at Allerton Bywater on 26 July 1989 the self-same HSE issued a report which exonerated roof bolts and attributed the collapse to the thinness of the pillar involved. There is some explaining to be done, and the HSE should not be allowed to issue reports that exonerate it from a failure to carry out its duties.
Mr. Paddy Tipping: Does my hon. Friend agree that what the miners in north Nottinghamshire want is reassurance on this point? Given the catalogue of accidents that my hon. Friend has described, is not the correct way forward the holding of a full, open and independent public inquiry? The Health and Safety Executive is in the dark; it is being asked to be judge and jury at the same time. That clearly cannot be right.
Mr. Dobson: I entirely agree, just as I agreed with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) during questions to the Prime Minister.
There can be no question but that there are serious doubts about the professional competence and commitment of the HSE in respect of the issuing of exemption certificates at Bilsthorpe. The HSE cannot clear itself; I do not think it can be cleared. We need a full, independent inquiry to find out what went on and why.
Mr. Cryer: That is an absolutely valid point. If what my hon. Friend is saying is true, does it not also follow that any new regulations recommended by the Health and Safety Executive are likely to be in breach of the legal obligation placed on it —endorsed by the Minister—to the effect that all regulations must have the aim of improving existing standards? It is patently clear from what my hon. Friend has said that the executive has not had regard to that important legal obligation, which was placed on it at the insistence of Labour Members in the 1974 Standing Committee.
Mr. Dobson: I absolutely agree. The HSE also has some obligation to explain the following. When the collapse occurred in the road that was being driven through with the use of roof bolting, there was no total collapse in the parallel road that was not using roof bolting. Ministers will see from the photograph of the double driveway that I have that that is so. The traditional system of support proved stronger and kept up some of the roof. But for the fact that the parallel road was kept open by the effectiveness of the old-fashioned roofing, more people would have died, because the rescuers went in along the parallel road.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: One of the reasons why most miners have long accepted that the roof-bolting practice is unsafe on its own is the fact that with the old-fashioned system of arches—still used in most pits —if there is a heavy roof fall, the chances are that the arches will be distorted or may even crumple and twist, but they will still leave a large enough aperture for people to escape through. My hon. Friend's photographs prove that, and the Ministers on the Front Bench should be ashamed of themselves. The Prime Minister says that there are three bastards in the Government. I do not think that he can count—there are three more on the Front Bench today.
Mr. Dobson: Once again, I agree. If anyone, including Tory Members, has any doubts about what I say about the shortcomings of the HSE in relation to mine safety, I refer him again to the report by Boyds. It states that blanket exemptions to allow the use of roof bolts are being issued by the Health and Safety Executive and they cover, not a specific place or circumstance, but a whole seam in a coal mine. That was not what was intended by Parliament when it granted the HSE the right to issue such exemptions.
There are no questions on conditions appropriate to each particular case and on-site investigations. Boyds, the American mining engineers, to whose views the Government attach such paramount importance, say that blanket exemptions are being issued.
It is a disgrace and it cannot be right. No safety inspectorate that takes its job seriously should operate in such a manner, and no safety inspectorate with such a lousy record of enforcing the law should expect its proposals for the most far-reaching changes in Britain's mining safety
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regulations to go unchallenged. Nor can the Government justify the new regulations by relying on the perceived authority of an agency that is proving increasingly incapable of doing its proper job. I understand that the Health and Safety Commission is meeting to discuss reductions in the budget of the Health and Safety Executive. How will that improve the health and safety of miners?
The Health and Safety Executive has no authority in the matter. The House will judge the new regulations on their merits, and it should judge them harshly. Winston Churchill said that Parliament should direct upon the industry of coal mining a specially severe scrutiny and introduce regulations of a different character from those elsewhere. We already have such regulations. They have been in place for years and they have worked. They have made our coal mines the safest in the world. The existing regulations need to be updated and improved, but the new regulations do not update and improve on the old. Instead, the new foreign-based regulations uproot and cast aside a system that has proved that it works.
We are not considering some theoretical text on deregulation produced by the Adam Smith Institute. What we are considering directly affects the safety of men, our fellow citizens, working as deep as 2,000 ft underground —miners facing real dangers working in mines. We owe them a duty of care, and any hon. Member who takes that duty seriously cannot vote for the regulations.
4.12 pm
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Forsyth): We have listened to a disgraceful speech, a vicious and unwarranted attack on a tripartite body, the Health and Safety Commission, and the Executive to which it is responsible. The Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations were not dreamt up by me, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment or the Government—[Interruption.] They were submitted to the Government by the Health and Safety Commission. I would not have been prepared to lay those regulations before the House without a clear view from the Health and Safety Commission that they were designed to improve health and safety in mines.
Mr. Skinner: The Health and Safety Commission was in the Government's pocket.
Mr. Forsyth: The Health and Safety Commission includes representatives from the Trades Union Congress. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the TUC is in the Government's pocket, he is mistaken.—[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. Let us have a little more quiet from hon. Members below the Gangway. I am having difficulty hearing what the Minister is saying, and I am sure that other hon. Members are, too.
Mr. Forsyth: I can assure you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that, in the case of the sedentary interventions, you have not been missing much.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: Does the Minister agree that the idea of using the roof bolting is that it is cheaper than girders and would save money? The people who push for the introduction of roof bolting are

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those at Hobart house, the coal board officials, Clarke and his cohorts who want to take the industry over when it is privatised.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman knows that the Health and Safety Executive cannot allow exemptions for the use of roof bolts in a situation that would result in unsafe practices. That would be contrary to law. If the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) has complaints about the conduct of the Health and Safety Executive, he is free to raise them.
The debate today is about the Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations, which are not concerned with roof bolting except in so far as they put a stronger obligation on the management of coal mines and other mines to conduct their business in a way that gives priority to health and safety.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I would not have been prepared to accept the regulations without a clear view from the Health and Safety Commission—a tripartite body—that they were designed to improve health and safety at mines. The commission's advice was that the new regulations would remedy serious defects and inadequacies in the existing law. Those who are opposed to the regulations should ask themselves who sits on the Commission that has proposed those regulations. Commissioners who have submitted the regulations and approved the associated codes of practice include members of the TUC and representatives of the CBI and of local government. It is a disgrace that Opposition Members should seek to challenge their integrity in that way.
Sir Harold Walker: The Minister is giving the House the impression that the Health and Safety Commission was unanimous in its decision. Will he make it clear that the TUC representatives were totally opposed to the proposals?
Mr. Forsyth: No, I will not make that clear. I will make it clear that some of the TUC representatives did not attend the meeting. The proposals were made by the commission with the express recommendation that they should be carried.
One of the reasons why there has been a delay is that I asked to be assured that the Health and Safety Executive was satisfied that the proposals are necessary to improve health and safety in mines.
The notion that the regulations are being slipped through at the last minute, as the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) had the nerve to suggest, is bizarre. Consultations on the regulations started in 1988 and all interested parties have had the opportunity to express a view and they have taken that opportunity. The British Coal Corporation, the National Association of Colliery Managers, the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the Federation of Small Mines, the Mining Association of the United Kingdom, professional institutions, and Her Majesty's inspectorate of mines have all had an opportunity to give their opinions.
Mr. Peter Hardy: Did not it occur to the Minister that, due to the serious nature of the regulations, it might be useful for him to consult not only the Health
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and Safety Commission which had the majority view, but those organisations within the mining industry which, throughout the long period of consultation, had perceived grave weaknesses in British Coal's proposals? Would not it have been wise for the Minister to consult them before he decided to accept everything that was put before him, even though it is obvious to many in the industry that it is a recipe for danger?
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman has followed the matter closely and will therefore know that a discussion document on the matter was published in 1988 and that there have been two formal consultation proposals. Endless informal revisions have been issued, there have been at least 10 meetings with the unions concerned and the proposals have been considered six times by the Health and Safety Commission.
Peter McNestry, the general secretary of the union that sponsors the hon. Gentleman, had the nerve to say on the "Today" programme on 25 August that the consultations were "single sided". The hon. Gentleman could do well to spend time teaching his sponsors how to count. There have been endless consultations on the matter and both sides of industry have had every opportunity to explore the implications of the regulations.
Mr. Bill Etherington: Will the Minister explain to the House what percentage the TUC has of the voting power on the Health and Safety Commission? Does he accept that it is impossible for the TUC representatives to carry anything from a minority position on the Commission?
Mr. Forsyth: If that is a speech against the nature of tripartite bodies, I am surprised to hear it coming from the hon. Gentleman. The Health and Safety Commission is a tripartite body, and the unions have representatives. If he is concerned that the union representatives are being outvoted, he should know that the Health and Safety Commission proceeds by consensus. He should also know that it would be considerably easier for the union representatives to give their views if they attended the meetings where the matters are discussed. It is certainly true that at the last meeting not all the TUC people were present. Consideration of the regulations has been going on for some four years and they have been subject to widespread consultation. Despite all the consultation, where is the opposition coming from—except from Labour Members who choose to speak for the main dissenting voices outside? Who are the dissenting voices? They are NACODS and Mr. Arthur Scargill.
Mr. Dobson: If the Minister wants to sustain the basis of the tripartite approach to health and safety, will he confirm that, at the final meeting of the substantial number of meetings of the Health and Safety Commission at which the proposals were discussed, the TUC representatives made it clear that they did not support the proposals and believed that the new regulations would reduce health and safety? That is what the minutes say. If the Minister wants to deny that, God only knows why.
Will the Minister also confirm that the trade unions that represent the bulk of the people who work below ground in British mines are so opposed to the proposals that NACODS, which represents the colliery overmen, deputies and shotfirers who have been responsible for safety so

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successfully all this time, is taking the Government to court because it believes that the regulations breach the basic law?
Mr. Forsyth: I can confirm that the TUC representative did not press for a vote on the matter at the final meeting. I am sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman take the line that he has taken this afternoon. I congratulate the Health and Safety Commission on putting the interests of safety ahead of the interests of trade unions and other lobbies that have put across a particular view. If we accepted the views expressed by NACODS and the NUM, we would have to believe that every other union and professional institution involved in the industry either has got it wrong or simply has no interest in the safety of miners in Britain. Only NACODS and the NUM have spotted that
"These regulations would push our standards down to third world standards",
as the general secretary of NACODS described the regulations. That is in contrast to the view of the Health and Safety Commission.
I wonder what is the real reason why Opposition Members are getting so excited.
Mr. Kevin Barron: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Forsyth: If I may make a proposition, I shall be happy to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to knock it down. I wonder what is the real reason for NACODS and NUM opposition. It certainly cannot be safety, because the Health and Safety Commission would not submit regulations that reduced safety standards. The truth is that, as Opposition Members well know, NACODS sees the proposals on supervision and inspection, which the Health and Safety Commission believes essential for better health and safety for miners underground—
Mr. Michael Clapham: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Forsyth: I shall not give way until I have developed this point, and I promised that I would give way to the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) first.
Opposition Members may not wish to hear this, but it is important that the House should be aware of why NACODS is opposed to the proposals. The truth is that NACODS sees the proposals on supervision and inspection as a threat to its monopolistic hold over pit deputies. That is the root of its objection. Before the regulations were introduced—the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras did not seem to realise that they were in force—mines could not be worked without a deputy being present. Of course, all deputies are members of NACODS.
Mr. Barron: The Minister asked why Opposition Members were worried about the regulations. He seemed to imply that we were after protecting some trade unions or trade union rights. Let me tell him that I spent 20 years working under the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 as an underground electrician. If I had not had the protection and independence that the statute gave me, on occasions I would have had to do things that people asked me to do even though I deemed it unsafe in that instance.
We and people in the industry are concerned that the Minister proposes to take away statutory rights that people have had for safety and production reasons, and divide people. I believe—leaving aside any coal industry politics —that it is a backward step for safety in Britain's mines.
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If my memory serves me well, every change of regulation that has taken place in the coal industry this century has happened through consensus. The Minister stands at the Dispatch Box and says that we cannot get consensus for the changes from people who work underground in those dangerous conditions. I think that that is a precedent which no Government should accept in an industry such as coal mining.
Mr. Forsyth: The Health and Safety Commission proceeds by consensus. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the importance of safety and I accept his experience. I should have thought, therefore, that he would welcome the regulations, which, for the first time, place a duty on all management in the mines to put safety ahead of every other matter.
Mr. Eric Illsley rose—
Mr. Forsyth: I shall reply to the hon. Member for Rother Valley first. NACODS is worried because it perceives a threat to its membership. If one looks at the position from the point of view of what is happening in the mines, however, there still needs to be a minimum level of qualification, because the changes will simply mean that someone might be called a manager or a supervisor. NACODS feels that its position as the deputies' union is under threat. It is not the members' health and safety that it is concerned about; it is merely the self-interest of the union. The health of the union, not the safety of the members, is uppermost in its mind.
Mr. John Cummings: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I make no apologies for speaking with passion and concern about an industry in which I worked for 29 years and where one leaves so much of oneself behind and so many fellow colleagues have suffered accident, serious injury or death. That is why we speak with passion.
The Minister should understand that collieries are deeper and machinery is more powerful than in the past, and there is pressure, not just from the colliery manager, but from the silhouettes in Hobart house with their computers, who, at times, are aware of breakdowns before the colliery manager.
The pressures on management and workmen are now so intense that we should seek to strengthen the present regulations. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), I was an electrician underground and many was the occasion when I had recourse to the miners' regulations in the top pocket of my waistcoat against the under-manager, the manager and the group manager. That protection will be removed. It is a detrimental step; a step back to the dark ages.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not only express my remarks to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, but I make the point that nine hon. Members are hoping to catch my eye during the short debate and if we continue to have long interventions some will not be successful.
Mr. Forsyth: I agreed with everything that the hon. Gentleman said until he neared the end of his remarks. It cannot be right, given what he describes—an industry which is deeper and which has new technology—to depend on regulations that were first formulated in the year when

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I was born. They are out of date. They need to be renewed and improved and that is why the Health and Safety Executive has done so.
Mr. Illsley rose—
Mr. Forsyth: I have been very generous in giving way and I heard what Mr. Deputy Speaker said about the importance of making progress.
It was right for the Health and Safety Executive and the Commission to ignore the attempts that were made to maintain a legislative framework that was more suited to life about 30 years ago. I was astonished by the attitude of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. After all, the work of the commission and executive, which the Labour party set up when it was in government, has been to modernise health and safety legislation, replacing prescriptive regulations with modern target-setting regulations and approved codes of practice. They are doing that in the mining industry, yet Opposition Members attack the Health and Safety Commission for doing precisely what the Labour Government set it up to achieve.
Mr. Dobson: Does the Minister understand that we are not talking about bureaucratic neatness? Procedures that might be successful on the surface in other industries and have been spread, rightly, by the Health and Safety Executive and people involved in safety are welcome. However, as somebody who claims to be a Conservative, the Minister ought to be able to see some merit in leaving alone a system that is the safest in the world. Why does he want to change it?
Mr. Forsyth: Because the Health and Safety Commission, a tripartite body set up by a Labour Government, has recommended that, in its view, it is necessary to make changes in order to improve safety in the mines. It would be an irresponsible Minister who ignored that and it is an irresponsible Opposition who seek to frustrate that process.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras talks about practicalities. What will the regulations do? MASHAM—the management and administration of safety and health at mines—will require each mine to have a management structure that is suitable for its circumstances, and the circumstances vary between mines. The previous legislation, so beloved of the hon. Gentleman, did not even require mines to have a developed management structure. A mine must have sufficient properly qualified and competent managers and every one of them must give precedence to health, safety and welfare over all other duties. How can the hon. Gentleman be against that?
The hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) was quick to say to the newspapers at the end of August that there is a conflict between productivity and safety. Does he not realise that an efficient mine is a safe mine and that safety demands efficiency in production? Does he not realise that MASHAM integrates responsibility for production and safety at every level far more securely than ever before?
Mr. Martin O'Neill: Is not the Minister aware that in countries where regulations of that character are in operation safety levels are much lower than in the United Kingdom and accident levels are much higher? Why change something that is seen to be working
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effectively? Why give instructions to the HSE to come up with regulations that may be internationally compatible, but which do not necessarily provide us with any greater safety than at present?
Mr. Forsyth: I am not aware of any such instructions. The hon. Gentleman should know that the Health and Safety Executive began in 1983 the process of modernising the health and safety legislation for mines. The hon. Gentleman has not answered the point, which is that everyone involved in the management of mines under these regulations will have a specific duty for safety. MASHAM strengthens the requirements for thorough supervision of everyone in all areas of the mine below ground.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras mentioned that there are more accidents away from the coal face than at the coal face. He was right. For the first time, these regulations require fully adequate arrangements to be made for the supervision of workers away from the coal face where those accidents occur. I listened in disbelief as the hon. Gentleman sought to argue against them. The regulations require all parts of the mine below ground to be divided into suitable clearly defined districts of a size that allows adequate inspection. MASHAM allows the functions of supervision and inspection to be carried out by the same person or by different people and—
Mr. Dobson: Exactly.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman seems to suggest that allowing supervision and inspection to be carried out by different people is a bad thing. There may be good reasons to prevent one person from performing both roles if it means leaving workers unsupervised while carrying out statutory inspection duties. Is the hon. Gentleman honestly saying that it is safer to allow a situation where someone may be off supervising and is, therefore, not available for inspection? Of course it is not. Common sense demands that there should be flexibility and that is what the regulations provide.
Mr. Illsley: The Minister seems to have missed the fact that in the role of deputy, supervision and inspection are combined. A deputy has the right and, in some cases, the statutory duty to stop a mine if safety is threatened. If supervision and inspection are separated—we will see a situation in which an inspector is subservient to a supervisor—the supervisor will be paid on a production bonus and it will not be in that supervisor's interest to stop production in the mine if safety is threatened, despite the representations of the inspector. That is the key issue in all these regulations. It is not the districts and the deputies, but the role of the deputy in safety and the statutory obligation placed on him, which the regulations would remove.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman sounds as if he believes that a deputy is not responsible to the management. What the hon. Gentleman does not take on board, and where the flaw in his argument lies, is the distinction between the duties of the inspector and those of the supervisor. Under the regulations, the supervisor will be under a duty to ensure that the paramount priority is health and safety in the mines.
Mr. Illsley: It is all to do with production.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman shouts from a sedentary position that it is to do with production, but the

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regulations make it a requirement for all management to make health and safety its foremost priority. That is where the hon. Gentleman's argument falls to pieces.
Mr. Illsley: Is the Minister aware that in 1988–89 the Select Committee on Energy considered the MASHAM regulations in a report on mining safety? A document, issued by British Coal, entitled "The Management of New Mines Working Party", refers to the separation of production and supervision. The working party was worried that it would not be able to get people to be district managers under the MASHAM regulations because they would be required to have a deputy's ticket. It stated:
"This might counter some of the benefits of separating safety and production."
One man will therefore be responsible for production and one man for inspection, and inspection will be subservient to production.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman is merely repeating the same points. What he should recognise is that the regulations make everyone involved in production in the mine responsible for health and safety. The regulations do not preclude one man or woman being responsible for both functions.
The hon. Gentleman did not deal with my key point, which is that there may be very good reasons against one person performing both roles—for example, if that means leaving workers unsupervised. Surely he does not believe that such practice is sensible and should be required by statute. The key point is that both functions should be carried out by suitably qualified and competent people. Those responsible for inspection and supervision in a coal mine must hold the minimum qualification of a deputy.
I was reeling off the list of positive benefits of the MASHAM regulations, which the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras did not recognise. They improve provisions for the installation and maintenance of plant and equipment. They require managers to ensure that all plant and equipment is safely installed and commissioned. They strengthen the requirements for qualified—
Mr. Barron: The regulations always did that.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman may say that, but we have had to have exemptions from the existing regulations in order to allow new equipment to come into the collieries.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras scoffs at the changes, but it seems to me that regulations that strengthen the requirement for qualified first-aiders—as these do—should be welcomed and not rubbished as they have been. The regulations double the ratio of first-aiders to employees underground.
The hon. Gentleman is always going on about contractors. Why did he miss out the fact that, to enable the mine manager to carry out his statutory duties, these regulations will, for the first time, require contractors to co-operate with him and comply with his instructions?
The regulations are an opportunity to ensure that those who work in mines benefit from a modern, target-setting health and safety system, which other industries have enjoyed during recent years. Those who wish to overturn the regulations seek to prevent the change which would result in miners being more safe and secure, and managers more accountable for safety. They seek to lock the industry into a 1950s time warp. I commend the regulations to the House.
4.39 pm
Sir Harold Walker: The regulations have their roots in the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which, as one who shared the responsibility of taking it through the House, I remember well. Any pride that I had in announcing what I thought and still think is, on the whole, a dramatic leap forward in the provision of health and safety in mines has been severely dented by our proceedings today. The Act was passed on a consensual basis, but not without a great deal of controversy between Government Departments. One of the controversies that dominated the proceedings was precisely the issue that we are discussing today—the procedure that is being used.
There are two matters before the House: the technical merits of the proposals and the way in which the House handles those proposals. I do not pretend to be sufficiently competent to comment on the technical merits—I shall leave that to other more experienced hon. Friends. However, significant numbers of people in my constituency who have had experience of the coal mining industry at all levels have expressed concern about the harmful effects of the regulations once they are implemented.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) was one of the participants in the debates in 1974. He rightly recalled the way in which on Second Reading and in Committee my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Employment, Michael Foot, said that he had received representations from all the mining unions about the way in which the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act might empower the body that was being set up to act in a manner that would weaken the prevailing health and safety standards.
To convey the flavour of the debate in Committee, I shall refer to the former Member for Hamilton, Alex Wilson, whom many of us will recall with affection and respect and who later became my Parliamentary Private Secretary. On behalf of the National Union of Mineworkers, he was persistent in expressing its anxiety that the powers that we were giving to the Health and Safety Commission to make regulations might be exercised in the way it seems to be exercised this afternoon—marking a regression from the prevailing standards, especially those embodied in the Mines and Quarries Act 1954. I can remember replying to him in Committee on 30 April 1974. I said:
"I turn now to the basic point that I understand my hon. Friend to make, namely that while he accepts that the Bill is a good thing for all other industries, somehow it should not be applied to the coal mining industry because it might lead to a regression from the high standards which he thinks have been achieved."
I went on to say that there would be change
"only after the fullest consultation when my hon. Friend's trade union sees and accepts in the course of the consultation ways and means of improving and strengthening the present provisions in a way which will satisfy both my hon. Friend and myself, and in a way that I should expect to see the industry proceed."
Later at that sitting, I quoted from the letter that Michael Foot sent to the NUM seeking to assuage the anxieties that it had expressed. He wrote to give assurances
"on two matters which you regard as being of crucial importance. The first of these concerns the statutory standards of protection for mineworkers which are at present laid down in the Mines and Quarries Acts, and in their supporting regulations. As I explained, the Bill repeals none of this legislation. All of the present statutory standards will remain in force until replaced by equally or more effective provisions, which would be made under the wide regulation-making power contained in the Bill. The object of any such revised provisions would be to seek improvements—which indeed is the object of the Bill as a whole."

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The letter continued:
"All regulations under the new Act will be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State in the usual way."
My right hon. Friend meant in the usual way that had applied up to the present time. "The usual way" is now rather different.
The Bill had the support of all parties in the House. It had been prepared by the former Secretary of State and we inherited it and made some minor changes that the previous Secretary of State accepted. The Opposition at that time was led by Lord Whitelaw, then the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border. On behalf of the Conservative party, he said:
"I want to see whether I can do something to allay the anxieties of the hon. Member for Hamilton".
He went on to say that, when he was the Minister in a previous Government, he
"heard all the representations then made by the National Union of Mineworkers. Like the Under-Secretary, I believe that these fears are—perhaps groundless is the wrong word—but I believe that they will be found in the long run to be ill founded … The hon. Member for Hamilton made another remark on which I hope I can give him some reassurance, if any words of mine can do that. He suggested that if this proposal in the Bill went through as it stood, there might at some time in the future be a Government—presumably he was thinking of a Conservative Government—who through this Bill might make an attack on the safety provisions in the mining industry."
My hon. Friends and I fear that that moment has arrived. The attack about which the Lord Whitelaw sought to give assurance is occurring today. Lord Whitelaw continued:
"I wish to give the hon. Member assurance, as one who has in the past had considerable interest in safety, health and welfare, from the time of the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Bill, that these matters have always been regarded entirely as non-political. They certainly would be in the future. I can only give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that I certainly would be no party to doing anything which would in any way undermine the exceptionally good work of the mines inspectorate, the way in which the inspectorate has sought to do their best in the mining industry, and equally the strong support—which has been very important—which they received from the National Union of Mineworkers."—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 30 April 1974; c. 7–10.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South will recall the manner in which that comment was welcomed as an assurance from the Government that we would proceed in such matters only with full support from those who work in the industry.
The Committee went on to establish assurances in a more specific and formal manner and, because of the debates that we had and the anxieties that were expressed, we wrote into section 1 of the 1974 Act that
"the regulations, orders and other instruments in force under those enactments"—
were to be—
"progressively replaced by a system of regulations and approved codes of practice operating in combination with the other provisions of this Part and designed to maintain or improve the standards of health, safety and welfare established by or under those enactments."
That was not a piece of parliamentary embroidery. Those words were deliberately chosen to reflect the views of the Government of the day and were fully supported by every party in the House—the changes would be only those that would maintain or improve prevailing safety conditions.
The Minister may say that the proposals meet precisely that desire, but that is in conflict with all the views that have been expressed by people who—unlike the hon. Gentleman and I—work or have worked in the coal
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industry. Interventions have come from the coalfields of Hendon; I prefer to speak from the coalfields of Yorkshire. I have not been a coal miner, but I am prepared to listen to those who are or have been miners. I only wish that the Government would do so. The Minister says that the Health and Safety Commission has produced the proposals, but my understanding is that the trade union representatives on the Health and Safety Commission have the gravest reservations.
I feel somewhat personally tarnished in the light of the work that I put into health and safety legislation and the assurances and commitments that we gave with the full support of the House. I am sure that Lord Whitelaw, if he has the opportunity to read our proceedings, will feel equally sad that there has been a resiling from the commitments that all of us gave. Today we face a prostitution of the powers that are contained in the 1974 Act. My hon. Friends and I are worried that the proposals are merely paving the path to privatisation.
I should have thought that the experience of Bilsthorpe would give the Minister cause to delay the proposals. I ask him to withdraw the regulations and to consult those whose jobs and livelihoods in the industry and whose families' well-being are at stake. The Minister should consult them and, if they share his view, we may take a different attitude. I very much doubt whether he will get support for the views which he has presented to the House today. I hope that he will take the regulations away and think again.
4.49 pm
Mr. Richard Alexander: The House will have listened to the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Sir H. Walker) with great interest. He commands great respect in the House, although the conclusions of Conservative Members may differ from his. I apologise for the fact that I have a Select Committee meeting running at the present time. With the leave of the House, I hope to join the meeting shortly after I sit down. I hope that my apparent discourtesy will be understood.
I sometimes do not know who advises Ministers and Departments about their public relations and their presentation of policy. As a Government, we should have the best, rather than the worst, presentation. If there is anyone out there who is supposed to be like a bird sitting on the Minister's shoulder and telling him the best time at which and the best way in which to present policy, there must have been some dereliction of duty in this case.
The House rose on 27 July after one of the most difficult ever public relations presentations in the coal mining industry when, as we all know, 31 pits had been proposed for closure the previous October. The day after the House rose, the regulations were made and just over a week later they were presented to the House when Parliament had gone to the seaside for its summer break.
I tell the House and my hon. Friend the Minister, if he does not already know, that there are people outside who doubt the Government's commitment to a thriving and profitable coal industry. As my hon. Friend will know, the young bride said to her husband the day following her wedding, "Jock, I didnae ken." He replied, "Well, Maggie, you ken noo." I say to my hon. Friend, "Michael, you ken noo."
I accept that, as my hon. Friend will agree, the regulations are part of a general review of mines and quarries regulations which was put in hand by the Health

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and Safety Commission some years ago. There was no reason in common sense or in common humanity why the regulations could not have been laid before the House a week before it rose for the recess or a week after it returned. As it was, the worst possible interpretation was put on the timing by those outside who took an interest in the matter. I am anxious to hear my hon. Friend's explanation.
Mr. Michael Forsyth: I have no bird sitting on my shoulder that I can blame. The regulations were not laid earlier because there was a change of ministerial responsibilities and, before I agreed to lay the regulations, I insisted that I had undertakings from the Health and Safety Commission that it would maintain and improve safety in mines. As a result of the delay arising from my insistence, it was not possible to lay the regulations until the end of the Session.
My hon. Friend asked why we did not wait until now to lay the regulations. It was the view of the Health and Safety Commission that the regulations should be in force by 1 October. I felt obliged, given the commission's view that the regulations were important from the point of view of safety, to act accordingly. I appreciate that that has caused criticism and difficulty. However, we expect people in mines to make safety their paramount consideration. The same should apply to Ministers.
Mr. Alexander: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his explanation.
There is a further difficulty. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, on which I serve under the excellent chairmanship of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), who is in his place waiting to make his contribution, has had no opportunity because of the timing to consider the regulations. We do not consider regulations on their merits; we consider whether they are intra vires of the parent statute or whether there are unusual uses of powers. It would have been helpful if the Committee could have had that opportunity. I do not wish to make the speech of the hon. Member for Bradford, South. He is the Chairman of the Committee and I shall let him elaborate on that point. Despite my hon. Friend's explanation, I think that, on a subject as emotional as mining safety, there was a little left to be desired in terms of timing and presentation.
Worse was to come. A couple of weeks after the regulations were laid, the Bilsthorpe colliery disaster occurred. It took place a couple of miles from my constituency boundary and that is why I have a particular interest in it. I see one or two hon. Members from neighbouring constituencies in their places today. It was one of the worst recent mining disasters and its reverberations are still being felt in north Nottinghamshire and beyond.
I believe that the regulations, which will require full supervision of everyone everywhere in the mines below ground, are beneficial. However, there is still deep uncertainty, and we had discussions about it this afternoon, about precisely what happened at Bilsthorpe and why. I suggest that it was unwise to plough on at that time with regulations that amend the regulations on safety and health in the mines without Parliament being able to debate them. That is my main point.
As the House can imagine and as happened today, the Government's political opponents, especially at local level, made big capital out of the fears that existed. Today, they
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made similarly heavy weather of the regulations. I make no criticism of that because as the Opposition it is their right and it is proper that they should do so even if, as I said in response to the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central, we may reach somewhat different conclusions on this side of the House.
Having criticised the timing of the regulations, I must say that I do not think that they are as harmful as has been suggested this afternoon. I listened to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). Although he said much, he did not really discuss the regulations themselves. I have listened carefully to the whole debate and I believe that that is a flaw in the Opposition's arguments so far.
Mr. Clapham: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that absolute duties, as a deputy had under the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, are stronger than the duties that arise under the new package, which are far less specific and are general? As a result of the strong and absolute duties under the 1954 Act, the deputy, with his combination of responsibilities for safety and supervision, was able to ensure that British pits were the safest in the world.
Mr. Alexander: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I was just going to come to that precise point. I accept that he is an expert in the industry. My reading of the regulations is that each mine must have a management structure with suitably qualified people who will give precedence to health, safety and welfare above all other duties. That must be a step forward and not a step back, despite what the hon. Gentleman says.
We have two large codes of practice. They are not flimsy documents; they are detailed and the duties are specific on safety, health and first aid—[Interruption.] Opposition Members may scoff. As I said, they are entitled to make the worst of these matters. Conservative Members are equally entitled to be positive about the proposals.
The lack of reduction of the powers of intervention by the inspector of mines is important. There is no diminution of his powers. He will continue to have all the powers originally given to him, or them, by the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act. That is where I would have disagreed with the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central.
Mr. Cryer: Is not it true that, in the statutory instrument, the obligation on people to carry out statutory duties is qualified by the phrase, "so far as is practicable"? Does not that phrase have a legal definition in court actions for compensation, to the effect that an employer or owner who says that the cost is too high is justified in not applying those safety standards? Therefore, is not that a reduction in the standard from the absolute duty that care shall be provided?
Mr. Alexander: I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but I do not reach that conclusion when I read elsewhere in the regulations that there must be present everywhere and at all times someone suitably qualified whose paramount duty is to ensure that safety is the first consideration.
Mr. Illsley: The hon. Gentleman might not be aware that at present any district underground must have a suitably trained person—in this case a deputy—who is capable of and trained in taking readings for levels of gas. Under the regulations, it will be apparent that whole districts will be without a trained person in charge who is capable of and trained in taking readings for gas.
Mr. Alexander: I was not aware of that. I am still not sure that will be the case, but that will be for the Minister to argue. I cannot deal precisely with that point.
Having read the regulations, and despite my criticism of the timing, I do not see that they represent a diminution in standards of safety in mines. If I thought that they did—I hope that the Opposition will give me credit for this in view of my interest in the coal mining industry—I would not not vote for them at any price. I am not a party hack. I am a party man, but I am also a man who looks after his constituents, who, in this case, are those in the mining communities of north Nottinghamshire.
My concern has been with timing and the method of introduction, which, like so much that has happened to the coal mining industry in the past year, has left much to be desired. I wish that the Government could have found a more sensible way of introducing the regulations, and had been a little more sensitive about their timing.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. In the two hours available for the rest of the debate, no fewer than nine hon. Members, including Front Benchers, hope to catch my eye. If hon. Members co-operate by making short speeches, all hon. Members might be successful.
5.2 pm
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: I shall endeavour to be brief.
The hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) addressed the issue of timing. I hope that he will accept that timing is extremely important and that it is not only a matter of cynicism; it is a matter of mismanagement and incompetence, although it could be interpreted as cynicism. Two particular points of timing will not be lost even on people with no real connection with the mining industry: first, major changes in working practices underground were published the week after the House rose for the summer recess and were implemented before we had an opportunity to debate them; and, secondly, in the Queen's Speech next month the Government will introduce measures for the privatisation of the coal industry. Those factors will not be lost on anyone. What is the prime motivation for those changes? Can we be absolutely sure that it is simply a totally objective and right moment to introduce new working practices that affect the operation of mines? I will not follow the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who expressed his view on that in his inimitable style. The Minister cannot be surprised that people make deductions from that coincidence of timing.
Another matter of some concern is that, within the same period, we had the Bilsthorpe colliery disaster. As one who is not as well informed or as closely involved as other hon. Members, I felt that the safety inspectors were remarkably quick to deduce that the bolting mechanism was not the source of the problem. I do not question their integrity and am not in any position to comment on them, but the speed with which they made their statement demonstrated one thing clearly to me, if I had not known it already: there clearly is great concern about the practice among the people who work underground. That concern cannot lightly be put aside. It is not right to introduce measures in
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which mineworkers—who are supposed to be protected by them—do not have confidence. That is a matter of extreme importance and it is one that we should take on board.
The specific point as I understand it—perhaps the key point—is the role of the deputy manager in determining the safe operation of the pit and his authority to stop the process if he believes that that is justified. First, it is apparent that deputy managers spend more of their time underground. Secondly, they are specifically charged with safety as their prime consideration.
Under the new regulations, it seems to me that the only person with authority to stop the process is the manager of the pit, who, in most cases, will not be underground. The only responsibility that any other operative has is to report a breach of safety if that occurs. One needs a much quicker line of response. That point—I am sorry that the Minister is not listening—seems to be an inherent sign of a change for the worse. Under the new regulations, the ability to halt the process because of a safety risk has been removed further from the process than was the case under the old regulations. I should like the Minister to answer that point at the end of the debate. Unless he can satisfy me that that is not the case, that example will be a clear indication of new regulations weakening existing safety standards.
I should have thought that it might be appropriate, if one were interested in strengthening regulations, to say that, at all times, there must be someone underground who has the authority to override the process for safety considerations. That would be an improvement on existing regulations.
Mr. Etherington: The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. I, too, shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Like many people, I spent 21 years working underground on the coal face. I was a fitter. Under the 1954 regulations, I had the power—under section 81 of the Mines and Quarries Act, which talks about machinery being free of patent defect—to stop any machinery that I did not think was operating properly. The hon. Gentleman is quite right: I would no longer have that power. At the time that I was working, the colliery manager could not override my decision, nor could the chairman of the British Coal Board at Hobart house, because I was carrying out my duties under the statute that was laid down in the House. If I were a fitter now and worked on the coal face, I would no longer have that power and could be overruled.
Mr. Bruce: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reinforcing a point from a period of specific personal knowledge.
I should like to take up a point that the Minister made. The point is not entirely surprising but is questionable. Let us keep the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers—NACODS—and the National Union of Mineworkers out of it, just to make it less sensitive. The Minister seemed to imply that NACODS' reservations about the regulations were entirely to do with its concern about its membership and its role as a trade union. That is unworthy of him. I do not think that it is right to suggest that a trade union with that degree of specialism is not capable of being persuaded—and needs to be persuaded if the new regulations are to work.
Even if the regulations are good in law, principle and practice, if the people who are to operate and benefit from them have no confidence in them, their morale will be adversely affected. No Minister should be satisfied with

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that as a way to advance safety and working in the mines. The Minister accuses the trade unions of being motivated only by the recruitment and retention of members. That invites the counter-argument that managers are, by definition, concerned only with production and profitability, which also gives rise to the possibility of compromise and conflict of interest.
It is essential that we strike the right balance in safety matters. Certainly, we want to allow people to run viable and profitable pits, but we want those pits to be run so that the safety of those who are expected to do the work at the most dangerous end of the job is not compromised. That is the responsibility of the Minister and it is the responsibility of the Health and Safety Commission and the Health and Safety Executive, and it does not seem to me that they have achieved the degree of consensus that would justify the claim that this is the right time at which to introduce the present regulations.
I should like to draw attention to one or two good points in the regulations. In particular, it is essential that a pit manager should be allowed to manage only one pit, and it is good that that has been written into the provisions. It is important, too, that the pit manager should have the right to challenge the pit owner in the interests of safety. I have a slight reservation about that provision, however, because it is possible for the pit owner also to be the pit manager. Who would provide the element of intervention in such circumstances?
The Minister reminded us that the original regulations date back to 1908; that regulations have been introduced in the intervening period, in 1947 and 1974; and that we are talking about a process of continuous change. I do not think that any hon. Member is frightened of change or believes that all the regulations are wholly unacceptable and that there is not a case for modernising and updating the procedures. I hope that the Minister will recognise, however, that there are one or two factors that suggest that the regulations would weaken safety rather than strengthen it, which is crucial, and that his timing is extremely suspect. The Minister cannot proceed simply on the ground that he has a majority in the House and disregard the damaging effect of introducing safety regulations that do not have the confidence of those working in the industry. So far, he has failed to secure that confidence, and I urge him not to force the provisions through until he has won the industry over.
5.11 pm
Mr. Michael Alison: Many of those who are laymen when it comes to the technicalities of these complicated and important matters—that includes most people who will be following the debate as well as many taking part in it—will feel that my hon. Friend the Minister made a fair point when he said that the origin or provenance of the regulations was an expert body with an absolutely impeccable reputation and pedigree—the Health and Safety Commission and its Executive. I am glad, too, that my hon. Friend emphasised that the consideration of possible beneficial changes in mine safety regulations goes back a long way.
My hon. Friend reasonably suggested that, given the list of contributing members, the proposition that the Health and Safety Executive or Commission could in some way have been beguiled, infiltrated or corrupted by the influence of Ministers and Tory policy fades into nonentity
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the moment it is made. The Health and Safety Commission would have faced many resignations and would never have been able to present serious proposals to the Minister or the House if there were any sense in which it was the kept woman of a Tory Government or a Tory Cabinet. It was manifestly doing its own job in an effective and serious-minded way and, although these are highly controversial and delicate matters, it has produced the specific and agreed recommendations and ideas that we are debating today. My hon. Friend was more than reasonable in emphasising that.
I have listened with great interest to the debate, and with even greater interest to the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Sir H. Walker)—at whose feet I have sat in Committee and with whom I have debated—and, in doing so, have picked up nuances and detailed ideas about and insights into industry that I could have picked up nowhere else. It seems to me—again, as a layman—that the Opposition are perhaps trying to prove too much by suggesting that everything that is in place now has the quality of the law of the Medes and the Persians and should not be interfered with, touched, modified or improved in any way. Opposition Members swing from that proposition—which is not a convincing one—to the proposition that everything that we are considering today is poison in every root and branch. Both propositions are unacceptable.
Safety regulations have to be changed, improved and modernised—following a lengthy period of consideration, consultation, submission and debate—as part of the evolution and modernisation of any industry. I am thinking in particular of the railways and of the air transport industry, in which changes have had to be made to take account of considerations of passenger time and of new machinery and processes.
I remember some of the features of the old safety regulations in the days when steam operated on the railways. With the fundamental changes in the mechanical processes by which the railways operate, all that has had to go. Similarly, today's pits are unrecognisable. I speak with some experience of the machinery used and the activities that take place in the Selby complex of mines. It seems eminently reasonable to me that there should be some attempt to move with the times and that safety procedures should be updated by a serious professional body such as the HSE and its Commission. I commend my hon. Friend the Minister for placing so much emphasis on the origin and provenance of the regulations.
My hon. Friend will understand, however, that changes can give rise to anxiety, especially among ordinary rank-and-file miners and individuals engaged in coal mining, although not necessarily at the coal face— especially given that they are bombarded with allegations of nefarious intent or distorted purpose, which, for people engaged in the day-to-day activities at the coal face, can be disturbing and unnerving.
I have received detailed representations from a number of my constituents who work in or near the Selby complex of mines. I hope that my hon. Friend will find time to address himself once more to the delicate subject of the possibility, at least, of a division of responsibility. I want to quote from a quite articulate letter from a NACODS official in my constituency:
"We also fail to see where the Health and Safety Executive"—

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the official at least gives credit to where the idea originated—
"have improved or bettered existing legislation by splitting the dual duties of pit inspection from supervision, which today are undertaken by the single pit deputy, replacing this with, first, a person doing inspections and, secondly, a command supervisor."
The official goes on to make this trenchant and important point:
"By doing this, they are confusing who has total and absolute control should an emergency occur."
I should like my hon. Friend to address himself to what would happen in the very rare and extremely undesirable event of a real underground emergency. We all know that different voices giving different orders from different quarters can be desperately hazardous and can result in a failure to move whatever action is necessary at that moment in a precisely defined and necessarily correct direction.
I know that my hon. Friend will be able to reassure me to some extent by referring to the fact that the regulations allow the functions of supervision and inspection to be carried out by the same person or by different people; they introduce the dual option. It is clearly most important that that function, whether dual or in a single hand, should be carried out by qualified and competent people. Will my hon. Friend assure me that full thought has been given to the hazard that might arise, especially in an emergency, if the option for a dual hat between supervision and inspection applies in a pit?
A constituent goes so far to reinforce the idea of the single deputy as to point out that, at present, an identified person, a named individual, has immediate charge of men and operations and concern consequently arises over any step in the direction of less identity, more diffuse responsibility and less capacity to be able to pinpoint the person who carries the can.
I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is an expert in this area and that he will have been briefed adequately by the Health and Safety Executive. It must have had good reason for giving the option of abandoning the single mandate and moving to the possible option of locating responsibility for supervision and inspection under different heads. If he can reassure us on that point and refer back to the considered view of the executive and why it is confident that it is for the best, I and my constituents who have made representations to me would be much reassured and would believe that the regulations stand a better chance of gaining acceptance and confidence in the mining industry.
5.20 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy: The right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) has done the House a service because his question to the Minister provided reason for the Minister's apology. The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers certainly should receive an apology from the Minister for his unworthy comments. The association's objection stemmed from the point that the right hon. Member for Selby put to the Minister. I look forward to hearing the Minister's explanation because during the months of consultation that very point has been at the heart of NACODS' rejection of the proposals.
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There are few pits now and there may be fewer still in a few months' time, but there will still be pits and there will be new ones and unmothballed ones when it is recognised that what has been done was foolish and that we should not lock away an important and fortunate national resource.
The regulations are designed for the time when pits have been privatised. Their purpose is to make the industry more appropriate for privatisation by weakening existing legislation, which is why NACODS and most people who have an interest in the industry oppose them. The safety priority is being weakened. Yes, a manager will have to run a pit effectively and safely, but the Minister did not point out the qualification
"so far as is practicable",
and that will cover an enormous amount.
The same attitude is not evident among Tories as when Winston Churchill spoke about the need for statutory qualified underground officials. The regulations provide for supervisors, who, as the right hon. Member for Selby pointed out, will not have the traditional statutory powers that have saved untold numbers of lives in pits since the law was made.
Representatives of the South African mining industry are visiting London today; indeed, one of them has been in this building. They are here to look at our safety arrangements for mines because they recognise the need to promote mine safety in their country. What are they to take back with them—the practices and regulations that hitherto applied, or this wretched, shabby lot that we are debating today? I know what advice any responsible person would give them, and I hope that it is the advice that NACODS is giving.
A few years ago it was suggested that colliery deputies should be fully included in the management structure of the coal industry, solely oriented within the production system. NACODS quite properly said that its obligations to safety meant that it could not accept that other function because safety had to be paramount. Of course there must be regard for production, and underground officials played a significant part in the immense achievement of increasing productivity by 36 per cent. in the last year. They did so on the understanding that precedents for safety would remain and that safety would continue to be their prime duty. That duty is weakened by the regulations and it is unwise and wrong for the overriding priority for safety in the mining industry to be removed, as it will be when the underground supervisor will have to report a hazard rather than respond to it.
The regulations are not only defective in character but, as the Minister confessed, have been furtively introduced. Interestingly, they are statutory instrument No. 1987 and were laid with orders such as No. 1930 and No. 1950, suggesting quite a substantial delay, when they could have been introduced, despite the ministerial changes, before the House rose for the recess. It is sad that the matter should have been so delayed, but it shows the arrogance of office to which Shakespeare referred.
British Coal, too, deserves criticism. Those responsible at Hobart house showed their disdain for Parliament when they decided that the regulations should be implemented on 1 October—before the House resumed. I said in the House last Monday that British Coal had tried to deny my suggestion that it was contemptuous of Parliament in 1989. I still think that it was contemptuous of Parliament in 1989, but it has certainly been contemptuous of Parliament in 1993, and it may have been so with the approval and

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admiration of the Minister because I do not believe that it would have decided to announce the implementation early in August if it had not first consulted the Department. British Coal and Ministers have revealed their contempt for Parliament and for history.
Hon. Members who represent the older coalfields—Durham, Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland—will be aware of the many traces of the past in their constituencies. There are memorials on which there are lists of names of hundreds of people who died in colliery catastrophes. There will be another list of names tonight—of hon. Members who either could not come into the Chamber to listen to a debate on matters of life and death, of hon. Members who popped in and out, or of hon. Members who allowed themselves to be beguiled into the Government Lobby.
The number of people who died in major tragedies was dwarfed by the number of men, and often children, who died in ones and twos in days when it was not even thought necessary to have inquests when people were killed down a pit. Reaction in the House and outside to those horrors led to the introduction of the regulations that are now being scrapped. The Minister fails to understand—I wish that his colleague, the Minister for Energy, was here—that the arguments that the Government are now advancing to defend their regulations were used in Parliament and outside to oppose the safety regulations 90 or 100 years ago.
I heard the Minister say on television the other day that there had been long periods of consultation about the regulations—consultation with the miners, British Coal and the Health and Safety Executive. It is true that the consultations lasted for some years, but no one appeared to advise the Minister that what he and his colleagues were doing was preposterous. The Minister and his colleagues have been saying that the arrangements under the order would be a vast improvement: there would not be one man with a statutory responsibility for safety—the colliery deputy—because everyone would have responsibility. That was the very argument used against the appointment of the deputy with a statutory obligation.
I wish that Ministers did not have such contempt for history. They are very good at accountancy, making money and beguiling the electorate with the assistance of a servile press which may not even report our argument tonight, but they do not understand the mining industry, which they are now embarrassing, or the country, which they are misruling.
Mr. Illsley: The Minister said that the regulations were being introduced because of inadequacies in the legislation. Is my hon. Friend aware of any such inadequacies?
Mr. Hardy: No, I am not, but I shall not detain the House for too long.
I have been a Member of Parliament for a long time. I have met some great people, many who may become great, many more who think that they will be great and some who think that they are great but are not. One man who was a considerable source of inspiration to me, although he never claimed to be great, and for whom I had enormous respect was my father, a colliery deputy. He was not an especially articulate man, but he was very honest. Being brought up in his home, I learnt certain values. I learnt why he was respected in our community. He was
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not a boss's man, but he was concerned about production and believed that a man should have a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. He was still popular because his men, of whom there were many in those days, knew that he was skilled in the ways of the mine and that he was honest and would not allow corners to be cut or their lives to be put at risk.
In the past, the role of the honest colliery deputy was important and, but for the shysters on the Government Benches who are giving away the mining industry, it would be important in the future.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. I am not sure whether I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly, but perhaps he would like to rephrase his comment.
Mr. Hardy: I should have thought that the word "shysters" as applied collectively to the current Administration was entirely appropriate. However, I do not wish to incur your disapproval in any way, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so if I can replace the word "shysters" with the words "this group of venal men", I am happy to do so. [HON. MEMBERS: "And women."] And women, although the former right hon. Member for Finchley has departed.
The serious point is that men such as my father saved many lives. They were able to do so because of their experience and knowledge of the pit and because of their statutory capacity. That capacity placed a considerable duty on their shoulders but that duty is to be taken away. Without the capacity to fulfil a statutory regulation, not even the most honest supervisor will be able to act to save lives.
The right hon. Member for Selby was right to ask about safety and responsibility. The arrangements will weaken the capacity which has served our industry well, which has made it safe and which has made it a model to which mining industries in other parts of the world can turn to ensure that they have safe arrangements.
The regulations are intended to assist privatisation and profit. [Interruption.] It is no good the Minister shaking his head because we know that the regulations are fitting the industry for the marketplace and the sale room. If that is not so, why did the Minister with responsibility for coal last Wednesday shelter behind the sub judice rule, which apparently does not apply today, and refuse to answer my request for a guarantee that a foreign company, which does not have a good safety record, would not be allowed to buy parts of the British mining industry?
One such company has received 1,474 citations from the American safety inspectorate regarding faults that it had not put right but of which it had been notified over seven or eight years. Are the Government going to allow companies with such records to take over our mining industry? If they do, those companies will do what they like and will shelter behind the phrase
"so far as is practicable"
which the Minister has provided for them.
Why did the Minister not explain what
"so far as is practicable"
meant? Does he acknowledge that having such words at the heart of the regulations compels us to ask questions? As I do not believe that the Minister is capable of answering our questions, I trust that I and my colleagues will be joined in the Division by many hon. Members from the smaller parties. I regret that hon. Members from Ulster are not present; they claim to be part of the United Kingdom, so I hope that none of them will join the Government in the

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Lobby tonight. If they have an obligation to the rest of the United Kingdom, they should join us. In addition to my colleagues and those in the smaller parties, I hope that the Conservatives who have a conscience and those with constituency obligations to the coalfields will join us because we are sure that our cause is right.
5.36 pm
Mr. Joseph Ashton: I am sure that hon. Members will not mind if I begin by sending the House's condolences to the wife of David Shelton, aged 31, who was a constituent of mine. He was killed in the Bilsthorpe disaster and lived in Blyth. The disaster has been mentioned many times, but I emphasise the fact that the inquiry was far from satisfactory and I hope that the demands for a further inquiry will be met.
The regulations, which affect safety standards, are clearly related to the privatisation of the industry. There is a strange parallel with the privatisation of prisons because both privatisations involve a strong safety element. Let us consider how the Government approached the privatisation of a part of the prison service. They let Group 4 take control of transferring prisoners to and from the courts. What happened? The people who took on that task did not know a great deal about the job and were spread over the front pages of the newspapers because of their lack of experience in handling prisoners. Indeed, for a while, they became a laughing stock.
The proposals to sell the pits offer a parallel. Private enterprise is to be put in charge of the pits, and the new owners will remove nearly all the safety regulations and run them for their own profit. The prisons were also softened up for privatisation.
The two industries are parallel in the sense that very few people have been in prison and very few have been down a coal mine. The Government, or the Department of Trade and Industry, have consistently reduced the number of prison officers and refused to listen to their good advice. There have been more prison riots, more disturbances and more problems because the Government refused to listen to the people who work at the pit face in the prisons; exactly the same will happen at the pit face down the mines. Very few people have ever been down a coal mine, including Members of Parliament, civil servants or those who live in the neighbourhood, and very few know about the safety standards. How many hon. Members realise what it is like to crawl 200 yds on one's hands and knees in a seam not much higher than a kitchen table, banging one's head every two yards, surrounded by nothing but thick dust and filth, with no light except that from the lamp on one's helmet, and a horrendous coal cutter four or five feet in diameter going at 2,000 revs a minute not two feet from one's hands or face, chopping off coal a tonne at a time?
Men have to work in those horrendous conditions, and all the public have ever seen of them is a film on television. I am a little critical of some of my hon. Friends, many of whom have said that they worked in the pit for 20 or 30 years. Over that time they seem to have become used to those conditions, not realising how revolting such conditions are to the average member of the public, and to the average workman in any other industry. I have never worked down the pit, but my father was a miner, and many
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years ago I found out that there are no toilets down a coal mine. Howe many people know that? The miners have to use a shovel for a chamberpot.
There is a saying in the pit that miners, to use biblical terms, "shit on a shovel." They use coal dust for their toilet paper, because there is nowhere to wash their hands. The Minister grins and laughs, and looks surprised. He does not know about that, yet he is the Minister introducing what purport to be health and safety regulations. What sort of health regulations can there be when there are no toilets down the coal mines, and nowhere for a man to wash his hands before he eats his sandwiches during his break? He simply has to throw what is on the shovel on to the outbye and let the roof fall in on it. He cannot wash until he gets to the surface and the pithead baths and showers, perhaps three hours later. That is what health and safety is about.
There are also pneumoconiosis and emphysema. The House resisted the idea of paying compensation, and I am sorry that the previous occupant of the Chair, Mr. Lofthouse, is no longer in the Chamber, because he did so much for miners' health in that connection. He devoted his life to that cause.
Everyone with relatives in the coal industry knows how many men are carried out of the pit to the hospital. In Bassetlaw we managed to get a new hospital simply because while I was taking a health Minister round the hospital to show him why we needed a new one a man was brought out of the pit on a stretcher covered in blood and filth and there was nowhere to treat him properly. That is what the mining industry is about.
Mining is about foul air, too. Murderers, rapists and bank robbers serving long sentences wreck prisons and smash up their showers and toilets in some kind of protest, and people say, "We must stop slopping out." There is no slopping out down the pit. Below people's feet in my constituency, in south Yorkshire and north Nottinghamshire, there are men fighting for their jobs, fighting for the right to work like animals, while prisoners rioting above the ground get far more attention than the miners have ever had.
Who will be in charge of implementing the safety regulations? The manager. What an excuse! There is not even a Judge Tumim, the prison inspector who mildly complains that at the Wolds the prisoners stay in bed until half-past 10 with the curtains drawn because the sun would get in their eyes and wake them up. He is the inspector of prisons, and I am glad that he is, but where is the inspector of mines? Where is the new inspector who will go round every coal mine and ask why there is nowhere for the men to wash their hands?
The conditions are primitive. We are arguing about technicalities instead of establishing the day-to-day decencies that exist in every other industry. One of my hon. Friends referred to what Winston Churchill said in 1932. That was before I was born, but my dad was in prison—sorry, I mean, down the mine—then. He probably would have been better off in prison than down the mine even in those days. Winston Churchill said that
"special circumstances existed to differentiate coalminers from … many other industries … Others have spoken of the heat of the mine, the danger of firedamp, of the cramped position, of the muscular exertion of the miner, at work in the galleries perhaps a mile under the ground. I select the single fact of deprivation of light. That alone is enough to justify Parliament in directing upon the industry of coalmining a specially severe scrutiny and introducing regulations of a different character from those elsewhere."

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What has happened since 1932? The pits are deeper, hotter and more humid. Extraction rates have increased, and the heavy-duty machinery turns the coal out faster. Men are working more dangerous machinery in more cramped conditions, and they are working longer shifts. In longer shifts men get tired. We can increase the machinery; we can increase the productivity; we cannot increase human strength and endurance.
The National Union of Mineworkers has proved the dangers time after time. On 17 June last year a development worker employed by a private contracting firm was killed at the end of his shift because he was tired. On 10 March this year a washery plant manager was drawn between the drive wheels of a barrel washer. He had been working 12-hour shifts without a break for a significant period. On 19 March this year a service engineer was killed when he was hit by two runaway mine cars when he was walking out of the pit at the end of his shift. It is no coincidence that accidents occur when a substantial proportion of employees have worked for more than 48 hours that week—far longer than normal.
What sort of life will people living near the pits have when we have ultra-productivity and seven-day working? Every time a lorry backs up at a pit it sounds a klaxon horn, for safety reasons. Klaxon horns will be sounding all through Saturday night, and all through Sunday. What about people living within 100 yds of a pit? The people in charge will not bother about the heavy lorries, the pollution, the smoke and the dust.
Mr. Illsley: Is it not more likely that the Government will do away with the klaxon on the lorry?
Mr. Ashton: Many a true word is spoken in jest, but the klaxon is a necessary safety precaution, and people who live near the pits accept that. They put up with the noise from Monday to Thursday, although they sometimes complain that such work should not be done at night. People living in the neighbourhood of a pit put up with an enormous amount of inconvenience. They suffer because they know that their jobs are at stake, and that when the pit dies they will have no future left. That is why miners put up with those working conditions, for the sake of their kids and of their future.
When we privatise the prisons it seems that those involved can have whatever they like. When the Wolds opened people said what a wonderful prison it was because every prisoner would be able to have a clean pair of underpants every day. But we cannot find out how much that costs, who is making a profit and who is paying for it. Things are vastly different when it comes to selling off the pits.
Since privatisation began, and we have done away with so many rules and regulations, one thing has stood out a mile: Lloyd's, the insurance company, has damn near gone bust. For many years Lloyd's made a massive profit, but then we suddenly had ferries going down, with the bow doors being left open because the turnround time had been speeded up when the ferries were privatised. There was the King's Cross fire, because there was no time to consider the underground safety regulations. There are football disasters too, and disasters such as that on the Piper Alpha rig have brought Lloyd's to its knees.
There will be more disasters in the mines. Driven by the great push for more and more productivity, people will take short cuts, and the insurance companies will have to
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pay. There is no reason for safety standards to be changed now, and putting implementation into the hands of managers who are under pressure to deliver productivity is a recipe for disaster.
5.48 pm
Mr. Jack Thompson: I am the first member of the mining profession to be called to speak in this debate. Although I hesitate to compete with some of my colleagues who intervened earlier and referred to their 20 years' and 21 years' experience of the industry, I can claim to have 37 years' experience of the industry, particularly on the engineering side on which I want to concentrate. That was my forte and discipline. I spent time as an electrician in the mines and then as an engineer. I had some responsibility for supervising some of my colleagues' contemporaries in the mines in which I worked.
The important issue in the debate relates to the changes to the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 as a result of the new regulations. I worked in the industry from 1944 and, even before the 1954 Act, the priority was safety. Acts of Parliament and regulations have primarily been concerned with safety. Safety was enshrined in the 1954 Act.
The new regulations change the fundamental principle, which has already been referred to, that a workman in a mine is responsible for his own safety. In certain circumstances, he could refuse to work in a part of the mine that he thought was unsafe. A miner who took that decision was never criticised and action was generally taken to improve the situation so that the workman felt confident.
The new regulations make significant changes. There are seven pages of changes to the 1954 Act and the regulations contain 25 other changes and four modifications. My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) referred specifically to the role of deputies. I will not follow that line, because my hon. Friend made an excellent presentation on behalf of the union members whom he represents. However, he referred to an aspect on which I want to concentrate because it is fundamental to the changes proposed by the regulations and is critical for the mines. That aspect relates to the interpretation in paragraph 2(1) which states:
"In these regulations, unless the context otherwise requires … 'maintained' with respect to plant and equipment means maintained in relation to any matter which it is reasonably foreseeable will adversely affect the health and safety of any person in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair;"
The 1954 Act demanded that plant and equipment must be in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair. That is a very important difference.
I want now to refer to my experience as an electrician in the mines, because it reflects the protection of the 1954 Act and what it did for me. At four o'clock one morning, a machine at a coal face for which I was responsible as an electrician was damaged. Its flexible cable contained a tear about 18in long—I cannot say what that is in metric terms. I believed that that tear was dangerous and that it could cause a serious accident, if not an explosion. I decided to remove the power from the machine and the cable was changed. The overman in charge of production and the under-manager on the shift were not very happy about that.
I left the mine at about 8 am and went home to bed to get some sleep. I received a message to return to the mine to have an interview with the manager. The pit manager happened to be a lay Methodist preacher. When I went to

729
his office, I saw before me a piece of paper which was my notice. I was being fired. Everything on the paper was filled in except the signature. As a young married man with two children, I found that rather frightening.
I sat down and the pit manager asked me for an explanation. I explained why I had done what I did. Happily, a very good engineer defended me. He said that I had complied with the 1954 Act specifically all the way down the line. He said that he would not support any proposition to have me fired. Eventually, the manager withdrew the piece of paper. It was obviously a threat. The important point was that the 1954 Act protected me on that occasion.
The expression
"so far as is practicable"
occurs in paragraphs 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the regulations. I believe that that phrase is open to misinterpretation and abuse. I should have thought that the people in British Coal, as they are the people in the industry, would consider that phrase very carefully.
However, many hon. Members have received a copy of a document from British Coal today entitled "The Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations 1993", which was issued for this debate. The section relating to the appointment of a manager states:
"In accordance with Regulation 9(3) of the 1993 Regulations you shall so far as is practicable:—"
and there are then subsections (a) to (d) which are followed by 4(a) to (g) and the rest which all refer to
"as far as is practicable."
That expression does not appear in the 1954 Act.
Mr. Michael Forsyth: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what section 157 of the 1954 Act does? Does not it provide a defence of impracticability in respect of many of the Act's provisions?
Mr. Thompson: I fully understand. I do not know how many hours the Minister has spent down a mine. It cannot be too many—if any. The difference between the 1954 Act and the current changes relates to the statutory responsibility of everyone in the mining industry from the manager to the young boy who has just joined the industry. That is what is important. Everything will now be discretionary. "As is practicable" can mean anything to anyone. If I were still an engineer in the industry, I should consider the phrase a defence, and I would manage to use it successfully.
Mr. Cryer: Is not the crucial underlying legal position that if someone is injured and goes to court to claim compensation the employer can use the defence that it was not practicable to do something because it was too costly? Behind the phrase
"so far as is practicable"
lies the justification of expenditure which will, in effect, provide an argument for the employer to say, "It was far too costly and I couldn't therefore afford it." Therefore, compensation need not be paid. This is a cost-cutting measure and that is the essential application of the phrase.
Mr. Thompson: I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Such situations will certainly arise. However, having worked in the industry, I am concerned about how the regulations apply in respect of ventilation, the safety of
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mining equipment and the mechanical and electrical side of the industry. How do they affect roof supports and a range of other issues involved in the industry?
There is a loophole which I am sure many people in British Coal will be concerned about at colliery management level. However, they may not be so concerned about it at Hobart house, because it depends what is going to happen when the mines are privatised.
I also regret the demise of the mining qualifications board. That body was highly respected in the industry. It set and applied high standards. It appears that the Health and Safety Executive has recently given itself power to approve qualifications instead of the board. I do not know what that move means in respect of the level of qualifications that will be demanded in any level of management in the industry. It seems that we are moving into an area in respect of which the House will have no opportunity to challenge what the HSE does. At the moment, we can mount such challenges through the Minister. In other words, that is a step backwards.
I am also concerned about the Coal and Other Mines (Mechanics and Electricians) Regulations 1965. Colleagues who lived by those previous regulations, as I did, will also be concerned that significant changes will apparently take place. Under the regulations, the mechanic or electrician in charge of a mine must have a certificate if there are more than 75 prime movers in that mine. I do not know what that will mean in the context of the new propositions. He must also be at least 25 years old. Again, I do not know what that will mean in the context of the new propositions.
After studying the changes, it is obvious that responsibility for safety and health in British mines has been shifted from the Government—the Department of Trade and Industry or the Department of Employment—to an executive organisation that is not answerable to Parliament. As my colleagues have mentioned, there is a lead-in for the Government's privatisation programme. I also envisage complex legal issues being raised because of the rather loose wording of the regulations. Of course, the only beneficiaries will be lawyers.
I am sure that hon. Members who travel frequently would not like to see any detrimental changes in the regulations governing the qualifications and standards of airline pilots or ships' captains. I do not want to see detrimental changes in the regulations governing coal mining. The regulations are detrimental and a step backward.
6 pm
Mr. Kevin Hughes: The Minister shakes his head when listening to hon. Members with many years' experience of underground mining. I worked underground for more than 20 years, and for 15 years on the coal face. I wonder whether the Minister would like to tell the House and the country how many years' experience he has had of health and safety underground. What does he know about working underground, save from reading a brief that somebody in his Department has put together for him? Has it struck him that no hon. Member has supported what he is doing? Only two Conservative Members have spoken about this matter, and both were critical. One said that in no circumstances would he support the regulations.

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The other one was not quite sure; he wanted some assurances. Unfortunately, neither hon. Gentleman is present.
Mr. Michael Forsyth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hughes: I will not give way. The Minister did not give way to me, so I will not give way to him.
The right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) seeks assurances. Let me remind him that several Conservative Members sought and were given assurances in March last year, when the Government brought forward a White Paper. We know what happened to those assurances. Undoubtedly, it will be exposed in tomorrow's debate on the coal industry.
The way in which the regulations were laid before Parliament is a total disgrace. The Government conveniently waited until the House was in recess and, on 6 August, presented this statutory instrument which effectively wipes out the Mines and Quarries Act 1954. That instrument came into force on 1 October, before the House resumed. It is clear that the Government had no intention of allowing debate on this very important matter. It is despicable that the Government should use such methods to repeal important mine safety regulations. It is typical of the Government's underhand approach that they should sneak through changes during the recess. That shows the Government's contempt for democracy and for Parliament and its procedures.
Together with last week's announcement about abolishing the 1908 legislation, we now have the deregulation of mine safety and the extension of working hours for our miners. That will be a recipe for disaster. Hon. Members must make no mistake about it; the regulations are being put in place for one reason only and that is to pave the way for privatisation. That will create in our mines conditions that turn back the clock more than 100 years.
Mr. Etherington: Like many Opposition Members, my hon. Friend has a keen interest in, and a great knowledge of, the history of legislation covering the coal mining industry. Does he accept that, in the past, it was always the miners and their supporters who eventually managed to obtain improvements in legislation and that this is the first ever coal mining legislation which does not have the support of miners and their supporters?
Mr. Hughes: I certainly concur with my hon. Friend. It is outrageous that such measures are being brought forward in this way. We have seen improvements, but, unfortunately, they have usually been brought about because of an accident or other serious occurrence underground. Many hon. Members have campaigned on issues relating to health and safety underground. The Government are intent on destroying the regulations that have protected miners for many years.
Deregulated mine safety and longer working hours will lead to more injuries and deaths underground in our coal mines. No longer will our miners have the protection of strict rules and regulations to defend them from an owner whose main motivation is cost saving and higher profits. No longer will they have the protection of the mine deputy, because that position will be systematically scrapped by
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the legislation. Instead, they will be at the behest of a manager, with only loose guidelines on health and safety, whose main motivation is higher profits.
The people who pay the price for this stupid legislation will be our miners and their families. In introducing this legislation, the Government have shown their total disregard for the safety of our mines and our mineworkers. We can be in no doubt about what coal industry the Government want—one that is fragmented, low cost and low on safety. It seems that the Government do not give tuppence for the men who risk their lives each and ever, day in our coal mines.
6.8 pm
Mr. Eric Illsley: Like my colleagues, I shall speak against the mines administration package, not because we want to protect the deputies' union or any other union but because we regard the mines administration package as lowering safety standards in the mining industry. The Mines and Quarries Act 1954 is being replaced by a code of practice. We will have a code of practice which cannot be followed by the industry after the implementation of the regulations, whereas the 1954 Act placed statutory duties on the industry. For example, paragraph 96 of the code of practice on the management and administration of safety and health at mines states:
"All parts of a mine should be inspected".
The code of practice does not say that the mine shall or must be inspected—it simply states that it should be inspected. Therefore, if there is an accident, or if a roof falls in a mine that has not been inspected, the injured workmen cannot claim compensation because no statutory right is placed on the manager or the owner of the mine to inspect the whole of the colliery. The code of practice will cause real problems in the industry because there will not be statutory back-up.
The Minister said that the Health and Safety Commission had produced the new regulations and the code of practice because of inadequacies in the existing legislation. However, no one has mentioned any of those inadequacies, and I have not seen a list of the inadequacies which led the commission to produce the code of practice.
In 1988–89, the Select Committee on Energy—sadly, it is now defunct—produced a report on mine safety which included references to the mines administration package. We took evidence from the Health and Safety Executive and the Health and Safety Commission. No information was given to the Select Committee about any inadequacies in the 1954 Act or other legislation. Therefore, I am sceptical about the Minister's assertion that there is anything wrong with the 1954 Act.
This summer, we saw the tragic accident at Bilsthorpe, which used roof bolting. If the Minister looked at the Select Committee's report on mine safety in the 1988–89 Session, he would see the recommendation that we made about roof bolting. We pointed out that roof bolting was not the safest method of support in a mine and that the best form of support would be arched girders.
About a year ago, I attended a meeting with British Coal in the North Yorkshire area. We were treated to a discussion on roof bolting and given a big heavy document on its pros and cons. At that meeting, I was surprised when British Coal said that it realised that geological pressures in mines do not come down from on top but from the sides. It took British Coal only about 100 years to work that out,

733
but now it has the idea that it is okay to use roof bolts. The fact that roof bolting is a little cheaper is said to have nothing to do with it.
It is no surprise that the package has been introduced before a Bill to privatise the coal industry. We expect an announcement about such legislation in the Queen's Speech. When we look at all the measures relating to the coal industry that are before us at present, we see that the idea is simply to reduce safety standards, because safety costs money. It is fairly obvious that costs will be reduced before privatisation to make the coal industry a little more attractive to the private sector.
Safety regulations will be reduced as a result of repealing the 1908 Act, and the number of hours that a miner will be required to work underground will be increased to about 12. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) referred to accidents occurring at the end of shifts. Safety regulations will be reduced, working hours will be increased and—this is the most important part of the mines administration package—the statutory role of the colliery deputy will be removed. It is simply a matter of deregulating the industry to sell it. The Government want to sell to private mine owners who do not want to spend money on implementing safety measures.
All that will be done against the backdrop of a falling market. It seems absolutely crazy to introduce a mines administration package today when we will debate tomorrow the crisis in the coal industry—the further pit closures that we face as a result of the increased use of gas-fired generation. Why do not we wait to see what will happen to the industry before we jiggle with safety aspects? Why do not we wait to see what will happen to the industry in the future?
People in the industry, especially the electricity supply industry, are looking at 10 to 12 years of gas-fired generation, followed by the need to import gas. People at National Power have told me that they will bolt a coal gasifier to the back of a coal-fired power station to use coal again within 20 to 30 years. Collieries will be closed and, in 20, 30 or 40 years, coal will be imported, which will be put through gas-fired turbines. It is an absolutely crazy situation.
The major issue, which I referred to earlier in an intervention, is the role of the colliery deputy and the responsibility for safety. At present, the deputy has a statutory duty and statutory responsibilities with regard to safety in the mine. If there is an accident underground, the deputy has the power to stop production. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) referred to a situation in which he had done just that.
The deputy has statutory protection. An important point is that if the deputy has stopped production after an accident or a dangerous occurrence, the mine owner cannot sack, criticise or attack him for sticking to mine operating procedures. The deputy has always had that power.
The deputy has first-aid qualifications, especially with regard to the proper and carefully controlled use of morphine and other drugs underground. However, that responsibility will be handed to untrained supervisors and inspectors. The statutory requirement will be removed from deputies and handed to people who almost certainly will not have the same level of expertise or training.
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I have referred to the measuring of gas levels, the taking of dust recordings and so on. The Government will do away with the statutory duty that is placed on the deputy at present. That will divide production and safety. At present, the deputy is protected. In the future, the supervisor will probably be responsible for production and the inspector will be responsible for safety. There will be a clash when the inspector wants to stop the mine because of a safety matter and the supervisor wants to keep it going. It has not gone unnoticed that, in the midlands, supervisors will be paid production bonuses. The supervisor will want to keep the colliery going to ensure that the financial element is satisifed, whereas the inspector will not have that specific power. That is where the whole mines administration package is weakened.
Earlier, I referred to a document from the new mines working party. The document was put to the Select Committee on Energy in 1989 when the then director of technical operations, Mr. Moses—sadly, he is no longer with us—accused me of having a stolen document because of a specific paragraph in it. The document states:
"Possible sources for District Managers given the requirement for a Deputies ticket. This would tend to encourage the view that District Managers will have to have been safety inspectors."—
this is the crucial sentence—
"This might counter some of the benefits of separating safety and production."
The working party expressed the view that the industry would not be able to appoint district managers who would be willing to circumvent the safety aspects of the mine. It was worried that all the members who were employed would be deputies and, because they had been trained as deputies, would put safety first. The document reflects the fact that the working party did not expect safety to be paramount.
In the future, supervisors will not have any responsibilities for safety. They will be there simply to increase production—to get as much out of the pit as possible. In the present market, the only way that anyone will make money from selling coal is to undercut all other contracts in the coal mining industry. The only way to do that is to stop spending on safety, cut back on wages and take the industry back to the pre-1946 days of the private owners when conditions underground were absolutely diabolical.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, I can say yes, everyone in the industry wants major improvements, especially in sanitary facilities underground, which sadly do not exist. At the same time, we want safety to be paramount underground.
Mr. Jack Thompson: Will my hon. Friend accept that there were limited chemical toilet facilities in the mine where I worked? The problem was that they were at the shelf bottom and we worked 10 km away.
Mr. Illsley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. In the House we so often hear people speaking from the experiences of 20 and 30 years ago. Perhaps sanitary conditions underground are not as bad as we have been led to believe.
The mines administration package will have other results which cause me great concern. I think that future legislation will remove existing health and safety regulations. The regulations introduced after the Aberfan disaster could well be under threat, as could those introduced after the Markham Main and Houghton Main

735
disasters. Each of those disasters led to regulations that were designed to deal with the problems that had occurred. Those rules and laws are likely to be deregulated, as are those affected by the mines administration package.
It seems strange that although we have been dealing with the regulations since 1983 and with the various drafts since 1989—the Select Committee on Energy took evidence on such matters for a report in the 1989 Session —for some reason they were shoved before the House at the beginning of a recess. Why did that happen? It is absolutely diabolical.
In conclusion, the sum total of the regulations is that safety in mines will decrease.
6.21 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) that the laying of the regulations was disgraceful. The Minister claimed that he wanted to be able to give the regulations some high quality scrutiny, which delayed them. His scrutiny came to an end six days after Parliament rose for the recess, when he was able to lay the regulations and, concomitant with that, they became law before the House came back, so there was no opportunity for us to discuss them before they came into operation. Moreover, those regulations repeal large sections of primary legislation which were passed in this place and have simply been removed by the arbitrary fiat of the Minister.
The regulations were also laid during the recess because before it there had been a little trouble with Tory Back Benchers over Maastricht and the coal mines. By leaving the recess for the Tories to forget about such things, the Minister could pretty well depend on a majority when they came back.
Mr. Kevin Hughes: My hon. Friend has a lot of experience in the House. I am a relatively new Member. I have never seen a statutory instrument that is 28 pages long. Usually they are one sheet, or perhaps two or three at the outside. We are discussing a detailed 28-page statutory instrument. Does my hon. Friend want to comment on that?
Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend may be used to only tiny statutory instruments, but unfortunately many of the 3,500 statutory instruments per annum that the Government are laying—more than any other Parliament in our history—run to 40, 50 or 60 clauses and to as many pages.
This statutory instrument is important. The Minister knew that it was controversial, but as he is an arrogant, right-wing, goggle-eyed extremist, he does not care. That is the fact of the matter. He is on the right-wing fringe of the Tory party, so Parliament is not very important to him. The democratic processes are not important to him and, even if it had been 100 pages long, the statutory instrument would have received the same treatment. Due to their right-wing position, the Government believe that this legislation is a necessary preparation for privatisation. That is what Opposition Members believe.
The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which I chair and which meets every Tuesday, has not had the opportunity to examine the instrument because the Government insisted that if we wanted three hours to discuss it, it should be taken today instead of tomorrow, when we could have produced a report. The Committee's view is that there are defects in the instrument. We have
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asked the Department for some items of information, to which it has responded, but we cannot provide a response to the House because after all these years of consultation the Government insist that the statutory instrument must be discussed right now. It does not add up, except when one understands that they do not give a fig for the democratic processes.
Mr. Etherington: If my hon. Friend had had the opportunity to scrutinise the statutory instrument, which, as he is well aware, was presented to the Government by the Health and Safety Executive, would he not have been somewhat lukewarm towards it, knowing that the organisation which advised on it was the same organisation that gave the dispensation for roof bolting to be carried out at Bilsthorpe colliery? When that organisation had to report on the reasons for the failure of the roof bolts, it stated it was because they were in "unsatisfactory ground", although it had given permission for them to be used in such ground.
Mr. Cryer: We must continuously take into account the Health and Safety Executive and the Health and Safety Commission. That is why we should consider these statutory instruments—based on those bodies' recommendations—before the instruments come into operation, so that the weight of experience of working practices and the effect of existing legislation can be brought to bear instead of the academic approach of the HSE and the Commission.
As it happens, I was on the Committee of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work, etc. Bill. I and Alex Wilson —a working miner who had come to this place—were concerned to preserve the safety standards which had prevailed and to improve them. Between us, we managed to insert a phrase to ensure that delegated powers should be used only to maintain and improve existing standards as we were frightened that there would be an erosion of those standards. I very much regret that the amendment that I tabled, which would have required absolute provision to be retained, was not agreed by the Committee, because it would have made an important difference.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central mentioned the Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act 1969 and Aberfan. That strikes a chord. The House would not include the words
"so far as is practicable"
in that Act because it was a qualification. The Act states that mines and tips "shall be kept safe". The reason for the Act was that 90 little children were engulfed and the nation rose up in horror and said that it must never happen again. That has also happened when miners have been killed in serious mining accidents.
For years we have all said that we must have absolute safety standards and that pits and machinery shall be safe, but in this statutory instrument the regulations are all qualified. It is extraordinary. For example, clause 13 states:
"It shall also be the duty of the manager of the mine, so far as is practicable … to make suitable arrangements for recording the names of all persons who go below ground".
Is that really to be a qualified duty? Should it not be a requirement that everyone who goes under ground is recorded and that someone knows where they are? If that is done "so far as is practicable" and anyone is injured, the owner of the mine will be able to say, "I'm terribly sorry, but it was too costly: we would have had to bring in an extra man." The mine owner would be able to say that the cost was too high and that he had conformed with the

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statutory requirement. If that phrase were removed, there would be an absolute duty like that set out in section 14 of the Factories Act 1961 which states that dangerous machinery "shall be fenced". Under that legislation a worker had a good chance of compensation if his hand was chopped off. We do not want compensation for its own sake, but if the duties are absolute and something goes wrong, it is the worker and his family who suffer and compensation should be available.
These regulations reduce the level of claim in civil courts, so insurance premiums will come down. Insurance companies will feel more comfortable with this sort of legislation and, of course, private owners will, too. Their friends in Government are putting these regulations before us for that precise reason.
We shall vote against these regulations tonight. I hope that even one or two of those Tories who have been expressing such concern about mine safety will vote with us, as well as all the rag, tag and bobtail parties. We should make a clear commitment that when we get into office we will restore safety standards in mines and quarries at the same time as we restore them to public ownership.
6.30 pm
Mr. Michael Clapham: The Minister has failed to take into account the unique role of the deputy. That role has developed over more than a century and a half. The first legislation came in the 1840s, and the deputy's role gradually developed until it became enshrined in legislation in 1911. Then came the Mines and Quarries Act 1954.
The 1954 Act came into being as a result of the bitter experiences of the 19th century. The opportunities that it provided have resulted in British coal mines becoming the safest in the world due to the unique combination of the deputy's supervisory and safety roles. The separation of supervisory work from safety considerations will take us back to the bad situation which existed in the 19th century.
I will give the Minister an example. I spent 10 years at the coal face underground. Sometimes the undermanager on the coal face wanted the shearer machine to move down the face, but because the distance from the tunnel to the coal seam was more than seven yards the deputy could say, "No, that machine does not move". In other words, he could base his decision on considerations for the safety of the men working on the coal face and not have to face the difficulty of the undermanager coming back at him about that. Under these regulations, all of that will change. If a deputy decides to stop a job for safety reasons, he can expect the manager to override his decision. Production will have priority over safety considerations.
The Minister mentioned contract workers. They do not come under the same strict supervision as payroll workers. The rate of accidents is more than twice as high among contract workers as among payroll workers. That is the result of separating the safety role from the supervisory role.
Deregulation is taking place in readiness for privatisation. If the Minister were prepared to come clean, he would tell the House just that. Since 1985 we have seen the gradual Americanisation of British mines. After the strike, Mr. MacGregor sent his managers to see what was
738
happening in American mines and to come back with ideas, and gradually some of those ideas have been implemented—to the detriment of the men in the pits.
It is clear that the regulations will produce inferior safety standards in mines. Because the deputy's supervisory role is to be separate from his other role he will not be able to make the decisions that he made previously. If the Government had any real understanding of the situation and were prepared to listen to the compassion expressed on this side of the House, they would withdraw the code of practice and allow further consultations, particularly with the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers—the union responsible for implementing safety in mines.
6.35 pm
Mr. Martin O'Neill: I should like to start my speech, as so many of my colleagues have done, by referring to Bilsthorpe colliery. A few weeks after the disaster I had the opportunity to visit the colliery and to meet Mr. Robson, union officials and others. The devastating impact of that disaster on the whole community was clear. It has blighted the lives, not just of the suffering families, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) referred, but of the whole community. The disaster brings home to us the dangers that miners face every day when they cut coal and the need for tough safety regulations. Miners need to work in a climate or, to use a word that the Minister for Energy abused some weeks ago, a culture in which it is possible for safety and productivity to co-exist.
The debate is taking place because of the uproar following the way in which this statutory instrument was presented. It was not presented so much as slipped under the door as the House was closing for the summer recess. Despite the nine years of discussions, the Select Committee's deliberations on safety and the opportunities to comment, the only people who have not had an opportunity to comment until today are those who are ultimately responsible for safety regulations, namely, this House of Commons. We give a grudging welcome to today's opportunity because the handling of the matter—the presentation of a fait accompli—is not the way to establish a consensus on which safety procedures can proceed.
There have been several speeches, and some interventions were almost speeches. That is often the case when those who intervene speak with passion, authority and experience. I am thinking of the interventions of my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Mr. Cummings), for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) and for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes)—a sprinkling from across the whole British coalfield.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Sir H. Walker) was the author of the Health and Safety Commission. His speech was an erudite, passionate defence of the regulations that he and his right hon. Friends introduced so many years ago and consolidated into a code of practice acceptable to and understood by all sections of the industry. At the heart of it were his words that those involved "had a duty" to maintain and improve conditions.
What we see today is not the fulfilment of that duty so much as the avoidance of it and of detailed, explicit statutes from which to seek guidance. We have heard today of men taking the 1954 Act down the pit with them as their defence

739
against management which is sometimes stupid and sometimes insensitive in its pursuit of production. We know that this independence was enjoyed not just by the deputies but by the tradesmen and craftsmen who go down pits and have a critical role to play. The men always knew that, quite separate from the colliery management, there were the deputies and firemen.
Perhaps surprisingly, Opposition Members today have quoted Winston Churchill. Introducing the Coal Mines Bill of 1906 he said:
"The deputies and firemen are the non-commissioned officers of the Mining Industry, and just as non-commissioned officers are said to be the backbone of the British Army, so the deputies and firemen are the essential foundation on which the safety and security of the mines mainly repose."
It may seem almost heretical of me to say this, but I do not think that the pit deputies are necessarily candidates for canonisation. They can be a pain in the neck—indeed they are, both to the management and to the men winning the coal—but they have their own standards; they have independence, based on statute and consolidated in the 1954 Act. This means that when men in my constituency go down the pit, their wives and families and people like me who send them down there have confidence that, if it is sensible and safe for them to work, they will work.
That is not at all the same as saying that it is "practicable", an expression that has infected this debate. There have been many references to the phrase "as far as is practicable". We do not want our people to be safe as far as is practicable. We want the miners in the coal mines of this country to win the coal on our behalf with the guarantee that there will be no conflict of interest underground between the demands of production and those of safety.
We know, on the basis of 40 or so years of public ownership, that it is possible to balance those two elements. Our coal industry is more successful now than any other deep mining industry in the world. It operates under geological difficulties far in excess of those anywhere else across the globe.
We know that if miners are given the right opportunities and technology they can do the job safely and effectively. And we know what happened at Bilsthorpe: the men were required to dig coal for their livelihood, but corners were cut by means of roof bolting and skin-to-skin technology. That resulted in a tragic accident that could have been anticipated. The 1989 Allerton Bywater report identified the dangers caused by the erosion of residual pillars. The warnings were clear for all to see, but as Bilsthorpe was fighting for its life, it seems that other considerations took precedence.
The miners should never have been forced to choose between these considerations. Ministers knew that they were offering false hope to the men. Similarly, the choice between productivity and safety is essentially a false one.
Mr. Alexander: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I have him wrong, but is he seriously saying that three men died at Bilsthorpe because corners were cut?
Mr. O'Neill: Yes. The roof bolting was not the major contributory factor. As the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) pointed out, perhaps the inspectors protested too much in that respect. However, in the context of the skin-to-skin approach, without guarantees of proper pillars to hold up the coal around the workings there was a serious threat to which the men should not have been exposed.
740
Safety is not incompatible with increased productivity under a system of public ownership. We are proud of the record of the publicly owned British coal industry, and we are proud that the arrangements for safety have always been based on consensus. This is the first time an issue of safety has been the subject of division in the House. In the weeks and months ahead the House will face the challenge of the Government's proposals to privatise ownership of the coal industry. The Government want to create conditions that will attract foreign investors to our industry to buy the mines from the Government.
Increased safety is fine, but let us have safety arrangements that enjoy the confidence of the miners group in this House, for instance. We ask the miners of this country to make the sacrifices involved in going underground, after all.
It is very difficult for the Minister to provide us with evidence of fatalities in private mines because, as we know, the HSE does not calculate the figures separately. More importantly, however, why are these figures not to be made available? Will the Minister admit that the reason is that it would be deeply embarrassing for the Government and the HSE if the figures were made known?
If the Government do not have statistics, I can give them mine. The accident rate in the private mining sector is three times higher than that in British Coal. The risk of death in private licensed mines is greater than it is in British Coal mines, and the fatality rate in private United States mines is three times greater than the rate in publicly owned British Coal. It is no use Ministers claiming that this last statistic can be explained by the different geological conditions in America. If anything, conditions there are easier. The United States should therefore have a lower accident rate.
The truth is that the system of ownership in America does not lend itself to safety because the pursuit of profit is always put before safety in the private mines. The outcome of this debate will determine not how many men go down a pit to cut coal but how many come out of the pit at the end of a shift. Even as we speak, British colliery managers have nothing more than vague, unspecified guidelines to follow—instructions that are so inadequate that the managers are still hanging on to the tried and tested procedures in the Mines and Quarries Act 1954.
Surely it would have been more sensible if Ministers had taken the time to come up with a consensus on safety, since consensus has served the industry so well for so long.
There have been times in the House in recent months when Tory Members have supported us and the coal industry. I urge those who have voted with us to save the coal industry to join us in the Lobbies tonight to vote down these mean and dangerous regulations. Our task tonight is not to save miners' jobs; it is to save miners' lives.
6.48 pm
Mr. Michael Forsyth: With the leave of the House, I should like to try to answer as many of the points made in the debate as I can. I shall be happy to write to hon. Members about any important matters that I do not have time to deal with.
The hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) made much of the "practicable" point as it applies to the regulations. He was echoed in that by the hon. Members for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) and for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).

741
The hon. Member for Wansbeck waved the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 and asked where the test of practicability was to be found in that Act. If he turns to section 157, he will find that it states:
"It shall be a defence in any legal proceedings to recover damages and in any prosecution, in so far as the proceedings or prosecution are or is based on an allegation of a contravention, in relation to a mine or quarry, of—

(a) a provision of this Act…

(b) a direction, prohibition, restriction…

(c) a condition attached to an exemption".

It goes on to say that it shall be a defence
"to prove that it was impracticable to avoid or prevent the contravention."
The hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members argued that the idea of practicability was new. That argument is undermined by the fact that the 1954 legislation was subject to that test of practicability.
Mr. Derek Enright: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Forsyth: No. I have many issues that I wish to raise.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) said that the mines inspectorate has too close a relationship with British Coal. That was unworthy of him and I venture to remind him of the argument made by a number of his hon. Friends that the British coal industry has an excellent record.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Forsyth: No, I have already said that I want to deal with many arguments.
A number of hon. Members said that our coal industry had the best safety record in the world. That record might have something to do with the quality of the mines inspectorate and its splendid work. It is regrettable that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras should have sought to cast aspersions on the integrity and independence of the mines inspectorate, which has supported the proposals.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) asked me an important question about the division of responsibility for supervision and inspection. He specifically asked about what would happen in an emergency. The regulations separate supervision from inspection. The advantages of that separation are clear. If the person in charge is miles away making an inspection, he cannot supervise the men at the coal face.
My right hon. Friend also asked who was responsible in an emergency. The supervisor for an area, as is normal throughout the industry, would be responsible. Of course, if an inspector on his rounds finds something that requires immediate action, he must take it. In all other circumstances, he reports matters requiring attention to the supervisor, who has a duty to arrange remedial action. I hope that that will reassure my right hon. Friend.
The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) asked me about an important matter that has been raised by several hon. Members and said that my answer to his question would determine whether he supported the Government in the Lobby tonight. I hope that my answer will be clear. He said that the ability to halt the process for safety reasons had been removed. That is not so. Section 79 of the Mines
742
and Quarries Act 1954 makes it the duty of the person in charge of any part of the mine, if there is an immediate danger, to withdraw the workers. The Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations do not change section 79. On the basis of that assurance, I hope that we will have the support of the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues tonight.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) took me to task over the timing of the regulations. I explained to him why there had been a delay in tabling the regulations before the House and why we felt that we had to comply with the suggested timetable of the Health and Safety Commission. I will certainly bring his remarks to the attention of the commission. I hope that he will understand the reasons why Ministers have acted as they have.
The right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Sir H. Walker) has played an important part in ensuring that we have an excellent Health and Safety Commission in this country and high standards of health and safety. As he said, he was the sponsoring Minister, and he asked whether it was right—he almost suggested that it was not right—for the regulations not to improve or maintain safety standards. Section 1(2) of the legislation, for which he was responsible, requires the commission to introduce proposals that maintain and improve safety. The explanatory memorandum attached to the regulations states:
"The proposals are necessary in order to improve and strengthen the current statutory requirements which have certain defects and anomalies."
I suggest that if the right hon. Gentleman were the Minister responsible, he, like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself, would have felt moved to table the regulations before the House, given the Health and Safety Commission's recommendations.
The right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central said that mining was different from other industries and that the Health and Safety Commission should not tamper with existing legislation. It is true that the safety record since the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 was introduced has been considerable. However, that does not mean that there is no room for improvement or that the target-setting approach endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is inappropriate for the mining industry. That approach was adopted post-Cullen in another hazardous industry—offshore oil production.
The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) suggested that in some underground areas nobody would be qualified to test for gas, but that is not so. In every underground area there will have to be a supervisor who must have, as a minimum, the qualifications of a deputy, including the ability to test for gas. Every inspector must be qualified to test for gas, and has the duty to do so.
The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), in an ill-tempered contribution, talked about the regulations being inspired by privatisation. I am at a loss to understand how he can describe a process that began in 1983—consultation on the regulations began in 1988—as being driven by the requirements of privatisation. I also fail to understand his apparent belief that the Health and Safety Commission's determination to seek privatisation was so great that it would override its statutory duties.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) said that accidents were being caused because shifts were too long. Some work has been done on the relationship between

743
accident frequency and the time of the shift when the accident took place. The work shows that most accidents occur mid-shift and there is no discernible increase towards the end of the shift.
Mr. Enright: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Forsyth: No, I will not.
The hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) criticised me for never having worked down a coal mine. My workplace is the House of Commons, as is his. One of my activities in the House is to listen to the contributions of hon. Members. The hon. Gentleman suggested that my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark had said that they were going to vote against the regulations.
The hon. Member for Doncaster, North was talking absolute nonsense as both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend made important and supportive contributions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Selby was at pains to describe how the regulations had issued from the Health and Safety Commission. He said that we were entitled to take them seriously, given that organisation's track record in maintaining health and safety standards in this country.
The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central talked about a code of practice replacing legislation, and its being a retrograde step. A breach of the codes of practice will be a prima facie case for a breach of the regulations. It is nonsense to compare—as many Opposition Members did —an approved code of practice with a voluntary requirement which does not have statutory force.
The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central also said that no evidence was being produced for the need for a new law. However, in submitting the MASHAM proposals, the Health and Safety Commission made it clear that they were necessary to deal with some defects and anomalies in existing law, chiefly that those in immediate charge in a deputy's district—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) and others have had their say, but he and his friends do not want to hear the answers. They know that the Health and Safety Commission have acted in the interests of safety, while they have spoken for the interests of trade unions, which is not the same.
The regulations have been produced to ensure that the highest standards of safety are maintained in mines. The Opposition have put up a dreadful showing tonight, and have shown where their interests lie. I commend the regulations to the House.
Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 254, Noes 292.

Division No. 368]

[6.59 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Adams, Mrs Irene

Bell, Stuart

Ainger, Nick

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Bennett, Andrew F.

Allen, Graham

Benton, Joe

Alton, David

Bermingham, Gerald

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Berry, Dr. Roger

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Betts, Clive

Armstrong, Hilary

Blair, Tony

Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

Blunkett, David

Ashton, Joe

Boateng, Paul

Austin-Walker, John

Boyce, Jimmy

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Boyes, Roland

Barnes, Harry

Bradley, Keith

Barron, Kevin

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Battle, John

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

Bayley, Hugh

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

744

Byers, Stephen

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Caborn, Richard

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Callaghan, Jim

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

Hutton, John

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Ingram, Adam

Canavan, Dennis

Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

Cann, Jamie

Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

Chisholm, Malcolm

Jamieson, David

Clapham, Michael

Janner, Greville

Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Jones, leuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

Clelland, David

Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

Coffey, Ann

Jowell, Tessa

Connarty, Michael

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Keen, Alan

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

Corbyn, Jeremy

Khabra, Piara S.

Corston, Ms Jean

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

Cousins, Jim

Leighton, Ron

Cryer, Bob

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Cummings, John

Lewis, Terry

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

Livingstone, Ken

Darling, Alistair

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Davidson, Ian

Loyden, Eddie

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Lynne, Ms Liz

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

McAllion, John

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

McAvoy, Thomas

Denham, John

McCartney, Ian

Dewar, Donald

McCrea, Rev William

Dixon, Don

Macdonald, Calum

Dobson, Frank

McFall, John

Donohoe, Brian H.

Mackinlay, Andrew

Dunnachie, Jimmy

McLeish, Henry

Eagle, Ms Angela

Maclennan, Robert

Eastham, Ken

McMaster, Gordon

Enright, Derek

McWilliam, John

Etherington, Bill

Madden, Max

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Maddock, Mrs Diana

Ewing, Mrs Margaret

Mahon, Alice

Fatchett, Derek

Mandelson, Peter

Faulds, Andrew

Marek, Dr John

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Fisher, Mark

Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

Flynn, Paul

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

Martlew, Eric

Foster, Don (Bath)

Maxton, John

Foulkes, George

Meale, Alan

Fraser, John

Michael, Alun

Fyfe, Maria

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Galloway, George

Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

Gapes, Mike

Milburn, Alan

Garrett, John

Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

Gerrard, Neil

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Morgan, Rhodri

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Morley, Elliot

Godsiff, Roger

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'nshawe)

Golding, Mrs Llin

Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Gordon, Mildred

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Gould, Bryan

Mowlam, Marjorie

Graham, Thomas

Mudie, George

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Mullin, Chris

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Murphy, Paul

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

Grocott, Bruce

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Gunnell, John

O'Hara, Edward

Hain, Peter

Olner, William

Hanson, David

O'Neill, Martin

Hardy, Peter

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Harman, Ms Harriet

Paisley, Rev Ian

Henderson, Doug

Parry, Robert

Heppell, John

Patchett, Terry

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Pendry, Tom

Hinchliffe, David

Pickthall, Colin

Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

Pike, Peter L.

Home Robertson, John

Pope, Greg

Hood, Jimmy

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Hoon, Geoffrey

Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Hoyle, Doug

Prescott, John

745

Primarolo, Dawn

Spellar, John

Purchase, Ken

Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

Quin, Ms Joyce

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Radice, Giles

Steinberg, Gerry

Randall, Stuart

Stevenson, George

Raynsford, Nick

Stott, Roger

Redmond, Martin

Strang, Dr. Gavin

Rendel, David

Straw, Jack

Robertson, George (Hamilton)

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Roche, Mrs. Barbara

Tipping, Paddy

Rogers, Allan

Turner, Dennis

Rooker, Jeff

Vaz, Keith

Rooney, Terry

Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Wallace, James

Rowlands, Ted

Walley, Joan

Ruddock, Joan

Wareing, Robert N

Salmond, Alex

Watson, Mike

Sedgemore, Brian

Wicks, Malcolm

Sheerman, Barry

Wigley, Dafydd

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Williams, Rt Hon Alan (SW'n W)

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Wilson, Brian

Short, Clare

Winnick, David

Simpson, Alan

Wise, Audrey

Skinner, Dennis

Worthington, Tony

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Wray, Jimmy

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

Wright, Dr Tony

Smith, Rt Hon John (M'kl'ds E)

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Snaps, Peter

Tellers for the Ayes:

Soley, Clive

Mr. Eric Illsley and

Spearing, Nigel

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle.

NOES

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Chapman, Sydney

Aitken, Jonathan

Churchill, Mr

Alexander, Richard

Clappison, James

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

Amess, David

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Ancram, Michael

Coe, Sebastian

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Colvin, Michael

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Congdon, David

Ashby, David

Conway, Derek

Aspinwall, Jack

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Atkins, Robert

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Cormack, Patrick

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Couchman, James

Baldry, Tony

Cran, James

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

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

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Bates, Michael

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Bellingham, Henry

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Bendall, Vivian

Day, Stephen

Beresford, Sir Paul

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Devlin, Tim

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Dickens, Geoffrey

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Dicks, Terry

Booth, Hartley

Dorrell, Stephen

Boswell, Tim

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Dover, Den

Bowis, John

Duncan, Alan

Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

Duncan-Smith, Iain

Brandreth, Gyles

Dunn, Bob

Brazier, Julian

Durant, Sir Anthony

Bright, Graham

Dykes, Hugh

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Eggar, Tim

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Elletson, Harold

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Burns, Simon

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Burt, Alistair

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Butcher, John

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Butterfill, John

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Carlisle, John (Luton North)

Evennett, David

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Faber, David

Carrington, Matthew

Fabricant, Michael

Carttiss, Michael

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Cash, William

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Fishburn, Dudley

746

Forman, Nigel

McLoughlin, Patrick

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Forth, Eric

Madel, David

Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

Maitland, Lady Olga

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Malone, Gerald

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Mans, Keith

Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

Marland, Paul

French, Douglas

Marlow, Tony

Fry, Peter

Marshall, John (Hendon S)

Gale, Roger

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Gallie, Phil

Mates, Michael

Gardiner, Sir George

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

Mellor, Rt Hon David

Garnier, Edward

Merchant, Piers

Gill, Christopher

Milligan, Stephen

Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

Mills, Iain

Gorst, John

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Moate, Sir Roger

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Monro, Sir Hector

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Grylls, Sir Michael

Moss, Malcolm

Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

Needham, Richard

Hague, William

Nelson, Anthony

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Neubert, Sir Michael

Hannam, Sir John

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Hargreaves, Andrew

Nicholls, Patrick

Harris, David

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Haselhurst, Alan

Norris, Steve

Hawkins, Nick

Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

Hawksley, Warren

Oppenheim, Phillip

Hayes, Jerry

Ottaway, Richard

Heald, Oliver

Page, Richard

Hendry, Charles

Paice, James

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Patnick, Irvine

Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence L.

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Hill, James (Southampton Test)

Pawsey, James

Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Horam, John

Pickles, Eric

Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Porter, David (Waveney)

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

Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

Rathbone, Tim

Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

Redwood, Rt Hon John

Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

Renton, Rt Hon Tim

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

Richards, Rod

Hunter, Andrew

Riddick, Graham

Jack, Michael

Robathan, Andrew

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

Jenkin, Bernard

Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

Jessel, Toby

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Sackville, Tom

Key, Robert

Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim

Kilfedder, Sir James

Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

King, Rt Hon Tom

Shaw, David (Dover)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

Knapman, Roger

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

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

Shersby, Michael

Knox, Sir David

Sims, Roger

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Lang, Rt Hon Ian

Soames, Nicholas

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Speed, Sir Keith

Legg, Barry

Spencer, Sir Derek

Leigh, Edward

Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Lidington, David

Spink, Dr Robert

Lightbown, David

Spring, Richard

Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

Sproat, Iain

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Lord, Michael

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Luff, Peter

Steen, Anthony

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Stephen, Michael

MacKay, Andrew

Stern, Michael

Maclean, David

Stewart, Allan

747

Streeter, Gary

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

Sumberg, David

Waller, Gary

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Ward, John

Taylor, Ian (Eshar)

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

Waterson, Nigel

Temple-Morris, Peter

Watts, John

Thomason, Roy

Whitney, Ray

Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

Whittingdale, John

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Widdecombe, Ann

Thomton, Sir Malcolm

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Thumham, Peter

Wilkinson, John

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Willetts, David

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

Wilshire, David

Tracey, Richard

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Tredinnick, David

Wolfson, Mark

Trend, Michael

Wood, Timothy

Trotter, Neville

Yeo, Tim

Twinn, Dr Ian

Young, Rt Hon Sir George

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Viggers, Peter

Tellers for the Noes:

Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

Mr. Robert G. Hughes and

Walden, George

Mr. James Arbuthnot.

Question accordingly negatived.

Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland)
7.15 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Michael Ancram): I beg to move,
That the draft Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1993, which was laid before this House on 18th October, be approved.
Before I comment in detail on the more significant provisions, I should perhaps explain to the House the reason why the draft order was withdrawn and relaid on 18 October. The draft order previously laid before the House contained a textual omission from article 28, which relates to the substituted article 116 of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. That article made provision for regulations governing the repayment or reduction of grant in specified circumstances.
As a result of that technical defect, the order as originally laid would not have provided the necessary vires for the recovery of enhanced value of the proceeds from surplus school property which currently exists in article 116 of the 1986 order. It was always intended that the new order should provide for the vires to continue unchanged. For the same reason, an identical amendment has been made to part II, schedule 4, which deals with colleges of education. The opportunity has also been taken in schedules 4 and 5 to correct a similar deficiency in the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, relating to grant-maintained integrated schools.
Rev. Ian Paisley: What sort of numbers will be involved, going back to 1967, if schools want to take the opt-out option?
Mr. Ancram: If the hon. Gentleman waits a little, I shall explain the provisions on the 100 per cent. grant, to which I think he was referring. I am merely explaining why the order was withdrawn and relaid. The reasons were essentially technical. I hope that the House will appreciate that there is no other reason behind the withdrawal and relaying of the order. If, when the hon. Gentleman has heard what I have to say, he still wishes to ask a question, I shall respond to it then.
The order has been the subject of wide consultation with educational interests in Northern Ireland. In addition to being sent to all schools and colleges of further education and their boards of governors, the order was sent to more than 100 other individuals and bodies, including the universities, the education and library boards, the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools, the Northern Ireland Curriculum Council, the Northern Ireland Schools Examinations and Assessment Council, the main teachers' unions and the four main Churches.
I should like to record my appreciation of the interest shown by the 70 or so educational bodies and individuals who submitted comments. Most of them were supportive and generally welcomed the proposals. All the comments were carefully considered. As a result of the comments, several changes have been made to the draft order. I shall deal with those changes a little later.
I am sure that the House will appreciate that the order is large and detailed. I should like to comment on the main points of interest.
Sir James Kilfedder: Can the Minister tell me whether the Protestant Churches support the order?
Mr. Ancram: I have to be cautious how I answer because the order covers a great deal of ground and I suspect that the Churches would support some parts and be less supportive of others. I know that representations have been made about one or two of the points in the order. In one case I have sought to alleviate the concerns by making a change in the order itself. I shall mention that later.
I shall now discuss the main provisions. I am happy to answer any questions about the other provisions during the debate, but it is to a large extent a technical order and I am sure that there are aspects of it into which hon. Members will not wish to delve in too much detail.
I start with what is perhaps one of the main issues—that of competitive tendering. Parts II and III of the order deal with competitive tendering and general administration of public supply and works contracts by education and library boards in Northern Ireland. The Government's policy of subjecting public services to external comparison with the private sector is already well established throughout the United Kingdom. The results of the policy of competition are becoming self-evident. In Northern Ireland, annual savings of about £7·9 million have been achieved in the health service, and in the civil service the exposure of services to competition has realised savings of about £6·1 million per year. Indeed, the benefits of competitive tendering have already been recognised by the education and library boards and most of the activities defined in the order have also already been, or are planned to be, submitted to the competitive tendering process. The savings generated to date by the boards amount to about £1·2 million per year and it is important to recognise that those savings are retained by boards for the benefit of the education service.
Although the boards have been making good progress on a voluntary basis, it is nevertheless necessary, in my view, to provide a firmer legislative framework for the policy.
I emphasise that the order does not cover compulsory privatisation or compulsory contracting out. Boards will continue to be responsible for the provision of services and their direct labour organisations will be entitled to tender for the work. Indeed all the education and library board contracts have to date been won by the boards' direct labour organisations. It is important to understand that boards will specify and monitor the outputs and standards of service they require, whether the service is provided "in-house" or by private contractors. In that way legislation will not mean a lowering of standards, as some people suggest; rather it will provide for greater choice, leading to improved efficiency and better services.
Part III of the order contains important provisions that will bring the education and library boards into line with the operation of competitive tendering of district councils in Northern Ireland. In particular, article 22 will allow my Department to specify information which contractors will be required to provide if they wish to tender for work. That is designed to counter the possibility of fraudulent exploitation of the tendering process, and to act as a filter for any attempts by non bona fide contractors to win contracts. That safeguard will be available, if required, to combat any such threat. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Down (Sir J. Kilfedder) for his obvious support.
750
I shall now discuss the second part of the order—article 28 and its related schedule 2—in detail. They deal with the introduction of an option for 100 per cent. capital funding for voluntary schools. I shall explain later why it is an option.
Voluntary schools are at present eligible for 85 per cent. grants on capital works. Many schools are finding it increasingly difficult to meet their share of the capital cost, at a time when additional accommodation is especially required to meet education reform curriculum requirements. Against that background, detailed discussions took place last year with the voluntary school authorities. As a result of agreement reached in those discussions, the order provides that a voluntary school that is prepared to change management arrangements to ensure that no single interest has a majority on the board of governors will be eligible for 100 per cent. capital funding. That is an option for all voluntary schools, whether under Catholic or other management.
The new arrangements will not, and are not intended to, affect the existing ethos of any voluntary school. The trustee parent and teacher representatives are likely to continue to reflect the ethos of the school. Before appointing its nominees, the Department of Education will consult with the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools in the case of Catholic maintained schools and with the board of governors in the case of voluntary grammar schools. No school will be obliged to adopt the new arrangements; that is why they remain optional. All voluntary schools may retain their existing management arrangements, but if they do so capital grants will continue to be paid at the existing rate of 85 per cent. There are obviously cost implications in paying higher capital grant rates. I can confirm, however, that that additional pressure on the education budget has been fully taken into account when reaching decisions about public expenditure allocations over the next three years.
Rev. Ian Paisley: If a Roman Catholic maintained school takes that option, does it come out from under the CCMS directly on to the board, or does it remain under the council with its particular disciplinary regulations?
Mr. Ancram: It remains under the CCMS, but it falls under the arrangements that effectively apply to controlled schools in terms of their capital grant. To that extent, we are trying to put all schools on the same footing.
The option of 100 per cent. capital funding to the voluntary school sector reinforces the Government's targeting social need policy. Schools serving areas of social deprivation will not be prevented from providing adequate accommodation for their pupils because of difficulties in raising voluntary funds. The new arrangements will ensure equity of funding across all sectors and equality of funding for all pupils. Finally, they represent a new partnership between voluntary schools and the public authorities which reflects a degree of confidence and trust in one another.
I shall now discuss the amendments made by article 31. They are designed to complement the tighter controls being exercised in awarding premature retirement compensation to teachers, following a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee. I hope that the purpose is simple: to allow compensating authorities to impose a charge equivalent to all or part of the award made, when they have good reason to believe that the organisation

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responsible for deciding the award has not acted in accordance with the purpose of the compensation scheme, or has made an excessive award.
As a result of consideration during the consultation period, the recovery provisions have been further clarified, including the facility to phase recovery over a maximum period of 10 years. Their substance and effect are nevertheless the same as in the original proposal.
For some time, boards have been seeking authority from my Department to raise and retain revenue through commercial activities that would be complementary to their existing statutory services and activities. Article 32 is designed to meet that requirement. Any such activity will, of course, be subject to the approval of the Department and must not be detrimental to boards' primary educational responsibilities. Any revenue in that way will, as in the case of savings secured through competitive tendering, be available to boards for the improvement or development of the education services for which they are responsible.
The draft order also makes provision in article 34 and schedule 3 for the amalgamation of the Northern Ireland School Examinations and Assessment Council and the Northern Ireland Curriculum Council into a single body, to be known as the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment.
Following the 1989 Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order, the two councils were set up separately because at that time the Government felt that it was important that when the reforms were being introduced there should be separate organisations to ensure that the exigencies of assessment—in other words, what could be tested—did not constrain or determine what should be taught in schools. Now that the programmes of study and the attainment targets are in place, however, the Government believe that the time is right to take forward the development of the curriculum and the assessment arrangements in a holistic way so that each can be seen to be supportive of and consistent with the other. I believe that that will establish an effective and integrated system which will work to the best advantage of schools, pupils and parents.
In the proposal for the draft order, article 37 limited the number of boards of governors of which a person can be a member to three. The reason behind that was that being a member of a school board of governors is a challenging and time-consuming task and it is unreasonable to expect a volunteer—for that is what governors are—to be able to devote the time and effort necessary to sustain a worthwhile contribution to more than three boards of governors at once. That is especially true since most governors are already holding down jobs and many, such as education and library board members, also have other pressing demands on their free time.
Having said that, convincing arguments were made during consultation that I should be prepared to consider exceptions to that rule for individuals with particular expertise, categories of people who are required to be appointed, or simply in circumstances where it would be in the interests of schools to have certain individuals on more than three boards of governors at once. In response to those arguments, the proposal was amended to give my Department discretion to approve membership of more than three boards in individual cases.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome the fact that the Minister has taken on board some of the
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representations that have been made to him. Will he accept that some people have given voluntary service in a dedicated way and have contributed much to education in Northern Ireland? Will he give an undertaking to the House that the order will not be used adversely against those in a controlled sector and that the exceptions will not be allowed only in the maintained sector?
Mr. Ancram: I appreciate why the hon. Gentleman raises that point and I have had representations made to me about it. There are instances, such as when the instrument of government of a school requires a certain office bearer to be a governor, when it may not be possible to restrict the number of boards to three. There were suggestions that that affected one denomination and not the other. The hon. Gentleman will have noted that I have effectively outlined three areas of criteria and I intend to exercise the discretion that this gives me in an even-handed way.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome that response, but Ministers are transient and officials guide successive Ministers. May we have something more permanent than, the commitment of a Minister, although I respect him and accept his undertaking, because this is legislation for the future as well as the present?
Mr. Ancram: All I can say is that I have laid out the criteria that the change in the order is designed to meet. Those are the criteria that I and my Department intend to operate. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said and it will be on the record.
I have made a number of other changes in the order before the House, partly in response to consultation and partly in response to changed circumstances. I have withdrawn the provision to establish a system of statementing appeals tribunals. There was a clear view during consultation that independent tribunals would be superior and I wish to consult further about that.
I have also withdrawn the provision to change the timing of key stage 2 assessment for use in the transfer procedure. I know that that has caused some concern in the Province. I am convinced that assessment outcomes should not be used in this way and that separate arrangements based on the curriculum followed by each pupil are necessary for transfer purposes.
I have removed provisions for the amalgamation of institutions of further education in different board areas, simply because no such amalgamations are planned. On further education, I have responded to representations from teachers' unions by including provisions to require my Department, before making a determination, to amalgamate institutions of further education and to consult with associations which are representative of staff and students.
As I said earlier, the remaining provisions in the order are largely technical and administrative. I could cover a lot more, but I know that this hour and a half is very valuable and I wish to allow hon. Members as much time as possible to raise any points, to which I shall do my best to reply in detail. At this stage I shall go no further into the details. Nevertheless, this is an important and significant, if somewhat varied, order and I commend it to the House.
7.34 pm
Mr. Roger Stott: On behalf of, I hope, everyone in the House, I should like to congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on a personal milestone. Fifteen years ago today you entered the House as the hon. Member for

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Pontefract and Castleford. I offer you my sincere congratulations on staying the pace and I wish you a happy anniversary as a Member of Parliament—I hope that will ensure that I am called again.
The order contains no fewer than 54 articles and five schedules. To describe this legislation as wide ranging would be an understatement. The Government appear to have cobbled together a series of individually important education changes and thrown them all into a general document, and allowed very little time in which the provisions could be comprehensively scrutinised or debated.
Many Members from Northern Ireland make a point consistently about the awful practice of using Orders in Council. We are not allowed to amend the order. As on most other occasions, it is rather like the curate's egg—in some parts it is good and in other parts it is very bad. Under those constraints, I shall attempt to highlight some of the Labour party's concerns about the Government's proposals. There are many concerns, but I have time to highlight only a few.
I am told that the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), the Under-Secretary of State, is building a reputation as a listening Minister. Only last week during Question Time, the hon. Member for Antrim, East (Mr. Beggs) said:
"The Minister is establishing a reputation already as a listener".—[Official Report, 21 October 1993; Vol. 230, c. 376.]
The Minister needs to work harder on that image because, although he may have listened to the disquiet expressed during the consultation period on the draft order, he has paid scant attention to the many contributions that his Department has received. It has received contributions from organisations such as the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance, the Irish National Teachers Organisation, the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers and the Northern Ireland Council of Trade Unions. Each of those organisations, which represent those working day to day in Northern Ireland schools and colleges, have expressed serious reservations about the Government's proposals.
The Minister has refused to heed the warnings from the professionals in favour of pursuing his Government's rigid dogma. Instead of attempting to tackle the crisis of confidence in the Government's botched education reforms, he has decided to implement compulsory competitive tendering, a move opposed by all the organisations to which I referred.
Part II of the order makes provision for the contracting out of public services. These are measures which have already been introduced in other parts of the United Kingdom, as we know to our cost, and they have had disastrous consequences for those working in the public sector. The experience of compulsory competitive tendering in the rest of the United Kingdom has meant that in the past year alone 49,000 men and women have lost their jobs in local government. Under the compulsory competitive tendering regime, many now have poorer conditions of employment and, for the second year running, they have had no pay increase. To repeat such an abysmal experience of job losses and worsening conditions
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of employment in Northern Ireland, a region already seriously trailing the rest of the United Kingdom, would be nothing short of a disaster.
The Opposition want to see efficiency in those defined activities contained in part II of the order. That includes the cleaning of buildings, catering and the maintenance of grounds and vehicles. Improved efficiency means maintaining value for money and a high-quality service which is often best provided directly. However, for those services which are eventually provided, it should be for the relevant board to make the decision.
The Labour party does not want Northern Ireland's schools to experience the corner-cutting, slap-dash decline in quality of service and working conditions and, worse, the decline in jobs, that is all too familiar under compulsory competitive tendering.
I wish to ask the Minister some questions. Will he give further details of how contracts will be handled under the new arrangements? Will contracts be phased, and, will all the services listed in part II under article 4 be tendered for on the same day, or will boards be given different commencement dates? What procedures will the listening Minister establish to ensure that full consultation takes place as to the way in which contracts will eventually be phased?
Included in the restrictions and conditions in part II is the requirement for a board to invite tenders. Will the Minister confirm that when the required number of invitations to tender has been issued the board will be under no further obligation to invite other contractors to tender?
Most important, the Minister will be aware that by putting previously public services out to tender in Northern Ireland he leaves the process open to particular and sinister abuse by organisations seeking to extend their influence into the listed activities contained in part II. Will the Minister assure the House that if a board has major reservations about a particular contractor, it will be able to exercise total discretion and use such reservations as a relevant factor in the evaluation of that contractor's tender?
Mr. Ancram: I will try to answer the hon. Gentleman's question more fully at the end of the debate. In my opening remarks I mentioned that three of the boards were already substantially contracting out, and that there were savings of £1£ ·2 million last year. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that some of the fears and accusations that he has expressed have been realised during that voluntary contracting-out period?
Mr. Stott: Our experience of compulsory competitive tendering in Great Britain is that it is bad in principle. It has led to many local government workers losing their jobs, and people employed by the organisations that win the contracts find that their terms of employment are worse than they were hitherto.
Will the Minister ensure that during the tendering process his Department will require that a board must insist on obtaining information about potential employees—including their previous work history and national insurance status—as already happens in Northern Ireland during compulsory tendering for local authority work?
Part III of the order applies restrictions to the scope of the factors that boards can consider when awarding contracts. By prohibiting a board from asking detailed questions about the terms and conditions of employment of

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a competitor's employees, the Government are removing a board's capacity to maintain high standards in employment and working conditions, a theme to which I continually return. Yet again, the Government are content to reduce working standards. Instead of looking at the overall picture, they are merely looking at the figures which the Minister outlined. That kind of attitude results in reduced employment protection and leaves the United Kingdom with the lowest paid work force in Europe and a high level of unemployment.
I fear that the Government's plans will be all the more devastating for Northern Ireland, which has traditionally relied on the public sector for employment. I warn the Minister that Northern Ireland cannot afford an increase in the only figure with which I am concerned—the unemployment figure—which is already obscenely high.
Part IV of the order provides for the amalgamation of two or more institutions of further education; it does not provide for any significant consultation process before such an amalgamation. Surely the listening Minister will wish to hear from those who work in the colleges, the parents of those who attend those colleges and the wider community, all of whom share a stake in their local institutions of further education. Will the Minister ensure that provision is made for a concerned party to make known its anxieties prior to any amalgamation?
To achieve the required standards and implement change, the education service ultimately depends on the quality of its teachers and lecturers. Although many such people have already positively responded to the added pressures of education reform, the onslaught of Government legislation is demanding so much of their energy and commitment that the quality of provision for pupils and students in schools and colleges is in danger of being lowered. If that is to be avoided, it will be necessary not only to employ the most effective forms of in-service training, advisory and support services to assist teachers in implementing change, but to win the vital endorsement and support of parents, teachers, employers and members of the local community.
It is regrettable that the order does nothing to bridge the ever-widening gap between the Government and those who work in and use the education service. Instead, the Minister and his colleagues are intent on selling our schools in the marketplace. The Minister should concentrate on supporting teachers and freeing them from the bureaucracy of previous reforms. Instead, the Government, through the order, consider that it is more important to give the education and library boards in Northern Ireland a lesson in free market philosophy.
I said earlier that the order is like the curate's egg. It is unfortunate that we do not have a proper procedure whereby we can amend it and fashion a better one. The problems contained in the order outweigh its benefits, and I therefore ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against it.
7.46 pm
Rev. Ian Paisley: One of the great problems that faces Northern Ireland is the way in which legislation passes through the House. Here we have this massive order—77 pages of it—so how can we possibly deal with it in one and a half hours, particularly when no one is permitted to table an amendment to it?
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Consultation is all very well, but we were elected to the House and we have the final responsibility for scrutinising legislation and seeking to amend it. This huge order has many ramifications, as outlined by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) and by other hon. Members in their interventions in the Minister's speech. The order should be subject to a great deal of care and attention, because parts of it disturb us and because it is difficult to understand the real meaning of other parts. I had great difficulty understanding it.
The order consists of 57 pages dealing with 50 articles, and another 20 pages dealing with schedules. The schedules repeal parts of many Acts, but they also significantly amend many others. It seems that the new way of passing legislation is to introduce a schedule to a particular order, and then to make some vast change to a previous Order in Council. Anyone who wishes to take part in the debate will find it difficult to deal adequately with what is before us tonight.
A provision in the order states that a maintained school can return to the voluntary sector. I shall ask the Minister again, how many schools qualify for that option? It has been mentioned that if a school were a voluntary school in 1967 it would qualify, but how many such schools in the Province are in that category and could take that option? How many are Roman Catholic maintained schools and how many are now generally called state schools? How many schools belong to some Protestant body and could be named as Protestant? We need to know who can opt out. and how far that net could be cast.
I shall not deal with the issue of compulsory competitive tendering because I largely agree with what has been said. I know that CCT meant large redundancies in the Housing Executive in Northern Ireland; now we see that the Housing Executive is not capable of dealing with matters on its new basis, about which I am especially worried.
I should like to address some religious aspects of the order. The hon. Member for North Down (Sir J. Kilfedder) asked how much of the order was opposed by the Protestant Churches—the Church of Ireland, the Irish Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church. The Minister said that some parts of the order were opposed by those Churches. Will he be more forthcoming and tell us exactly which parts?
Article 47 deals with collective worship and complaints about religious education, which is of grave importance in Northern Ireland. Do parents still have the right to make a complaint about the type of religious education that their child is offered? Do parents have the right to withdraw their child from that sector of religious education? Will the Minister give us a categorical assurance that practices that have arisen in some schools, whereby teachers tell children that when they get home they should not tell their parents where they were taken that day and then take the children to religious services other than their own religious services, will no longer occur?
I am absolutely opposed to that practice. Parents have the right to decide what religious service their children attend and they have the right to withdraw their children, from religious instruction, education or whatever it is called—even if it is for mutual understanding, which think is the correct term—if they so desire. That principle should be upheld. I want the Minister to tell the parents of Northern Ireland whether that principle will continue to be upheld because I anticipate great dangers in that matter.

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I believe in a non-sectarian school system and believe that there should be a one-school system in Northern Ireland that is supported by the public purse and that should not be tied to any religious denomination. However, ministers of the various Churches whose children also attend school should have the right of access at certain times to the desired type of religious instruction for their children. If we began to move towards that approach, there would be a great difference in our education system. I want the Minister to explain what the amendments in article 47 mean and what their practical effect will be.
Will the Minister also tell us about the disciplinary procedures which are suggested in the order that concern those who attend various schools? Article 39 outlines the requirement to set up disciplinary arrangements in schools. Will the disciplinary arrangements that are to be made by the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools give the children in those schools the right of appeal to a tribunal which, it is suggested, is to be set up by the board?
The Council for Catholic Maintained Schools wanted to close one school in north Antrim, but the parents of the children at the school wanted to keep it open. When it came to a decision, the CCMS closed the school in opposition to all the families. When the families tried to lodge an appeal, the Minister concerned said that the council had made the decision, that was that and the school had to close.
That example covers one aspect of the right of appeal, but I am concerned about the idea of expelling children from the school. I understand from the order that if a child is expelled, the parents will have the right to appeal to a tribunal set up by the board. Will that right also cover the schools that come within the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools? I cannot find reference to that in the order. Perhaps I have read it incorrectly, but it seems that the appeals systems should be the same in both areas of education, especially when the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools moves towards full Government payment for all the services that it is to provide. If it is to be responsible for the entire subsidising and payment of all Catholic schools that opt out for this approach, surely the schools should come under the same tribunal disciplinary board. Will the Minister help me on that issue so that I can understand the order correctly and exactly determine what will happen?
Will the Minister also further explain how much schools will have to pay for library services? I fear that we are in an era leading to schools that were previously serviced by libraries having to pay in future, and that could be a heavy expenditure. I do not know how the system worked before, but I should like to know how the Minister envisages it will work in future and what price will have to be paid by individual schools for the service. On such serious matters of administration, and knowing the Government's attitude towards demanding payment, I should like to know how heavy that expenditure will be.
Will compulsory competitive tendering as it applies to the obligations entered into for the building and re-equipping of schools be applied to schools under the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools? Does it cover both sections or do the Catholic maintained schools not have to enter CCT? The Minister needs to make that point absolutely clear.
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I know that many hon. Members want to take part in the debate. I have already made my protest about the shortness of the time available. I shall conclude because I do not want to prevent any Northern Ireland Member from having the opportunity to speak. I hope that if the Minister does not have time to reply fully at the end of the debate, he will promise to answer our questions by letter so that we have a firm answer to our queries.
Mr. Ancram indicated assent.
Rev. Ian Paisley: I see the Minister nod his head at that.
8 pm
Mr. Ken Maginnis: The Minister will be aware of my reservations about participating in debates on Orders in Council. I shall not repeat what I have said on many occasions. Suffice it to say that I hope that we are getting to the stage when my protestations and those of my colleagues about Orders in Council will no longer be necessary. In the light of the present situation in Northern Ireland, it is especially important that those who are being asked to eschew political violence and to adhere to the democratic path should not find anything in the procedures of this House that will disillusion them or make that plea seem meaningless.
Part II deals with competition. Article 4 defines the activities currently carried out by the education and library boards in Northern Ireland that the Government have initially earmarked for compulsory competitive tendering—cleaning, catering, ground maintenance, and the repair and maintenance of vehicles. Can the Minister elaborate on paragraph (2) and tell us which other activities are likely to be added to the list for CCT and what he envisages the time scale to be?
Will the Minister accept that the added burden of responsibility on the boards for managing changes in the education service is such that they would benefit from more time to phase in and monitor CCT, bearing in mind the restrictions and conditions with which the boards must comply in respect of those activities?
Article 7 requires boards to publish in at least two local newspapers and at least one trade publication a notice giving details of functional work that they intend to carry out. In the absence of any suitable widely circulating trade-related journal in Northern Ireland, would it not be more effective to require publication in all three Northern Ireland daily newspapers?
Articles 9 to 11 deal with accounts, financial objectives and reports for the financial year in respect of defined activities. Are the accounting arrangements outlined compatible with the current basis on which board accounts are prepared—that is, on the basis of receipts and payments rather than on income and expenditure—or will alternative accounting procedures be required as a result of CCT?
I note that under article 11 a board will be required to publish a report for the financial year by the following 30 September and that a copy must reach the Department by 31 October, after which an auditor will be appointed by the Department and will give his written opinion both to the Department and to the board. The financial report will be open to public scrutiny on request at a time and place published by the board, and copies will be available on request—and on payment, I believe. That is welcome and is a further step in public accountability, as is the

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requirement that a copy of functional work specifications within a defined activity, whether the work is being carried out by the board or not, will be made available to interested parties.
I welcome the statement in article 16(3) that before making an order under article 16 the Department "shall consult the boards". But that statement will be taken with a pinch of salt and would be more welcome if it could be guaranteed that the Department would engage in meaningful consultation. We have had many examples of fairly meaningless consultation—on health matters and planning, for example—in which representations to departmental officials have too often been ignored.
There is no reference in the order to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, although CCT will almost certainly have serious implications in terms of the continuity and security of employment of board personnel. Difficulties will arise in the event of boards' bids being undercut and awarded to those who win contracts by engaging staff under poorer conditions of employment and at lower wages than those currently enjoyed by board employees.
What checks and balances can the Minister offer in the likely event of unscrupulous contractors having the opportunity to cut corners in a way that may bring the most undesirable people into close contact with vulnerable young children? The boards know what is required, but by maintaining their standards they will end up competing on an uneven playing field.
Part IV deals with amalgamations of institutions of further education. It has already been recognised that the Department of Education has the power to determine which institutions should be amalgamated, and progress on that issue has been made by voluntary arrangement and agreement between the boards of governors and the education and library boards. The Department should seek to ensure—this is especially important in a constituency such as mine—that students in rural areas do not become further disadvantaged by finding themselves at too great a distance from the institutions at which further education courses are provided.
It must be nonsense to propose that any new centre of higher education planned for Northern Ireland should be situated where it would almost certainly fail to attract the widest possible cross-community student enrolment. One hopes that the Minister will look carefully at the implications of some of the proposals being made in that respect.
On compensation costs for premature retirements, with the proviso:
"Where there appears to a board to be good reason",
the board or the Department in certain circumstances may direct that

"(a) a specified amount shall be deducted from the budget share of the school in any single specified financial year; or

(b) a specified amount shall be deducted from the budget share of a school in each financial year for such period (not exceeding 10 years) as may be specified, in respect of premature retirement compensation costs of the board in relation to a member of the staff of the school."

I do not know what that means. Will the Minister elaborate on that and give us an example of a good reason for deducting such costs from the budget of a school or a college?
On article 33, new article 119A is to be inserted in the 1989 order about the formation of companies in connection with institutions of further education. Can the Minister
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advise whether there are any restrictions on the period for which loans can be granted before repayment is required? Is the governing body or company when formed permitted to seek external finance in the commercial market, or will loans be restricted to a governing body to company arrangement?
Will the proposed changes in article 36 to article 6 of the 1986 order mean that boards will be committed to providing home tuition immediately a child ceases to attend achool? Will the proposed changes make it more difficult to get a child back to school, where that is a better option?
My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) earlier intervened in respect of the change to article 12 of the 1986 order reducing the number of boards of governors on which members can sit from five to three. The restriction will, I fear, cause difficulty in arranging for each school and college governing body to have a serving board member, thereby providing a direct link between the board and its schools and colleges—a retrograde step.
Will the Minister clearly indicate that there will be flexibility on that issue and that there is no hidden agenda to limit further the direct representation by board members on behalf of schools and colleges? The order seems to be full of ambiguities and there are many matters that are not clear. I hope that the Minister will realise that, if we had a Bill passing through the House, we would have had a much fuller opportunity to clarify the situation and perhaps put right any deficiencies.
In conclusion, I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that, through the order, he is taking the opportunity in schedules 4 and 5 to correct a deficiency in the Education Reform Order 1989 relating to grant-maintained integrated schools. We have had that deficiency for four years. I think that the Minister will agree that that is not good enough. I hope that, in future, Bills will be introduced so that such things do not occur.
8.12 pm
Mr. Harry Barnes: Everyone is supposed to be interested in Northern Ireland at the moment. The media, newspapers and television are full of Northern Ireland concerns. Northern Ireland politicians and anybody who has a word of interest to speak on Northern Ireland are eagerly being interviewed.
Education is supposed to be a matter of major concern. Many people in the Labour party have educational backgrounds. When I came to the House, I found that, initially, it was impossible to get on the Education Reform Bill Committee, because there were so many hon. Members with educational backgrounds from which to pick. We are now dealing with Northern Ireland and education issues. We should have a massive concern for those matters, as they are not issues of minor significance. We are dealing with competitive arrangements, education' and libraries, the issuing of contracts and funding arrangements, some of which arise from earlier legislation that has passed through the House. There are many items with which we should concern ourselves.
Some hon. Members present tonight represent constituencies in Northern Ireland. Other hon. Members are here on duty. They are doing their duty well, from the Front Benches and other positions, but Back Benchers are absent. Some hon. Members are here as Whips. There are

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hon. Members here as Parliamentary Private Secretaries. There is only one hon. Member present, as far as I can see, from the Back Benches who is not associated with Northern Ireland. We are supposed to be in a situation where Northern Ireland is of overwhelming consideration.
We have seen 100 per cent. attendance from the Democratic Unionist party. We have had the entire Popular Unionist party here—we always have 0 per cent. or 100 per cent. We have seen nearly half of the Ulster Unionist party. We have not seen anybody from the Social Democratic Labour party—my sister party. It is supposed to be involved with social and economic affairs, but it is not here on this occasion.
I attempted to speak in last Friday's debate on Northern Ireland issues. I had to settle for three interventions and a point of order. I have come tonight to listen to what is taking place. I am no expert in terms of all the details that are contained in the measure. I came to find things out, because I have an interest in education and Northern Ireland. The opportunity is here for me to speak, whereas there was no opportunity on Friday. We are in a quite disgraceful situation as far as Northern Ireland is concerned. We should be concerned about the issues.
The procedures of the House, in which Northern Ireland issues are marginalised—the Order in Council procedure—means that we do not deal with the matters properly. There is no encouragement for people to be here. Should not people be here to try to change the situation and push for changes because they have an interest in Northern Ireland and educational matters?
Mr. Peter Robinson: As the hon. Gentleman wants to change things for the better in terms of the way that legislation and other matters relating to Northern Ireland are dealt with, would he support the introduction of a Select Committee for Northern Ireland?
Mr. Barnes: I certainly would. If the Labour party was seeking not to involve itself in that, I would offer myself as someone who could be involved in that Committee. I should say to the Democratic Unionist party, and to other Ulster Unionists, that I should like to see their involvement in the British-Irish parliamentary body, because we would then have a cross-fertilisation on education in matters dealt with by that body and matters that could be dealt with by the Select Committee.
Education could not be a more important matter for us to discuss in the context of the situation in Ireland. The problems within Ireland—for example, the role of the Catholic Church in education—spill over into Northern Ireland. Teacher training colleges do not have a fair share of the communities because there is a Catholic teacher training college, and the state provision tends to be Protestant. Those are matters with which we should concern ourselves.
The leader of the DUP concentrated some of his remarks on article 47 which was about complaints relating to religious education and collective worship. In so doing, he mentioned the position of education for mutual understanding in Northern Ireland.
Perhaps I need more information about education for mutual understanding, but it seems to me that the Government are attempting a fruitful and worthwhile activity in that area so that there is understanding in
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education about the two traditions that exist, which spill over a great deal into education matters. But the hon. Gentleman suggested that the opt-out should apply also to education for mutual understanding. As I see it, education for mutual understanding is not just a matter of religious education; it concerns the cultural traditions that exist in Northern Ireland and is a matter of great social importance. Such education should be opted into rather than opted out of, because if it is conducted correctly, people will begin to understand each other's traditions and wish to share in and draw from them. I hope that the Minister will elaborate on that matter in his reply and help me to understand the hon. Gentleman's position.
Education and Northern Ireland are both matters with which we should concern ourselves. I hope that the message will percolate beyond these Benches and beyond the pages of Hansard and will be heard by hon. Members who are not present tonight, some of whom have very high profiles on Northern Ireland issues and some of whom were here last Friday. I will not mention their names, because I did not put letters on the board asking them to be here, but I hope that in future they will attend debates such as this. I am talking about people who have ideas about the role of Gerry Adams, about talks and other issues and who should have been here tonight to contribute, in interventions if the opportunity did not arise for them to do so in speeches.
8.22 pm
Mr. Ancram: I suspect that I shall not often find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), but I agree with him that it is sad that not many mainland Members are present tonight. During my shortish period as a Northern Ireland Minister, it has struck me that the more our parliamentary colleagues who are not from Northern Ireland know about the life of the Province and its difficulties, the more understanding there will be of the major problems that exist there. I hope that, in the coming weeks and months, the hon. Gentleman and I will be able to encourage more of our colleagues to attend debates such as this.
It is a matter of some disappointment to me that, on this occasion, we have not heard anything from the Liberal Benches. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who has been in his place throughout, is not usually a reticent man and I should have thought that he would have much to say on the subject of education in Northern Ireland in particular.
Mr. Don Foster rose—
Mr. Ancram: I see that I have tempted the hon. Gentleman to his feet.
Mr. Foster: Only yesterday, I had the opportunity to pay my first visit to Northern Ireland and to have a look at its education system. I knew that a number of Northern Ireland Members wished to speak and felt that on this occasion it would be somewhat impertinent of me to speak in the debate. A number of questions that I would have asked have been asked by other hon. Members.
Incidentally, I was delighted to see that only yesterday, in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph, the Minister pointed out that he recognised the considerable overload being experienced by teachers in Northern Ireland and

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expressed his willingness to slow down the pace of reform. I only wish that the Secretary of State for Education in England would follow similar advice.
Mr. Ancram: The hon. Gentleman is being a little disingenuous. He knows that the Dearing report has made certain recommendations as regards the curriculum in England and Wales, and that that report does not apply to Northern Ireland. That is why I, as Minister responsible for education in Northern Ireland, have had to take decisions. If the hon. Gentleman reads carefully the words that I used, rather than those attributed to me in the first paragraph of the article, he will see that I said that there "could be" serious problems of overload and that because that suggestion had been made I had asked the Curriculum Council to look into the primary curriculum and, following consultation with schools and teachers, to make representations to me in April so that if there are problems, they can be resolved. I have made it clear all along that there is no difference between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and myself in this and that we are both looking for a system that works.
Inevitably, many hon. Members have commented on the procedures by which we take orders such as this through the House. I repeat that the Government are always willing to listen to suggestions for improving legislative procedures, but there are good reasons—and hon. Members know them—why Orders in Council are used for Northern Ireland, and any changes would have substantial implications, not least for the House of Commons. I think that it can be said in general—and this has also been said before—that direct rule, under which the present system has grown up, was introduced as a temporary measure and that we would all wish to see responsibility devolved back to Northern Ireland in matters such as education. That is what we are all striving for, in different ways and from different directions.
Unfortunately, by the very nature of the order, which is detailed and technical, it is difficult to get a theme running through my reply. A number of specific and detailed questions have been asked and I will try to respond to them. If I fail to respond to any tonight, I will try to answer them in correspondence once I have had time to reflect on what hon. Members have said. I give that undertaking to the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), who was right to see me nodding when he made that suggestion.
It was something of a disappointment to me, given that this is a major order covering many areas of education in Northern Ireland and matters of great importance to schools and children in Northern Ireland, that the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) should have majored on the whole question of compulsory competitive tendering. His speech was a little off target because what we propose in the order is already being done by a number of the boards, without any of the fearful consequences that the hon. Gentleman predicted would follow from the proposals. There are dangers in going over the top, which I suggest the hon. Gentleman did this evening, without having closely examined what is happening.
The hon. Gentleman asked me a number of specific and serious questions and I will answer them as best I can. First, he asked whether all contracts will be phased. It will be necessary to consult boards before drafting regulations, so that proper account can be taken of the expiry dates of contracts that have already been competitively tendered. I
764
can assure the hon. Gentleman that full consultation will take place with each board to ensure that the competitive tendering programme is practicable and in the best interests of the education service.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the services listed in schedule 1 would become subject to competitive tendering as soon as the order became effective. The answer to that is no, because the Department intends that competitive tendering should be phased in over time. As I said, boards have already competitively tendered a significant proportion of the four defined services and, for that reason, the phasing arrangements will need to take account of the expiry of existing contracts. I repeat that the boards will be consulted fully on this matter.
The hon. Gentleman asked a serious question about whether the process might be open to paramilitary influence. Part III of the order contains important provisions, which will bring the education and library boards into line with the operation of competitive tendering in district councils in Northern Ireland. In particular, article 22 will allow my Department to specify information that contractors will be required to provide if they wish to tender for work. That provision is specifically designed to counter the possibility of fraudulent exploitation of the tendering process and to act as a filter for any attempts by non bona fide contractors to win contracts. That safeguard will be available as required to meet any such threat. We are conscious of the danger, but I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it is met in the order.
Mr. Stott indicated assent.
Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for nodding his assent.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether provision would be made for any concerned parties to make known their concerns before amalgamations of colleges take place. Article 26 requires the Department to carry out wide consultation before making a determination that two or more colleges should be amalgamated. The bodies to be consulted include the governing bodies of the colleges, the education and library board that manages the colleges and the staff and students of the colleges. The hon. Gentleman will accept that most of the bodies to which he referred are covered. But if any other bodies or individuals wished to express any views about any proposed amalgamation of colleges, I should be happy to take them on board before any decisions were made. As I said in my opening remarks, however, we have extended consultation to the staff and students of the colleges and I hope that that will be welcomed.
The hon. Member for Wigan asked about the low pay of staff involved in contracts. The interests of the education service are being assisted by the savings that are being generated by the boards in the competitive tendering of the four defined services. Savings of £1·2 million a year are retained by the boards for use in enhancing education services. The boards are satisfied about the financial benefits and other advantages that CCT will bring, especially where there are real pressures on available sources. Moneys saved by the boards will be used in improving the funding of schools, colleges, libraries and youth clubs. The hon. Gentleman spoke of value for money, which I hope he will accept is one of the major purposes of the order.

765
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether, during the tendering process, boards will be allowed to ask about the terms and conditions of employers' staff. The answer is no. Article 20 deals specifically with non-commercial issues that cannot be raised by boards in considering contracts for defined services. It is specifically designed to prevent discrimination against employers and to ensure a level playing field for all those who are interested in competing for this work. Efficiency, effectiveness and quality of service demand that this provision be applied on grounds of equity.
The hon. Gentleman asked a number of other questions, not least about the political affiliation of potential employers who might contract. I refer him to article 20(5) (6), which deals with the political, industrial or sectarian affiliations of contractors or their employees.
The hon. Member for Antrim, North made a number of significant and important points and asked a number of specific questions. He asked about maintained schools that might opt for voluntary status. No maintained schools have opted back to voluntary status and it is not likely that any will. The provision may be otiose, but it is appropriate to make it available until consultation has taken place with interested parties.
The hon. Gentleman asked how many schools might opt for 100 per cent. grant. Some 600 voluntary schools are potentially eligible for the new 100 per cent. arrangements. Of course, not all will necessarily decide to opt in this way. Existing schools can retain existing management arrangements, and if they do so they will still be entitled to only the capital grant rate of 85 per cent.
The hon. Member for Antrim, North asked about the new provision on appeals against expulsion applying to pupils in all schools. I can tell him that it does, including maintained schools, and I hope that that will reassure him.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I appreciate the Minister giving way on that point. Is he aware of the concern about children who have been suspended but not expelled? They have not been receiving an education, although it was suggested that they would receive home tuition, and, because they have not been expelled from school, they cannot attend another school. Has that been covered, because I have raised the issue with boards several times but have not received satisfactory answers?
Mr. Ancram: The main concern has arisen in connection with maintained schools, but the appeal provision applies to all schools, including maintained schools. Article 49(2), as revised by the draft order, requires the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools to prepare schemes for suspensions and expulsions in maintained schools.
Rev. Martin Smyth: Does that remove responsibility from the board? In future, will the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools be responsible?
Mr. Ancram: The appeal provision is being applied even handedly across all areas of education. I understood that to be the main complaint, but I shall study what the hon. Member said and if there are any differences of emphasis I shall write to him.
Rev. Ian Paisley: The point that the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) is raising is important. Will maintained schools, including Roman Catholic schools, and state schools appeal to the same body?
Mr. Ancram: I have made it clear that the draft order requires the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools to prepare schemes for suspension and expulsions in maintained schools. I hope that hon. Members will write to me about their specific concerns, which I shall try to deal with.
Rev. Ian Paisley: The Minister does not get the point. Under article 49,
"the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools shall prepare a scheme specifying the procedure to be followed in relation to the suspension or expulsion of pupils from Catholic maintained schools."
It further says that every board shall make arrangements for an appeal system. Does that appeal system cover the Catholic maintained schools or only state schools?
Mr. Ancram: It covers both. I am sorry if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman's earlier point.
The hon. Member for Antrim, North asked whether a parent has a right to complain about the type of religious education and to withdraw a child from attendance at a religious service. The answer to both questions is yes.
Mr. Barnes: The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) asked about education for mutual understanding. Is that covered by religious education, or by some other heading?
Mr. Ancram: I should like, if I may, to write to the hon. Gentleman about that point. I should like to check before giving an answer, but I can confirm the categorical assurance that I have given on the two points asked by the hon. Member for Antrim, North.
The hon. Member for Antrim, North asked about the closure of schools. There are well-established procedures for the closure of schools, including maintained schools, which require full public consultation and any objections are carefully considered before a final decision is taken by the Northern Ireland Office and myself. I hope that that will reassure the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) made a detailed and thoughtful speech. He is not in his place, for which he offered his apologies and I understand why he cannot be here. I undertook to write to him to answer the questions that I could not answer tonight. He asked whether competitive tendering would be extended to other professional services, as envisaged in Great Britain in the Local Government Act 1992. He asked me to identify such services. I refer him to the White Paper, "Competing for Quality", which sets out the framework for the development of competitive tendering within the public sector, including professional or white collar services. The policy applies equally to the education service in Northern Ireland and we shall consider the scope for extending the present programme in the light of a recent study by consultants. Of course, we shall consult the boards fully before embarking on this course.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether the boards' present accounting arrangements would be adequate for the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering. Boards will be required to maintain detailed trading accounts in respect of all competitive tendering contracts. The

767
Department will consult boards on the nature of those accounts and any changes required to present board financial accounts as a result of these provisions.
The hon. Gentleman went on to ask whether there would be a level playing field for all contenders in the compulsory competitive tendering process. The answer again is yes. Safeguards are built into the legislation to ensure that the private sector and boards' direct labour organisations are treated fairly and even handedly, which is important in any such system.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the limitation on membership of boards of governors, which several other hon. Members also mentioned. It might be helpful if I were to outline the type of exception that I have in mind. The first point to emphasise is that I would expect to make such exceptions only rarely. The purpose of the provision is not to provide a back door for making wholesale exceptions, which would merely make a well-balanced policy ineffective. However, I accept that there may be exceptional categories, individuals or circumstances which would warrant approval.
For example, one category that I shall be prepared to approve is where a school's instrument of governance specifies the holder of a particular office as a governor and where such an appointment could be made only by appointing a person to more than three boards of govenors. Similar problems may arise in schools where individuals are nominated from among the transferor interests on the board of governors of contributory primary schools. There may be individuals for whom it would entail serving on more than three boards of governors. A case might be made for an individual with particular expertise and the time available to share it with a number of schools.
Those examples make it clear that I expect the exceptions to relate to the particular circumstances and needs of the schools, and I would need to be convinced that the needs cannot otherwise be met. The important point is that the power to make exceptions exists, and I would exercise that power if a justifiable case were made.
The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone also asked me to ensure that amalgamations of colleges do not result in students in rural areas having to travel too far to receive further education. He made the valid point that were that to be the case, there would in fact be discrimination against such students. The amalgamations which have been announced and which are already proceeding will not result in the closure of any existing sites for the provision of further education. That should ensure that students in rural areas continue to enjoy easy access to further education. However, I shall certainly bear the hon. Gentleman's comments in mind.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned retirement compensation and asked what would be deemed a good reason to recoup it, as the provision allows. As I said in my opening remarks, the situation arises because of the concerns expressed by the Public Accounts Committee about the high cost of operating the scheme. A number of measures had to be taken to increase cost consciousness. They include placing a limit on the number of added years to be awarded and cash limits on awards for efficient discharge grounds. A board of governors that ignores such limits would give an education and library board good reason, as defined, to recoup excessive awards from the school budget. I hope that that example is of some help to the hon. Gentleman in understanding how what I admit is a somewhat obtuse provision will work.
768
At the end of his speech, the hon. Gentleman also asked about the provision of a university site at Springvale and pondered whether it would further sectarianise higher education in Northern Ireland. I must point out that higher and further education in Northern Ireland has an outstanding record for providing facilities that attract students from all sides of the community. The Government would not want that tradition altered, and cross-community support must be an important criterion in any analysis. Any facility would have to be accessible to all communities in Northern Ireland.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I thank the Minister for giving way again. I agree that there has been a mix at that level of education, but the Minister's remit also includes sport. Does he accept that to do away with Paisley park, a recreational area which has produced many outstanding athletes and sportsmen, would not only be detrimental to that part of the city but would not enhance sporting provision?
Mr. Ancram: That is not a matter currently before me, but I shall look into what the hon. Gentleman said and write to him.
The only outstanding question asked by the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone dealt with exemptions for board members. He asked why the exemption would not extend to board members themselves. Each case will be considered on its merits, but it is not essential for the education and library board representatives on boards of governors to be board members. They will have commitments to the board and its committees as well as up to three boards of governors. That is a heavy commitment at a time when the responsibilities of boards of governors have already increased. It is therefore reasonable to exclude them.
We have had a very full debate, but I appreciate the fact that hon. Members may have wished to deal with many other details. If they care to write to me about any matters that have not been raised, I shall try to give them a full reply.
It is an important order because—
It being one and a half hours after commencement of proceedings on the motion, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Order [22 October]:—
The House divided: Ayes 241, Noes 180.

Division No. 369]

[8.45 pm

AYES

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Bowis, John

Alexander, Richard

Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Brandreth, Gyles

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Brazier, Julian

Amess, David

Bright, Graham

Ancram, Michael

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Aspinwall, Jack

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Atkins, Robert

Burns, Simon

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Burt, Alistair

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Butler, Peter

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Butterfill, John

Baldry, Tony

Carlisle, John (Luton North)

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Carrington, Matthew

Bates, Michael

Carttiss, Michael

Bellingham, Henry

Cash, William

Beresford, Sir Paul

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Clappison, James

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Booth, Hartley

Coe, Sebastian

Boswell, Tim

Colvin, Michael

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Congdon, David

769

Conway, Derek

Knapman, Roger

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Knight, Greg (Derby N)

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Knox, Sir David

Couchman, James

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Cran, James

Lang, Rt Hon Ian

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

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Legg, Barry

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Leigh, Edward

Day, Stephen

Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

Devlin, Tim

Lidington, David

Dicks, Terry

Lightbown, David

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Dover, Den

Lord, Michael

Duncan, Alan

Luff, Peter

Duncan-Smith, Iain

Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

Dunn, Bob

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Durant, Sir Anthony

MacKay, Andrew

Eggar, Tim

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Elletson, Harold

Madel, David

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Malone, Gerald

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Mans, Keith

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Marland, Paul

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Marlow, Tony

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Evennett, David

Mates, Michael

Faber, David

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Fabricant, Michael

Mellor, Rt Hon David

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Merchant, Piers

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Milligan, Stephen

Fishburn, Dudley

Mills, Iain

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Forth, Eric

Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

Monro, Sir Hector

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Moss, Malcolm

Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

Needham, Richard

French, Douglas

Neubert, Sir Michael

Gale, Roger

Nicholls, Patrick

Gallie, Phil

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Gardiner, Sir George

Norris, Steve

Gill, Christopher

Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Oppenheim, Phillip

Gorst, John

Page, Richard

Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

Paice, James

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Patnick, Irvine

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

Pawsey, James

Grylls, Sir Michael

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Hague, William

Pickles, Eric

Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie (Epsom)

Porter, David (Waveney)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Redwood, Rt Hon John

Hannam, Sir John

Richards, Rod

Hargreaves, Andrew

Riddick, Graham

Haselhurst, Alan

Robathan, Andrew

Hawkins, Nick

Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

Hawksley, Warren

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Hayes, Jerry

Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

Heald, Oliver

Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

Hendry, Charles

Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

Hill, James (Southampton Test)

Sackville, Tom

Horam, John

Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Shaw, David (Dover)

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

Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

Shersby, Michael

Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

Sims, Roger

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Hunter, Andrew

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Jack, Michael

Soames, Nicholas

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Speed, Sir Keith

Jenkin, Bernard

Spencer, Sir Derek

Jessel, Toby

Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

Jones, Gwilym(Cardiff N)

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

Spink, Dr Robert

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Spring, Richard

Key, Robert

Sproat, Iain

King, Rt Hon Tom

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

770

Stephen, Michael

Waller, Gary

Stern, Michael

Ward, John

Streeter, Gary

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Sumberg, David

Waterson, Nigel

Sykes, John

Watts, John

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Whitney, Ray

Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

Whittingdale, John

Temple-Morris, Peter

Widdecombe, Ann

Thomason, Roy

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

Wilkinson, John

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Willetts, David

Thornton, Sir Malcolm

Wilshire, David

Thurnham, Peter

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Wolfson, Mark

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

Wood, Timothy

Tredinnick, David

Yeo, Tim

Trend, Michael

Twinn, Dr Ian

Tellers for the Ayes:

Viggers, Peter

Mr. Sydney Chapman and

Walden, George

Mr. James Arbuthnot.

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

NOES

Adams, Mrs Irene

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

Ainger, Nick

Foster, Don (Bath)

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Foulkes, George

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Fyfe, Maria

Ashton, Joe

Gapes, Mike

Austin-Walker, John

Gerrard, Neil

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Barnes, Harry

Godsiff, Roger

Battle, John

Golding, Mrs Llin

Bayley, Hugh

Graham, Thomas

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Bell, Stuart

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Bennett, Andrew F.

Grocott, Bruce

Benton, Joe

Gunnell, John

Bermingham, Gerald

Hanson, David

Berry, Dr. Roger

Hardy, Peter

Betts, Clive

Harman, Ms Harriet

Blunkett, David

Heppell, John

Boateng, Paul

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Boyce, Jimmy

Hinchliffe, David

Boyes, Roland

Home Robertson, John

Bradley, Keith

Hood, Jimmy

Byers, Stephen

Hoon, Geoffrey

Caborn, Richard

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Callaghan, Jim

Illsley, Eric

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

Canavan, Dennis

Jamieson, David

Cann, Jamie

Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

Chisholm, Malcolm

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

Clapham, Michael

Jowell, Tessa

Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Khabra, Piara S.

Clelland, David

Kilfedder, Sir James

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Kilfoyle, Peter

Coffey, Ann

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

Connarty, Michael

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Lewis, Terry

Corston, Ms Jean

Livingstone, Ken

Cousins, Jim

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Cryer, Bob

Loyden, Eddie

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

McAllion, John

Davidson, Ian

McAvoy, Thomas

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

McCartney, Ian

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

McCrea, Rev William

Denham, John

Macdonald, Calum

Dixon, Don

McFall, John

Donohoe, Brian H.

Mackinlay, Andrew

Dowd, Jim

McMaster, Gordon

Dunnachie, Jimmy

McNamara, Kevin

Eagle, Ms Angela

McWilliam, John

Eastham, Ken

Madden, Max

Etherington, Bill

Mahon, Alice

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Fatchett, Derek

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Martlew, Eric

Fisher, Mark

Maxton, John

Flynn, Paul

Michael, Alun

771

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Rowlands, Ted

Milburn, Alan

Sedgemore, Brian

Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

Simpson, Alan

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Skinner, Dennis

Morgan, Rhodri

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Morley, Elliot

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

Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Mudie, George

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Mullin, Chris

Snape, Peter

Murphy, Paul

Soley, Clive

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Spearing, Nigel

O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

Spellar, John

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

O'Hara, Edward

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Olner, William

Steinberg, Gerry

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Stevenson, George

Paisley, Rev Ian

Stott, Roger

Parry, Robert

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Patchett, Terry

Taylor, Rt Hon John D. (Strgfd)

Pickthall, Colin

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Pike, Peter L.

Tipping, Paddy

Pope, Greg

Turner, Dennis

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Tyler, Paul

Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

Wallace, James

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Walley, Joan

Prescott, John

Watson, Mike

Purchase, Ken

Wicks, Malcolm

Quin, Ms Joyce

Wilson, Brian

Raynsford, Nick

Worthington, Tony

Redmond, Martin

Wray, Jimmy

Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Roche, Mrs. Barbara

Rooker, Jeff

Tellers for the Noes:

Rooney, Terry

Mr. Alan Meale and

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Mr. Jon Owen Jones.

Question accordingly agreed to
Resolved,
That the draft Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1993, which was laid before this House on 18 October, be approved.

Teachers' Pay and Conditions
8.59 pm
Mr. Win Griffiths: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Education (School Teachers' Pay and Conditions) (No. 2) Order 1993 (S.I., 1993, No. 1755), dated 15th July 1993, a copy of which was laid before this House on 16th July, be annulled.
At the start of the debate, I declare an interest as a paid parliamentary consultant to the National Union of Teachers. However, I want to point out that, in common with Conservative Members who have similar interests, I will not be speaking in a partisan way this evening.
The pay of teachers is yet another example of the Government's cavalier attitude towards teachers and the education of children in local authority and voluntary schools. The order which we prayed against in July and which we are debating this evening represents a further betrayal of teachers and is part of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts policy which the Government have had towards taxpayer-funded education services and those involved in providing them.
The House will recall the winsome words elaborating the Government's clear commitment by the former Secretary of State for Education and Science, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), in the debates on the Second Reading and the Third Reading of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill on 29 April and 6 June 1991. I should like to remind the House of some of those words. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
"I also realise that, to get the high quality, well motivated and professional group of teachers that we require, teachers need a fair level of remuneration to reward ability and good performance ….With the establishment of a review body to determine the pay and conditions of teachers, the Bill will pave the way for that aim."—[Official Report, 29 April 1991; Vol. 190, c. 34.]
The right hon. and learned Gentleman also said that it was the essence of this machinery that the Government were setting up an independent body that would give advice to the Government in the light of all the evidence that it received. He said that the Government would implement the recommendations unless there were clear and compelling reasons why they should not. He said, "To repeat what I said before, the Government will not be giving to the review body a financial remit of the type that the interim advisory committee had. We shall reject recommendations only for clear and compelling reasons."
The right hon. and learned Gentleman also said that one of the principal differences between the interim advisory committee and the review body was that the new body would not operate within a predetermined financial envelope. He said that the Government were submitting themselves to the objective judgment of a body which would recommend the right pay, terms and conditions for teachers. What a sick joke. However, that is par for the course for a Government prepared to say anything to win votes and raise hopes which so quickly and so often turn to dust.
Unfortunately, the pay review body has proved to be a spineless quango only too willing to straitjacket itself within the Government's own recommendations. When it has shown an air of independence, the Secretary of State has moved quickly to quash its recommendations, as he did this year over the review body's 1·5 per cent. increase for teachers which would have raised the total bill a further 0·3 per cent. because of a rounding-up exercise for teachers affected by the reduction of 243 salary combinations to 17.

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It is therefore not a curious coincidence that last year the pay review body's recommendations were accepted unchanged in the run-up to the general election. During the previous two years, the Interim Advisory Committee on School Teachers' Pay and Conditions recommended reducing the overall pay bill by 1·5 per cent. in 1980 and 1·7 per cent. in 1991. Of course, that pay is permanently lost to teachers. Remarkably, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) mentioned on Second Reading of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill, there had been no real-terms increase in teachers' pay since 1987, another election year. However, in paragraph 120 of its report, the pay review body, in making its recommendations for 1993, said:
"This is less than is needed in respect of recruitment, retention and motivation considerations taken as a whole".
Those are the very things that that body should have regard to—recruitment, retention and motivation. The pay review body is plainly in self-confessed dereliction of its duty in making recommendations which do not advance the cause of high-quality teaching and learning in our schools. Even its modest, inadequate pay recommendation was rejected by the Government, who forced their own deal on to teachers.
What price the independence of the pay review body? None whatsoever. Why should teachers' unions bother to submit evidence to a body which is not prepared to make recommendations in the best interests of teachers, children and schools and whose timid terms for teachers' pay in 1993 are rejected in any event by the Government in this order?
Mr. Harry Greenway: I take a very close interest in such matters. A few days ago, in my constituency I held a conference with all heads, chairmen of governors, and representatives of teachers, parents and children, with Sir Ron Dearing present. I was interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman appeared to predict—that is, by implication, unless teachers were paid at a level which he, by implication again, said that they are not being paid at, teaching would deteriorate. The evidence is to the contrary. Standards are rising for GCSE, A-levels and so on. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that teachers are teaching as well as and as conscientiously as ever?
Mr. Griffiths: Yes, teachers make every effort to be conscientious, but the Government's treatment of them does not help their morale. They are conscientious in spite of the Government's best efforts to undermine them. Their morale is certainly low.
A body which is not prepared to make recommendations in the best interests of teachers is hardly worth keeping in place. What are the clear and compelling reasons that force the Government to reject the pay review body's rather modest pay deal? Classroom teachers at every level of remuneration were worse off in April than they were last year by between £83 and £137. The hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further and Higher Education, provided those figures to my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) in May. They are to be found in columns 497 and 498 of Hansard, if the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education would like to read them.
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Do the Government believe that the bad old days of reducing the value of teachers' pay will herald the dawn of a new age of high-achieving pupils and schools inspired by poorly paid but somehow highly motivated teachers? Most people would answer that question with a resounding "No". But there is a horrible chance that a Government who believed that their election victory in April 1992 would see the recovery begin the next day actually believe that this teachers' pay order will raise the rock-bottom morale of teachers. It will not. There is more in the order to undermine any possible threads of confidence that teachers might have had in the Government's pay policy for them.
The proposal on performance-related pay is a disaster, although it is typical of the arrogance in power that has marked the regime of the Secretary of State for Education. The document on teachers' pay deliberately ignores the views of the pay review body which were expressed in its report last year. The review body believed that the best approach would be to conduct a consultative exercise based on the whole school approach to performance with additional funding to implement it.
In this year's report, a pilot scheme to examine performance-related pay for heads and deputy heads was announced. The Secretary of State has well and truly elbowed the pay review body out of the way with his performance-related pilot pay scheme, which is outlined in the 1993 school teachers' pay and conditions document. His scheme will be based on individual performance. Surely individual performance is already covered by part III, paragraphs 6 and 7, on responsibility and excellence where up to five points and three points respectively can be gained, with the latter being available especially for classroom teaching.
What clear and compelling reasons caused the Secretary of State to ignore the pilot scheme of the pay review body and set up a scheme of his own? Incidentally, some heads have demanded to withdraw from his pilot scheme because they were misled by him about its establishment. I look forward to receiving an explanation from the Minister.
I am concerned that the pay review body seems to have had virtually no impact on the Government's action over the huge shortfall of incentive allowances in primary schools.
Mr. Nigel Evans: Since 1979, teachers' pay has increased by 57 per cent. in real terms, after allowing for inflation. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the fact that teachers' pay has increased so markedly is one of the reasons why standards have increased, more pupils are getting better GCSE results and more pupils are going on to further and higher education? The number of pupils going on to further and higher education has increased from 1:8 in 1979 to 1:4 now.
Mr. Griffiths: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said earlier. I pointed out that teachers are paid less today in real terms than they were last year. The figures were provided by the hon. Member for Daventry. We might as well say that, since 1702, teachers' pay has increased in real terms. It is totally irrelevant to the fact that teachers' pay went down last year.
To return to the issue of the plight of primary school teachers, last year's report of the pay review body stated:
"… despite the Government's acceptance of our recommendation for 26,000 extra incentive allowances in primary schools, only 4,000 such allowances were being paid."

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What are the clear and compelling reasons for such a shortfall? When do the Government expect to honour their acceptance of the recommendation made by the pay review body last year?
Finally, I turn to the extremely important issue of remuneration for teachers who wholly or mainly teach children with special educational needs. About 2 per cent. of children with special educational needs have statements and about 18 per cent. of them have not. Under part III, paragraph 9, of the pay document that we are debating tonight, teachers of the 18 per cent. of children with special educational needs but no statements are excluded from any additional award. The recommendation of the pay review body in paragraph 99, appendix D, paragraphs 16–19, refers to an extra entitlement for teachers who
"wholly or mainly teach children with special educational needs"
without any reference to the specific need for the children to have received a statement.
Often the borderline between children who are with or without statements is thin. The Government's provisions in paragraph 9, limiting that extra point to teachers of children with statements only, is an extremely restrictive view of special educational needs. I hope that the Minister will explain why that straitjacket circumscribes the award to teachers of children with such needs when no such limits were mentioned in the pay review body's recommendations.
I know that it would be a miracle if the Minister were to respond positively to any of my requests. If he had the well-being of all teachers and children at heart, he would respond positively to all of them. Let him dare to be a Daniel and stand alone against the eccentric educational views of the Department in which he serves and thus win the praise of parents, pupils and teachers.
9.15 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr. Robin Squire): With the permission of the House, I shall refer later to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) and will then seek to deal with each of them.
I must say immediately that, based on a significant number of visits that I have made to many schools, I refute utterly his allegation that teacher morale is at rock bottom.
Mr. Win Griffiths: I was being polite.
Mr. Squire: If that is being polite, I am enormously relieved that the hon. Gentleman was not being rude.
In all sincerity, having spoken to many teachers I can say that they are being let down by Opposition Members, who are spreading the word that morale is at rock bottom. That is not what I have found in the schools that I have visited, and that is important.
On 12 February 1993, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State published the second report of the school teachers' pay review body. As is now well known, that report was a watershed. It made recommendations about the level of pay increase for the coming year and how it should be distributed, as review body reports customarily do. However, it did far more than that; it recommended far-reaching changes to the pay structure for classroom teachers.
Let me remind the House what the recommendations were. The previous 10-point standard scale, incentive allowances, incremental enhancements and discretionary scale points were to be replaced from 1 September by a
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common 18-point pay spine for all classroom teachers. Teachers would move up the spine by earning points for experience, qualifications, responsibility and excellence —especially in the classroom. Extra points would also be awarded to teachers of children with special educational needs, and to those holding posts that were difficult to fill. Teachers' points scores would be reviewed every year.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: When they are reviewed at the end of the year, is a ratchet in place, or can teachers slide back down the spine?
Mr. Squire: A safeguard is built into the initial spine to ensure that no teacher has lost out as a result of its adoption. Clearly, I cannot forecast the procedure for future years at this stage, but I think that I have dealt with my hon. Friend's query.
Mr. Stephen Byers: Can the Minister confirm that the order mentions a new pay spine of 18 points, with a difference of about 6 per cent. between them, whereas his Department's evidence for the pay review body recommends for next year a spine of 35 points with a difference of 3 per cent. between each? Can the Minister tell the House why his Department has recommended a totally different spine for next year?
Mr. Squire: One of the problems with debates in this place is that we can sometimes be a little behind the action. I am unable, and for that matter unwilling, to speculate about any aspect of the settlements for next year, not least because neither the hon. Gentleman nor I is aware what resources may be available.
Mr. Byers rose—
Mr. Squire: Hold on, let me finish. The order relates to the first year of the 18-point scale. I cannot say what the circumstances will be next year, any more than the hon. Gentleman can. It would be foolish to speculate.
Mr. Byers: The cavalry may be coming over the hill. The Department's evidence, which has already been submitted to the pay review body for next year, talks about a 35-point scale because such a scale will be workable and flexible. By implication, the scale that the Minister proposes this evening is unworkable and inflexible.
Mr. Squire: I resent that completely. The hon. Gentleman must be living in another world. We are talking about a new scale. We expect there to be further changes as it develops over the years. Of course, there will be changes. The suggestion that it is possible with such a revolutionary change to get everything right first time is strictly for the birds.
As recommended by the STRB, adjustments were to be made in two stages, on 1 April and 1 September. My right hon. Friend accordingly made two pay and conditions orders. The first, simpler, order gave effect to the changes in salary rates from 1 April; the second brought in the new pay structure from 1 September. It is this second order to which the Opposition have objected. I believe that they are wrong to do so. Let us look at what the order actually does.
First, the order maintains teachers' pay at a very competitive level. Average teachers' pay is now nearly £21,000. Good honours graduates now have starting salaries of at least £12,600. In inner London their salaries could be more than £15,000. A typical department head in

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a London secondary school now earns more than £26,400. Forty-five per cent. of teachers will be on or above point 11 of the spine, earning at least £21,400.
Mr. Nigel Evans: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Squire: I will not give way too often as I know that other colleagues wish to speak.
Mr. Evans: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He has just given the figures for the average pay of teachers. Does he agree that these are the very people whom the Labour party would soak through higher taxation if ever it got back into government?
Mr. Squire: My hon. Friend reminds us of last year's discussions.
It is true that the overall increase in teachers' pay in 1993 was limited to 1·5 per cent., and that this will slightly reduce teachers' pay compared with the average pay of non-manual workers. But it will remove only a small amount of the relative increase of some 12 per cent. over the years 1990 to 1992. Teachers have done very well under this Government.
The order also brings in a pay structure which opens up new possibilities for the best classroom teachers. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State described the STRB's proposals last February as "imaginative and far reaching". He went on to welcome
"the emphasis the STRB has placed on identifying and rewarding good classroom teaching".
He was right to do so. Prospects for those promoted to headships or deputy headships have always been good. The head of a typical primary school will now earn about £30,000, and the head of a typical secondary school outside London about £40,000. The salaries of the highest paid head teachers outside London will be well over £50,000, while heads of large secondary schools in London could earn £53,000, or even more if their responsibilities or performance are exceptional.
Similar opportunities now exist for high achievers in the classroom. The new pay spine which we introduced last month has 18 points. Experience and qualifications on their own will take teachers automatically to point 9 on the spine, £19,062, but they need not stop there. For those prepared to take on extra responsibilities, those who demonstrate excellence in their work, notably their classroom teaching, or those whom the school particularly wants to recruit or retain, there are further points available on the spine—18 in all, the highest of which brings a salary of £30,441.
I can think of no better way to bring about the improvements which we all want to see in our schools than by giving teachers a real incentive to improve their performance. I believe that the new structure will give governing bodies ample opportunities to exercise their discretion and reward good classroom performance.
Local education authorities will also have their part to play, by ensuring that enough funds are made available to schools. [Laughter.] It is interesting to detect a note of humour from the Opposition Front Bench. All hon. Members know—this does not divide the parties—that LEAs could make more rapid progress on the elimination of surplus places. On the basis of a survey carried out by the Department in 1991, it is estimated that there were then about 1·3 million surplus places in England. I am told that
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the cost of maintaining those places is about £255 million a year. To put that in context, the review body has estimated that the pay bill for 1993–94 will be about £10·63 billion.
Mr. Byers: Will the Minister confirm that the local education authority with the highest number of surplus places is Essex? Will he also confirm that the LEA with the most pupils in grant-maintained schools is Essex? How can he reconcile those two facts?
Mr. Squire: Without notice, I am reluctant to confirm any such figures, but I can certainly confirm that Essex has a very large number of GM schools. As the hon. Gentleman knows, from 1 April the Funding Agency for Schools will have the power to review those schools and make recommendations about removing surplus places. I expected the hon. Gentleman to point out that what has happened in his own authority in the past few weeks provides the answer to those who ask about schools opting out and surplus places. The Ralph Gardner school, with the agreement of North Tyneside LEA, is to close, despite its application for GM status. I should have liked the hon. Gentleman to make that clear, if only to calm some of the more nervous brethren sitting near him.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is my hon. Friend aware that Lancashire county council always funks taking away surplus places in Labour areas and does its best to imagine them in Conservative-controlled areas, thus attacking our outstanding good village schools and doing its best to close them?
Mr. Squire: If Lancashire LEA is prepared to take on the ire of my hon. Friend, it is a strong LEA indeed. But I can assure her that any proposals from LEAs, including Lancashire's, are given the greatest study by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. If they are not reasonable in all the circumstances, closure proposals will be resisted.
The cost of maintaining surplus places at the moment is roughly 2 per cent. of the whole pay bill. If even a fraction of that were made available by LEAs, it would be extremely good news for teachers.
Most teachers in our schools are working extremely hard to ensure that their pupils receive the best possible education. Theirs is a difficult and challenging job, and I believe that they are worthy of the highest respect and praise. I have been very impressed by the teachers whom I have met and by the exciting things happening in our schools. I want to support teachers; I want the pay structure to be reformed to provide better rewards for the good teacher in the classroom. That is what I believe the new structure will achieve.
We now need to give schools time and space to learn to use the new structure. It may not be perfect in every detail and it will surely need refining in the light of experience, but we have taken an important step forward—
Mr. Tim Devlin rose—
Mr. Squire: I am coming to the end.
The Government are immensely grateful to the STRB and to its founding chairman, Sir Graham Day, for its imaginative approach. We are also grateful for the thoughtful and constructive approach of the local authorities and teaching unions to the fundamental revision that was needed to the statutory school teachers' pay and conditions document.

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I commend the order to the House and I resist this prayer.
9.29 pm
Mr. Gerry Steinberg: Having listened to the Minister, I am sure that many schoolteachers will not be impressed by his arguments when they read the debate. On 6 June 1991, during discussions on the Third Reading of the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Bill, I predicted to the House and warned the teaching profession of the consequences of trusting the Government and the then Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who had already, when Secretary of State for Health, betrayed the health workers.
With the order, my worst fears have been realised. In the Secretary of State's summing up of that debate on 6 June 1991, he accused Labour Members of showing
"their true colours by voting against one of the most welcome and important Bills that the education service has seen in a generation."—[Official Report, 6 June 1991; Vol. 192, c. 463.]
The Government showed their true colours that day when they attempted to deceive the teaching profession into believing that they were getting the only statutory truly independent pay review body.
Typically, the Government have broken their word, as they have done on many other occasions in the past 14 years. The pay review body, like its predecessor the interim advisory committee which was set up in 1987, is anything but an independent body. It is purely a front created by Governmnent to ensure that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State could determine teachers' pay and conditions.
In the debate on 6 June 1991, I told the House that the Bill allowed the Secretary of State to choose the chairman and members of the review body and decide what it discussed, and also enabled him to amend its recommendations or to ignore them completely and implement his own. The review body is anything but independent. In a radio interview earlier that day, the Secretary of State denied that he had such powers. In the debate he said:
"if the Secretary of State wishes to make a substantial modification to the review body's recommendations, he can do so only by obtaining Parliament's consent so to act."—[Official Report, 6 June 1991; Vol. 192, c. 454.]
I would argue that he has failed to do that, or even bothered to attempt to do that. On Second Reading, the then Education Minister, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Eggar), said:
"The review body has to have regard to whatever directions the Secretary of State gives, but it does not have to abide by them."—[Official Report, 29 April 1991; Vol. 190, c. 112.]
The order makes a mockery of that statement.
Who is telling the truth and predicting the consequences accurately? I leave that for hon. Members to decide, but the pay review body's recommendations were ignored by the Government and today's debate is at the insistence of the Labour party. So much for the promises and words of the then Secretary of State and his Ministers of the time.
On that fateful day, teachers' negotiating rights were finally stripped away, with the expected consequences. Only our demands to debate the order can bring the Secretary of State to account for his decision to ignore his review body's recommendations and impose his misguided dogma, as we predicted at the time. He has imposed a derisory pay increase of half a penny in the pound for
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teachers. Having encouraged the review body to develop one method of performance-related pay, he rejected its recommendations and imposed his own system through the designation of pilot schools for performance-related pay.
Interestingly, the Secretary of State said on Third Reading:
"one of the principal differences between the interim advisory committee and the new review body is that the new body will not operate within a predetermined financial envelope."
He also said:
"The Government are submitting themselves to the objective judgment of a body which will recommend the right pay, terms and conditions for teachers."—[Official Report, 6 June 1991; Vol. 192, c. 433–34.]—
[Interruption.] I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) said that that was a joke. When I prepared my speech, I wrote down the same words. What a joke—the words could have been said by a comedian, and they probably were. The Government never had any intention of allowing a truly independent pay review body. The teachers' pay increase of 1·5 per cent. in 1993 was imposed dictatorially by the Government on the pay review body, which did not have the guts to oppose the Government. That is not surprising because its members —every one of them—are appointed by the Government. Even the pay review body's recommendation, which would have meant a mind-boggling increase of 1·8 per cent., was overruled.
All the Government's fine words of 1991 have meant nothing, and the review body has proved to be just a puppet of the Government. Teachers' pay continues to be eroded. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) gave statistics about pay increases in real terms since 1979. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that in 1974 the average pay for teachers was 136 per cent. of non-manual earnings. At the end of the interim advisory committee era in 1990, it had dropped to 104 per cent. of non-manual earnings. By the time the next increase is due, it is projected that teachers' pay will have declined to 102 per cent. of non-manual earnings. In other words, teachers have seen their pay eroded over the last 10 to 15 years under the Government.
Mr. Nigel Evans: Can the hon. Gentleman explain why it was that between 1974 and 1979, under the last Labour Government—let us hope that it was indeed the last— teachers' pay increased by 6 per cent. in real terms, while between 1979 and today it has increased by 57 per cent.?
Mr. Steinberg: Teachers' pay has increased during the period of the Government's misrule of the economy, but their pay has not risen by as much as that of other non-manual earnings.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Steinberg: The hon. Lady has been on her feet about three times tonight—she might as well make a speech.
So much for the Government's so-called commitment to teachers and education. The sad facts are that, while teachers become more and more undervalued by the Government, standards cannot hope to be raised.
We are told that more teachers have been recruited into the profession. However, I will give a warning and I give it with great sincerity. There is no doubt that the recession has acted as a recruiting agent, but once the recession has ended—we are told by this hapless Government that it is

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ending now—many of the recruits will leave to get better paid, less stressful jobs and teacher shortages will again become a major problem.
Even now we have unqualified temporaries from overseas being used as teachers in our schools. We still have teacher shortages, and the situation will get worse. On the whole, teachers have taken on more work and had their pay and conditions worsened by the latest reforms. Having shown great commitment in their attempts to make the Government changes successful, they are then stabbed in the back by the Government. Teachers suffer from the underfunding of education, but so do our children who are penalised by the Government's hypocritical approach to education.
I wish to comment next on performance-related pay. Again, the pay review body's recommendations—that only deputy heads and heads should be considered for performance-related pay—were overruled. The Secretary of State has dictatorially ignored the recommendations and designated 14 schools as performance-related pay pilot schools. Incidentally, I understand that some of those schools have asked to be withdrawn from the scheme as they feel that they have been deceived.
I strongly oppose performance-related pay in any shape or form for teachers. Performance-related pay is divisive, it de-motivates and it demoralises. Against the advice of professionals and of the review body, the Government have arbitrarily enforced their dogmatic and bigoted beliefs which will further demoralise the teaching profession. Whatever one's opinion may be about performance-related pay, it is clear that the pay review body did not see it as the answer to teachers' pay. It was not an option that the pay review body favoured, even given its recommended rise, which it admitted was
"less than is needed in respect of recruitment, retention and motivation".
Contrary to what the previous Secretary of State said, a Secretary of State can impose pay settlements and working conditions for teachers which do not result from the pay review body recommendation.
Today's order proves that the Secretary of State has dictatorial power over pay levels, pay structure and conditions of service for teachers. It proves conclusively once and for all that the pay review body is a sham and no substitute for free collective bargaining and agreements. The order should be vigorously opposed.
9.39 pm
Mr. Don Foster: I begin by declaring an interest as a consultant to both the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. Although I do not speak for them, I suspect that members of those unions and of all other teacher unions would have been surprised to hear the Minister's comments about the state of morale in the profession. I have met many teachers in the past 18 months. I assure the Minister that morale within the profession is at a low ebb.
Mr. Robin Squire: I wish to add a coda, to which the hon. Gentleman may be coming. There has been a significant sea change of opinion in the past few months, for reasons of which the whole House will be aware, with the interim report of Sir Ron Dearing. I was referring to that when I spoke about morale.
Mr. Foster: I am more than willing to acknowledge that there has been a change in attitude as a result of what Sir Ron Dearing has done. That is because Sir Ron has demonstrated the great benefits of consultation—something which the Secretary of State and the Government Front-Bench team have been unwilling to do.
Mr. Oliver Heald: Who set up the Dearing committee? What the hon. Gentleman says is absolute poppycock. [Interruption.]
Mr. Foster: These comments backwards and forwards across the Chamber are of no great benefit. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is well aware that the reason it was necessary to set up the Dearing review was the strife that had been created in our education service as a result of the proposals and actions of the Government and, in particular, the Secretary of State. Many people in the teaching profession still feel at a low ebb despite what Sir Ron Dearing has done.
I entirely agree with the Minister on one thing: he said that teachers deserved the "highest respect and praise". I am sure that the whole House agrees with that. It has to be said that the excellent work that we still see in our schools occurs despite the Secretary of State's and the Government's proposals, not because of them.
The order is about the pay-round proposals. The comments that were made when the proposals were first announced were very critical. I did a trawl of the newspapers. "Derisory", "a con", "abysmal", "a recipe for conflict" and "an insult" were just some of the reactions that were reported. Why were people so worried? One of the reasons, as other hon. Members have said, was that the announcement demonstrated the complete lack of independence of the review body. It is interesting to note that the Public Finance Foundation, a branch of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, pointed out that teachers had fared worse than other professions with review bodies. It concluded that the review body's work to address the problems—this is worth hearing—of low teacher morale and the need for a pay structure in line with the changing needs of the profession had been "nipped in the bud".
One of the most obvious demonstrations of the lack of independence of that pay review body is in paragraph v. of the summary of its report, which says:
"Inevitably, our review has been coloured by the Government's announcement in November that public sector pay increases over the coming year should be in the range zero to 1·5 per cent."
The review had been coloured. The same paragraph refers to the body's likely constraint by the Government's policy.
As other hon. Members have mentioned, one of the major problems for teachers at present, and one of the obvious reasons for low morale, is the work load. It is interesting that before this debate we discussed education in Northern Ireland. The Minister, the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), acknowledged the problems of the heavy work load for teachers. Only yesterday he was quoted in an interview in the Belfast Telegraph as referring to that very subject. He said:
"Overload is a very serious problem because it is very debilitating to teachers and teaching. I would like to have a resolution to this problem… within a reasonable timescale."
I hope that, for the sake of the people teaching in Northern Ireland, he is successful.
The order will actually increase the work load for teachers in England, because even the review body

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acknowledged that the implementation of its recommendations would lead, as a result of the already overstretched budgets of local education authorities, to
"a deterioration in staffing levels".
That obviously has implications for the remaining staff in the profession.
The award gives the wrong signals to those working in the education service. It does nothing to restore morale or to enhance motivation. For that reason, it is especially important that the Minister makes it clear to the House tonight that neither he nor the Secretary of State has in any way pre-empted the review body's recommendations for 1994. I am sure that the whole House will wish to hear that assurance.
I hope that the Minister will also assure us that in future he will take more notice of the review body's other recommendations. Reference has already been made to the lack of acknowledgement of the recommendations about performance-related pay. Like other hon. Members, I am concerned about performance-related pay, especially as I acknowledge that teaching is a co-operative venture. It is about partnership among teachers, not competition between them.
The review body said, in effect, that one should not divert current appraisal work towards PRP, that one should not even think of going ahead before much more work had been done on developing acceptable indicators and that one should not think of introducing a scheme unless one were willing to make extra money available to fund it.
In spite of those three key warnings, the Government have gone ahead and, as we notice in paragraph 7 of the document, the Secretary of State ignored that advice and went ahead with 14 pilot schools. Other hon. Members have referred to the fact that some of those 14 schools have already dropped out, but I think that the House would like to know how many of those 14 schools have dropped out. My understanding—I look for confirmation from the Minister—is that five out of 14 schools have dropped out. [Interruption.] The Minister is saying two from a sedentary position. I am sure that the way in which he was indicating two will not be recorded.
It will be interesting to know whether the Minister agrees with the opinion that was expressed by the chairman of the governors of a school in Berkshire, who said that they had been conned into joining those trials and that
"The Government well and truly stepped over the mark."
I wonder whether the Minister agrees that that is what they have done.
I also accept that the Government have given themselves—sadly, I believe—the right to ignore or amend the review body's recommendations, but if they do so in future I hope that they will consult more widely first. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) referred to the worries, for instance, about teachers for pupils with special educational needs. I wish that he had looked more closely at the advice from the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf.
I hope that the Department will recognise the difficulties that are imposed on schools by the implementation of major changes. That may seem obvious, but it is worth reflecting that the notification that was given to heads and governors to implement the changes and assimilations by 1 September last year was sent out in a letter dated 15 July. That allowed very little time to do all the necessary work. The order shows a lack of regard for the review body and for heads, teachers and governors of our schools.
9.51 pm
Mr. Nigel Evans: I hope that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) is not on performance-related pay from the teachers' unions that he represents. If he is, heaven help his income.
Time and again, we hear from the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) about low teacher morale or about how teachers were much better off under the last Labour Government. That is not true. One has only to look at teachers' pay between 1974 and 1979 to see that they were far more poorly paid than they are now.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I was fascinated by the highly selective statistics given by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg)—I cannot see him in his place now. Like most members of the Labour party, he is behind the times. He drew his conclusions from statistics up to 1990 when the relative pay of teachers compared to non-manual workers was 105. He omitted to mention, not surprisingly, that in 1991 the relative pay was 112 and in 1992 it was 118—as compared with 106 when we took office.
Mr. Evans: That does not surprise me. I am sure that the hon. Member was burning the midnight oil trying to work out some statistics to make the Labour party's shabby little case look better.
We have seen teachers' pay rise remarkably in real terms since 1979 and, at the same time, we have seen standards in our schools improve. Far too often we look at the input in education as opposed to the output. We have seen GCSE results improve and far more of our youngsters are staying on for A-levels, either in their own school or in further and higher education. Many of them have done extremely well and have gone on to university. The number going to university has risen from one in eight to one in four and the Government are determined that, by the end of the century, we will see one in three of our youngsters going to university. That is superb.
Mr. Don Foster: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that as more and more students go into higher education—and that is worth supporting—one in eight is dropping out because of a lack of funding?
Mr. Evans: All I can say is that we are seeing more of our youngsters going on to further and higher education and benefiting from it. We want to ensure that our youngsters are taking relevant courses that will benefit them. Perhaps in too many cases our youngsters take courses that are not right for them and drop out because of that. We need to pay more attention to that.
Ms Estelle Morris: The hon. Gentleman's speech so far seems to have been about comparative wage rates for teachers between now and some time in the past. Has not the hon. Gentleman realised that we are concerned because of the Government's attitude to the review body and because in three of the past four years the Government have ignored the recommendations from the pay review body? It is the breaking of the pledge that the Government made to accept the recommendations from the review body that is causing a downward trend in morale.
In the rest of his speech, will the hon. Gentleman give us fewer statistics comparing one year with another and address the real concern of Labour Members, which is that

785
his Government and Ministers have proved that they are not prepared to accept the recommendations of the review body? It was the Government's pledge to accept such recommendations that enabled teachers to go along with the idea in the first place.
Mr. Evans: Of course, I do not accept what the hon. Lady says about morale in our schools.
Before I became a Member of Parliament for Ribble Valley, I was a county councillor in West Glamorgan. I was the chairman of a governing body for a couple of years and a member of many other governing bodies, as was the practice in Labour-controlled county councils in those days. During those six years as a governor, I witnessed an absolute sea change when we, through Government policy, depoliticised those governing bodies. If the Opposition want to talk about low morale in the teaching profession, they need only remember when Labour councillors were sitting on the governing bodies of schools and dictating to them exactly what their policies should be. That is when there was low morale.
The mood has changed since then, because we have taken power away from the politicians on the governing bodies and given it to those to whom it belongs—the parents, teachers and the professionals in the teaching profession. We have taken it away from the politicians, and the Opposition do not like it.
The pay of teachers has increased by 57 per cent. in real terms between 1979 and 1993. The Minister also stated some of the amounts that teachers are currently earning. At one stage, I intervened to say that the average pay of some of our teachers is not what we would call extremely high, but, had the Opposition won the election, teachers would have been in the very sector of society that would be caught by the higher taxes that the Opposition would have introduced.
During the period that the Conservatives have been in government, we have seen the tax on teachers' pay come down remarkably, because, since 1979, the basic rate of tax has dropped from 33 per cent. to 25 per cent., and, in certain sectors, to 20 per cent. Teachers are the very people who would have seen their taxes increase if Labour had won the general election.
Mr. Derek Enright: Will the hon. Gentleman speculate on what pay rise the teachers should have if the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts VAT on books? Does he agree that it should be considerable and will he promise to fight for such a rise if VAT is slapped on books?
Mr. Evans: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken if he thinks I will speculate about what will be in the Budget on 30 November. I will speculate about what would happen if there were a return of a Labour Government. I do not really need to speculate, because one has only to remember what the shadow Chancellor said during the general election campaign, when he made the great mistake that many people feel caused Labour to lose the general election. What did the Labour party then do? It promoted him to be its leader. That is what happens in the Labour party; it promotes failures rather than gets rid of them.
Opposition Members are concentrating on one narrow aspect of teachers' pay and incentives when they should be looking at their gamut. We have seen an increase in
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standards and incentives. We want to drive standards up, and time and again that is what we are seeing in education in our schools.
We have seen the introduction of grant-maintained schools, and 1,000 schools have opted for that status. The Opposition would take the rights of the parents away from those schools and they would be trawled back into local authority control, which would be an absolute disgrace. They should listen to parents on that issue, but they will not do so.
Through the local management of schools, governing bodies now have more control over their budgets so that they can spend the money on those items that they think will be of benefit to their youngsters. When Opposition Members talk about performance-related pay and comparisons with the private sector, is not it amazing that they want the teaching profession—which we believe is doing a superb job—to have the rewards of the private sector but not the demands?
Mr. Devlin: My hon. Friend may be aware that I am the governor of a private school in my constituency which is one of the highest performing newly formed private schools in the past few years and gets a high percentage of boys into Oxford, Cambridge and other universities. Is he aware that I find it extraordinary that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) suggested earlier that performance-related pay is inimical to the co-operative nature of teaching children? In our school, which out-performs nearly all of the state sector, there is performance-related pay and the teachers work extremely well together. The value of the Secretary of State's work is of great benefit to the future of the teaching profession.
Mr. Evans: I can only accept everything that my hon. Friend has said on that subject. I am sure that he makes an extremely good governor who contributes well to that governing body.
The Government have seen many changes over their period in office. During the time that I was a governor of a school in my area, I saw some of those changes coming in and it is right that we are determined to continue with the process of ensuring that youngsters in our schools get the best education.
Money has been invested in the technical and vocational educational initiative to ensure that youngsters with a more vocational aspect of their education will get the sort of education that they deserve. General national vocational qualifications have been introduced alongside those initiatives to ensure that youngsters who are not academic are able to concentrate on those lessons that will be of benefit to them when they leave school.
Mr. Don Foster: I share the hon. Gentleman's pleasure at success of the initiatives to which he has just referred. He will be aware that those initiatives were available for pupils in all state schools. Does he agree that, in the further development of that process through the new technology initiative, it is therefore right for the Secretary of State to make the money available only for children in grant-maintained or voluntary-aided schools?
Mr. Robin Squire: There is now flexibility.
Mr. Evans: As the Minister has said, there is now flexibility and that is what we want to see in our schools.
Mr. Matthew Banks: If I might briefly take my hon. Friend back to something that he mentioned earlier, does he agree that it is of paramount importance, when discussing matters relating to conditions of service and pay, that we constantly state that under this Government teachers' pay has risen dramatically in real terms and that, no matter what Opposition Members say, teachers' pay under the last Labour Government barely rose at all?
Mr. Evans: That is one of the reasons why my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) was elected and why the Liberal Democrats lost that seat.
Mr. Nick Hawkins: My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) has just mentioned the technical and vocational educational initiative. Opposition Members should recognise that many of their colleagues in local government, especially in the Kirklees local authority, bitterly opposed the introduction of TVEI in the teeth of the support for TVEI consistently made clear by many Labour-supporting teachers and head teachers throughout the middle and late 1980s.
I was heavily involved in a number of those battles when I was the parliamentary candidate for Huddersfield. Many socialists in west Yorkshire opposed TVEI tooth and nail and continued to do so against all educational common sense.
Mr. Evans: It would not be the first time that Opposition Members have done a U-turn on a policy that was introduced by the Government and in which they now see some merit.
I shall bring my comments to a close, as many other hon. Members wish to speak. The Government are absolutely committed to the teaching profession and are proud of the work that they are doing and we will ensure that that work carries on in the future.
10.3 pm
Mr. Stephen Byers: I am grateful to have the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate, because, before my election in April last year, I had the pleasure of serving as chairman of the national employers' organisation for school teachers, which is the body that represents the local authority employers. Before that, I was a member of the Burnham committee which was later abolished by the Conservative Government.
I shall make one comment about the need to restore negotiating rights to the 400,000 teachers in England and Wales and I shall then make some detailed comments about the order. It must be a matter of great regret to the House that we have such a large body of workers who are unable to enjoy the basic democratic right of negotiating their own pay and conditions of service. It is a right which many in the House argued should be enjoyed in other countries when it was denied to people there. I am thinking especially of Solidarity in Poland. Many Conservative Members were keen to extol the virtues of that trade union and to give it the ability to negotiate freely with the Polish Government of the day. Many of us feel that the time has come to give teachers the right to negotiate freely with their local authority employers.
Mr. Devlin: Does the hon. Gentleman consider that the Burnham machinery was successful? It was clear that, year
788
after year, the employers and unions agreed a pay increase that they then expected someone else—the Government —to fund. That position was clearly unsatisfactory. Either the Government had to have some role in the negotiating procedure, because they were footing the bill, or the whole machinery had to be changed. That is why the machinery was scrapped.
The value of the present system is that the Secretary of State at least has some say in the way in which the negotiations are carried out and he is doing a great deal through the order and the proposals that will come forward for next year to enable good teachers to stay in the classroom.
Mr. Byers: To say that the Secretary of State now has some say in the matter is rather an understatement. He appoints all the members of the review body. He gives them the remit under which they have to operate and, once the report has been received, he modifies it by order so that it cannot be identified as the original submission from the review body.
The Burnham committee had the benefit of, for example, the negotiators being people with practical experience who would know the practical difficulties to which certain proposals would give rise. One of the reasons why teachers had a fair deal throughout the 1980s was precisely that for seven of the 10 years pay was determined by the Burnham committee. The teachers' present difficulty is that in three of the past four years, the Government have changed the review body's recommendations, not for the better, but by reducing or delaying the amount that teachers would have got as a result of the review body's recommendations.
There is a democratic principle at stake when considering free nogotiations. There are also practical reasons why negotiations are important. There are people with expertise and with day-to-day experience who can bring those qualities to bear on the proposals that come forward.
Mr. Heald: Does the hon. Gentleman propose bringing back the Burnham committee? Is it not right to say that in three out of the last four years of its operation it could not agree?
Mr. Byers: I agreed with the Burnham committee's recommendations to the then Secretary of State. It is a matter of regret that the Secretary of State chose to ignore them. The Burnham made two main proposals. The first was that the size of both sides of the committee should be reduced. The second was that there should be a deadline by which the committee would have to make recommendations which it would then put to the Secretary of State. The committee would then not have had the difficulties that it experienced in the previous three to four years. Its proposals to the Secretary of State were practical. If he had looked at them rationally and less dogmatically, he would have been able to agree to them. For political reasons, the then Secretary of State decided that he wanted to remove negotiating rights from teachers. That is a matter of deep regret and that is why we are now dealing with the order.
The order does not reflect the recommendations that came from the schoolteachers' pay review body. It modifies it substantially, as the memorandum before us clearly demonstrates.
The schoolteachers' pay review body, even though it had been given a remit by the Secretary of State, proposed

789
an end-loaded settlement that would have cost 1·8 per cent. in a full year on the total pay bill for teachers. That was unacceptable to the Government because they had to bring it within the 1·5 per cent. public pay policy envelope. It is because of the Government's need to achieve that overriding political objective that we have some of the difficulties that are created by the order.
What is even worse, though—to add insult to injury —is that even though only 1·5 per cent. is being made available to teachers pay overall, the Government are not even funding the 1·5 per cent. increase. The Minister will be aware that the increase in the education standard spending assessment for local education authorities is only 0·25 per cent. in 1993–94, compared with the actual spend on education last year.
The Minister may live in a never-never land where actual spend does not mean much. It clearly means that it is money that was spent in the previous financial year. That, of course, is ignored by the Government because they see it as Labour local authorities committing the cardinal sin of overspending on education. The Government ignore that and are only prepared to increase the education standard spending assessment by the amount that they believe should have been spent, which is substantially less than what Labour local authorities are spending.
Mr. Robin Squire: The hon. Gentleman is taking me back to a previous role, which is always a dangerous trip to make. My memory is that the increase year on year—a legitimate comparison for the adjusted services of education—is approximately 3 per cent. If that is not so, I shall make that clear elsewhere. Against the background of inflation conditions that we had, I think that that is a reasonable settlement.
Mr. Byers: Because of his previous portfolio, I think that the Minister knows full well that that does not compare with what is happening in reality. That may be all right as far as the Treasury is concerned—we know that the Treasury dominates exactly what his Department can now do—but in terms of what is being spent in our schools, which must concern the House, there has been an increase of only 0·25 per cent. year to year as a result of the decisions that the Government have made. Financial difficulties will be experienced by local education authorities and individual schools as a result of the paltry increase that teachers will get. We should have had a reasonable and responsible increase properly funded by the Government.
On the question of structure, the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said that the document was not published until 15 July, which, in practice, has meant that governing bodies, which will implement many of the structural changes, have simply not had the time to put those changes in place. If we experience the same procedure next year, there will be a strong argument—I suggest this in a constructive way—for the document to be published earlier so that governing bodies in the summer term can consider the modifications to which the order will give rise.
The order allows the Secretary of State to designate individual schools to introduce performance-related pay on a pilot basis. We understand that, originally, 14 schools volunteered. Were they really volunteers or had they merely expressed an interest in a letter at some stage and
790
found themselves, in the full glare of publicity, described as having volunteered? Can the Minister confirm that, of those 14, five have indicated that they do not want to proceed? It would be interesting to hear the Minister say whether it is five or fewer.
When he chaired the review body, Sir Graham Day heard much evidence about PRP. Because of his industrial background, he was a man of great experience of the benefits, in certain sectors, that can come from the introduction of PRP. Sir Graham Day knew very well that it was almost impossible to introduce performance-related pay into the schools sector. That is why he wanted to proceed with caution, and why the review body was prepared to do no more than start some feasibility studies of how performance-related pay could work; it was not prepared to go any further than that, because it realised the difficulties that were involved and the need to proceed with caution. There is great concern that, by introducing the order, the Government are moving towards a system under which pilot projects can be set up through designation by the Secretary of State.
Many of us disagree fundamentally with the whole idea of performance-related pay in schools. Who is to judge? Who is it to be awarded to? Is it to be awarded to the whole school, an individual department, a group of teachers or individual teachers? Those are difficult issues, which need to be tackled sensibly and sympathetically. As I said, Sir Graham Day, a highly experienced industrialist, was not prepared to embark on pilot projects because of the difficulties that he envisaged. The order represents the triumph of political dogma over education reason.
I have questions about two specific points that arise from the order, the first of which concerns the 18-point pay spine for qualified teachers. As I told the Minister, I should be interested to hear why it is that, in his Department's own evidence, which has now been submitted to the pay review body for next year, a 35-point pay scale is recommended for qualified teachers. The reason given is that, in the Department's view, such a scale will be workable and flexible. By implication, that means that the 18-point spine proposed in the order is unworkable and inflexible. I shall be interested to hear why the Minister's own Department has made such a substantial change.
My second specific point concerning the structure changes before us relates to the windfall earnings that will come to certain individual teachers. I hope that the Minister will consider that matter. The provision affects those teachers who were in service under the old Burnham structure, which was abolished in 1987. The order states that they are to receive one spine point for each year of service, in the same way as all other teachers. But it will give a windfall gain to teachers who have had a break in service since 1987 and have not yet reached the top of the standard scale.
We are not talking about small amounts. The sums will be substantial, and the employers have calculated that, for some local education authorities, the provision will mean an additional 0·25 per cent. on the salary bill. That may not seem much to hon. Members, but it is the equivalent of 1,000 teachers, so the issue is crucial.
What does the Minister intend to do about those windfall earnings? They will be random in nature: they will turn up in individual schools—perhaps more than one teacher in a particular school will be eligible for them. What will the Minister do to help schools one or two of whose teachers experience a windfall increase as a result of

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the order? Will there be additional support? How will the arrangements operate under the scheme of delegation under local management of schools, bearing in mind the fact that it is not the actual salary that is covered under the local management arrangements but the average salary for the local authority as a whole? How does the Minister intend to tackle that point?
The order represents the worst of all possible worlds. It will create financial difficulties for' individual local education authorities and schools because of the chronic underfunding of the education service by this Government. It will do nothing to raise morale among our teachers. It will not retain, recruit and motivate any of our teachers. We need an order that will reward and ensure that we keep high-quality teachers and so invest in high-quality education for our children. It is because the order fails to achieve those objectives that it should be opposed.
10.18 pm
Mr. Win Griffiths: It is worth reminding the Minister of the point with which my hon. Friend the Member for Wallsend (Mr. Byers) finished, because, in setting out the Government's stall, the Minister emphasised what he felt were the positive aspects of the award—the 18-point spine, the opportunities for extra points based on excellence and responsibility, and so on. He gave the impression that any successful school, with teachers diligently carrying out responsibilities and performing excellently in the classroom, would be able to claim up to five extra points for responsibility and up to three points for excellence. He suggested that a headmaster would recommend teachers for points because of the excellence of their performance. The truth is that everything depends on the resources that are made available through the national pay award, which percolate down to local authorities and then to schools.
There is a severe limit on any flexibility in the system. Will any head teacher have total carte blanche to reward a member of staff in exactly the way in which he or she would want? The truth is that the money is not there.
I do not want the Minister to advance well-rehearsed arguments about the history of pay increases since the year dot, but as the pay review body is likely to be in existence for some time, I should like him to consider its independence. Unfortunately, it has been rather supine in accepting the financial limits that have been placed on it by the Government, even though in previous debates Ministers and the Secretary of State made it quite clear that no financial limit would be placed on its consideration of teachers' pay. It has admitted, however, that its recommendations are less than is necessary to ensure a well-motivated profession of teachers who want to stay in schools or to attract others with good qualifications to the profession.
None of those issues has been tackled by the Minister. Is he prepared to say that the pay review body will be directed not to pay heed to any financial limit placed on it by the Government but to respond honestly with the recommendations that it believes to be necessary to ensure a well-paid and well-motivated teaching force, providing our young people with a quality education? One of the great disappointments this year has been the way in which the pay review body has meekly accepted the financial limits that the Government have placed on it.
I hope, too, that the Minister will explain clearly why even the modest recommendations of the pay review body
792
have not been accepted, why the special educational needs sector is limited only to teachers who are teaching with statements and exactly when primary schools will get all the allowances that were recommended by the pay review body. We look forward to the answers and hope that there will be a positive response to the needs outlined by the pay review body which were, unfortunately, rejected by the Government.
10.26 pm
Mr. Robin Squire: This has been an enjoyable if short debate to which hon. Members from both parties have made important contributions. I am sure that they will accept that if I cannot deal with every issue raised now, I shall write to them about any outstanding matters.
I listened carefully to see whether I could learn why Labour Members think that it would be right to annul the order and create administrative chaos in schools and local education authorities which have made good progress by putting it into effect. I listened, but I confess that I have not found the answer.
A variety of reasons were advanced. I do not think that it is too much of a caricature to summarise them as follows: Labour Members object to the independent review body system; they object to the Government adjusting the recommendations so that all public sector employees were this year affected in the same way by the Government's approach to pay—in other words, they object to fair treatment; they object to the notion that good teachers might be paid more than bad; and they object to schools that have developed their own arrangements for rewarding good performance being permitted to continue to do so.
I deal now with specific questions. The background to the 1993–94 settlement was mentioned by the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) and for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg), among others. The Government did not put a financial constraint on the schoolteachers pay review body, which was directed to have regard to the 0 to 1·5 per cent. overall limit. I remind the House that the pay restraint policy applied to all public sector groups without exception. The 0·35 per cent., to which the hon. Member for Bridgend referred, did not affect the salary settlement for 1993–94, but it would have affected the settlement for 1994–95. In fairness to all other public sector workers, the Secretary of State saw no reason to depart from the practice which was affecting every other public sector employee. I think that most hon. Members would agree with that.
In answer to the hon. Members for Bath (Mr. Foster) and for Bridgend, I confirm that there is no specific financial constraint or percentage limit on pay settlements for 1994–95. We have, of course, consistently said that we shall accept the recommendations of the review bodies unless there are clear and compelling reasons to the contrary, but the review bodies will have to be realistic about the context in which they operate, which will not be clear until after the forthcoming Budget statement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) helpfully wondered about an alternative. I suspect that a number of Labour Members would like to return to what they term "collective bargaining". Many people would argue that the performance of collective bargaining in the 20 years up to the 1986 settlement, which produced only thre negotiated settlements for teachers, has done

793
more than almost anything else to downplay teachers' reputations in the eyes of the public. I submit that teachers are better off with the body that they now have.
As for performance-related pay, our view is that across all public services, regular and direct links should be established between a person's contribution to the standards of service provided and his or her reward. We are determined to raise standards in the public sector.
On the issue of schools dropping out, I can confirm that two have dropped out and that one further school rumoured to have dropped out is carrying on, as are all the other schools.
Time does not allow me to deal with every issue, but I shall use the balance of the time available to answer the hon. Member for Bridgend. The important comparison to bear in mind is that the Opposition presided over an unparalleled decline in teachers' salaries until 1979. They do not like being reminded of it, but it happens to be true. The average pay of schoolteachers, as my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) and for Southport (Mr. Banks) reminded us—
It being one and a half hours after commencement of proceedings on the motion, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Order [22 October]:—
The House divided: Ayes 175, Noes 237.

Division No.370]

[10.29

AYES

Adams, Mrs Irene

Denham, John

Ainger, Nick

Dixon, Don

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Donohoe, Brian H.

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Dowd, Jim

Ashton, Joe

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Austin-Walker, John

Eagle, Ms Angela

Barnes, Harry

Eastham, Ken

Battle, John

Enright, Derek

Bayley, Hugh

Etherington, Bill

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Bell, Stuart

Fatchett, Derek

Bennett, Andrew F.

Fisher, Mark

Benton, Joe

Flynn, Paul

Bermingham, Gerald

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

Berry, Dr. Roger

Foster, Don (Bath)

Betts, Clive

Foulkes, George

Boyce, Jimmy

Fyfe, Maria

Boyes, Roland

Gapes, Mike

Bradley, Keith

Gerrard, Neil

Byers, Stephen

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Caborn, Richard

Godsiff, Roger

Callaghan, Jim

Golding, Mrs Llin

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Gordon, Mildred

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Graham, Thomas

Canavan, Dennis

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Cann, Jamie

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Chisholm, Malcolm

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Clapham, Michael

Gunnell, John

Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

Hanson, David

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Hardy, Peter

Clelland, David

Harman, Ms Harriet

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Heppell, John

Coffey, Ann

Hill, Keith (Streatham)

Connarty, Michael

Home Robertson, John

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Hood, Jimmy

Corbyn, Jeremy

Hoon, Geoffrey

Corston, Ms Jean

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Cousins, Jim

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Cryer, Bob

Illslay, Eric

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

Darling, Alistair

Jamieson, David

Davidson, Ian

Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

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

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

794

Jowell, Tessa

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

Khabra, Piara S.

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Kilfoyle, Peter

Prescott, John

Kirkwood, Archy

Primarolo, Dawn

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Purchase, Ken

Lewis, Terry

Quin, Ms Joyce

Livingstone, Ken

Raynsford, Nick

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Redmond, Martin

Loyden, Eddie

Roche, Mrs. Barbara

Lynne, Ms Liz

Rooker, Jeff

McAllion, John

Rooney, Terry

McAvoy, Thomas

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

McCrea, Rev William

Rowlands, Ted

Macdonald, Calum

Sedgemore, Brian

McFall, John

Short, Clare

Mackinlay, Andrew

Simpson, Alan

McMaster, Gordon

Skinner, Dennis

McWilliam, John

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Madden, Max

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

Maddock, Mrs Diana

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

Mahon, Alice

Soley, Clive

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Spearing, Nigel

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Spellar, John

Martlew, Eric

Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

Maxton, John

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Meale, Alan

Steinberg, Gerry

Michael, Alun

Stevenson, George

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Stott, Roger

Milburn, Alan

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Tipping, Paddy

Morgan, Rhodri

Tyler, Paul

Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Wallace, James

Mudie, George

Walley, Joan

Mullin, Chris

Wareing, Robert N

Murphy, Paul

Watson, Mike

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Wicks, Malcolm

O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

Wise, Audrey

O'Brien, William (Normanton)

Worthington, Tony

O'Hara, Edward

Wray, Jimmy

Paisley, Rev Ian

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Parry, Robert

Patchett, Terry

Tellers for the Ayes:

Pickthall, Colin

Mr. Jack Thompson and

Pike, Peter L.

Mr. Dennis Turner.

Pope, Greg

NOES

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Butterfill, John

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Carlisle, John (Luton North)

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Amess, David

Carrington, Matthew

Ancram, Michael

Carttiss, Michael

Arbuthnot, James

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Clappison, James

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Aspinwall, Jack

Coe, Sebastian

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Colvin, Michael

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Congdon, David

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Conway, Derek

Baldry, Tony

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Bates, Michael

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Bellingham, Henry

Couchman, James

Beresford, Sir Paul

Cran, James

Blackburn, Dr John G.

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

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Booth, Hartley

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Boswell, Tim

Day, Stephen

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Devlin, Tim

Bowis, John

Dicks, Terry

Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Brandreth, Gyles

Dover, Den

Brazier, Julian

Duncan, Alan

Bright, Graham

Duncan-Smith, Iain

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Dunn, Bob

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Durant, Sir Anthony

Burns, Simon

Dykes, Hugh

Burt, Alistair

Eggar, Tim

Butler, Peter

Elletson, Harold

795

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Hunter, Andrew

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Jack, Michael

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

Evennett, David

Jenkin, Bernard

Faber, David

Jessel, Toby

Fabricant, Michael

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Fishburn, Dudley

Key, Robert

Forman, Nigel

Kilfedder, Sir James

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

King, Rt Hon Tom

Forth, Eric

Kirkhope, Timothy

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Knapman, Roger

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

Knight, Greg (Derby N)

French, Douglas

Knox, Sir David

Gale, Roger

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Gallie, Phil

Lang, Rt Hon Ian

Gardiner, Sir George

Lawrence, Sir Ivan

Gill, Christopher

Legg, Barry

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Leigh, Edward

Gorst, John

Lidington, David

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Lightbown, David

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

Lord, Michael

Grylls, Sir Michael

Luff, Peter

Hague, William

Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie (Epsom)

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

MacKay, Andrew

Hannam, Sir John

McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

Hargreaves, Andrew

Madel, David

Harris, David

Maitland, Lady Olga

Haselhurst, Alan

Malone, Gerald

Hawkins, Nick

Mans, Keith

Hawksley, Warren

Marland, Paul

Hayes, Jerry

Marlow, Tony

Heald, Oliver

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Hendry, Charles

Mates, Michael

Hill, James (Southampton Test)

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Horam, John

Mellor, Rt Hon David

Hordem, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Merchant, Piers

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

Milligan, Stephen

Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

Mills, Iain

796

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Sproat, Iain

Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

Monro, Sir Hector

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Steen, Anthony

Moss, Malcolm

Stephen, Michael

Neubert, Sir Michael

Streeter, Gary

Nicholls, Patrick

Sumberg, David

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Sykes, John

Norris, Steve

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

Taylor, Rt Hon John D. (Strgfd)

Oppenheim, Phillip

Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

Page, Richard

Temple-Morris, Peter

Paice, James

Thomason, Roy

Patnick, Irvine

Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Pawsey, James

Thomton, Sir Malcolm

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Thumham, Peter

Pickles, Eric

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Porter, David (Waveney)

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

Redwood, Rt Hon John

Tredinnick, David

Richards, Rod

Trend, Michael

Riddick, Graham

Twinn, Dr Ian

Robathan, Andrew

Viggers, Peter

Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

Waller, Gary

Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

Ward, John

Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

Sackville, Tom

Waterson, Nigel

Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

Watts, John

Shaw, David (Dover)

Whitney, Ray

Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

Whtttingdale, John

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Widdecombe, Ann

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Wiggin, Sir Jerry

Shersby, Michael

Wilkinson, John

Sims, Roger

Willetts, David

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Wolfson, Mark

Soames, Nicholas

Wood, Timothy

Speed, Sir Keith

Yeo, Tim

Spencer, Sir Derek

Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

Tellers for the Noes:

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Mr. Sydney Chapman and

Spink, Dr Robert

Mr. Robert G Hughes

Question accordingly negatived.

St. Philip's Sixth Form College, Birmingham
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
10.41 pm
Ms Clare Short: I am taking the unusual step of raising the future of St. Philip's sixth form college in my constituency because I am very concerned that a popular, happy and academically successful college is being undermined by a very small group of trustees who will not listen to parents, students, staff, or mainstream Catholic opinion in Birmingham. I ask the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further and Higher Education and, through him, the Secretary of State to intervene to preserve that fine educational institution, as happened in the case of the school in Stratford in London, which was being undermined by a small faction that had taken control of the governing body of the school and was undermining the education of the children at that school.
I am very sad indeed to have to bring this matter to the attention of the House and to make this unusual request. I myself attended St. Paul's then grammar school, which was a sister school of St. Philip's. One of my brothers and many of my uncles and cousins attended St. Philip's school. Unfortunately, those who are now in control of the governing body seem not to be as wise or as concerned for Catholic education in Birmingham as their predecessors were.
St. Philip's, which was a grammar school, is now a sixth form Roman Catholic college. It is extremely popular. It has more than 900 students, and it has had to turn away students this year and in previous years. Indeed, it has turned away Catholic students. Its academic results are excellent. It recently won a prestigious academic award. It is a very happy and popular college. It is a Catholic college with a Catholic ethos. All students receive Catholic education, but within an ethos that is multicultural and shows deep respect for other world religions. The result is that the parents of students committed to other faiths are keen for their children to attend St. Philip's because there is a religious ethos and deep respect for religions at that college.
I should explain as background that Roman Catholic education in Birmingham, of which I am a product, has had to face up to the multicultural nature of our city. It used to be the case that all Catholic schools in Birmingham were all-white. As our population changed, our black populations came mainly from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent and had very few Catholics. Schools such as St. Clare's, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), which also recently won a prestigious award and at which my sister used to teach, started to be all-white in a multicultural city. Wisely and sensibly, such schools said that they would give priority to Catholic children but invite children from all faiths in the city. They would show respect to all faiths and be a beacon of high-quality Catholic education in our city. Catholic education in Birmingham has been respected for that contribution and has learnt that lesson.
Sadly and suddenly, the oratory fathers have decided to break that tradition. Because one third of the students at St. Philip's college are Catholic, the oratory fathers decided
798
that they must close the college. The first preference announced was to turn the college into a boys' Catholic secondary school. Obviously, that was a ridiculous proposition because we have surplus places in our secondary schools in Birmingham and the demand is for girls' schools, if there is to be any change. There is no demand for a boys' secondary school.
Having failed in that endeavour, having consulted the staff and parents, and having been opposed by everyone who was consulted, they decided, extraordinarily, to hand the college to the Anglican Church and arrange for it to be transferred to another site. That is an extremely odd decision. It is disturbing for the Catholic staff at the college who wonder whether they will be told one day that they must cease to teach in a Catholic ethos and teach in the Anglican ethos. The proposal is extraordinary—it is an argument for those concerned with Catholic education—and is causing enormous anxiety among mainstream Catholics in Birmingham.
That is not the issue that I raise in the House tonight. My concern is to secure the future of this fine academic institution and ensure that current students at the college do not have their education undermined. Because of the way in which the unrepresentative governing body is managing the college, I am concerned that the college might be undermined and might not survive to be transferred to another site under Anglican authority. It seems that those who are managing the college know nothing about education, care nothing about education, and do not have respect for academic traditions and the decent management of such a fine college.
Since the decision was made to move the college, a pattern of ugly behaviour by the governing body has developed. The governing body ceased to act democratically. It would not allow the elected staff representative to be on the governing body—it chose its own community representative, who was part of its faction. It called all sorts of confidential meetings, it would not circulate minutes, and it started to behave in a deeply undemocratic way. It also ceased to meet or consult parents and students.
Since the governing body consulted parents about the closure of the college, parents who are worried about the education of their children have written to the college—there was a massive meeting at which total opposition to the proposed closure was expressed—but have received no response or information. There is an absolute refusal to consult the staff or even keep them informed about plans.
There is an atmosphere of intimidation in the college. Staff are too frightened to speak, ask questions or continue to teach in the fine way that they have until now. There is an enormously sad and immoral, if not illegal, question about the use of public funds. Large sums of money have been spent on parts of the building that are not being used by the college. We know that the plan is to transfer the college elsewhere, so that the way in which public funds which have been raised and given to the college for the purposes of education are being used is questionable.
Most painful of all is the mistreatment of students of other faiths. Recently it was decided that Muslim students, who had been recruited as equal students in the college and who had always been treated with respect, could not pray in private in their classroom. Buildings elsewhere had to be rented at a cost to the college, and Muslim students were told that they had to go elsewhere to pray. The governors and trustees argued that that decison was made because corporate acts of worship of other faiths are not allowed

799
under the trust deed of the college. These are not corporate acts of worship; this is private prayer by Muslim students. That decision is ugly and prejudiced—even racist—in its consequence, and it is disturbing people in Birmingham.
My request to the Minister is simple. For the purposes of this debate, I accept the decision to transfer the college to the Anglican authorities and to another site. However, I am concerned that, if things continue as they are, the college—the staff and students—will be undermined and there will not be a college to transfer.
Part of the problem arises from the Government's reorganisation of the management of education. They devolved power to governing bodies and sometimes, as in the case of the school in Stratford in London and now St. Philip's, a small unrepresentative faction will not listen to staff, students, parents and mainstream Catholic opinion and destroys and undermines a fine educational institution.
This is where the Secretary of State and the Minister have a duty. It takes years to build an educational institution of such high quality; it cannot be created overnight. This college has been nurtured and built. Everyone is proud of it and its academic results are spectacular. It is a valuable institution in inner-city Birmingham. We need fine institutions to give our children a chance of succeeding and going on to higher education.
We need the Government's help. They thought that they were devolving power to local communities, but in this case a small faction has got control of a college and is in danger of undermining the education of current students and the future of the institution. I ask that the Secretary of State use his powers to appoint governors to the governing body and to ensure that the college is run properly and an orderly transfer takes place for the sake of existing and future students.
10.51 pm
Ms Estelle Morris: I wish to add briefly to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms Short). The college lies in her constituency and my constituency is some miles away. I emphasise that this problem is not just an issue for my hon. Friend's constituents; it spreads throughout the city of Birmingham.
St. Philip's is a success story. These days, when it is difficult for our children to learn in our schools, we should celebrate our successes, build on them and conserve them. It is a great sadness for all of us that one of our great success stories in terms of academic work as well as social and multiracial integration has come upon these problems. I, too, plead with the Government to take action to solve this problem, for two reasons.
First, while all this is going on, a group of young people is trying to continue and to complete their education. They have only one chance. They cannot wait for us to sort out the quagmire and introduce new rules and regulations. As my hon. Friend said, it is the Government's fault and our fault as politicians that we have allowed a structure to exist whereby this kind of abuse can take place. The onus is on the Government quickly to improve the situation before the education of more young people is jeopardised.
The second reason why we need a speedy resolution is that the problem is tainting education throughout our city and not just in the one school. Too much energy is being used to try to solve this problem when it could be better
800
used by Government, Members of Parliament, councillors, parents and the local city council to address some issues that we want to be addressed in Birmingham.
My only reason for intervening in the debate is to emphasise as much as I am able that this problem faces the largest education authority in the country. It does not affect just a few children and parents. We need a speedy resolution to it so that parents, teachers and pupils at St. Philip's as well as the rest of us in Birmingham can get on with what we are trying to do, which is to provide a decent standard of education for our young people.
10.54 pm
Mr. Jeff Rooker rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. Does the hon. Gentleman have the permission of the hon. Member for Ladywood to speak?
Mr. Rooker: Yes, Sir.
I support everything that my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms Short) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) have said. Earlier this year I met more than 60 members of staff at St. Philip's college, and I can confirm that there is a climate of fear there. They are fearful about speaking out about what is happening at the college. Fear is rampant throughout the institution. It can only be dealt with by major changes in the governing body.
10.55 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further and Higher Education (Mr. Tim Boswell): I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms Short) on her good fortune in securing this Adjournment debate. She has spoken with characteristic passion and concern about what she sees as a matter of public interest and in the interests of the students of St. Philip's college.
I fully appreciate the strength of feeling aroused by the uncertainty surrounding the future of the college. I have seen press reports that raise various issues, including those on which the hon. Lady touched tonight. I am also aware of correspondence from those with a close interest in the matter.
I should, however, make it clear that these are essentially local issues which those at the local level must work together to resolve—
Dame Jill Knight: I should perhaps explain that, until fairly recently, the college was in my constituency. I urge my hon. Friend to recognise that there are two sides to the problem.
First, the trust deed under which the college operates clearly lays down that the college exists to perpetuate and maintain the Catholic religion. I am not a Catholic, but that is what it says.
As for the allegations about Muslims, my hon. Friend should be aware that only yesterday the chairman of the governors received a letter of staunch support from the chairman of Birmingham's Muslim liaison committee:
"It gives me pleasure to confirm that we are in agreement with the arrangements that have been made for the prayers of muslim pupils at the college. We further confirm that this matter is now settled between yourselves and the muslim community … We re-iterate our gratitude for your cooperation in bringing this matter to a pleasant end and satisfactory conclusion."

801
I ask my hon. Friend to bear those important points in mind when he comes to weigh up the rights and wrongs of the argument.
Mr. Boswell: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. I can readily give her the assurance that all relevant matters will be carefully weighed up.
Institutions in the further education sector are autonomous and Parliament has deliberately and properly made it difficult for Ministers to intervene in the affairs of individual colleges. I call on all the parties involved to co-operate with one another to achieve a satisfactory conclusion. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) said, uppermost in our minds must be the interests of the students involved. The Department for Education will have a role to play once the local players have put forward a proposal on the future of the college. The Department will, of course, be happy to offer advice if called upon.
I should make it clear at the outset that the governing body has the right to take decisions about the future of the college. I am aware of its decision to transfer the college to premises elsewhere in Birmingham under the Anglican authorities, and that the transfer is intended to take place by the end of August 1995. I am also aware that if the transfer cannot be accomplished, the governing body intends that the college should close. While this may be an unpopular decision in some quartersߞincluding Opposition Members—the governors are acting within their powers.
The governors, as trustees, have a duty to ensure that the aims and objectives of the college trust deed, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) referred, are furthered. The principal objective of the trust deed under which St. Philip's is administered is the advancement and maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion in England. The governors have taken the view that, with the number of Catholic pupils on roll at the college declining over the years, they are not meeting that objective. For that reason, they have decided to close the college. That is not to say that the governors have no responsibilities. Their actions must accord with the college's instrument and articles of government regulating the institution and they also have a duty to act reasonably.
There is no specific mechanism of closure set out in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 which must be followed. The various interested parties, the oratory, the Anglican authorities and the Further Education Funding Council are actively considering how best to proceed.
Ms Short: If there is a duty to promote Catholic education, can it possibly be legal to close a college with a Catholic ethos and hand it over to the Anglican faith? One suggestion is that the Anglicans might run it on the current site. Is that legal under the trust deed?
Mr. Boswell: As I am not a lawyer, I would be reluctant to give the hon. Lady a legal opinion from the Dispatch Box. I shall refer later to what might happen in specific circumstances. If the hon. Lady is not satisfied with that, I shall be pleased to communicate with her later on the issue. She will appreciate that there are important issues of legal process and I am anxious not to give any misleading advice to the House.
Various technical difficulties need to be overcome before any transfer can proceed. Uppermost in our minds
802
—particularly in this context—must be the need to protect the interests of the students. It is important that they be able to complete their courses. Under the transfer option they would be able to do that, and all concerned would need to ensure that that was achieved with a minimum of disruption.
I shall explain what would happen if the proposed transfer did not take place. There is no guarantee that the transfer proposed by the governors would be possible because the process is by no means straightforward, as I believe all parties recognise. It requires those involved in any decision to work together in a co-operative way. Should the transfer not go ahead and St. Philip's closes, a decision will need to be taken as to whether there is a need for alternative provision in the city of Birmingham.
The Further Education Funding Council is under a statutory duty to ensure that there is sufficient provision of further education in that city. It would fall to that organisation to consider, in the first instance, whether there would be a need for additional or replacement further education provision in Birmingham. The Secretary of State has a statutory role in considering any proposal for the establishment of a new further education corporation. I owe it to the House to set out how that procedure might take place within the governing body's proposals.
Issues have been raised, both in the House and in other contexts, about the process so far. There have been reports, which the hon. Lady mentioned, that the governing body has spent considerable sums of money—£100,000 has been mentioned—on the refurbishment of parts of the present oratory buildings. It has been alleged that that work was carried out in the full knowledge that the college was to close. It was argued that, as a result, the refurbishment could only have been for the benefit of the governors themselves, who would use the buildings as a museum to Cardinal Newman or for some other purpose.
To respond to the hon. Lady's intervention, may I say that the property of the trust is vested in the governors in their capacity as trustees. As trustees they have a duty to ensure that at all times they act in the best interests of the trust. It is a collective responsibility and no individual could be deemed to have a personal financial interest.
I understand that the building project has been financed from funds provided by the former maintaining local education authority, Birmingham city council. It is for the city council to satisfy itself that any conditions attached to funding which it has provided are complied with. I believe that some audit process is currently under way.
On various occasions people have raised the issue of public funds which were made available to the college before it joined the FE sector. They have asked whether those funds would be recoverable in the event of closure of the college. As a voluntary-aided sixth form college, St. Philip's has received capital grant from the Department over the years.
There is no current statutory provision for assets which have been provided or enhanced by grant aid to be so recovered. Any assets released in the event of closure would be subject to the charitable trust deed under which they are held and would need to be reapplied for the purpose of the charity. In the case of St. Philip's, the object of the trust deed is the advancement of the Roman Catholic faith. The assets would need to be reapplied for this purpose.
Funds have been provided by the Further Education Funding Council since 1 April 1993. There is in place a

803
financial memorandum between the Further Education Funding Council and each institution in the further education sector. It places upon colleges certain duties and obligations, one of which is to ensure that funds provided by the council are spent for the purposes for which they were given. The Further Education Funding Council could require the college to make capital repayments if assets acquired or enhanced with FEFC grant were disposed of or if the college closed.
As for financial probity, St. Philip's satisfied the Further Education Funding Council's pre-incorporation scrutiny conducted by Coopers and Lybrand. That is on the same basis as the other further education colleges in Britain. In common with all colleges in the sector, St. Philip's is required to have internal and external audit procedures and in due course it will be required to produce a statement from its external auditors confirming that funds are beings used appropriately. The hon. Member may be interested to hear that the Further Education Funding Council is currently conducting a review of the college's audit procedures. However, that is as part of the council's rolling programe for further education colleges.
I turn now to claims, including those by the hon. Member for Ladywood, that the governing body has not conducted itself in a proper manner. Irregularities in the conduct of governing body meetings have been suggested. It has also been suggested that the governors have knowingly withheld information from the college staff.
I am aware that there is currently a vacancy on the governing body for a staff governor. The Department has urged the governing body to fill the vacancy as soon as possible. I should explain that St. Philip's, in common with other colleges in the sector, is also obliged to have a nominee from the local training and enterprise council on its governing body. I understand that that position is currently vacant. I gather that the training and enterprise council nominated an individual who was obliged to resign due to pressure of other commitments. It is for the training and enterprise council to nominate a replacement governor.
Claims have also been made that the governing body has not published minutes and papers relating to meetings. Under the terms of the instrument of government, governors are required to make available at the institution minutes of their meetings as soon as practicable. They are not, however, obliged to include material which they consider to be of a confidential nature. It would appear that where the governing body has not published minutes or sections of minutes, this is because it has decided that the issues covered are confidential. I assure the House that if any evidence is presented that the governing body has acted improperly, the Department will investigate it.
804
The hon. Member for Ladywood asked that the governing body be replaced. Certainly the Secretary of State has powers under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to replace any or all of the governors of an institution in the further education sector. He can do this only if he is satisfied that the affairs of the institution have been or are being mismanaged. Furthermore, such action can be taken only on the recommendation of the Further Education Funding Council. No such recommendation is in place. Indeed, there is no evidence of mismanagement yet. Any allegations that are made, including those sent to us in correspondence, will, of course, be thoroughly investigated by us.
I should make it clear to the House that St. Philip's is not a school like Stratford—the case to which the hon. Member for Ladywood referred. St. Philip's will be dealt with under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which I mentioned. The Secretary of State does not have a completely free hand in the appointment of governors at St. Philip's. The Act requires that, in the case of former voluntary-aided schools such as St. Philip's, colleges be conducted in accordance with their trust deeds and that a majority of governors be persons appointed to ensure that the established character of the institution be preserved. If governors were to be replaced, those requirements would need to be satisfied.
The hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) referred to Muslim worship. I should make it clear to the House that for denominational colleges the act of collective worship must be in a form which complies with the provisions of the college trust deed. Governors are not obliged to make provision for acts of worship which reflect the practices of other religious traditions represented in Great Britain.
I have made it clear to the House that the key question —the future of the college—is for the governing body to decide. I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady's concerns. I can sympathise with all those who have a stake in the college's future, although I am sure that the hon. Lady will acknowledge that that they do not all have the same view of that future. I realise that this is an unsettling time for parents, staff and students.
If the airing of the various issues has helped—I have done my best to clarify them for the benefit of the House—the debate, even if it has not concluded the matter, for the reasons that I have given, will have served a useful purpose.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Eleven o'clock.

DEFENCE

  Gibraltar
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what information Her Majesty's Government have been given since 1963 by the French authorities on the degree of radioactive contamination suffered by British citizens resident in Gibraltar.

  Mr. Aitken
  None. I am not aware of any such contamination that would warrant investigation.

  French Nuclear Tests
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will ask his French counterpart for information provided by the French nuclear authorities under article 34 of the Euratom treaty since 1963 in connection with French atmospheric nuclear tests in Reganne, Algeria.

  Mr. Aitken
  No. Article 34 of the Euratom treaty does not apply to military activities.

  Inhumane Weapons
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what plans he has to ratify the 1981 inhumane weapons convention.

  Mr. Hanley
  I refer the lion. Member to the answer my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office gave to the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on 22 October,Official Report, column 371.

  Tornado Collision
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether the Tornado aircraft involved in the mid-air collision over Cumbria on 23 June was the same aircraft that overflew the village of Clayton, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire during its sortie.

  Mr. Hanley
  The Tornado involved in the mid-air collision was part of a two-aircraft formation; neither aircraft passed near the village of Clayton. Their route took them some 40 nautical miles north of Clayton, on their westbound heading towards Cumbria.

  Low Flying
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many operational low-flying sorties were authorised in(a) the northern Scotland tactical training area, and (b) the central Wales tactical training area in each month from (i) January 1979 to December 1987, (ii) November and December 1990 and (iii) from May 1992 to the latest date available.
  520
  Mr. Hanley
  Figures for operational low-flying sorties are not available. The numbers of operational low-flying movements authorised into the northern Scotland and central Wales tactical training areas in each month during the periods requested are set out in the table. A breakdown by month is not available for 1979.

  Northern Scotland

  Central Wales

  1979

  Total

  664

  123

  1980

  January

  262

  31

  February

  0

  0

  March

  6

  41

  April

  67

  67

  May

  0

  0

  June

  0

  0

  July

  0

  0

  August

  0

  0

  September

  0

  0

  October

  0

  0

  November

  130

  9

  December

  161

  23

  TOTAL

  626

  171

  1981

  January

  175

  46

  February

  0

  0

  March

  15

  0

  April

  89

  0

  May

  0

  6

  June

  6

  7

  July

  0

  0

  August

  0

  0

  September

  251

  0

  October

  24

  0

  November

  0

  0

  December

  41

  0

  TOTAL

  601

  59

  1982

  January

  0

  0

  February

  37

  0

  March

  136

  0

  April

  59

  0

  May

  2

  0

  June

  0

  0

  July

  0

  0

  August

  0

  0

  September

  0

  0

  October

  0

  4

  November

  0

  0

  December

  2

  0

  TOTAL

  236

  4

  1983

  January

  48

  2

  February

  30

  0

  March

  41

  0

  April

  309

  0

  May

  90

  0

  June

  144

  0

  July

  79

  0

  August

  91

  50

  September

  98

  0

  October

  69

  0

  November

  349

  6

  December

  289

  13

  TOTAL

  1,637

  71

  1984

  January

  3

  0

  521

  Northern Scotland

  Central Wales

  February

  0

  11

  March

  67

  26

  April

  78

  10

  May

  30

  5

  June

  0

  4

  July

  23

  0

  August

  0

  0

  September

  0

  0

  October

  26

  8

  November

  163

  0

  December

  158

  0

  Total

  548

  64

  1985

  January

  194

  18

  February

  39

  11

  March

  26

  15

  April

  0

  0

  May

  0

  0

  June

  0

  0

  July

  0

  0

  August

  0

  0

  September

  0

  0

  October

  0

  0

  November

  0

  0

  December

  0

  0

  Total

  259

  44

  1986

  January

  250

  9

  February

  154

  6

  March

  16

  0

  April

  34

  0

  May

  0

  0

  June

  0

  0

  July

  16

  11

  August

  0

  0

  September

  28

  26

  October

  41

  11

  November

  0

  0

  December

  0

  0

  Total

  539

  63

  1987

  January

  0

  1

  February

  69

  20

  March

  99

  33

  April

  93

  175

  May

  0

  0

  June

  14

  2

  July

  8

  5

  August

  0

  0

  September

  21

  0

  October

  207

  4

  November

  7

  0

  December

  0

  2

  Total

  518

  242

  1990

  November

  210

  26

  December

  9

  9

  1992

  May

  0

  33

  June

  248

  0

  Harrier

  Tornado

  Jaguar

  Chinook

  Other helicopters

  Total

  1992

  January

  58

  343

  0

  0

  0

  401

  February

  188

  349

  0

  0

  0

  537

  March

  87

  479

  0

  0

  1

  567

  522

  Northern Scotland

  Central Wales

  July

  198

  0

  August

  6

  9

  September

  2

  0

  October

  0

  68

  November

  2

  26

  December

  26

  0

  1993

  January

  64

  76

  February

  125

  12

  March

  103

  13

  April

  57

  51

  May

  12

  2

  June

  8

  0

  July

  0

  1

  August

  27

  3

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what sources of weather data for individual low flying areas are available to the tactical booking cell, RAF West Dray ton, for onward transmission to aircrews; and what changes have been made to the meteorological data collection facilities in low flying areas since 1979.

  Mr. Hanley
  The tactical booking cell, RAF West Drayton has no involvement in the transmission of weather data to aircrews. Before flying, aircrew receive a full and comprehensive meteorological briefing from the professional meteorological staff at their station. These staff have direct access to the facilities of the Meteorological Office at Bracknell.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many low-level training sorties were carried out by Royal Air Force V-bomber aircraft from Goose Bay, Labrador, in each year from 1963 to 1982.

  Mr. Hanley
  The information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost and effort.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the changes made to the weather minima for visual flight rules operations in the United Kingdom low flying system since 1979.

  Mr. Hanley
  My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence will write to the hon. Member.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many low flying sorties were booked in the United Kingdom low flying system by aircraft from RAF Germany in each month from January 1992 to the latest available date, broken down by aircraft type.

  Mr. Hanley
  The numbers of sorties booked in the United Kingdom low flying system by aircraft from RAF Germany, which on 1 April 1993 was redesignated No. 2 Group RAF Strike Command, during the period from January 1992 to August 1993, the latest date for which data are available, are set out in the table.
  523

  Harrier

  Tornado

  Jaguar

  Chinook

  Other helicopters

  Total

  April

  85

  343

  0

  0

  0

  428

  May

  192

  241

  0

  2

  1

  436

  June

  230

  239

  0

  1

  0

  470

  July

  309

  243

  0

  0

  0

  552

  August

  61

  186

  0

  0

  0

  247

  September

  88

  170

  0

  0

  0

  258

  October

  180

  447

  0

  0

  0

  627

  November

  84

  186

  0

  1

  0

  271

  December

  110

  157

  26

  0

  10

  303

  TOTAL

  1,672

  3,383

  26

  4

  12

  5,097

  1993

  January

  104

  300

  0

  0

  0

  404

  February

  247

  359

  0

  0

  0

  606

  March

  288

  483

  0

  0

  3

  774

  April

  29

  225

  0

  0

  0

  254

  May

  112

  255

  0

  2

  3

  372

  June

  181

  408

  0

  4

  0

  593

  July

  48

  251

  0

  1

  1

  301

  August

  52

  293

  0

  0

  1

  346

  TOTAL

  1,061

  2,574

  0

  7

  8

  3,650

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the minimum authorised altitude at which aircrew are trained to fly in(a) the tri-national Tornado training establishment and (b) each of the fast jet operational conversion units; and what changes have taken place in these authorised minima since 1985.

  Mr. Hanley
  The minimum authorised heights at which aircrew are permitted to fly are as follows:

  (a) Tri-national Tornado Training Establishment—500 ft.

  (b) Fast Jet Operational Conversion Units—250 ft.

  The only change to have taken place in the authorised minima since 1985 occurred in 1991 when the authorised minimum height for all tri-national Tornado training establishment crews was raised from 250 ft to 500 ft.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence on what date the crew of the three Tornado F.3 aircraft of No. 29 squadron Royal Air Force which were involved in an unauthorised overflight of the community of Rigolet, Labrador, on 12 April, arrived at Canadian forces base Goose Bay.

  Mr. Hanley
  The aircrews of the aircraft concerned, which were staging through Canadian forces base Goose Bay en route to Alaska, arrived at Goose Bay on 12 April 1993. The incident occurred as they were approaching Goose Bay on their inward flight.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what warnings were given laterally and vertically to the low-flying military jet aircraft operating between approximately 2100 hours and 2130 hours on 10 August overflying the village of Clayton-with-Frickley, South Yorkshire, that there was a helicopter operating in the vicinity; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hanley
  A number of Tornado aircraft from RAF Cottesmore conducted routine low-level training in the areas at about the times stated on 10 August. No military helicopters were booked to low fly in the area at the time, and no notification was received under the civil aircraft notification procedure or by other means of any civil aircraft activity.
  524
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the dates, nationality, number and type of aircraft, host air base, and host unit for all exchange visits by foreign air force units to the United Kingdom over the last five years; and what was the minimum authorised altitude for low flying by foreign aircrew involved in each of the exchange visits.

  Mr. Hanley
  The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost and effort.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what communications took place between Royal Air Force officers and the Canadian authorities between February and June 1990 concerning changes in the radii by which RAF aircrew deployed to Goose Bay for low-level training were required to avoid hunting and fishing camps.

  Mr. Hanley
  The local files containing details of this exchange have since been destroyed and the information requested is therefore not available. Any changes in flying regulations resulting from the exchange would have been reflected in the appropriate operations directives issued by the Canadian authorities at Goose Bay at the time.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what disciplinary action was taken against the leader of the formation of Tornado F3 aircraft from No. 29 squadron Royal Air Force which was involved in an unauthorised overflight of the community of Rigolet, Labrador, on 12 April.

  Mr. Hanley
  Local action was taken against the individual concerned, but it is not our practice to give details of such action. Letters of apology were sent to the mayor of Rigolet by the leader of the formation and by the Officer Commanding No. 29 Squadron.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what numerical limits on US Air Force aircraft low flying in the United Kingdom have been agreed with the United States authorities since 1990 in order to accommodate increased low flying by aircraft from RAF Germany.
  525
  Mr. Hanley
  A limit of 18,800 low flying sorties by Third United States Air Force aircraft in the United Kingdom low flying system was agreed for 1991 in order to provide leeway for increased low flying in the United Kingdom by aircraft from RAF Germany. Since then, Third United States Air Force low flying has reduced as a consequence of the withdrawal of aircraft from the United Kingdom and it has not been necessary to impose any specific ceiling on activity.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the numbers of low flying sorties, by each specified foreign air arm, in the United Kingdom low flying system for each month from January 1992 to the latest date available; and how many of the sorties for each air arm were authorised to minimum heights of(a) 250 ft, (b) 500 ft and (c) 1,000 ft or above.

  Jan.

  Feb.

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  Aug.

  Sep.

  Oct.

  Nov.

  Dec.

  Total

  1992

  Netherlands

  —

  12

  115

  18

  139

  62

  74

  —

  106

  32

  2

  2

  562

  France

  —

  —

  106

  2

  9

  30

  26

  —

  194

  —

  2

  22

  391

  Italy

  —

  6

  4

  6

  86

  32

  54

  45

  6

  —

  —

  —

  239

  Denmark

  10

  —

  48

  32

  —

  19

  25

  —

  38

  —

  —

  24

  196

  USA

  —

  4

  76

  1

  16

  1

  10

  —

  52

  3

  8

  —

  171

  Germany

  —

  —

  72

  26

  42

  26

  —

  —

  58

  4

  —

  2

  230

  Belgium

  —

  —

  62

  —

  23

  16

  62

  —

  14

  2

  —

  4

  183

  Canada

  —

  —

  —

  2

  36

  2

  —

  —

  2

  3

  —

  —

  45

  Spain

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  20

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  20

  Portugal

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  4

  2

  —

  —

  6

  Turkey

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  TOTAL

  10

  22

  483

  87

  351

  208

  251

  45

  474

  46

  12

  54

  2,043

  1993

  Netherlands

  —

  137

  —

  8

  5

  —

  21

  15

  12

  —

  —

  —

  198

  France

  2

  88

  4

  2

  13

  —

  —

  12

  71

  —

  —

  —

  192

  Italy

  —

  4

  13

  —

  —

  24

  138

  43

  24

  —

  —

  —

  246

  Denmark

  —

  44

  6

  14

  4

  30

  8

  —

  82

  —

  —

  —

  188

  USA

  —

  24

  —

  21

  —

  51

  —

  35

  80

  —

  —

  —

  211

  Germany

  —

  —

  6

  —

  2

  —

  16

  6

  82

  —

  —

  —

  112

  Belgium

  —

  —

  4

  16

  —

  —

  —

  5

  34

  —

  —

  —

  59

  Canada

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  Spain

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  14

  Portugal

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  27

  —

  —

  —

  27

  Turkey

  —

  —

  —

  —

  4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  0

  TOTAL

  2

  297

  33

  61

  28

  119

  183

  116

  412

  0

  0

  0

  1,251

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if the crew of the three Tornado F3 aircraft of No. 29 squadron Royal Air Force which were involved in an unauthorised overflight of the community of Rigolet, Labrador, on 12 April, had confirmed in writing prior to their flight that they had read and understood the Canadian forces base Goose Bay flying orders.

  Mr. Hanley
  The aircrew concerned had not read the Canadian Forces Goose Bay flying orders as they were not planning to operate out of Goose Bay other than for transit in and out of the air base, en route for Alaska.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what was the(a) recorded height and (b) aircraft type of the military fast jet aircraft that overflew the village of Clayton-with-Frickley in South Yorkshire at approximately 1359 hours on 22 September; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hanley
  A Tornado aircraft from RAF Cottesmore was conducting a routine low-level training sortie in the
  526
  Mr. Hanley
  The numbers of sorties flown by aircraft of foreign air forces in the United Kingdom low flying system in each month from January 1992 to September 1993, the latest date for which information is available, are shown in the table. This flying is carried out under reciprocal arrangements which permit RAF aircraft to fly at low level in the countries concerned. The figures exclude low flying by foreign aircraft based in the United Kingdom.

  Information on authorised minimum heights could be provided only at disproportionate cost and effort. In general, sorties will not have been authorised below 500 ft or, in the case of German and Belgian aircraft, 1,000 ft.

  area at about the time stated on 22 September. We have no reason to believe the aircraft flew below the permitted height of 1000 ft.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what was the minimum authorised altitude for the flight by three Tornado F3 aircraft of No. 29 squadron Royal Air Force from Canadian forces base Goose Bay which overflew the community of Rigolet, Labrador, at approximately 2 pm on 12 April.

  Mr. Hanley
  2000 ft.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many sorties by Royal Navy Sea Harrier aircraft in the United Kingdom low flying system at less than 250 ft were authorised in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Hanley
  The available statistics on operational low flying in the United Kingdom low-flying system do not distinguish between sorties flown by Royal Navy Sea Harrier aircraft and those flown by Royal Air Force Harrier aircraft. The Sea Harrier, however, carries out very little flying below 250 ft over land.
  527
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if the crew of the three Tornado F3 aircraft of No. 29 squadron Royal Air Force which were involved in an unauthorised overflight of the community of Rigolet, Labrador, on 12 April received a briefing from Canadian forces personnel on the environmental restrictions in force for military flying from Goose Bay prior to their flight.

  Mr. Hanley
  The aircrews concerned did not receive a briefing from Canadian forces personnel before their flight, as the flight originated in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what proportion of the required continuation training flying hours of Royal Air Force Tornado aircrew consisted of low altitude flying(a) before and (b) since 1991.

  Mr. Hanley
  Until very recently the Tornado continuation training syllabus has not specified any minimum requirement for low-flying training. The general principle which has applied and continues to do so is that aircrew should carry out the minimum necessary low flying consistent with acquiring and maintaining the necessary skills. This position did not change in 1991.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the bird strike incidents involving Royal Air Force fast jet aircraft operating from Canadian forces base Goose Bay since 1990, providing for each incident(a) the date, (b) the location, (c) the height and speed of the aircraft, (d) the species or type of bird involved and (e) the category of damage to the aircraft.

  Mr. Hanley
  There has been only one recorded bird strike since 1 January 1990. On 31 August 1993, a Tornado GR1 hit an unidentified bird species 130 nautical miles north west of the Goose Bay airfield. There was no damage to the aircraft, which was operating at 120 ft and 420 knots.

  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many low-level sorties have been conducted from Canadian forces base, Goose Bay during 1993 by Royal Air Force Tornado F3 aircraft; and if he will indicate the dates during which Tornado F3 aircraft were deployed at Goose Bay.

  Mr. Hanley
  Royal Air Force Tornado F3 aircraft carried out two low-level sorties at Goose Bay during 1993. These aircraft were deploying to Alaska, but staged through Goose Bay, and were there from 12 to 15 April.

  Exercise Red Flag
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence which RAF Tornado GR1 squadrons sent crews to participate in(a) the second two-week period and (b) the third two-week period of Exercise Red Flag 93–1; and where their pre-exercise work-up training was conducted in each case.

  Mr. Hanley
  No. 2 (Army Cooperation) Squadron sent crews to participate in the second two-week period of Exercise Red Flag 93–1, and carried out work-up training in the United Kingdom. No. 9 Squadron sent crews to participate in the third two-week period, and their work-up training was carried out at Goose Bay, Canada.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if the Tornado GR1 crews responsible for ferrying 528
  aircraft from Canadian forces base Goose Bay to Nellis air force base for Exercise Red Flag 93–1 in October 1992 also participated in the exercise; and where their pre-exercise work-up training was conducted.

  Mr. Hanley
  Yes. Pre-exercise work-up training was carried out at Goose Bay.

  B52 Bombers (Near Miss)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he has yet received a report from the US Air Force on the incident in which two of its B52 bombers on a NATO exercise narrowly avoided a civilian helicopter near Aberdeen on 7 September; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hanley
  An initial report has been received from the United States air force and the joint air miss section is currently investigating this incident. The joint air miss working group's final report will be published in due course.

  Overseas Staff and Premises
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the cost for the current financial year of his Department having(a) premises and (b) personnel overseas; and what were the comparable figures for (a) 12, (b) 24, (c) 36 and (d) 48 months ago.

  Mr. Hanley
  The information is not held in the form requested. We are, however, currently forecasting a sum of £2.27 billion for 1993–94 for the operating costs incurred in countries where there are significant numbers of permanently garrisoned United Kingdom military personnel. The comparable figure for 1992–93 is £2.34 billion and for 1991–92 £2.50 billion. Figures for earlier years are not available.

  Conservative Party Conference
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what was the total cost to his Department for arrangements arising from the 1993 Conservative party conference in Blackpool.

  Mr. Hanley
  In response to a routine request from the Lancashire police, a small number of specialist military personnel were deployed to assist the police in searching the conference area for explosive devices and on standby for potential bomb disposal tasks. No readily identifiable additional costs to the defence budget arose from this operation.

  In addition, staff from Ministers' private offices visited Blackpool in order to deal with departmental work. Travel, subsistence and communications costs were incurred on defence votes.

  Officers and Other Ranks Ratio
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what was the ratio of officers to other ranks in each of the three armed services in 1980 and 1992.

  Mr. Hanley
  The ratio of officers to other ranks in each of the three armed services in 1980 and 1992 were as follows:
  529

  1 April 1980

  7 April 1992

  Royal Navy (including Royal Marines)

  1:6·1

  1:5·2

  Army

  1:8·3

  1:7·4

  Royal Air Force

  1:5·1

  1:4·7

  All Services

  1:6·6

  1:5·9

  Hercules Accident
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the progress being made in the investigation of the accident to Hercules XV 193; what is the expected date of completion of the accident investigation; and what is the expected date of publication of the military aircraft accident summary.

  Mr. Hanley
  The board of inquiry has completed its investigation and the findings are now being considered. This process should be completed by late December. Publication of the military aircraft accident summary will follow shortly thereafter.

  Shackleton Aircraft
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when the Shackleton aircraft was first clear for carriage of nuclear weapons.

  Mr. Hanley
  The Shackleton maritime aircraft was first certified for carriage of American nuclear depth charges in the mid-1960s.

  "Bridging for the 90s"
  Mr. Couchman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make-a statement about the production order for the "Bridging for the 90s" equipment.

  Mr. Aitken
  I am pleased to announce that the "Bridging for the 90s" (BR90) production contract negotiations have concluded very satisfactorily. The production order was issued and accepted on 22 October 1993. The value of the order is approximately £140 million.

  The BR90 family of bridges is planned to enter service between January 1996 and June 1997 as follows:

  January 1996

  General Support Bridge

  November 1996

  Close Support Bridge

  May 1997

  Two Span Bridge

  June 1997

  Long Span Bridge

  BR90 will be deployed with Royal Engineer units in both Germany and the United Kingdom.

  This order will secure up to 250 jobs at the prime contractor, Thompson Defence Projects in Wolverhampton, as well as 50 jobs at Unipower in Watford and Tipton and many more at the other sub-contractors.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Sour Gas
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what research his Department has carried out into the(a) toxicity and (b) inflammability of sour gas; and if he will make a statement.
  530
  Mr. Atkins
  None.

  Farm Incomes
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is his estimate of the(a) gross and (b) net farm income in Northern Ireland in each of the last 10 years.

  Mr. Ancram
  The two measures of agricultural income published by the Department of Agriculture are net of all material and service input costs. The broader measure is total income from farming which gives the sum available to reward farmers, their spouses and family workers for their labour and enterprise and to provide a return on their own capital invested. The second, narrower, measure is farming income which is the sum available to reward only farmers and their spouses for their labour and enterprise and to provide a return on their own capital invested. Figures for the period 1983–92 are as follows:

  £million (current prices)

  Total income from farming

  Farming income

  1983

  130·3

  90·2

  1984

  163·5

  122

  1985

  125·4

  81

  1986

  106·9

  61·1

  1987

  161

  113·7

  1988

  184·1

  136·3

  1989

  212·8

  160·6

  1990

  155·3

  103·3

  1991

  180·3

  125

  11992

  224·2

  168·1

  1 Provisional.

  Land Ownership
  Rev. William McCrea
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the Government's estimate of the acreage of land in Northern Ireland owned by foreign companies and trusts based(a) in the Republic of Ireland and (b) elsewhere outside the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Ancram
  The information requested is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Chief Electoral Officer
  Mr. Peter Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish the report of the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland for 1992–93.

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  The Chief Electoral Officer's report has been laid before Parliament today. Copies are available in the Library of the House.

ENVIRONMENT

  Environmental Action Fund
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the launch of the 1994 environmental action fund announced on 16 August.

  Mr. Yeo
  Since the launch of the environmental action fund for 1994, applications have now been received and are
  531
  being assessed. I have asked the Civic Trust, which manages the local projects fund on behalf of the Department, to extend its remit to include the management of all new projects commissioned in 1994. The Department will continue to manage existing projects and strategic funding.

  Warehouse Racking Systems
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if the Government will take steps to implement the Wood committee's recommendation that warehouse racking systems in England be removed from the list of rateable appliances in the Plant and Machinery Order.

  Mr. Curry
  We are currently considering all the Wood committee's recommendations as part of the preparation for the 1995 rating revaluation.

  Special Waste
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, pursuant to his answer of 15 July,Official Report, columns 587–88 in respect of special waste, when he will have the information available; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Yeo
  Waste regulation authorities hold some of the information asked for, but we do not at present collect it centrally. We are, however, looking at ways of improving the coverage of our special waste statistics and are aiming to complete our studies and our consultations in the first half of 1994.

  Drinking Water Provision
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what provisions exist for the provision of drinking water in public places; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Yeo
  Under section 14 of the Public Health Act 1925, local authorities may provide drinking fountains for public use in any convenient public place. With the consent of the local authority, any person may make similar provision. It is for each local authority to decide whether to provide such facilities, having regard to their own priorities and the availability of resources.

  Water Disconnections
  Ms Gordon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps the Government are taking to ensure compliance with section 63(1) of the Water Industry Act 1991; and if he will list the number of disconnections notified to local authorities under this section, broken down by local authority district.

  Mr. Yeo
  Breaches of compliance should come to the attention of the local authority on which the water company has failed to serve, within the required period, notice of its failure to reconnect, in the time specified, the service pipe to a house which it has earlier disconnected. Numbers of disconnections notified to local authorities under section 63(1) of the Act, broken down by local authority district, are not available centrally.

  The latest figures for domestic disconnections in the financial year 1992–93 in the area of each OFWAT
  532
  customer service committee region is set out in the following table. Each entry covers one of the privatised water and sewerage undertakers, together with figures for the water supply companies operating within that area.

  Region

  Number

  Central

  3,100

  Eastern

  926

  North West

  495

  Northumbria

  754

  South West

  300

  Southern

  4,800

  Thames

  3,665

  Wales

  2,448

  Wessex

  315

  Yorkshire

  1,833

  EC Funds
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions he has had with the London Boroughs Association on the campaign to win European Community structure funds for London; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Baldry
  I have had no discussions with the London Boroughs Association on this matter.

  Lead Pollution
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to prescribe pollution control standards for lead.

  Mr. Yeo
  The Government's long-standing policy is to reduce exposure to lead wherever it is practical to do so. This policy is currently implemented in a number of ways.. including setting pollution control standards for lead in air, water, food and drinking water.

  Minerals
  Mr. William O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what plans he has to present safeguards for the environment through the revision of Mineral Planning Guidance 3; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) when he intends to publish the results of the consultation on the revision of MPG3; and if he will make a statement;

  (3) if he will publish the names of organisations and individuals who have made representations regarding changes to MPG3.

  Mr. Baldry
  A list of those organisations that responded to my Department's initial consultation exercise on the effectiveness of MPG3 was placed in the Library of the House in June 1992. My right hon. and learned Friend the then Secretary of State announced on 25 March that we intended to proceed to consultation on revised planning guidelines which would reflect the Government's commitment to the protection of the environment. We will do this as soon as possible. The results of this consultation exercise will be published in due course.

  Countryside Stewardship Scheme
  Mr. Spellar
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, further to his answer of 20 July,Official Report, column 99, on the countryside stewardship scheme, what is the cost of the additional payments for open access.

  Mr. Yeo
  For agreements entered into in 1991 and 1992, expenditure in respect of open access sites under the countryside stewardship scheme is expected to be £565,700 in 1993–94.

  Local Government
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the cost, to date, of the Local Government Commission's review of local government in England and the expected full cost of the completed review.

  Mr. Baldry
  The Local Government Commission incurred expenditure of £2.056 million in 1992–93. We are making available some £3.259 million to fund the Commission's activities in 1993–94 and have made provision of £3.300 million and £3.439 million for the two following years. These figures are being reviewed in the usual way as part of the public expenditure round.

  Disabled Facilities Grant
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will exclude works pensions from income calculations for disabled facilities grant;

  (2) if he will revise disabled facilities grant regulations to take account of average mortgage payments;

  (3) if he will encourage the use of disabled facilities grant in cases where rehousing effectively and economically meets the needs of disabled people;

  (4) what plans he has to amend disabled facilities grant regulations.

  Sir George Young
  The Department is currently reviewing options for change to the house renovation grant system in the light of responses to the consultation paper issued on 21 June. This review covers disabled facilities grants and will include the points raised by the hon. Member.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many applications for disabled facilities grant have been(a) successful and (b) unsuccessful, in each year since 1990.

  Sir George Young
  The number of successful applications for disabled facilities grants for England and for Wales is shown in table 2.19 of the publication "Housing and Construction Statistics—Part 2". Figures for the number of disabled facilities grants paid out for individual local authorities is shown in the publication "Local Housing Statistics". Copies of these publications are available in the Library.

  The Department does not have any information about unsuccessful applications for the disabled facilities grant.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what studies have been undertaken to identify the number of disabled facilities grant claimants who have received financial assistance from local authority social services departments; and if he will make a statement.
  534
  Sir George Young
  The Department is not aware of any such studies undertaken or of any planned for the future.

  Private Tenants (Home Purchase)
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce measures to enable private sector tenants to buy their homes; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir George Young
  No.

  Extending the right to buy to the private rented sector would discourage landlords from letting their property. The sale of privately owned property to sitting tenants is a matter for negotiation between landlord and tenant.

  Council House Sales
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the total value of receipts from council house sales, to date, resulting from tenants exercising their right to buy.

  Sir George Young
  Figures for receipts resulting from council tenants exercising their right to buy from local authorities are not separately collected by the Department. However, between the introduction of right to buy in 1980 and the end of June 1993, the total value of council dwelling sales to sitting tenants, net of discounts, is estimated to be £17.7 billion.

  The number of sales to sitting tenants during this period was almost 1,240,000, and 92 per cent. of such sales resulted from tenants exercising their right to buy.

  Water Meters
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many and which water companies have installed pre-payment meters in the last six months.

  Mr. Yeo
  I understand that four water companies have installed pre-payment meters in the last six months. The companies are as follows:

  Bristol Water plc

  Mid-Kent plc

  North West water Ltd.

  Severn Trent Water Ltd.

  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many reported instances of self-disconnections there have been in the pre-payment metering trial being undertaken by Severn Trent water authority.

  Mr. Yeo
  I understand that to date there have been 113 instances of self-disconnection in the pre-payment metering trial undertaken by Severn Trent Water Ltd. The majority were reconnected within 48 hours.

  Lappel Bank
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what advice he has received from English Nature on whether the intertidal mud flats of Lappel bank on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, qualify on scientific grounds for inclusion within the proposed Medway Estuary and Marshes special protection area and Ramsar site.

  Mr. Yeo
  English Nature has advised that Lappel bank is a good quality roductive feeding and sheltering ground
  535
  for a range of bird species and is an integral part of the Medway estuary and marshes potential special protection area. I understand that the area of Lappel bank is less than I per cent. of the proposed Medway SPA.

  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will reconsider his provisional intention to exclude Lappel bank from the Medway estuary and marshes special protection area following the judgment of the European Court of Justice in case C-355/90 relating to the Santona marshes in Spain.

  Mr. Yeo
  The Secretary of State is currently considering whether the Medway estuary and marshes should be designated as an SPA and whether Lappel bank should be included. The Santona marshes judgment is one of many factors which he will take into account before reaching his decision.

  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what account he has taken of the research into the hydrodynamic effects of port expansion in the rest of the estuary, carried out by the university of Hull and commissioned by English Nature; and if he will now consider the revocation of the extant planning permission on Lappel bank.

  Mr. Yeo
  The Secretary of State is currently considering whether the extant planning permission for the reclamation of 22 ha at Lappel bank should be revoked. The report on the "Medway Estuary Coastal Process and Conservation", produced by the Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies, is one of many factors which he will take into account before reaching his decision.

  EC Habitats Directive
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment on what date the EC habitats directive will come into force.

  Mr. Yeo
  Member states are required by 5 June to bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the EC habitats directive.

  Lower Severn Estuary
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects the completion of his consultations with English Nature, the Countryside Council for Wales and private landowners and others on the preparation of the lower Severn estuary proposed special protection area under the wild birds directive, 1979.

  Mr. Yeo
  The Government consider that co-operation with owners and occupiers is vital if wildlife habitats are to

  Housing Investment Programme (HIP) bids, allocations and gross housing capital expenditure in Lancashire

  £thousand/percentage

  HIP bids

  HIP Allocation1

  Allocation percentage of bid

  Housing capital expenditure

  Blackburn

  1991–92

  23,193

  7,558

  32·6

  11,937

  1992–93

  25,174

  6,684

  26·6

  211,467

  1993–94

  30,589

  8,093

  26·5

  314,915

  Blackpool

  1991–92

  4,326

  2,832

  65·5

  3,727

  536
  be protected. Detailed consultations are therefore conducted to ensure that any conflicts of interest are closely examined, together with the scientific evidence. The Severn estuary is included in the accelerated designation programme on which the Government are currently working. I am unable to say when consultations on this particular site will be completed.

  Integrated Pollution Control
  Sir Rhodes Boyson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what changes are to be made to the scheme of fees and charges for integrated pollution control operated by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution.

  Mr. Yeo
  Minor technical changes to the HMIP integrated pollution control fees and charges scheme 1993–94 take effect on 26 October 1993. They are necessary to ensure that the scheme fully reflects changes in the governing legislation made by the Environmental Protection (Prescribed Processes and Substances) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 1993, SI 1993/2405, which come into operation on that date. Copies of the amendment to the scheme are being placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

  Energy Efficiency
  Mr. Heald
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to abolish the client contribution payable under the Government's home energy efficiency scheme.

  Mr. Yeo
  I have received many representations on the client contribution payable under the home energy efficiency scheme. To meet concerns that this contribution may deter some people from applying for a grant to have their homes insulated, I will shortly be laying before Parliament proposals to amend the regulations governing HEES which would remove the requirement for a client contribution.

  Housing, Lancashire
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what percentage of the housing investment programme bids his Department has authorised in respect of each local authority in Lancashire over the last three years in relation to their bid; and what is the cash figure.

  Sir George Young
  [holding answer 22 October 1993]: The information requested is given in the table.

  The levels of local authorities' bids for housing investment programme resources reflect, in part, the competition for these resources and therefore often exceed the amount of resources likely to be available.
  537

  HIP bids

  HIP allocations1

  Allocaion as percentage of bird

  Housing capital expenditure

  1992–93

  6,127

  3,550

  57·9

  24,036

  1993–94

  4,915

  3,301

  67·2

  32,660

  Burnley

  1991–92

  11,701

  4,508

  38·5

  6,337

  1992–93

  12,915

  4,922

  38·1

  37,692

  1993–94

  12,213

  4,725

  38·7

  36,765

  Chorley

  1991–92

  4,055

  1,509

  37·2

  1,755

  1992–93

  4,233

  2,244

  53·0

  22,465

  1993–94

  4,762

  2,068

  43·4

  32,407

  Fylde

  1991–92

  2,282

  979

  42·9

  1,894

  1992–93

  2,341

  1,115

  47·6

  21,945

  1993–94

  2,225

  1,144

  51·4

  32,009

  Hyndburn

  1991–92

  9,717

  3,525

  36·3

  4,717

  1992–93

  13,572

  4,156

  30·6

  26,195

  1993–94

  12,528

  4,176

  33·3

  35,998

  Lancaster

  1991–92

  8,289

  2,853

  34·4

  4,152

  1992–93

  5,895

  3,673

  62·3

  25,568

  1993–94

  7,337

  3,220

  43·9

  35,566

  Pendle

  1991–92

  5,610

  2,468

  44·0

  3,381

  1992–93

  6,005

  3,420

  57·0

  24,429

  1993–94

  6,020

  2,954

  49·1

  33,447

  Preston

  1991–92

  29,567

  5,775

  19·5

  10,785

  1992–93

  15,478

  3,958

  25·6

  25,617

  1993–94

  9,847

  5,975

  60·7

  311,453

  Ribble Valley

  1991–92

  1,715

  545

  31·8

  1,292

  1992–93

  1,600

  1,156

  72·3

  21,974

  1993–94

  1,750

  1,150

  65·7

  31,209

  Rossendale

  1991–92

  8,245

  2,731

  33·1

  4,698

  1992–93

  7,890

  3,242

  41·1

  24,682

  1993–94

  7,916

  2,310

  29·2

  35,830

  South Ribble

  1991–92

  4,178

  1,494

  35·8

  3,083

  1992–93

  4,060

  2,301

  56·7

  23,657

  1993–94

  2,950

  1,597

  54·1

  23,006

  West Lancashire

  1991–92

  6,063

  2,908

  48·0

  5,042

  1992–93

  6,775

  2,510

  37·0

  24,744

  1993–94

  3,507

  1,650

  47·0

  35,220

  Wyre

  1991–92

  4,520

  1,266

  28·0

  1,763

  1992–93

  6,575

  1,738

  26·4

  24,227

  1993–94

  6,878

  2,350

  34·2

  23,919

  Notes:

  1 Under the new capital finance system, the HIP allocation is an assessment of relative need for housing capital expenditure. Borrowing approval is conveyed by the single, all service, basic credit approval. The allocation figures are the housing annual capital guidelines plus specified capital grants, issued prior to the start of the financial year. These figures do not include any supplementary credit approvals issued during the year.

  2 Provisional.

  3 Estimated.

  Hedgerows
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will give(a) the number of agreements, (b) the amount of money spent and (c) the length of

  539
  hedgerow affected in each county under the hedgerow incentive scheme in (i) 1992–93 and (ii) to date in 1993–94; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Yeo
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Under the 411 agreements made in the first year of the scheme some 600km of hedgerow will be restored over a period of five years. The Countryside Commission is currently considering new bids for the 1993–94 round of agreements.

  The information is not available in the form requested. Total spend in the financial years requested as at 25 October 1993 is set out on a regional basis. These figures do not include additional resources available under the scheme from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which account for an approximate addition of 15 to 20 per cent.

  Region

  Agreements

  1992–93 Spend £

  1993–94 Spend to date £

  Northern

  83

  58,104

  46,300

  Midlands

  70

  30,894

  29,382

  South West

  95

  28,054

  23,335

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  56

  36,279

  18,405

  North West

  31

  32,990

  2,757

  South East

  50

  17,592

  19,403

  Eastern

  26

  7,522

  13,816

  Total

  411

  211,435

  153,398

  Opencast Coal
  Mr. Ronnie Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he will announce the outcome of the review of guidance to planning authorities on opencast coal; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Baldry
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: I intend to publish draft revised planning guidelines for opencast coal for public consultation as soon as possible.

  Nuclear Power
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what assessment has been made by his Department in respect of new nuclear power stations of the risks of(a) turning out to be a poor performer, (b) major construction cost increases, (c) (i) retrofitting, (ii) power downrating and (iii) closure arising from the tightening of (1) safety standards, or (2) environmental standards resulting from a major accident or otherwise and (d) major increases in (i) spent fuel management, (ii) decommissioning and (iii) radioactive waste management costs;

  (2) if he will make a statement on the strategic benefits of nuclear power which have been identified in his Department's nuclear review;

  (3) what consideration his Department's nuclear review has given to assessing viability of new nuclear power stations to the delays and uncertainties in the development of a national radioactive waste repository; and if he will make a statement;

  (4) what discount rate will be used in his Department's nuclear review in investment appraisal for new nuclear power stations;

  (5) what are the results of his Department's nuclear review in respect of tests to determine whether new nuclear power stations are commercially viable;
  540
  (6) what consideration his Department's nuclear review has given in assessing the future security of nuclear power to the economic, social and political impacts of a major nuclear accident; and if he will make a statement;

  (7) if he will list the (a) risks and (b) uncertainties associated with nuclear investment which have been identified as a result of the nuclear review; and what plans he has for determining who will be responsible for covering them;

  (8) if he will list the options being considered in his Department's nuclear review for financing new nuclear power stations.

  Mr. Eggar
  I have been asked to reply.

  It remains Government policy that Nuclear Electric plc will not be granted capital expenditure approval for any new nuclear stations pending the outcome of a review of the future prospects for nuclear power in the United Kingdom. Options for the scope and format of the review are currently under consideration within Government.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

  Second Church Estate Commissioner
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, as representing the Church Commissioners, what estimate has has made of the cost to the Church Commissioners in the last financial year in respect of his discharging his responsibilities in Parliament as Second Church Estate Commissioner.

  Mr. Alison
  There is no direct cost to the Church Commissioners in relation to my duties in Parliament as Second Church Estate Commissioner.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the right hon. Member for Selby, as representing the Church Commissioners, what was the cost to the Church Commissioners of answering written and oral questions to the Second Church Estate Commissioner in the last two parliamentary Sessions and in the present Session, up to and including 27 July.

  Mr. Alison
  A total of 79 questions were answered between 1 October 1991 and 27 July this year, but it has not been the Commissioners' practice to keep a record of the cost.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Ecclesiastical Matters
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, as representing the House of Commons Commission, what estimate he has made of the staffing costs incurred by House of Commons staff and officials in connections with work associated with the Ecclesiastical Committee or other parliamentary matters relating to the Church of England.

  Mr. Beith
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) on 25 March, column 663. The total cost is of the order of £2,000 per annum.

TRANSPORT

  British Rail Privatisation
  Mr. Kenneth Carlisle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what proposals he has to involve non-metropolitan local authorities in the franchising of rail services following the privatisation of British Rail.

  Mr. Freeman
  We propose to incorporate in the Secretary of State's statutory guidance to the Franchising Director the following:Outside PTE areas you should consult such representatives of local government as appear to you to be appropriate about the pattern of services and the quality of services to be provided through franchising. In your consultations you should seek to agree practical arrangements which will provide for effective mutual communication between local authorities and franchisees. You should also include within franchise agreements a requirement for franchisees to take reasonable steps to keep the local authorities for the areas served by their franchised services informed of significant intended changes to the pattern of franchised services. These arrangements must be implemented in such a way as to place the minimum burden on franchisees. I would expect local authorities to consult you before formally adopting plans and policies dealing with the role of passenger rail services in their areas.

  Motor Rescue Services
  Mr. Bates
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he has yet concluded whether rights of access to motorway service areas similar to those currently enjoyed by the RAC and AA should be extended to other motor rescue services.

  Mr. Key
  My predecessor decided that the requirement on motorway service area operators to permit access at all times to the employees or agents of the AA or the RAC to carry out emergency repairs to members' vehicles should continue under the new regime announced on 6 August last year. I have now decided that similar rights should be extended to any repairer requested to carry out an emergency repair by the driver of a broken down or damaged vehicle.

  Goods Vehicles
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) if he will make a statement on the differences in safety regimes between operator licence exempted vehicles and licensed vehicles;

  (2) if he will list by type the numbers of vehicles which are exempt from holding a goods vehicle operator's licence;

  (3) what studies have been carried out to determine whether operator licence exempted vehicles are more or less likely to be involved in accidents than licensed vehicles;

  (4) how many vehicles are exempted from goods operator licensing regulations.

  Mr. Key
  Applicants for operator licences must satisfy financial requirements and requirements of good repute and professional competence or fitness to operate. They must show that they have adequate maintenance arrangements, and operators of goods vehicles must also satisfy the licensing authorities that they have an environmentally acceptable operating centre.

  Whether or not they are covered by operator licensing, all goods vehicles, with some minor exceptions, are subject
  542
  to the same roadworthiness requirements, including annual roadworthiness tests and possible roadside enforcement checks. All goods vehicles, apart from certain specialised types, are also subject to drivers' hours and tachograph regulations, although drivers of vehicles which do not require an operator's licence are exempt from the need to keep records under domestic drivers' hours legislation.

  The classes of vehicles exempt from goods operator licensing comprise vehicles not exceeding 3.5 tonnes; Crown vehicles; and those listed in schedule 5 of the Goods Vehicles (Operators' Licences, Qualifications and Fees) Regulation 1984, as amended. The main categories are:

  tractors when hauling agricultureal and certain other equipment;

  dual-purpose vehicles and their trailers;

  vehicles used between private premises and not exceeding 6 miles by road in any one week;

  funeral vehicles;

  police and fire brigade vehicles and ambulances;

  vehicles used for fire-fighting or rescue operations at mines;

  vehicles used for test or trial;

  vehicles used under a trade licence;

  United Kingdom and visiting forces vehicles;

  trailers used for road maintenance or construction;

  road rollers;

  Coastguard and Royal National Lifeboat Institution vehicles;

  vehicles with certain fixed equipment;

  local authority weights and measures vehicles;

  local authority civil defence vehicles;

  steam-propelled vehicles;

  tower wagons or trailers;

  vehicles used within aerodromes;

  electrically propelled vehicles;

  showman's goods vehicles and trailers;

  certain vehicles first used before 1 January 1977 with a gross weight exceeding 3.5 tonnes but not 31/2 tons;

  vehicles used by a highway authority for weighbridge purposes;

  water, gas, electricity and telephone emergency vehicles; recovery vehicles;

  vehicles used for snow clearing or the distribution of grit, salt or other materials on icy roads;

  vehicles going to or from a test station.

  We have no information on the number of vehicles exempted from operator licensing, nor am I aware of any studies on whether operator licence exempt vehicles are more or less likely to be involved in accidents than those within the operator licensing system.

  Vocational Drivers
  Mr. David Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what information he has on procedures available to vocational drivers in other member states of the European Community to appeal against the refusal of a licence on medical grounds.

  Mr. Key
  Our information on appeal arrangements elsewhere in the European Community is currently incomplete. I will write to the hon. Member in due course.

  Mr. David Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of whether appeals against refusal of LGV/LPV licences which are medically resolved at the DVLA are receiving an adequate level of consideration, of numbers of vocational drivers proceeding to the final level of appeal at magistrates courts and of the costs to the individual vocational driver of pursuing an appeal to the magistrates courts.

  Mr. Key
  Notifications of appeals which are resolved at DVLA are considered by the agency's medical adviser and,
  543
  if necessary, the legal adviser, who take account of any fresh medical evidence provided by the appellants or their doctors. Appellants are required to pay a small lodging fee plus the cost of their counsel or expert witnesses if used.

  Mr. David Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of whether representative numbers of appeals against DVLA medical decisions on LGV/LPV vocational drivers' licences are going to the magistrates courts; and whether sufficient advice is available to the courts on the medical issues involved.

  Mr. Key
  The number of appeals against medical decisions on LGV/PCV licences has remained fairly constant over recent years. From April 1992 to September 1993 DVLA's medical section handled 54,786 LGV/PCV applications/notifications. Of these 7,036 applicants/drivers were refused licences or had licences revoked. An intention to appeal against the decision was lodged by 257 individuals of which 15 proceeded to court.

  The court is provided with a report from the DVLA medical adviser, who also attends the hearing and will provide clarification on the medical issues involved if required. Appellants are also free to provide their own medical experts.

  Vehicle Operator Licensing
  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list, for each traffic area, the number of goods vehicle operator licences revoked in 1990, 1991 and 1992; and what were the reasons in each case why the licences were revoked.

  Mr. Key
  The numbers of licences revoked are given in the "Annual Reports of the Licensing Authorities", copies of which are available in the House of Commons Library. The reasons for revocation in each case could be collated only at disproportionate cost.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list for each traffic area the number and nature of objections and representations received against the issue of goods vehicle operator licences in 1991 and 1992.

  Mr. Key
  Information on objections and representations is published each year for the period 1 April to 31 March in the "Annual Reports of the Licensing Authorities", copies of which are available in the Library of the House.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many heavy goods vehicles exempt from goods vehicle operator licensing were involved in road traffic accidents in 1991 and 1992.

  Mr. Key
  The numbers of exempt vehicles involved in road traffic accidents is not available.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether emergency vehicles operated by public utility companies are exempt from goods vehicle operator licensing; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Key
  A vehicle being held ready for use in an emergency by an undertaking for the supply of water, electricity, gas or telephone service is listed as exempt from goods vehicle operator licensing in schedule 5 to the 544
  Goods Vehicles (Operators' Licences, Qualifications and Fees) Regulation 1984, as amended. We keep all exemptions under review.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list the organisations and individuals who have responded to his consultation paper on the deregulation of goods vehicle operator licensing.

  Mr. Key
  Comments were received from the following associations representing the interests of those in the transport industries:

  Freight Transport Association

  Road Haulage Association

  Bus and Coach Council

  Vehicle Builders and Repairs Association

  British Association of Removers

  National Farmers Union

  United Kingdom Agricultural Supplies Trade Association Ltd.

  Federation of Small Business

  National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors

  British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association

  Comments were received also from the:

  Council on Tribunals

  Transport Tribunal

  Traffic Commissioners

  There were in addition over 100 responses from individual operators, local authorities and others having an interest in the operator licensing provisions.

  Rail Franchising Director
  Mr. Gunnell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to appoint the franchising director; and how rapidly he would expect him to enter into discussions with the potential lessors of rail rolling stock.

  Mr. Freeman
  The Franchising Director will be appointed shortly after Royal Assent to the Railways Bill. The Franchising Director-designate is already involved in discussions about the establishment of rolling stock leasing companies and will be able to enter into substantive discussions with potential lessors of rail rolling stock once he is formally appointed.

  Buses
  Mr. David Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish the names and addresses of all bus companies which have been found guilty of operating vehicles which failed to meet the minimum requirements of maintenance standards; what assessment he has made of the operations of the vehicle inspectorate and traffic commissioners in this respect; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Key
  The names and addresses of the relevant bus companies are not readily available. The vehicle inspectorate and the traffic commissioners publish annual reports on their activities including the enforcement of maintenance standards. The Department maintains regular liaison with both the inspectorate and the traffic commissioners. An annual review is undertaken of the targets set for roadside checks and maintenance inspections of vehicles by the vehicle inspectorate.

  Tobacco and Alcohol Imports
  Mr. Mills
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what action he is taking to check for overloading of private vehicles returning from France importing tobacco and alcohol products for personal use.
  545
  Mr. Key
  Privately operated light goods vehicles and minibuses are subject to weight checks by examiners from the vehicle inspectorate and local authorities and can be prohibited where they are found to be overloaded. Vehicles are checked at ports and other locations in the same way as are heavy commercial vehicles. Drivers can also be prosecuted for using a vehicle which is dangerously overloaded.

  Accident, Sowerby Bridge
  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what investigations have been carried out into the Sowerby bridge road traffic accident on 6 September.

  Mr. Key
  The lorry involved in the accident has been examined both by the police and by the vehicle inspectorate. I understand the operator of the vehicle is helping with further inquiries.

  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if the heavy goods vehicle involved in the road traffic accident on 6 September at Sowerby bridge was(a) a motorway maintenance vehicle or (b) exempt from goods vehicle operator licensing.

  Mr. Key
  Neither. The vehicle was specified on a goods vehicle operator's licence.

  "A Guide to Making Representations"
  Ms Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list where, other than traffic area offices, the publication "A Guide to Making Representations" can be obtained.

  Mr. Key
  The guide is also available from the traffic area co-ordination division of the Department of Transport, Room P2/029B, 2 Marsham street, SW1P 3EB.

  Traffic Area Network
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to make a decision on the possibility of agency status for the traffic area network.

  Mr. Key
  We are currently examining the scope for applying next steps principles to the traffic area network. I hope to announce a decision soon.

  Nuclear Safety
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether the containers used to transport plutonium-contaminated materials from the Drigg nuclear disposal site to Sellafield meet current International Atomic Energy Agency regulations.

  Mr. Freeman
  No plutonium-contaminated materials have been moved from Drigg to Sellafield.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Police Officers
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information he has on the number of serving police officers in England and Wales who are ethnically Romanic and gipsy by origin.
  546
  Mr. Charles Wardle
  This information is not collected.

  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the establishment number of police officers for each county in England and Wales; and what is the ratio of police officers to population for each county.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  With one exception, the information requested can be found in the appendix to the annual report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary 1992, a copy of which is in the Library.

  Since December 1992 the formal establishment of Kent county constabulary has been increased by 40 posts, all for policing the channel tunnel. These posts are subject to reimbursement of full costs, by the tunnel operator. The establishment of the force is now 3,136 and the ratio of police to population 1:491.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will publish life expectancy tables for retired police officers; and whether such information was provided to and examined by the Sheehy inquiry.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  No. Aggregate data from which such tables would be derived are not available centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Cautions
  Mr. John Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set out the current guidelines on cautioning, with particular reference to the categories of offences and persons who receive cautions.

  Mr. Maclean
  The current guidance to the police on the use of cautioning is set out in Home Office Circular 59/1990, a copy of which is in the Library of the House. I am about to consult interested parties on the content of some supplementary guidance which I have decided that it is now necessary to issue.

  Mr. John Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the latest available figures on cautioning; and what the figures were(a) 12 months ago and (b) two years ago.

  Mr. Maclean
  Information for the years 1990 to 1992, which is provisional, is given in the table. 1993 data will not he available until autumn 1994.

  Number of offenders cautioned and as a percentage of offenders found guilty or cautioned 1990 to 921

  England and Wales

  Offence/Year

  Cautioned

  Cautioning rate

  Indictable offences2

  1990

  166,300

  33

  1991

  179,900

  35

  19921

  216,200

  41

  Summary offences (excluding motoring offences)

  1990

  102,800

  18

  1991

  98,900

  18

  19921

  105,100

  18

  Total (excluding summary motoring offences)

  1990

  269,100

  25

  1991

  278,800

  26

  19921

  321,300

  29

  1 Provisional.

  2 Includes triable either way.

  Criminal Injuries Compensation
  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the highest award given in(a) Merseyside and (b) Liverpool by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board at the latest date.

  Mr. Maclean
  The board does not keep information on the payment of awards by locality.

  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Secretary of state for the Home Department what are his plans for putting the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board on a statutory basis; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  There are no plans to make the present criminal injuries compensation scheme statutory since, as previously announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the then Home Secretary, the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), on 23 November 1992, column 457, it is to be replaced next year by a new scheme, based on a tariff of awards. Details of the new scheme will be set out in a White Paper later in the year.

  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how long is the average waiting time for the settling of a case with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  The board does not maintain statistics on the average time taken to deal with a case. However,

  Number of 15, 16 and 17 to under 21-year-olds sentenced to immediate custody by type of court, type of sentence and month

  England and Wales

  19921

  Type of court/type of offence

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  Total

  15-year-olds

  Magistrates courts Indictable

  37

  39

  37

  31

  27

  44

  27

  27

  34

  20

  24

  20

  367

  Summary non-motoring

  7

  15

  4

  12

  10

  6

  6

  5

  4

  3

  9

  —

  81

  All offences2

  44

  54

  41

  43

  37

  50

  33

  32

  38

  23

  33

  20

  448

  The Crown court

  Indictable

  5

  5

  4

  6

  14

  5

  6

  3

  3

  9

  5

  5

  70

  All offences2

  5

  5

  4

  6

  14

  5

  6

  3

  3

  9

  5

  5

  70

  All courts

  Indictable

  42

  44

  41

  37

  41

  49

  33

  30

  37

  29

  29

  25

  437

  Summary non-motoring

  7

  15

  4

  12

  10

  6

  6

  5

  4

  3

  9

  —

  81

  All offences2

  49

  59

  45

  49

  51

  55

  39

  35

  41

  32

  38

  25

  518

  16-year-olds Magistrates courts

  Indictable

  57

  54

  71

  56

  47

  53

  63

  49

  56

  48

  39

  60

  653

  Summary non-motoring

  12

  14

  16

  17

  15

  20

  11

  10

  8

  9

  7

  3

  142

  All offences2

  69

  68

  87

  73

  62

  73

  74

  59

  64

  57

  46

  63

  795

  The Crown court Indictable

  14

  14

  17

  20

  21

  13

  23

  15

  22

  8

  9

  7

  183

  Summary non-motoring

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  All offences2

  14

  14

  17

  20

  21

  13

  24

  15

  22

  8

  9

  7

  134

  All courts Indictable

  71

  68

  88

  76

  68

  66

  86

  64

  78

  56

  48

  67

  836

  Summary non-motoring

  12

  14

  16

  17

  15

  20

  12

  10

  8

  9

  7

  3

  143

  All offences2

  83

  82

  104

  93

  83

  86

  98

  74

  86

  65

  55

  70

  979

  17–20-year-olds Magistrates courts

  Indictable

  313

  305

  317

  299

  262

  245

  280

  260

  213

  142

  201

  200

  3,037

  Summary non-motoring

  140

  115

  139

  88

  77

  101

  98

  91

  88

  50

  58

  67

  1,112

  All offences2

  453

  420

  456

  387

  339

  346

  378

  351

  341

  192

  259

  267

  4,149

  The Crown court Indictable

  828

  752

  832

  708

  686

  6S0

  886

  553

  645

  586

  565

  469

  8,190

  Summary non-motoring

  21

  13

  24

  17

  10

  19

  36

  20

  17

  14

  12

  10

  213

  All offences2

  849

  765

  856

  725

  696

  699

  922

  573

  662

  600

  577

  479

  8,403

  548
  paragraph 6 of the 28th annual report of the board (Cm 2122), a copy of which is held in the Library of the House, does provide some information about the time taken to resolve cases.

  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the total amount awarded by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board at the latest date.

  Mr. Maclean
  Appendix A to the 28th annual report of the Board (Cm 2122), a copy of which is held in the Library of the House, shows that in the period 1 August 1964 to 31 March 1992 a total of £757,244,992 had been paid out in compensation. Since then provisional figures indicate that a further £224.78 million has been paid out in the 18 months ending 30 September 1993. That latter figure is, of course, subject to audit.

  Young People (Custody)
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many(a) 15 and 16-year-olds and (b) 17 to 21-year-olds were sentenced to custody in England arid Wales in each of the last 12 months.

  Mr. Maclean
  Information for 1992, which is provisional, is given in the table. 1993 data will not be available until autumn 1994.
  549

  Type of court/type of offence

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  Total

  All courts Indictable

  1,141

  1,057

  1,149

  1,007

  948

  925

  1,166

  813

  858

  728

  766

  669

  11,227

  Summary non-motoring

  161

  128

  163

  105

  87

  120

  134

  111

  105

  64

  70

  77

  1,325

  All offences2

  1,302

  1,185

  1,312

  1,112

  1,035

  1,045

  1,300

  924

  963

  792

  836

  746

  12,552

  All ages Magistrates courts

  Indictable

  1,341

  1,172

  1,255

  1,157

  975

  1,040

  1,067

  1,017

  1,035

  483

  609

  645

  11,796

  Summary non-motoring

  438

  359

  380

  314

  266

  336

  322

  300

  277

  143

  187

  164

  3,486

  All offences2

  1,779

  1,531

  1,635

  1,471

  1,241

  1,376

  1,389

  1,317

  1.312

  626

  796

  809

  15,282

  The Crown court

  Indictable

  3,622

  3,412

  3,742

  3,000

  2,960

  3,202

  3,637

  2,468

  2,889

  2.273

  2,538

  2,210

  35,953

  Summary non-motoring

  79

  54

  68

  52

  41

  52

  68

  43

  50

  36

  30

  34

  607

  All offences2

  3,701

  3,466

  3,810

  3,052

  3,001

  3,254

  3,705

  2,511

  2,939

  2,309

  2,568

  2,244

  36,560

  All courts

  Indictable

  4,963

  4,584

  4,997

  4,157

  3,935

  4,242

  4,704

  3,485

  3,924

  2,756

  3,147

  2,855

  47,749

  Summary non-motoring

  517

  413

  448

  366

  307

  388

  390

  343

  327

  179

  217

  198

  4,093

  All offences2

  5,480

  4,997

  5,445

  4,523

  4,242

  4,630

  5,094

  3,828

  4,251

  2,935

  3,364

  3,053

  51,842

  1 Provisional.

  2 Excluding summary motoring.

  Note: For summary motoring offences five 15-year-olds were sentenced to immediate custody in 1992, 23 16-year-olds, 769 17–20 year-olds and a total of 5,698 for all ages.

  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many 15-year-olds have been(a) remanded in custody and (b) sentenced to custodial terms, in 1993 to the latest date available; and, of these, how many were male and how many were female;

  (2) how many 15-year-olds were (a) remanded in custody and (b) sentenced to custodial terms in 1992; and of these, how many were male and how many were female.

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answers 19 October 1993]: Information for 1992, which is provisional, is given in the table. 1993 data will not be available until autumn 1994.

  Remand and custodial data for 15-year-olds by gender 19921 England and Wales

  Males

  Females

  Receptions on remand into prison service establishments

  376

  —

  Sentenced to immediate custody

  519

  4

  1 Provisional

  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) of those 15-year-olds (a) remanded into custody and (b) sentenced to custody in 1992, how many faced charges of committing or attempting to commit the offences of (i) theft, (ii) handling, (iii) deception and fraud, (iv) burglary, (v) taking without consent, (vi) allowing to be carried, (vii) aggravated vehicle taking, (viii) motor vehicle interference, (ix) criminal damage, (x) common assault and actual bodily

  Persons aged 15 years sentenced to immediate custody by offence and sex—19921

  England and Wales

  Offence description

  Magistrates courts

  Crown courts

  All courts

  Males

  Females

  Persons

  Males

  Females

  Persons

  Males

  Females

  Persons

  Aggravated vehicle taking

  Causing death by

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  1

  1

  —

  1

  Other (indictable)

  23

  —

  23

  1

  —

  1

  24

  —

  24

  Criminal damage of £2,00 or under

  1

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  1

  Theft of a motor vehicle

  7

  —

  7

  1

  —

  1

  8

  —

  8

  Unauthorised taking of motor vehicle

  65

  —

  65

  —

  —

  —

  65

  —

  65

  Other Theft

  22

  —

  22

  2

  —

  2

  24

  —

  24

  Handling stolen goods

  11

  —

  11

  1

  —

  1

  12

  —

  12

  Fraud and Forgery

  1

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  1

  Burglary

  174

  1

  175

  18

  —

  18

  192

  1

  193

  Causing danger

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  550
  harm, (xi) sexual offences, (xii) other offences of violence against the person, (xiii) possession of drugs, (xiv) possession with intent to supply drugs or (xv) other offences; and how many of the 15-year-olds in each case were (1) male and (2) female;

  (2) how many 15-year-olds (a) remanded into custody and (b) sentenced to custody in 1993 to the latest date available faced charges of committing or attempting to commit the offences of (i) theft, (ii) handling, (iii) deception and fraud, (iv) burglary, (v) taking without consent, (vi) allowing to be carried, (vii) aggravated vehicle taking, (viii) motor vehicle interference, (ix) criminal damage, (x) common assault and actual bodily harm, (xi) sexual offences, (xii) other offences of violence against the person, (xiii) possession of drugs, (xiv) possession with intent to supply drugs or (xv) other offences; and how many of the 15-year-olds in each case were (1) male and (2) female.

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answer 19 October 1993]: The analysis requested of persons remanded is not available centrally because although some information on the use of remands during proceedings is collected, the amount of detail recorded is limited and does not identify separately every individual offence. Moreover the data which are collected are particularly subject to data quality problems.

  Information for England and Wales in 1992, which is provisional showing the number of 15-year-olds sentenced to immediate custody by offence and sex is given in the table. 1993 data will not be available until the autumn of 1994.
  551

  Offence description

  Magistrates courts

  Crown courts

  All courts

  Males

  Females

  Persons

  Males

  Femalesi

  Persons

  Males

  Females

  Persons

  Criminal damage

  Indictable

  16

  —

  16

  5

  —

  5

  21

  —

  21

  Summary

  8

  —

  8

  —

  —

  —

  8

  —

  8

  Common assault

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Actual bodily harm (ABH)

  23

  —23

  4

  —

  4

  27

  —

  27

  Grievous bodily harm (GBH)

  Wounding with intent to do GBH etc.

  3

  —

  3

  2

  —

  2

  5

  —

  5

  Wounding or inflicting GBH with or without weapon

  12

  —

  12

  3

  —

  3

  15

  —

  15

  Sexual offences

  —

  1

  1

  2

  —

  2

  2

  1

  3

  Other violence against the person

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Drugs

  Supplying or offering to supply

  —

  —

  —

  3

  —

  3

  3

  —

  3

  Possession of a controlled drug

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Possession with intent to supply

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Other drug offences

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Total indictable offences

  364

  3

  367

  69

  1

  70

  433

  4

  437

  Total summary non-motoring offences

  81

  —

  81

  —

  —

  —

  81

  —

  81

  Total summary motoring offences

  5

  —

  5

  —

  —

  —

  5

  —

  5

  Total all offences

  450

  3

  453

  69

  1

  70

  519

  4

  523

  1 Provisional

  West Yorkshire
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he next intends to pay an official visit to West Yorkshire.

  Mr. Howard
  I intend to visit West Yorkshire when my diary permits.

  Wrongful Convictions
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action has been taken to date in investigating possible wrongful convictions in each of the cases of which notice has been given to him; and in those cases where a person has already been released, what compensation has been paid.

  Mr. Maclean
  I will write to the hon. Member.

  Prisoners (Court Transfers)
  Mr. Matthew Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list for the Metropolitan police area, for the year to 30 June(a) the number of prison movements to and from courts, (b) the number of prisoner escapes from police and Prison Service custody in transit to and from courts, and from custody at court, (c) the number of deaths, including suicides, by prisoners at court or in transit to and from court, (d) the number of assaults on police and prison officers while escorting prisoners to and from courts and (e) the number of prisoners arriving at court more than one hour late.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  The information requested is as follows:

  (a) prison movements to and from magistrates courts—57,213.

  (b) prisoner escapes—12 from police custody, 5 from Prison Service custody.

  (c) deaths—I suicide.

  (d) assaults—56 police officers, 4 prison officers.

  (e) Information on the number of prisoners arriving more than one hour late for court is not available centrally.

  Rape
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list for each of the last five years and for the current year to date (a) the number of 552
  cases of (i) rape and (ii) attempted rape on males that have been reported and (b) the number of successful convictions that have ensued in (i) and (ii).

  Mr. Maclean
  The available information relates to the number of male offenders cautioned and convicted of acts of non-consensual buggery and is given in the table. Data for 1993 will not be available until autumn 1994.

  Male offenders cautioned and convicted at all courts of certain buggery offences 1988–92

  England and Wales

  Number

  Offence/Year

  Cautions

  Convictions

  Buggery by a man with a male person of the age of 16 or over without consent

  1988

  n/a

  18

  1989

  11

  15

  1990

  10

  13

  1991

  6

  14

  19921

  6

  15

  Attempt by a man to commit buggery with a male person of the age of 16 or over without consent

  1988

  n/a

  5

  1989

  n/a

  2

  1990

  2

  2

  1991

  n/a

  2

  19921

  2

  2

  1 Provisional.

  n/a = Not available.

  Miscarriages of Justice
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when C3 division expects to complete its current investigations into alleged miscarriages of justice; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  In each of the cases of alleged miscarriage of justice currently under consideration, we shall aim to reach a decision as quickly as possible. Some cases may take longer than others to decide, depending upon the nature of the representations and the extent of any police or other inquiries which may need to be made.

  C3 Division
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people are currently employed in his Department's C3 division; and if he will list each individual employee's qualifications.

  Mr. Maclean
  A total of 69 staff, of whom 22 are engaged in considering alleged miscarriages of justice, are currently employed in C3 division of the Home Office. All are administrative civil servants in grades up to and including grade 5, having a variety of backgrounds, experience and qualifications.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many cases C3 division are currently investigating in respect of alleged miscarriages of justice; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  On 30 September 1993 179 cases of alleged miscarriage of justice were under consideration in C3 division of the Home Office.

  Mentally Disturbed Patients
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list by regional health authority and by year for the last five years and the current

  Persons found guilty or cautioned for specified offences of unlawful sexual intercourse with a mentally disordered person

  Numbers found guilty (Cautions given in brackets)

  Code

  Description

  Act

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  11992

  19.2

  Man having unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman who is a defective

  Sexual Offences Act 1956 sec 7 as amended by the Mental Health Act 1959 sec 127

  26

  4(3)

  7(7)

  5(1)

  4(8)

  19.3

  Male member of staff of hospital or mental nursing home having unlawful sexual intercourse with a female patient

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(l)(a)

  1

  1

  1(1)

  2(1)

  1

  16.5

  Male member of staff of hospital or mental nursing home committing buggery or an act of gross indecency with male patient

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(1 )(a) as amended by Sexual Offences Act 1967 sec 1(4)

  —

  1

  —

  1

  —

  16.6

  Man committing buggery or act of gross indecency with mentally disordered male patient who is subject to his care

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(1)(a) as amended by Sexual Offences Act 1967 sec 1(4)

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  19.4

  Man having unlawful sexual intercourse with mentally disordered female patient who is subject to his care

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(l)(b)

  —

  1

  —

  —

  1

  1 Provisional date.

  2 Cautions data for 1988 offence sub-classifications is not available.

  Persons prosecuted for specified offences of unlawful sexual intercourse with a mentally disordered person

  Numbers prosecuted

  Code

  Description

  Act

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  11992

  19.2

  Man having unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman who is a defective

  Sexual Offences Act 1956 sec 7 as amended by the Mental Health Act 1959 sec 127

  9

  7

  4

  8

  14

  19.3

  Male member of staff of hospital or mental nursing home having unlawful sexual intercourse with a female patient

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(l)(a)

  1

  1

  2

  1

  —

  16.5

  Male member of staff of hospital or mental nursing home committing buggery or an act of gross indecency with male patient

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(l)(a) as amended by Sexual Offences Act 1967 sec 1(4)

  —

  —

  1

  1

  —

  16.6

  Man committing buggery or act of gross indecency with mentally disordered male patient who is subject to his care

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(l)(a) as amended by Sexual Offences Act 1967 sec 1(4)

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  19.4

  Man having unlawful sexual intercourse with mentally disordered female patient who is subject to his care

  Mental Health Act 1959 sec 128(1)(b)

  1

  —

  1

  2

  1

  1 Provisional data.

  554
  year to date the number of cases reported of (a) unlawful sexual intercourse with (i) a male and (ii) a female who is a defective under the terms of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, section 7, as amended by the Mental Health Act 1959, section 127, (b) a (i) male and (ii) female member of staff of a hospital or mental nursing home having unlawful sexual intercourse with a patient under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1959, section l28(1)(a) and (c) a (i) male and (ii) female having unlawful sexual intercourse with a mentally disordered patient who is subject to care under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1959, section 128(i)(b); and how many successful convictions have ensued in each category listed.

  Mr. Maclean
  The readily available information for England and Wales is provided in the tables.

  Information is available only for the numbers prosecuted and those cautioned or found guilty in the courts. These specific offences are not separately identified in the statistics of recorded crime. Statistics on courts proceedings are not available by regional health authority.

  The Mental Health Act 1959 refers only to males who have unlawful sexual intercourse with females.

  Drink Driving
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list significant changes in law, enforcement and sentencing relating to drink driving since 1979.

  Mr. Maclean
  The Transport Act 1981 introduced evidential breath testing in May 1983.

  A "high risk offenders scheme" under which certain categories of drink-drive offenders must demonstrate that they are not alcohol dependent before their licences are restored to them was introduced in 1982 and extended in 1990.

  A new offence of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs was introduced in July 1992 under the Road Traffic Act 1991 to strengthen the courts' powers to deal with those drink-drivers who kill. The maximum penalty for this offence was doubled to 10 years' imprisonment in August 1993.

  The same 1991 Act also introduced an experimental scheme of rehabilitation courses for those convicted of drink-driving offences, designed to influence the attitudes of such offenders away from alcohol and driving.

  The Department of Transport runs at least one major publicity campaign on a drink-drive theme each year and in many years there have been two such campaigns.

  Taken together, these measures to which my hon. Friend made a significant contribution as Minister of State, have resulted in a reduction in the estimated number of drink-related fatalities on the roads from 1,550 in 1982 to 610 in 1992.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list as a ratio the number of drink-drive related deaths compared with the number of murder victims in each year from 1979.

  Mr. Maclean
  The available information on murder relates to the number of offences decided at court to be murder. Figures for the number of deaths in drink-drive accidents have been supplied by the Department of Transport. These figures, and the calculated ratios, are given in the following table.

  Offences decided at court to be murder, fatalities in drink-drive accidents, and the ratio between them, 1979 to 1991 England and Wales

  Year

  (a) Offences decided at court to be murder

  (b) Drink-drive fatalities

  (b)/(a)

  1979

  160

  1,640

  10·25

  1980

  126

  1,450

  11·51

  1981

  148

  1,420

  9·59

  1982

  160

  1,550

  9·69

  1983

  152

  1,110

  7·30

  1984

  165

  1,170

  7·09

  1985

  167

  1,040

  6·23

  1986

  204

  990

  4·85

  1987

  198

  900

  4·55

  1988

  178

  790

  4·44

  1989

  183

  810

  4·43

  1990

  179

  760

  4·25

  1991

  1124

  660

  5·32

  1 At the lime these statistics were compiled (September 1992), there were 204 court decisions pending on offences initially recorded in 1991. On past experience, about 65 further offences will eventually be decided at court to have been murder.

  556
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will estimate the number of crimes(a) excluding and (b) including drink driving in 1979 and in the latest year;

  (2) if he will estimate the number of offences and the proportion detected in 1979 and in the latest available year.

  Mr. Maclean
  Drink driving is not a notifiable offence and does not form part of the recorded crime series. The available information relating to drink driving is on findings of guilt at all courts for driving or being in charge of a vehicle after consuming alcohol or taking drugs. There were 67,000 findings of guilt in 1979 and 103,800 in 1991, the latest available year.

  The information relating to notifiable offences recorded and cleared up by the police is published for 1979 in tables 2.17 and 2.18 of "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales 1989" and, for 1992, in table 6 of Home Office Statistical Bulletin 9/93; copies of both publications are available in the Library.

  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the number of fatalities associated with drink driving in 1979 and the latest year.

  Mr. Key
  It is estimated that in 1992 around 610 people were killed in accidents where a driver or rider was over the legal limit compared with 1,640 in 1979. The way in which these figures were derived is explained in "Road Accidents Great Britain 1992".

  West Midlands Police
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will call for a report from the West Midlands chief constable as to how many officers were disciplined as a result of the West Yorkshire inquiry ; what were the offences involved; and what penalties were imposed.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  No. These are matters for the chief constable of the West Midlands.

  Police Reform
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has had from the Greater Manchester police authority in regard to police reform; what reply he is sending; what action he is taking; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  Since the White Paper on police reform was published in June, we have received representations from the Greater Manchester police authority in the form of a letter dated 23 September from the clerk to the police authority. A reply was sent on 7 October. The points raised in the letter are being taken into account as work on developing the proposals for police reform proceeds.

  Anti-British National Party Demonstration
  Mr. Austin-Walker
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the estimated cost of(a) policing the anti-British National party demonstration in Woolwich and Bexleyheath on 16 October, (b) the overall additional police costs arising out of protecting the BNP and (c) what contribution the BNP will be asked to make towards these additional costs.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  My right hon. and noble Friend the Earl Ferrers will write to the hon. Member.

  Police, Plumstead and Greenwich
  Mr. Austin-Walker
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what representations he has received regarding the reduction in the number of police constables in the Plumstead division and the proposed further reduction before the end of this year; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) if he will meet a deputation from the Greenwich police consultative committee to discuss their concerns about reduced policing levels in the Plumstead and Greenwich divisions.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  My right hon. and noble Friend the Earl Ferrers will write to the hon. Member.

  Victim Support
  Mr. Michael
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what is the level of funding for victim support in the current financial year; and which plan he has to increase this sum;

  (2) what is the expected level of funding for victim support in 1994–95.

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answer 21 October 1993]: Home Office grant aid to Victim Support in the current financial year will amount to £8.375 million, an increase of 15 per cent. on last year's grant of £7.26 million.

  In November 1991, we informed Victim Support that the increase in funding it would be receiving over the next three years would be £7.3 million, £8.3 million and £8.6 million, respectively. We made it clear that it would need to devise budgets to operate within this level of funding and that there could be no expectation of further increases.

  Details of Home Office funding for 1994–95 will be made known as soon as possible.

  Young People (Remand)
  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many 15-year-old(a) males and (b) females, remanded into custody pending trial or sentence in 1993 to the latest date available, received custodial sentences at the conclusion of their cases;

  (2) how many 15-year-old (a) males and (b) females, remanded into custody pending trial or sentence in 1992, received custodial sentences at the conclusion of their cases.

  Mr. Maclean
  [holding answer 19 October 1993]: In 1992, of the 376 persons aged 15, all of whom were male, received into Prison Service establishments on remand, about 120 were recorded as subsequently received under sentence. I regret that information for 1993 is not yet available.

EDUCATION

  Chief Education Officer, Birmingham
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what representations he has received concerning his remarks about the Birmingham chief education officer; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Patten
  I have received a number of letters.

  School Numbers
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education on how many occasions since 1 January his Department has declined a local education authority application to reduce standard numbers.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Since 1 January my right hon. Friend has declined 43 applications from LEAs to reduce school standard numbers. Over the same period he has approved reductions at 312 schools, of which 215 were approved without modification.

  National Curriculum Council
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what are the costs of relocating and merging the National Curriculum Council and the Schools Examination and Assessment Council.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The estimated total cost of establishing the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and winding up the National Curriculum Council and School Examinations and Assessment Council is £4 million. There will be recurrent savings, estimated at £1 million a year, arising mainly from a reduction of almost 50 in the total number of staff employed and from giving up the NCC's premises in York.

  Grant-maintained Schools
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) how many OFSTED reports on grant-maintained schools have been published;

  (2) how many grant-maintained schools have received OFSTED inspections.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The arrangements for inspecting schools under the Education (Schools) Act 1992 are a matter for OFSTED.

  I have asked Professor Sutherland to write to the hon. Member.

  Primary School Teachers
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many comments he has received on his Department's draft circular on the initial training of primary school teachers; and how many expressed opposition to the circular.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  My right hon. Friend has received about 4,000 responses to the draft circular on the initial training of primary school teachers, expressing a wide range of views on the various proposals it contains. My right hon. Friend intends to issue a substantive circular later this autumn which will take account of these responses.

  Student Unions
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many comments he has received on his proposals for the reform of student unions; and how many have expressed their opposition to the proposals.

  Mr. Boswell
  Since my right hon. Friend announced his proposals for student union reform on 1 July, he has received some 1,265 written representations in response to the consultations on implementation. Comments have also been received in meetings and visits. Many comments have questioned particular aspects of the implementation of the reforms, while passing others in silence; others have similarly expressed support for particular points and for the principles which underlie the reforms.

  Special Educational Needs
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what was the sum of money that the Further Education Funding Council spent on special educational needs in 1992–93, by local authority area.

  Mr. Boswell
  The Further Education Funding Council did not assume its responsibilities until 1 April 1993. In 1993–94 the council has allocated the bulk of the funding for provision for students with learning difficulties and disabilities as part of colleges' recurrent funding. The allocations represent broadly stable funding and reflect the council's commitment to providing continuity of provision for these students.

  Mr. French
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education when he intends to respond to the third report from the Education Select Committee of Session 1992–93 on "Meeting Special Educational Needs: Statements of Needs and Provision".

  Mr. Heald
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education when he intends to respond to the third report from the Education Select Committee of Session 1992–93 on "Meeting Special Educational Needs: Statements of Needs and Provision".

  Mr. Forth
  My right hon. Friend today issued the Government's response to the report "Meeting Special Educational Needs: Statements of Needs and Provision" by the Select Committee on Education. The Government welcome the report. The provisions in the Education Act 1993, including the draft code of practice on the identification and assessment of special educational needs, published today, will improve the framework for special education.

  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education when he intends to consult about a draft code of practice on special educational needs under section 158 of the Education Act 1993.

  Mr. Forth
  My right hon. Friend is today issuing for consultation a draft of the code of practice on the identification and assessment of children with special educational needs together with drafts of the regulations governing statutory assessments and statements. Copies will be placed in the Library. All maintained schools and local education authorities will have to have regard to the code, as will district health authorities and social services departments when they assist LEAs in their duties towards 560
  children with special educational needs. The consultation period will last until 14 January. Subject to the approval of Parliament, the code will come into effect in September 1994.

  Schools Technology Initiative
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many applications he has received from businesses willing to participate in his schools technology initiative.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Schools wishing to become technology colleges under the programe which the Government announced on 27 September will prepare a development plan backed by private sector sponsors. It is not for sponsors to apply direct to the Department for Education. Over 100 schools have already expressed interest in becoming technology colleges. Many of these have identified business sponsors and have begun to prepare their development plans. My right hon. Friend expects to announce in the new year the names of the first group of schools which will begin operating as technology colleges in September 1994.

  Student Finance
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) what plans he has to compensate students in higher education to take account of the imposition of VAT on fuel; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) what estimate he has made of the impact on student incomes of the imposition of VAT on fuel; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Boswell
  It is my right hon. Friend's policy to review annually the overall level of mandatory support available to students through the basic grant and loan, in the light of forecast cost movements. The rates for the 1994–95 academic year will be announced in due course.

  Mr. Bill Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what was the annual expenditure on discretionary awards for students attending further education college courses for each of the metropolitan authorities, for each financial year since 1990–91.

  Mr. Boswell
  Expenditure on discretionary awards for further education by metropolitan authorities for the academic years 1990–91 and 1991–92 is shown in the table. Data for later years are not yet available.

  Discretionary awards expenditure for further education in the metropolitan authorities in 1990–91 and 1991–92

  LEA NO

  1990–91 Expenditure (£000)

  1991–92 Expenditure (£000)

  West Midlands

  Birmingham

  922·6

  1,298·6

  Coventry

  527·4

  558·4

  Dudley

  455·6

  393·0

  Sandwell

  496·9

  870·7

  Solihull

  128·9

  200·6

  Walsall

  1,450·9

  1,894·3

  Wolverhampton

  74·6

  34·6

  Merseyside

  Knowsley

  1,046·8

  1,368·8

  Liverpool

  5,696·6

  4,432·7

  St. Helens

  530·6

  678·3

  Sefton

  277·8

  224·4

  561

  LEA NO

  1990–91 Expenditure (£000)

  1991–92 Expenditure (£000)

  Wirral

  1,453·1

  1,652·9

  Greater Manchester

  Bolton

  536·1

  821·2

  Bury

  510·2

  642·3

  Manchester

  0·0

  1,835·6

  Oldham

  544·3

  459·5

  Rochdale

  490·2

  741·1

  Salford

  423·0

  314·4

  Stockport

  504·4

  691·2

  Tameside

  238·9

  352·5

  Trafford1

  n/a

  302·2

  Wigan

  418·1

  499·1

  South Yorkshire

  Barnsley

  1,269·5

  788·8

  Doncaster

  698·0

  685·0

  Rotherham

  669·0

  904·4

  Sheffield

  2,025·6

  1,930·6

  West Yorkshire

  Bradford

  1,612·0

  1,778·3

  Calderdale

  249·6

  310·3

  Kirklees

  1,402·9

  2,195·9

  Leeds

  2,117·1

  2,742·9

  Wakefield

  1,017·7

  1,048·2

  Tyne and Wear

  Gateshead

  454·3

  375·8

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  608·7

  770·4

  North Tyneside

  706·1

  1,023·8

  South Tyneside

  325·8

  450·4

  Sunderland1

  n/a

  933 3

  Total Metropolitan Authorities

  29,883·1

  36,204·4

  1 Discretionary data not provided in 1990–91

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Forestry
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will give, for each of those forest areas in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Humberside currently for sale to the private sector, details of(a) how rights of public access will be maintained, (b) how the environmental code for forestry enterprise will be enforced, (c) what charges she will allow for access, (d) how many people are currently employed on these forests, (e) what percentage it is of the Forestry Commission's land in each county (i) in 1980 and (ii) at present and (f) what were the criteria for selection for privatisation.

  Mr. Jack
  The areas of forest land currently being offered for sale by the Forestry Commission in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Humberside are shown in the table.

  Area (hectares)

  Lincolnshire

  1—

  Yorkshire

  Cannon Park Estate

  194

  Gateforth East

  27

  Gateforth West

  47

  Hayton Wood

  51

  Hazelhead Wood

  94

  Hazelwood

  56

  562

  Area (hectares)

  Howsham Wood

  81

  Humberside

  Greenwickdale

  44

  1 =None.

  a. Access to Forestry Commission woodlands can be either by means of public rights of way or by permission. Public rights of way will not be affected by a change of ownership. Arrangements for securing continued permissive public access to Forestry Commission woodlands after sale, through prior agreements entered into between the Commission and local authorities, were introduced in October 1991. Of the forest areas listed above, access agreements have been concluded under these arrangements for Gateforth East, Hayton Wood and Hazelwood, and an agreement is currently being negotiated for Hazelhead Wood.

  b. The Environmental Code was drawn up specifically in relation to the management of the Commission's woodlands by its Forest Enterprise arm. Private woodland owners participating in the Woodland Grant Scheme are required to follow environmental guidelines published by the Forestry Commission. Grants are withheld if the guidelines are not followed.

  c. No charges are allowed for public access under the agreements described at a. above.

  d. These are small woodlands which do not have any staff assigned to them on a regular basis.

  e. The areas of forest land currently for sale in Yorkshire amount to about 2 per cent. of the total woodland area managed by the Forestry Commission in the county, both in 1980 and in 1993. The one area for sale in Humberside represents about 8 per cent. of the total woodland area managed in 1980 and about 12 per cent. of the current area.

  f. The main considerations to be taken into account in selecting properties for disposal were set out in 1981 by the then Secretary of State for Scotland in a letter to the Chairman of the Commission. That letter is reproduced at Appendix V to the Commission's 1981–82 Annual Report, copies of which are in the Library of the House.

  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will list all the pieces of Forestry Commission land in Yorkshire which have been sold in the last 10 years; and if she will list for each sale(a) the name of the forest or piece of land, (b) its area in acres, (c) the sale price, (d) the name and address of the purchaser and (e) whether the current owner provides a public right of access to the land.

  Mr. Jack
  Details of the areas of forest land sold by the Forestry Commission in each county, from the start of the disposals programme in July 1981 to December 1992, are given in lists held in the Library of the House. For all sales since June 1985 the commission has sought permission from the purchasers to disclose their names and the prices paid; where such permission has been given these details are included in the lists.

  Information about the sale of other categories of land, such as agricultural land, houses and gardens, is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  The Government retain no direct interest in land which has been sold by the commission, so no official records have been collected on the provision of public access by the new owners. Public rights of way will not, however, be affected by a change of ownership.

  Cereals
  Sir Ralph Howell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current world price of(a) feed wheat and (b) milling wheat.

  Mr. Jack
  There is no single definition of what constitutes millling wheat or feed wheat—considerable

  Wheat prices on world markets (£'000)

  Canadian Western Red Spring No. 1(fob Vancouver)1

  US Hard Red Winter (fob Gulf)2

  EEC Standard Wheat(fob Rouen)3

  1992–93

  120

  88

  82

  September 1993

  164

  87

  57

  1 Canadian Western Red Spring No. 1 is a premium hard wheat with a protein content of 14 per cent. or above. Because of its high protein content and quality, it is used for premium breadmaking.

  2 US Hard Red Winter wheat also has a high protein content (12–13 per cent.) and is used for breadmaking.

  3 EEC Standard wheat has a lower protein content (9.5–10 per cent. on an equivalent moisture basis) and produces a softer flour. It is used for Borne types of bread and gluten can be added to improve the strength of the grist. Depending on supplies and prices, this wheat may also be used for animal feed.

  Porcine Somatotropin
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what information she has on the commercial availability of porcine somatotropin ; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Soames
  Porcine somatotropin is not commercially available in the United Kingdom. I have no information on its commercial availability in other countries.

  Chemical Pollution
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what policy proposals she has developed as a result of the findings and recommendations of the second joint annual report of the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment and the Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment.

  Mr. Soames
  So far as the responsibilities of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are concerned, the safety assessments carried out by these committees form an essential basis for all policies related to the safety of food. In the case of the second joint annual report, the conclusions of the committees were reflected in the policies pursued in EC negotiations on the approval of specific food additives, in the clearance of food use of a novel fat, and in the withdrawal from sale of certain comfrey products.

  Ostriches
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many consignments of ostriches have been flown in to the United Kingdom since January 1993; how many birds were involved; and how many birds died during transit.

  Mr. Soames
  Two consignments have been flown to the United Kingdom this year involving 107 ostriches. The Welfare of Animals during Transport Order 1992 and EC directive 91/628 require all such transport to comply with standards of care laid down by the International Air Transport Association. One ostrich died during the journey.
  564
  quantities of miling wheat are used for feed—and prices and price differentials for wheat on world markets vary according to quality and other factors. Illustrative prices for 1992–93 and September 1993 are given in the table, but it should be noted that the current exceptionally wide divergence in prices reflects shortages of high quality wheat on world markets.

  The Department is monitoring this trade and guidance has been prepared for the authorities in other countries and importers on the additional welfare standards to be observed during air transport.

  Live Animal Imports
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will give an estimate of the annual number of live animals arriving in the United Kingdom illegally ; what type of animals are involved; what countries are involved; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Soames
  Comprehensive information on live animals imported into the United Kingdom in contravention of animal health import legislation, which is enforced by local authorities, is not held centrally.

  However, a number of importers are still failing to provide my Ministry with the required advance notification of their intention to import live animals and consignments have been imported with incorrect official health certification. In each case my Ministry has taken up the matter either with importer concerned or with the veterinary authorities in the exporting member state, as appropriate.

  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations she has received concerning EC legislation to protect the welfare of live farm animals during transport.

  Mr. Soames
  During the last 12 months the Government have received over 100,000 pieces of correspondence, and 81 petitions representing approximately 27,000 signatures, concerning the welfare of animals during transport, of which the majority concern our trade with the Community. New proposals to amend directive 91/628, on the welfare of animals during transport, were sent to over 500 interested organisations and individuals for consultation this summer. We have received 86 replies.

  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the proportion of consignments of animals imported from other EC member states from which blood samples have been taken since January; and what were the equivalent proportions for each of the previous two years.
  565
  Mr. Soames
  The state veterinary service is carrying out at places of destination a significant number of veterinary checks—which includes, if appropriate, the taking of samples for testing—on animals imported from other member states. The number of blood, or other, samples varies according to the species of animal being imported, the country of origin, and the perceived disease risk at the time of import, but precise figures cannot be published for operational reasons.

  Beta-agonists
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make a statement on the use of beta-agonists in food animals.

  Mr. Soames
  Beta-agonists are a group of drugs which have been used for a number of years in both human and veterinary medicines. In the United Kingdom there are five licensed veterinary medicines containing clenbuterol, a member of the family of beta-agonist drugs. These can be used legally only on prescription from a veterinary surgeon and are used in the treatment of respiratory ailments in cattle and horses and as an aid to cattle at the time of calving.

  When fed to food-producing animals at high dosages, beta-agonists have been found to improve the lean content of the carcase. No beta-agonists have, however, been licensed in the United Kingdom or in any other member state for this purpose and any such use would therefore be illegal.

  Surveillance for residues of beta-agonists in meat is carried out in Great Britain under the national surveillance scheme for residues in meat. Under this scheme randomly selected samples are collected from carcases at slaughterhouses and from live animals on farms. No beta-agonist positives have been identified from samples taken under this scheme since testing commenced in August 1989.

  Separate surveillance arrangements directed at retail and wholesale premises, cover both imported and domestic supplies. Two clenbuterol positive samples were reported in 1992 (Official Report, 2 March 1993, column 78). Neither was likely to have posed any threat to human health, but it was not possible to establish whether the samples originated in Great Britain or elsewhere. No further positive samples have been reported in 1993 to date.

  Because of the evidence of abuse of beta-agonists outside Great Britain, surveillance has been increased under both schemes this year. In particular, as a result of the recent reports in the media following the finding by Somerset county council of traces of clenbuterol in samples of pig liver pâté manufactured in Belgium, sampling of pâté has been increased. Under the retail animal products survey approximately 70 samples of pig liver pôté will have been collected from retail outlets across the United Kingdom by the end of November. The full results of this survey will be published as soon as all the confirmed results become available. The confirmed results of the analysis of the first 25 samples taken during September have, however, shown no evidence of contamination with clenbuterol.

  Overseas Staff and Premises
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the cost of the current financial year of her Department having(a) premises and (b) personnel overseas; and what were the comparable figures for (a) 12, (b) 24, (c) 36 and (d) 48 months ago.

  Mr. Jack
  The Department has no overseas premises, nor does it have any personnel based overseas who are carrying out departmental functions. Staff on loan to work in the agriculture sections of British embassies are funded by the Foreign Office.

  RAF Aston Down
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will list the nature of the work carried out by the wildlife unit based at Royal Air Force station Aston Down; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Soames
  The wildlife unit carries out badger removal operations to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis from badgers to cattle and advises farmers who have experienced a breakdown on methods designed to reduce the risk of further cattle infection.

  Peat
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make it her policy to promote the use of long-term set-aside for peat soil adjacent to raised bog habitats.

  Mr. Jack
  We have recently completed consultations on the introduction in England of a habitat scheme which will offer incentives to take selected agricultural land out of production for 20 years. There was general support for the priorities identified for this scheme, but land adjacent to raised bog habitats was not one of them. As a result, we do not plan to include such land in the pilot phase of the scheme.

  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans she has to produce a manual for professional horticulturalists identifying the available peat-free products and giving advice on their use in horticulture.

  Mr. Jack
  Advice on the range and use of commercial products is a matter for the suppliers themselves. The Horticultural Development Council is, however, undertaking research on peat alternatives and plan a seminar on this subject on 1 December. Currently I am not planning to publish a manual on this matter.

  Sewage Sludge Dump, Bristol Channel
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will place in the Library a map showing the boundaries of the sewage sludge dump in the Bristol channel.

  Mr. Jack
  All dumping of sewage sludge in the Bristol channel ceased in October 1992. The two designated disposal sites in use at that time were each circular areas of radius of 1 nautical mile centred at co-ordinates:

  51 22.5N 03 56.0W (site LU050) and

  51 24.5N 04 04.0W (site LU 160).

  567
  A map showing these areas has been placed in the Library.

  Stoke Park Wood
  Mr. Milligan
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans she has to sell Stoke Park wood in Bishopstoke, Hampshire.

  Mr. Jack
  There are no plans to sell this wood.

  Set-aside
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what percentage of land, and what amount in hectares, in rotational set-aside in 1993–94 she predicts will be put into non-rotational set-aside for the following year.

  Mr. Jack
  There has been considerable interest shown in non-rotational set-aside, but detailed figures will not be available until aid applications are submitted next year.

  EC Surplus Cereals
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the price charged at the most recent date for surplus cereals from the EC sold on the world market; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  Export sales from intervention are made by weekly tender. In setting prices under these tenders, account is taken of factors such as the current market situation, demand for the grain concerned, the need to minimise intervention stocks and the need to obtain the best possible price.

  Details of the most recent sales on to the world market from EC intervention stores are as follows:

  Quantity (tonnes)

  Price(ECU/tonne)

  Member State

  Wheat (21 October 1993)

  192,867

  71·23

  Germany

  72,446

  73·10

  France

  Barley (14 October 1993)

  138,254

  55·58

  Germany

  34,540

  57·72

  France

  Maize (21 October 1993)

  27,700

  91·02

  France

  Rye (21 October 1993)

  7,131

  52·12

  Germany

  In the current marketing year, no cereals have been exported on to the world market from United Kingdom intervention stocks.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what amounts of cereals are in storage in each of the 12 member states of the EC.

  Mr. Jack
  According to information supplied by the EC Commission, at 17 October 1993, the amounts of cereals in intervention in each member state are as follows:

  Member state

  Quantity (tonnes)

  Belgium

  252,211

  Denmark

  1,362,375

  Germany

  10,446,515

  568

  Member state

  Quantity (tonnes)

  Greece

  789,731

  Spain

  1,056,491

  France

  7,973,282

  Ireland

  235,792

  Italy

  2,459,037

  Luxembourg

  2,200

  Netherlands

  —

  Portugal

  44

  United Kingdom

  1,729,849

  Dairy Intervention Stocks
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the level of intervention stocks held in the United Kingdom in the dairy sector at the last date for which figures are available.

  Mr. Jack
  On 16 October 1993 there were 9,236 tonnes of butter and 1,200 tonnes of skimmed milk powder in intervention stores in the United Kingdom. This is down on the stocks held on the same day last year when there were 9,941 tonnes of butter and 1,700 tonnes of skimmed milk powder in intervention stores.

  Pig Slaughtering
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make a statement on the number and percentage of pigs which have to be re-stunned at slaughter; and what steps she is taking to reduce this number and percentage.

  Mr. Soames
  There are no centrally held figures, although a MAFF-commissioned survey undertaken by Bristol university during the period 1989 to 1992 suggested that in the region of 13.5 per cent. of pigs were re-stunned. On 1 January this year two statutory codes of practice on the welfare of red meat animals at slaughter came into force and the requirement for supervision by official veterinary surgeons was extended to all licensed slaughterhouses. In response to the survey results we have recently issued new comprehensive guidance to pig slaughterhouse operators and enforcement authorities on the electrical stunning of pigs. In addition, veterinary officers from this Department have been asked to pay particular attention to pig stunning and slaughter practices during their monitoring visits, and to report on the standards observed.

  Novel Foods and Processes
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will list the members of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes indicating what sector or establishment each of them comes from.

  Mr. Soames
  The membership of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes is listed, together with details of the establishment to which each member belongs.

  Professor Derek Burke, BSc PhD HonLLD (Chairman)

  Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia.

  Professor G. E. Adams, BSc PhD DSc FACR

  Director, Medical Research Council Radiobiology Unit, Oxford.

  Professor A. T. Atkinson, BSc PhD

  569

  Deputy Director, Public Health Laboratory Service, Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, Potion Down.

  Dr. A. C. Baird-Parker, OBE BSc PhD

  Head of Microbiology Division, Unilever Research.

  Professor E. Cocking, BSc PhD DSc FIBiol FRS

  Plant Genetic Manipulation Group, University of Nottingham.

  Professor H. M. Dick, MD FIBiol FRCP FRCPath FRSE

  Department of Medical Microbiology, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee.

  Dr. Michael J. Gasson, BSc PhD

  Head of Genetics and Microbiology Department, Agriculture and Food Research Council Institute of Food Research, Norwich.

  Professor W. P. T. James, MA MD DSc FRCP FRCP(Edin) FRSE

  Director, Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen.

  Professor V. Marks, DM FRCP FRCPath

  School of Biological Sciences, University of Surrey.

  Mrs. H Millar, MA

  Adult Education Department, University of Glasgow.

  Professor B. E. Moseley, MSc PhD

  Head of Reading Laboratory, Agriculture and Food Research Council Institute of Food Research, Reading.

  Rev. J. Polkinghorne, MA PhD ScD FRS

  The President, Queens' College, Cambridge.

  Professor P. Richmond, BSc PhD DSc CPhys FInstP

  Co-operative Wholesale Society Technical Services, Manchester.

  Dr. P. J. Rodgers, MA DPhil

  Zeneca Bio Products, Billingham, Cleveland.

  Professor J. E. Smith, BSc MSc PhD DSc FIBiol FRSE

  Head of Applied Microbiology Division, University of Strathclyde.

  Professor D. A. T. Southgate, BSc PhD MIBiol

  Visiting Professor to the School of Biological and Nutritional Sciences, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

  Professor R. Walker, BSc PhD FRSD CChem FIFST

  Professor of Food Science, University of Surrey.

  Professor H. F. Woods, BSc BM BCh MRCP DPhil FFPM FRCP

  Head of Department of Medicine and Pharmacology, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield.

  Marine Mammals
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures she intends to introduce in order to meet the requirements to monitor and control incidental capture and killing of cetaceans as set out in the EC habitats and species directive article 12(4).

  Mr. Jack
  Article 12(4) of the EC habitats and species directive requires member states to establish a system to monitor the incidental capture and killing of certain animal species, including cetaceans. In anticipation of this obligation, in January 1992 the UK Fisheries Departments introduced a voluntary scheme for fishermen to report incidents involving the accidental capture of marine mammals. This scheme has not been successful and is currently being reconsidered. Separately, the Department of the Environment funds marine mammal strandings schemes for England and Wales and for Scotland through which post mortems on recovered carcases are carried out and particular stranding incidents investigated.
  570
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what powers her Ministry possesses to regulate fishing operations, including attaching conditions on the siting or the use of fishing nets, for the express purpose of conserving cetaceans.

  Mr. Jack
  The powers available to regulate fishing operations are in relation to sea fish as defined in the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967. This definition does not include cetaceans. Obligations on the United Kingdom in relation to the incidental capture and killing of cetaceans are set out in the EC habitats and species directive.

  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many reports have been received from fishermen of incidental catches of marine mammals under her Ministry's voluntary monitoring scheme; what assessment she has made of the extent to which this is a true reflection of the scale of incidental catches around the United Kingdom coast; and if she will make a statement on the adequacy of this scheme.

  Mr. Jack
  Since the scheme was introduced by the United Kingdom Fisheries Departments in January 1992 six reports of incidental catches have been received. These involved five common porpoises, three common seals, one grey seal and one common dolphin. Two of the common seals and the dolphin survived and were released. The scheme has not been successful as returns clearly fall short of the number of strandings from all sources recorded by the Department of the Environment's marine strandings co-ordinators. The scheme is currently being reconsidered.

  Weeds Act 1959
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans she has for the future of the Weeds Act 1959; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  After careful consideration by Agriculture Ministers of responses to consultations on the future of the Weeds Act we have decided to retain it. This was announced on 11 October by my noble Friend the Earl Howe.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Customs Searches
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what records are kept on the ethnicity of persons entering the United Kingdom who are stopped and searched by Customs and Excise officials.

  Sir John Cope
  HM Customs and Excise record the ethnic grouping of persons who, on entry to the United Kingdom, are selected for search of their person.

  Reading Material
  Rev. William McCrea
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans the Government have to impose VAT on reading material in the Province.

  Sir John Cope
  It would be inappropriate for me to comment in advance of the Budget statement.

  Income Tax
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 2 April,Official Report, column 479, what is his most recent estimate of the number of taxpayers with gross and taxable incomes within specific income bands.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Latest estimates for 1993–94 are given in the table.

  Thousands

  Number of taxpayers by range of

  Gross income1

  Taxable income2

  Under 5,000

  2,100

  8,200

  5,000 to 10,000

  7,800

  6,800

  10,000 to 15,000

  6,100

  4,400

  15,000 to 20,000

  3,900

  2,400

  20,000 to 25,000

  2,000

  1,200

  25,000 to 30,000

  1,100

  630

  30,000 to 40,000

  940

  590

  40,000 to 50,000

  340

  210

  50,000 to 70,000

  250

  180

  70,000 to 80,000

  60

  40

  Increase in the lower rate band

  Revenue cost in 1994–95

  Revenue cost in a full year

  Additional numbers of taxpayers with a marginal rate of 20 per cent

  £

  £million

  £million

  Males (000s)

  Females (000s)

  100

  80

  100

  60

  80

  500

  400

  500

  310

  450

  1,000

  780

  980

  710

  860

  Mr. Cormack
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what would be the estimated cost if the higher rate of income tax were levied only on those earning over £45,000 per annum;

  (2) what would be the estimated yield if the higher rate of tax were increased to 50 per cent. on those earning over £70,000 per annum.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Higher rate income tax is charged on taxable income—that is gross income for income tax purposes less those allowances and reliefs, which are available at the taxpayer's marginal rate— in excess of the basic rate limit.

  At 1994–95 income levels the estimated full-year cost of increasing the basic rate limit to £45,000 would be £3.4 billion compared with statutory indexation. The yield from the introduction of a 50 per cent. rate on taxable incomes over £70,000 would be about £1.4 billion. These estimates do not allow for any behavioural effect that might result from such changes to the tax system and do not include capital gains tax.

  VAT
  Mr. Alfred Morris
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has had from British Airways and other airlines in regard to VAT on domestic air fares; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir John Cope
  A number of such representations have been received. It would be inappropriate for me to comment in advance of my right hon. and learned Friend's forthcoming Budget statement.

  Mr. Cormack
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the yield if VAT at 5 per cent. were levied on all items which are currently zero rated or exempt other than food.
  572

  Number of taxpayers by range of

  Gross income1

  Taxable income2

  over 80,000

  170

  140

  Total taxpayers

  24,800

  24,800

  1 Gross income is defined as total income for income tax purposes. It excludes income from certain social security benefits and some investment income such as National Savings Certificates.

  2 Taxable income is defined as gross income for income tax purposes less those allowances and reliefs which are available at the taxpayer's marginal rate.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 25 February,Official Report, column 683, what estimate he has made of the effect of increases on the lower rate band of tax, in 1994–95.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Estimated costs compared with the statutory indexation of allowances and with the lower rate band width of £3,000 announced in the March 1993 Budget are in the table.

  Sir John Cope
  The publication "Tax Ready Reckoner and Tax Reliefs" shows the cost of not applying VAT at the standard rate to those goods currently zero rated or exempt. Although such a calculation may be misleading, adding together the figures for 1993–94 for all items in these groups other than food comes to £17.8 billion. It is not possible to calculate pro rata the figure for exempt goods but 5 per cent. on zero rated items other than food would be expected to raise £3.0 billion. These estimates take no account of behavioural changes.

  Mr. Marlow
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment has been made of the revenue to be gained from imposing VAT on the footwear and clothing of women whose size enables their clothing to be free of VAT.

  Sir John Cope
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The law provides that articles designed as clothing or footwear for young children and not suitable for older persons are zero rated. Although certain adults may be able to purchase certain items of zero rated clothing for themselves, we do not believe the VAT receipts forgone from these purchases to be large.

  Mr. Marlow
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what calculation he has made of the effective transfer of resources from families of children aged 10 to 16 years in the top clothing size quartile to families of children aged 10 to 16 years in the bottom clothing size quartile arising from the present VAT provisions.

  Sir John Cope
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: None, as there is not the data on which to base a reliable calculation.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Matrix Churchill
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what requests for information on Government export control policy have been received from Lord Howe in connection with the Scott inquiry.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Like other witnesses before the Scott inquiry, Lord Howe has been given access to papers relevant to his evidence by the Departments in which he held office.

  Israel
  Sir Thomas Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further steps he has taken to ascertain the whereabouts of the Israeli navigator captain Ron Arad.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We continue to raise the case of Ron Arad with those who might be able to help, but we have not obtained reliable information as to his whereabouts. We continue to believe that the best hope for a solution lies with the efforts of the United Nations.

  Science Museum
  Mr. Shersby
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what assessment he has made of whether the trustees of the science museum are able to meet their obligation under the National Heritage Act 1983 and to discharge the museum's mission statement including care and research of the national collection; if the proposed reduction in staff will leave in post an adequate number of curators, conservation staff and librarians; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sproat
  Under the National Heritage Act 1983, the trustees of the science museum may generally promote the public's enjoyment and understanding of science and technology and of the development of those subjects, both by means of the board's collections and by such other means as they consider appropriate.

  In considering future policy for the national museum of science and industry the trustees are naturally aware of their fiduciary responsibilities to the collections and the care and research that attaches to them. They are concerned to ensure that the buildings that house the museums and the public displays presented in them meet the museum's stated mission. The current plans are being implemented in the light of those concerns in order that the museum can improve what it delivers to its various publics and play its proper role in promoting the public understanding of the history and—in particular—the contemporary practice of science, technology, industry and medicine.

  Works of Art (Export)
  Mr. Jessel
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage when the report of the reviewing committee on the export of works of art 1992–93 will be published.

  Mr. Brooke
  The reviewing committee's annual report 1992–93 has been published today, and copies have been laid before both Houses.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Mobile Phones
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the completion of his Department's project, "Interaction of the Body with Radio Emissions from Hand Held Transceivers".

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The project, "Interaction of the Body with Radio Emissions from Hand Held Transceivers", is due to complete in December 1995. On completion of the project, a document summarising the results will be made public. I will review the need for a statement at that time.

  Nuclear Power
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what level of capital investment is required for building nuclear power stations; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Eggar
  It remains Government policy that Nuclear Electric plc will not be granted capital expenditure approval for any new nuclear stations pending the outcome of a review of the future prospects for nuclear power in the United Kingdom. Options for the scope and format of that review are currently under consideration within Government.

  Telecommunications
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans he has to alter the wayleave regulations under the Telecommunications Act 1984 following privatisation to make them more suited to use by private companies laying fibre optic cables.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Any operator licensed under the Telecommunications Act 1984 may negotiate wayleaves freely for the installation of any kind of apparatus. In addition, licensees granted powers under that Act's telecommunications code may, in certain circumstances, ask the court to decide the terms of a wayleave which has not been freely agreed by the landowner. I have no plans to alter these arrangements.

  Pollution Control Equipment
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what action has been undertaken by his Department to stimulate the development of pollution control equipment in industry in the United Kingdom following the Centre for Exporation of Science and Technology's report in 1991.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Since the publication of the Centre for the Exploitation of Science and Technology's report in 1991, the DTI has created, in association with the Department of Environment, the joint environmental markets unit. The main aims of the unit are to increase United Kingdom firms' awareness of the huge and growing markets for environmental goods and services and to assist United Kingdom companies to exploit such opportunities. In addition to the creation of this unit, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister launched, in March this year, the technology partnership initiative which aims to encourage appropriate environmental technology co-operation
  575
  between United Kingdom business and developing countries. These two initiatives mean that the DTI is developing a close working relationship with United Kingdom manufacturers and suppliers in the environmental field.

  Under a three-year environmental technology programme—DEMOS, ETIS and Euroenviron—grants amounting to £13.8 million have been made to a total of 77 projects involved with the development of innovative environmental technologies, techniques and processes, including pollution control equipment.

  Nuclear Safety
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make representations to the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and Nuclear Electric requiring them to state what accident scenarios are considered during the planning and carrying out of defuelling and decommissioning of nuclear reactors.

  Mr. Eggar
  This is a matter for the Health and Safety Executive's nuclear installations inspectorate and Nuclear Electric plc. NE is required by nuclear site licence conditions to produce a safety case which demonstrates the safety of such activities to the HSE's NII. This includes an emergency plan to ensure that the public would be adequately protected in the unlikely event of an accident occurring during the decommissioning process.

  Exports to China
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade to what extent the embargo on arms exports to China applies to the export of radar systems for use by military aircraft.

  Mr. Needham
  The terms of our arms embargo on China were announced to the House by my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 6 June 1989,Official Report, column 30. The embargo applies to the sale of weapons as well as any equipment that could be used for internal repression.

  Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what communications his Department has had with the International Plutonium Management Study Committee of the Japanese Science and Technology Agency about the THORP contracts; and what documents have been provided by the committee on the management of Japanese-owned plutonium at Sellafield.

  Mr. Eggar
  My Department has frequent discussions with representatives of the Japanese Science and Technology Agency on a range of topics of mutual interest. The THORP contracts are a commercial matter for British Nuclear Fuels plc and its customers.

  Electricity Imports
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade, pursuant to his answer 19 July,Official Report, column 13, what are the latest monthly figures for the amount of electricity imported via the channel interconnector; and what are the prospects for the remainder of 1993 and the first half of 1994.
  576
  Mr. Eggar
  Net imports across the interconnector in the five months from May to September 1993 were 6.75 TWh. As I said in my answer of 19 July, the future pattern of trade will depend on the operation of commercial contracts.

  Coal Imports
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade, pursuant to his answer of 28 June,Official Report, column 371, what are the latest monthly figures for coal imports; and what assessment he has made of the prospects for the remainder of 1993 and the first half of 1994.

  Mr. Eggar
  Import figures for 1993 are still subject to revision, but estimates for the period January to August 1993 suggest that imports in 1993 will be about 10 to 20 per cent. below imports in 1992.

  Orkney Wind Turbine
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the number of hours of operation and the electricity generated, in kilowatt hours, by the Orkney 3 MW wind turbine at Burgar hill in each year since 1988 and in 1993 to date.

  Mr. Eggar
  Operating records of the Orkney 3 MW wind turbine at Burgar hill are described in the table:

  Year

  Hours run

  mKWh generated

  1989

  1,551

  1·926

  1990

  1,103

  1·549

  1991

  790

  1·135

  1992

  3,662

  5·152

  1993

  —

  —

  The machine has not operated in 1993 pending a decision on recommissioning it following completion of its experimental programme.

  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what estimate he has made of the costs of repairing the crack in the rotor in the Orkney 3 MW wind turbine discovered in December 1992; and when he expects the repairs to be completed;

  (2) if he will make a statement on the future operational programme for the Orkney 3 MW wind turbine.

  Mr. Eggar
  The turbine has completed its experimental programme and therefore its future depends on its viability as a generator of electricity. This is under consideration and my Department and Scottish Hydro-Electric plc hope to make a statement before the end of the year. The cost of repairing and recommissioning would be in the region of £50,000.

  Nuclear Review
  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he will announce the terms of reference of the 1994 nuclear review.

  Mr. Eggar
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I made on Wednesday 20 October to the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill),Official Report, column 245.

  Energy Review Panel
  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he will appoint members of the energy review panel, which he announced in the coal White Paper.

  Mr. Eggar
  I announced to the House on 20 October that I had asked Dr. Martin Holdgate to chair the energy advisory panel, and had written to other experts in the energy field asking them to serve as members. I will make an announcement of the full membership of the panel as soon as possible.

  Post Office Pension Schemes
  Ms Estelle Morris
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what access to the funds and assets of the Post Office superannuation and Post Office pension schemes will be afforded private companies who take over ownership in the event of privatisation of Post Office Counters Ltd., Royal Mail Ltd. and Parcelforce Ltd.;

  (2) what arrangements are planned in the event of the privatisation of Post Office Counters Ltd., Royal Mail Ltd., and Parcelforce Ltd., for any staff made redundant to take their current pension entitlements with them to alternative employment.

  Mr McLoughlin
  The Government are continuing their review into the future structure and organisation of the Post Office. Once the Government have decided on the future of the Post Office and its constituent businesses, they will be able to consider any implications for pensions in detail. Until then, these questions are hypothetical.

  Post Office Chairman
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade on what criteria he judges the performance of the chairman of the Post Office; when he will next review his performance; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: I look to the chairman of the Post Office to lead the board and the Post Office as a whole in providing high quality of service to its customers, efficiently and effectively, particularly measured against the financial and efficiency targets for the Post Office and its businesses set by Government as detailed in the Post Office annual report and accounts, and against targets agreed for the quality of service provided by the businesses.

  Redirected Mail
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what were the percentage and actual increases in the charges for redirection of mail between 1991 and 1993, and what was the retail prices index increase over the equivalent period.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Charges for redirection of mail service have increased between 1991 and 1993 as follows:

  Charge from:

  1 month

  3 months

  12 months

  16 September 1991

  £3·50

  £7 75

  £18·75

  13 September 1993

  £6·00

  £13·00

  £30·00

  Percentage increase

  71·4

  67·7

  60·0

  578
  The retail price index increase between September 1991 and September 1993 was 5.4 per cent.

  These increases bring the charges more closely into line with the costs of the mail redirection service and reflect the improvements recently made to these services.

  Mr. Patrick Doyle
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will publish a list of all meetings held and correspondence exchanged in the past 10 years between his Department and Mr. Patrick Doyle, now of AST Training; what was the nature of such meetings or correspondence; what plans he has to meet Mr. Patrick Doyle; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  [holding answer 21 October 1993]: My Department has no record of any contact with Mr. Patrick Doyle.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  R. v. Morris, Reade and Woodwiss
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will place in the Library a copy of Mr. Justice Garland's judgment in the case of R.v. Morris, Reade and Woodwiss.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  I have arranged for a copy of Mr. Justice Garland's judgment to be placed in the Library.

WALES

  Welsh Language Board
  Mr. Rowlands
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what his estimate is of the budget for a full year of the Welsh Language Board.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  The budget for 1993–94 for the advisory Welsh Language Board is £400,000. Decisions about future provision for the statutory Welsh Language Board will be made in the context of the current and subsequent public expenditure surveys and will take into account the change in status, duties, functions and remit of the board brought about by the Welsh Language Act 1993. I will announce my decisions in due course in the normal way.

  Community Care Housing
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what level of increased capital funding has been granted to Tai Cymru to meet community care housing needs.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Housing needs of this type are provided for from within the gross resources available to Housing for Wales which for this financial year represent an increase of approximately 5 per cent. on 1992–93, excluding acquisition initiative funding.

  Special Needs Housing
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what proportion of Tai Cymru funding was allocated towards approved development programmes of new housing for(a) special needs groups and (b) sheltered housing for elderly people in each year since 1990–91.
  579
  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Capital funding for new special needs projects as a percentage of the total programme was as follows:

  Per cent

  1990–91

  9·3

  1991–92

  7·2

  1992–93

  4·4

  Housing for Wales estimates that the figure for 1993–94 will be 8 per cent.

  Separate figures for sheltered elderly allocation are not available for the period in question.

  These figures are for new build only. They do not include the increasing number of homes being allocated to people in these groups from general needs provision.

  Morriston Hospital, Swansea
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales by what date the new cardiac surgery centre will be completed at Morriston hospital, Swansea; and in what year 600 adult open-heart operations will be carried out there.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  There is presently no estimated completion date, but the project board established to manage the development of cardiac services at Morriston hospital is drawing up a detailed timetable for the project.

  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many dedicated intensive care beds will be provided at the new cardiac surgery unit at Morriston hospital, Swansea.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  My announcement on 21 June gave the overall capacity of the unit—600 open heart procedures a year. Clearly, appropriate intensive care facilities will be needed to support this level of activity, but the detailed planning under way has not yet reached a stage where I could indicate the precise services to be provided.

  Dental Treatment
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will place in the Library for each family health service authority area in Wales, the telephone number and contact name for use by any person not registered with a general dental practitioner who requires emergency dental treatment at night or during the weekends.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Non-registered patients requiring emergency treatment at night or at weekends should contact their nearest local dentist who may be willing to treat them. Alternatively, patients should contact their GP who will be able to provide pain relief and, where clinically necessary, refer the patient onwards to a local casualty department or appropriate hospital unit. Patients may also refer themselves to casualty departments.

  Local Government Boundaries
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will ensure that the geographical boundaries of the proposed new unitary local authorities will be co-terminous with health authority and family health service authority boundaries.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  The Government propose, in consultation with the health authorities and the family 580
  health service authorities, to review their boundaries so that, as far as possible, they do not cross those of the new unitary authorities.

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will publish the dates by which he will require hospital trusts in Wales to publish their annual reports.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Except in the first year of operation, the statutory annual public meeting of NHS trusts must be held on or before 30 September to present the audited accounts, annual report and any report on the accounts.

  Diabetes
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many people in Wales are diabetics dependent on insulin injections; and in what form and at what level of disaggregation the information is held.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  The Welsh Health Planning Forum's protocol on physical and sensory disability, which was published by the Welsh Office in November 1991, estimated that there are between 50,000 and 60,000 diabetics in Wales, of whom 30 to 40 per cent. are dependent on insulin injections. This estimate drew on the Welsh Medical Committee's report on diabetes, published the same year.

  Further information on the number of people with diabetes, their capacity to cope with everyday life and their views on the management of their care will be available in 1994 from a survey of the health of the people of Wales commissioned by the Welsh Office.

  NHS Trusts and Fund Holders
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list the current official listed business address of(a) each NHS hospital trust and (b) each general practitioner fund-holding practice in Wales.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  The list of addresses is as follows.

  NHS TRUST

  1. Pembrokeshire NHS Trust.

  Chief Executive

  Pembrokeshire NHS Trust

  Withybush Hospital

  Fishguard Road

  HAVERFORDWEST SA61 2PZ

  2. Glan Clwyd District General Hospital NHS Trust

  Glan Clwyd Hospital

  Bodelwyddan

  NR. RHYL

  Clwyd LL18 5UJ

  3. Wrexham Maelor Hospital NHS Trust

  Wrexham Maelor Hospital

  Croesnewydd Road

  WREXHAM

  Clwyd LL13 7TD

  4. Gofal Cymuned Clwydian Community Care NHS Trust

  Catherine Gladstone House

  Hawarden Way

  DEESIDE

  Clwyd CH5 2EP

  5. Powys Health Care NHS Trust

  581

  Unit Offices

  Felindre

  Bronllys Hospital

  Bronllys BRECON

  Powys LD3 0LS

  6. Glan Hafren NHS Trust

  Royal Gwent Hospital

  Cardiff Road

  NEWPORT

  Gwent NP9 2UB

  7. Gwent Community Health NHS Trust

  Grange House

  Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital

  CWMBRAN

  Gwent NP44 8YN

  8. Llandough Hospital NHS Trust

  Llandough Hospital

  Llandough

  PENARTH

  South Glamorgan CF6 1XX

  9. Bridgend and District NHS Trust

  Nurses Home Offices

  Quarella Road

  BRIDGEND

  Mid Glamorgan CF31 1YE

  10. Swansea NHS Trust

  Singleton Hospital

  Sketty

  SWANSEA

  SA2 0FB

  11. Llanelli Dinefwr NHS Trust

  Prince Philip Hospital

  Bryngwynmawr

  Dafen

  LLANELLI SA14 8QF

  12. Carmarthen and District NHS Trust

  West Wales General Hospital

  Glangwili

  CARMARTHEN

  Dyfed SA31 2AF

  13. Ceredigion and Mid Wales NHS Trust

  Bronglais General Hospital

  Caradog Road

  ABERYSTWYTH

  Dyfed SY23 1ER

  14. South and East Wales Ambulance NHS Trust

  South Glamorgan Ambulance Headquarters

  Ty Bronna

  St Fagans Road

  Fairwater

  CARDIFF CF5 3XP

  GP FUNDHOLDERS

  Clwyd

  Dr. W. B. Clarke & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Padeswood Road

  Buckley CH7 2JL

  Dr. C. W. Spencer & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Padeswood Road

  Buckley

  and

  83 Main Road

  Broughton CH4 0NR

  Dr. D. E. Jones & Partners

  Beech House

  Vale Street

  Denbigh LL 16 3AU

  582

  Dr. J. G. Thomas & Partners

  Bronyffynnon

  Bridge Street

  Denbigh LL16 3TH

  Dr. G. O. Jones & Partners

  Pendre Surgery

  Coleshill Street

  Holywell CH8 7UP

  Dr. E. W. Jones & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Regent Street

  Llangollen LL20 8HL

  Dr. G. W. Jones & Partners

  Cadwgan Surgery

  360 Abergele Road

  Old Colwyn LL29 9LW

  Dr. N. Evans & Partners

  Central Surgery

  Ffordd Pendyffryn

  Prestatyn LL19 9DH

  Dr. J. N. Taylor & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Pen y Bont

  The Roe

  St. Asaph LL17 0LD

  Dyfed

  Dr. R. W. Burns & Partners

  St. Thomas' Surgery

  Rifleman Lane

  St. Thomas' Green

  Haverfordwest SA61 1QX

  Dr. I. A. Davies & Partners

  Meddygfa Teilo

  Crescent Road

  Llandeilo SA19 6HL

  Gwent

  Dr. S. M. Telang & Partners

  Gray Hill Surgery

  Woodstock Way

  Caldicot NP6 4DB

  Dr. P. E. Jones & Partners

  Bellevue Surgery

  Courtybella Terrace

  Newport NP9 2WQ

  Dr. M. Thomas & Partners

  The Mount Surgery

  George Street

  Pontypool NP4 6YL

  Dr. A. C. Pugh & Partners

  Abersychan Surgery

  Old Road

  Abersychan

  Pontypool NP4 7BQ

  Powys

  Dr. E. J. Welton & Partners

  The Surgery

  Well Street

  Montgomery SY15 6PF

  West Glamorgan

  Dr. M. D. Edwards & Partners

  22 Mill Street

  Gowerton

  Swansea SA4 3ED

  583

  Drs. Davies, O'Kane & Partners

  Sketty Surgery

  De La Beche Road

  Sketty

  Swansea SA2 9EA

  Dr. D. G. Bromham & Partners

  Castle Surgery

  1 Prince of Wales Drive

  Neath SA11 3EW

  GP FUNDHOLDING SCHEME

  Dr. B. K. Shah & Partners

  The Surgery

  Oakfield Street

  Ystrad Mynach

  Hengoed

  Mid Glamorgan CF8 7WX

  Drs. D. S. B. James, Jones & Partners

  The Ashgrove Surgery

  Morgan Street

  Pontypridd

  Mid Glamorgan CF37 2DR

  Dr. W. A. Jerrett & Partners

  Old School Surgery

  School Street

  Pontyclun

  Mid Glamorgan

  Dr. D. Parry & Partners

  Gwlad y Mor

  45–47 South Road

  Porthcawl

  Mid Glamorgan CF36 3DG

  Drs. G. F. Morgan, Edwards & Partners

  Ely Bridge Surgery

  23 Mill Road

  Ely

  Cardiff CF5 4AE

  Dr. S. P. Jenkins & Partners

  Ty'r Felin Surgery

  Cecil Road

  Gorseinon

  Swansea

  West Glamorgan SA4 2BY

  Dr. B. F. Bracewell & Partners

  Clarence House

  14 Russell Road

  Rhyl

  Clwyd LL18 3BY

  GP FUNDHOLDING:

  Clywd

  Dr. D. Jones & Partners

  Plas y Bryn Surgery

  Chapel Street

  Wrexham

  LL13 7DD

  Drs. Alstead, Alstead & Williams*

  The Surgery

  40 St Georges Crescent

  Wrexham

  LL13 8DB

  Drs. Saul & Buchanan*

  The Clinic

  Beech Avenue

  Rhos

  Wrexham

  LL14 1AA

  584

  Dr. J. Tattersall & Partners

  The Clinic

  First Avenue

  Gwersyllt

  Wrexham

  Dr. R. Rouse & Partners

  Rysseldene

  98 Conway Road

  Colwyn Bay

  LL29 7LE

  Dr. D. Ryan & Partners

  The Surgery

  Gardden Road

  Rhos

  Wrexham

  LL14 2EN

  Dr. W. Jolly & Partners

  Shotton Lane Surgery

  38, Shotton Lane

  Shotton CH5 1QW

  Dr. S. B Patel & Partners

  Rhoslan Surgery

  4 Pwllycrochan Avenue

  Colwyn Bay LL29 7DA

  Dyfed

  Dr. R. R. E. Evans & Partners

  Furnace House Surgery

  St. Andrews Road

  Carmarthen

  SA31 1LW

  Dr. N. J. Lupini & Partners

  Ty Elli Surgery

  Vauxhall

  Llanelli

  SA15 3BD

  Dr. E. L. Anthony & Partners

  Avenue Villa Surgery

  Brynmor Road

  Llanelli

  SA15 2TJ

  Dr. D. E. C. Hurle & Partners

  The Medical Centre

  Westfield Road

  Saundersfoot

  SA69 9JW

  Gwent

  Dr. S. J. Thomas & Partners

  Isca General Practice Unit

  Cadoc House, High Street

  Caerleon

  Newport NP6 1AZ

  Dr. R. H. Jones & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Regent Way

  Chepstow

  NP6 5BS

  Dr. D. C. B. Bissett & Partners

  Glan Rhyd Surgery

  Riverside

  Beaufort

  Ebbw Vale NP3 5PB

  Dr. A. E. Gray & Partners

  Beechwood Surgery

  371 Chepstow Road

  Newport

  NP9 8HL

  Dr. D. W. John & Partners

  St. Davids Clinic

  Courtybella Terrace

  Newport

  NP9 2LD

  585

  Dr. A. W. Davies & Partners

  The Grange Clinic

  Westfield Avenue Malpas

  Newport NP9 6EY

  Dr. R. H. Jones & Partners

  Risca Surgery

  Church House Field

  St. Mary Street

  Risca NP1 6YS

  Dr. D. McPherson & Partners

  Chippenham Surgery

  Monmouth

  Gwent

  NP5 3EQ

  Dr. A. L. Calland & Partners

  The Wye Valley Practice St. Briavels Surgery

  Briavels

  Lydney, Glos

  GL15 6SA

  Gwynedd

  Dr. D. J. Bowen & Partners

  The New Surgery

  Longford Road

  Holyhead LL65 1TR

  Mid Glamorgan

  Dr. P. W. Jones & Partners

  Parc Canol Surgery

  Central Park

  Church Village

  CF38 1RJ

  Dr. B. Wookey & Partners

  Pontcae Surgery

  Georgetown

  Merthyr Tydfil

  CF48 1YE

  Dr. C. D. V. Jones & Partners

  The Medical Centre

  Duffryn Road

  Rhydyfelin

  Pontypridd

  Powys

  Dr. A. J. M. Cavenagh & Partners

  Brecon Medical Group Practice

  Ruperra House

  St. Mary's Street

  Brecon LD3 7AA

  Dr. A. R. W. Harriss & Partners

  Glandwr Park

  Builth Wells

  LD2 3DZ

  Dr. J. R. Waring & Partners

  War Memorial Health Centre

  Beaufort Street

  Crickhowell

  NP8 1AG

  Dr. E. T. Scrase & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Llanidloes

  SY18 6EZ

  South Glamorgan

  Dr. M. T. K. Wheeler & Partners

  Fairwater Health Centre

  Plasmawr Road

  Fairwater

  Cardiff CF5 3JT

  586

  Dr. D. W. Williamson & Partners

  Clifton Surgery

  151–153 Newport Road

  Roath

  Cardiff CF2 1AG

  Dr. D. A. Richards & Partners

  The North Cardiff Medical Centre

  Excalibur Drive

  Thornhill

  Cardiff

  CF4 9BB

  Dr. M. J. O'Kane & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Caebricks Road

  Cwmbwrla

  Swansea

  SA5 8NS

  Dr. D. G. Lewis & Partners*

  Fforestfach Health Centre

  Ravenhill Road

  Fforestfach

  Swansea SA5 5AA

  Dr. I. M. Millington & Partners*

  Fforestfach Health Centre

  Fforestfach

  Swansea

  Dr. A. L. Foulkes & Partners

  Llwynbrwydrau Surgery

  3 Frederick Place

  Llansamlet

  Swansea SA7 9RY

  Dr. M. K. Hopkins & Partners

  Manselton Surgery

  Elgin Street

  Manselton

  Swansea

  SA5 8QE

  Dr. B. Lervy & Partners

  The Surgery

  65 Sway Road

  Morriston

  Swansea SA6 6JA

  Dr. D. H. Gamage & Partners

  St. Thomas Surgery

  Ysgol Street

  St. Thomas

  Swansea SA1 8LH

  West Glamorgan

  Dr. R. B. D. Skidmore & Partners*

  The Health Centre

  Hunter Street

  Briton Ferry

  SA11 2SF

  Dr. C. S. Selby & Partners*

  The Health Centre

  Hunter Street

  Briton Ferry

  SA11 2SF

  Dr. D. M. Davies

  Dyfed Road Health Centre

  Dyfed Road

  Neath

  SA11 3AP

  Dr. T. V. Barrow & Partners

  The Health Centre

  Pontardawe

  587

  Swansea

  SA8 4JU

  Dr. R. R. Jones & Partners

  140 St Helens Road

  Swansea

  SA1 4DE

  Dr. A. Law & Partners

  The Surgery

  Trinity Buildings

  21 Orchard Street

  Swansea

  SA1 5EB

  Dr. J. R. Evans & Partners

  Tal y Boni Surgery

  Station Road

  Pontardulais

  Swansea

  SA4 1TL

  Dr. J. G. Williams

  48 Sketty Road

  Uplands

  Swansea

  SA2 0LJ

  and

  49 Queens Road

  Mumbles

  Swansea

  SA3 4AW

  Dr. G. H. Jones

  The Surgery

  78 Newton Road

  Swansea

  SA3 4BE

  *Group application

  VAT (Headquarters Buildings)
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what representations he has had in relation to the treatment of VAT on new headquarters buildings to be owned by(a) training and enterprise councils, (b) the Welsh Development Agency or (c) training and enterprise councils and the Welsh Development Agency jointly; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  None. North East Wales training and enterprise council and the Welsh Development Agency have taken account of, inter alia, VAT requirements in preparing their proposals.

  Urban Investment Grant
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, pursuant to his answer of 11 June,Official Report, columns 346–48, if he will list for each of the recipients of urban investment grant in Wales, both as regards Welsh Office direct payment and via Cardiff Bay development corporation, how much has been (a) agreed, and (b) paid in each quarter.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply my right hon. Friend gave him on 11 June and on 22 June at column 114.

  Details of projects approved in each of the quarters are given at table 1—Welsh Office—and table 2—CBDC. Payments are made in arrears and calculated on the basis of certificated measured work and, where appropriate, site acquisition costs.
  588

  Table 1: Welsh Office Approved Projects

  Quarter and Project and Developer

  Grant approved £

  April-June 1991

  Goat Mill Road, Merthyr

  Breamvalley Estates Ltd.

  315,000

  July-September 1991

  Llewellyn's Quay, Port Talbot

  Comfort House Investments Ltd.

  175,000

  October-December 1991

  Beacons View, Dowlais

  Comfort House Investments Ltd.

  100,000

  Quay West, Swansea

  Andrew Scott Developments Ltd.

  500,000

  St. David's Church, Aberdare

  R. A. & C. T. Davies

  43,000

  January-March 1992

  Harold Wilson Industrial Estate, Caerphilly

  G. A. Spacey (Management Services) Ltd.

  136,000

  Cromwell Service Station, Newport

  Sinclair Garages (Port Talbot) Ltd.

  245,000

  Cardiff Road, Aberaman

  Beazer Urban Developments

  328,000

  Letchworth Road, Ebbw Vale

  Barakat Property Developers Ltd.

  84,000

  Old Bus Station, Merthyr

  Redraw Homes (South Wales) Ltd.

  250,000

  Warnill's Foundry, Abertillery

  Safeway Stores plc

  150,000

  April-June 1992

  Blaenant Business Park

  Short (Bros.) Plant Ltd.

  25,000

  King Street, Mold

  MPH (North Wales) Ltd.

  70,000

  July-September 1992

  Clase Road, Morriston

  Castle Leisure Ltd.

  200,000

  Royal Opera House Scenery Store, Aberaman

  Macob Holdings Ltd.

  1,336,000

  October-December 1992

  Nil

  January-March 1993

  Former YMCA, Aberaman

  R. A. & C. T. Davies

  45,000

  Castle Court, Caerphilly

  Macob Construction Ltd.

  95,000

  Dimond Street, Pembroke Dock

  Peter Morris & Mewbeck Ltd.

  55,000

  Table 2: Cardiff Bay development corporation approved grants

  Quarter and project and developer

  Grant approved £

  January-March 1993

  NCM Offices, Capital Waterside

  Associated British Ports

  2,500,000

  North-east Wales Training and Enterprise Council
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what representations he has had in relation to the development of a new headquarters for the North-east Wales training and enterprise council; what consent has been(a) sought and (b) refused for capital expenditure for such a purpose; what consent has been (i) sought, and (ii)

  589
  refused for a new headquarters for North-east Wales for the Welsh Development Agency; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  Representations have been received from those listed as follows about the proposed North East Wales business development centre which would include office accommodation for both the training and enterprise council and the Welsh Development Agency. Aspects of the proposal are still under consideration.

  Welsh Development Agency

  North East Wales Training and Enterprise Council

  Mr. John Bragg

  Dr. John Marek MP

  Mr. Barry Jones MP

  Mr. R. J. Dutton, Chairman, Wrexham ITEC Management Advisory Group

  Mr. B. Goodhall, Wrexham Maelor Borough Council

  Mr. Rhodri Morgan MP

  European Elections
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what has been the advertising expenditure of his Department on the proposed new Euro-constituency boundaries in Wales; and if he will separately distinguish the sum spent on(a) television advertising and (b) newspaper advertising.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I have been asked to reply.

  The total sum spent on advertising the provisionally recommended boundaries for European parliamentary constituencies in Wales has so far been £5,336.23. This was all spent on newspaper advertising, in both English and Welsh in the following papers: Western Mail, Liverpool Daily Post, Evening Leader, Wrexham, Y Cymru.

  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list the names and addresses of all the establishments in Wales where members of the public may view the boundaries of the proposed Euro-constituencies within Wales.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I have been asked to reply.

  The provisional recommendations of the European Parliamentary Constituency Committee for Wales were placed on public deposit on Monday 13 September 1993 at the following locations:

  Clwyd

  Council Offices, Russel House, Churton Road, Rhyl

  Council Offices, Wynnstay Road, Ruthin

  Council Offices, Glynne Way, Hawarden

  Delyn House, Chapel Street, Flint

  Guildhall, Wrexham

  Civic Centre, Abergele Road, Colwyn Bay

  Dyfed

  Council Offices, 3 Spilman Street, Carmarthen

  Town Hall, Aberystwyth

  Town Hall, Llanelli

  Cambria House, Haverfordwest

  District Offices, Llanion Park, Pembroke Dock

  Municipal Offices, Crescent Road, Llandeilo

  Gwynedd

  Council Offices, Cae Penarlag, Dolgellau

  Council Offices, Pwllheli

  Council Offices, Bodlondeb, Conwy

  Borough Council Office, Llangefni

  Town Hall, Bangor

  Mid Glamorgan

  Civic Offices, Angel Street, Bridgend

  590

  Council Offices, Talbot Street, Maesteg

  Municipal Buildings, Morgan Street, Pontypridd

  Council Offices, Ystrad Fawr, Ystrad Mynach, Hengoed

  Civic Centre, Castle Street, Merthyr Tydfil

  Municipal Offices, Llewellyn Street, Pentre, Rhondda

  Council Offices, Rock Grounds, High Street, Aberdare

  South Glamorgan

  City Hall, Cardiff

  Council Offices, Holton Road, Barry

  West Glamorgan

  Civic Centre, Penllergaer

  The Guildhall, Swansea

  Civic Centre, Neath

  Civic Centre, Port Talbot

  Gwent

  Municipal Offices, Civic Centre, Ebbw Vale

  Civic Centre, Blackwood

  Civic Centre, Pontypool

  Mamhilad House, Mamhilad Park Estate, Pontypool

  Civic Centre, Newport

  Powys

  Council Offices, Severn Road, Welshpool

  Neuadd Brycheiniog, Cambrian Way, The Watton, Brecon

  District Council Offices, Llandrindod Wells

PRIME MINISTER

  Overseas Journeys
  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the Prime Minister what has been the total cost to public funds of his journeys abroad since 9 April 1992.

  The Prime Minister
  The cost to public funds of my journeys abroad since 9 April 1992 is estimated to be £1,979,000.

  Yasser Arafat
  Mr. Parry
  To ask the Prime Minister what plans he has to meet Mr. Yasser Arafat; and if he will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  I hope to see Mr Arafat in London before the end of the year.

  Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
  Mr. Dunn
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the outcome of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Cyprus.

  The Prime Minister
  With my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, I attended the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Cyprus from 21 to 25 October. The final communiqué of the meeting and accompanying documents have been placed in the Library of the House.

  The emphasis of the meeting was on the practical and constructive work of the Commonwealth. Agreement was reached on a range of important subjects. The "Limassol Statement on the Uruguay Round" expressed the Commonwealth's strong collective commitment to a comprehensive, equitable and balanced conclusion of the round by 15 December 1993. Commonwealth Heads decided to send a mission of Ministers from Barbados, Canada, Ghana, Malaysia and Mauritius to call on the GATT Director General in Geneva, the European Commission in Brussels and selected capitals to press for

  591
  urgent progress in the trade talks. Nothing will do more to promote growth and jobs for developed and developing countries alike.

  The meeting called for additional measures to reduce the debt burden of developing countries to sustainable levels and, in particular, for the full implementation of the Trinidad terms. These discussions confirmed me in the view that the neediest countries, with a trace record of economic reform, should be offered early and sufficient reduction on their whole stock of official debt. We will continue to press for this.

  I secured strong support for my proposal that Commonwealth countries should strengthen their cooperation in combating the international menace of financial crime. There was agreement to work towards implementation of the 40 recommendations of the financial action task force set up in 1989 at G7 initiative. The United Kingdom is the current chairman. This means that Commonwealth countries will seek to adopt best international practice in this area. Law and Finance Ministers are following up in detail. This will also help Commonwealth work on drug abuse and proceeds of illicit trafficking. I encouraged all Commonwealth Governments not yet party to the relevant 1988 United Nations convention to do so as soon as possible and put in place enforcement mechanisms.

  We agreed that the Commonwealth observer mission to South Africa was making an important contribution towards helping to stem the violence and should remain there until after the election next year. We also agreed that a Commonwealth group should observe the elections as part of a wider international presence to build confidence in the electoral process. We looked forward to welcoming South Africa back into the Commonwealth at the earliest possible opportunity after democratic elections, if South Africa decides to reapply for membership. In lifting all economic sanctions still in place, we endorsed the appeals by President de Klerk and Dr. Nelson Mandela for foreign investment in, and increased trade with, South Africa to help overcome the social, and economic legacy of apartheid.

  The 1991 Harare declaration on good governance has proved its worth. Since 1991, five out of the nine Commonwealth members without democratic government then have held multi-party elections. The Commonwealth has sent observer missions to each of these countries and has provided technical assistance to help the process. Much work on fundamental political values remains to be done. We recognised that in this field the Commonwealth has its particular vocation. We mandated the Secretary-General to give it a high priority.

  In this context, the meeting considered Cameroon's application for Commonwealth membership. It agreed to welcome Cameroon to membership at our next meeting in 1995, on the condition that current efforts to establish a democratic system, consistent with the Harare Commonwealth declaration, were by then completed.

  The meeting discussed a wide range of international political matters, including Bosnia and the Cyprus problem, and agreed that the Commonwealth action group on Cyprus should continue to monitor developments.

  Commonwealth Heads accepted with pleasure the Canadian invitation extended to all governments to participate in the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia during 18 to 28 August 1994.
  592
  Commonwealth Heads also accepted with pleasure New Zealand's invitation to them to hold the next meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1995.

  Lockerbie Bombing
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will obtain for the library of No. 10 Downing street a copy of the book, the details of which have been supplied to him, relating to the loss of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

  The Prime Minister
  [holding answer 19 October 1993]: No. A copy is already available in the Treasury library.

  Mr. Patrick Doyle
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will publish a list of all meetings held and correspondence exchanged in the past 10 years between his Office and Mr. Patrick Doyle, now of AST Training; what was the nature of such meetings or correspondence; what plans he has to meet Mr. Patrick Doyle; and if he will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  [holding answer 22 October 1993 ]: I am unaware of any such contacts and have no plans to meet Mr. Doyle.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Child Support Agency
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the latest estimate of the sum in maintenance which should be paid by absent parents as a result of Child Support Agency assessments(a) in the agency's first year of operation and (b) in a full year on the assumption that the assessments are in operation at current levels.

  Mr. Burt
  It is estimated that the sum in maintenance paid by absent parents as a result of Child Support Agency assessments will be some £530 million in the agency's first year and £900 million in the long run.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the latest estimate of the sum in maintenance payments resulting from Child Support Agency assessments which will go to the Treasury or which will benefit the Treasury by reducing income support payments in the agency's first year of operation; and what percentage this is of the total of maintenance payments assessed by the agency.

  Mr. Burt
  It is estimated that the savings to the taxpayer from reductions in income support payments in 1993–94 will be approximately £450 million. This represents 85 percent. of the estimated total of the maintenance payments which will be made as a result of assessments.

  Mr. Milligan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to trace absent parents who are now living elsewhere in the European Community and are not paying maintenance for their children.

  Mr. Burt
  The jurisdiction of the Child Support Agency does not extend beyond the United Kingdom. The Lord Chancellor's Department administers reciprocal enforcement agreements with many countries both inside and outside the European Community. These provisions
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  allow for the enforcement of British court orders abroad and of foreign orders in the United Kingdom. The Government have no plans to change these arrangements.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to review the operation of the Child Support Agency and in particular the financial formula for calculating the maintenance liabilities of absent parents; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Burt
  The new child support maintenance system is a major Government initiative and we are keeping its implementation under close scrutiny. We have no current plans for changes to the formula.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the latest estimate of the sum that will be paid in maintenance as a result of Child Support Agency assessments in the agency's first year of operation which will be(a) retained by parents with care and (b) recovered through reduced benefit payments.

  Mr. Burt
  It is estimated that some £50 million of maintenance will be retained by parents with care and about £480 million will be recovered through reduced benefit payments.

  Mr. Mills
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what assessment he has made of the effect of the Child Support Agency calculations on the level of maintenance required from responsible fathers already paying maintenance.

  Mr. Burt
  It is estimated that average awards of maintenance by the Child Support Agency will be about £45 to £50 per week, compared with awards of £25 to £30 under the previous arrangements. This increase is in part due to the fact that many awards under the old system have run for years without review. Awards by the Child Support Agency will be reviewed annually.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to undertake a review of the Child Support Agency's workings.

  Mr. Burt
  The new child support maintenance system is a major Government initiative and we are keeping its implementation under close scrutiny. We have no current plans for change.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what consideration he has given to the extent to which the new maintenance arrangements for child support(a) penalise second families in respect of absentee parents partners have their income taken into account and (b) undermine the clean break principle by disturbing previously agreed maintenance arrangements.

  Mr. Burt
  Assessment of child support maintenance is based on an absent parent's own income and essential expenditure. A partner's income is taken into account only to assess whether the partner can contribute towards the support of any child of the couple themselves; and whether the amount the absent parent has been assessed to pay under the maintenance formula should be reduced to avoid his second family's resources falling below a prescribed level.

  The clean break principle is restricted to arrangements between couples who divorce and it has always been the
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  case that there can be no clean break between parents and their children. The child support maintenance formula takes account of the practical consequences of a clean break settlement by allowing the absent parent's housing costs in his exempt income.

  Independent Living Fund
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when his Department will provide guidance to local authorities concerning the administration of the independent living fund, and the consequent responsibilities of local authorities; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Scott
  The independent living (extension) fund and the independent living (1993) fund are independent and discretionary trust funds. I am informed by the director of the funds that detailed guidance on the operation of the independent living (1993) fund was issued to local authorities on 6 September 1993.

  Lone Parents
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security in what percentage of the cases in which a maintenance assessment has been issued and the parent with care is in receipt of income support that parent no longer will be eligible for income support as the result of the payment of the assessed maintenance.

  Mr. Burt
  The cost of establishing the number of such cases would be disproportionately high.

  However, it is estimated that in the long run about 30,000 lone parents will no longer be dependent on the taxpayer by requiring income support because they are receiving maintenance. This represents just under 10 per cent. of all lone parents expected to be receiving child support maintenance.

  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the latest estimate of his Department's current annual expenditure on single parents.

  Mr. Burt
  It is estimated that the total benefit expenditure on lone parents was £6.6 billion during 1992–93.

  Maxwell Pensioners
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what measures his Department has taken to secure the return of Maxwell pension scheme funds from Credit Suisse to the Maxwell pensioners;

  (2) what measures his Department has taken to secure the return of Maxwell pension scheme funds from Lehman Brothers to the Maxwell pensioners.

  Mr. Hague
  Responsibility for the recovery of missing Maxwell pension scheme assets rests with the trustees of the pension schemes and the joint liquidators of Bishopsgate Investment Management Ltd.

  The trustees of the Maxwell Pensioners Trust have taken an initiative to promote an overall settlement to the many disputes relating to missing Maxwell pension scheme assets. The Government welcome this initiative, which is being taken forward on behalf of the trust by Sir Peter Webster, a retired High Court judge.

  Maxwell pensions have been kept in payment while asset recovery work has continued, initially by means of

  595
  Government emergency funding amounting to £2–5 million. Assistance is currently provided through loans to the pension schemes from the Maxwell Pensioners Trust.

  Pensioners (Consumer Goods)
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the latest available information on the level of ownership among pensioners of(a) motor cars, (b) central heating, (c) telephones, (d) televisions, (e) personal computers or word processors, (f) housing, (g) washing machines, (h) dishwashers and (i) refrigerators; what were the figures for 1979; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hague
  The information requested is in the table.

  Pensioner households—Ownership of goods

  Item

  1979 Per cent

  1992 Per cent

  Motor Cars

  23

  39

  Central Heating

  43

  78

  Telephones

  50

  90

  Televisions

  94

  98

  Personal Computers or word processors

  n/a

  1

  Year

  Local authority tenants

  All private tenants (a+b)

  Housing Association tenants(a)

  Other private tenants (b)

  1990

  22,507

  3,708

  —

  —

  1991

  23,581

  4,410

  —

  —

  1992

  24,780

  5,288

  2,560

  2,838

  Notes:

  1. The information covers benefit units, and not individuals; couples are counted as one unit.

  2. Discrete information on the numbers of Housing Association Tenants is available only from 1992. Prior to that date, the data is included with that of all Private Tenants.

  3. The source of the data is the Housing Benefit Management Information System quarterly caseload returns for February, May, August and November for 1990, 1991 and 1992.

  VAT on Fuel
  Mr. Cormack
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what would be the estimated cost of measures to relieve those in receipt of benefits from the effect of VAT on domestic fuel at(a) 171/2 per cent., (b) 8 per cent. and (c) 5 per cent.

  Mr. Burt
  The costs of compensation will depend on the measures taken and the benefits covered. Extra help will be given to poorer pensioners and others on low incomes. An announcement will be made later in the autumn.

  Among the points to be taken into account is the fact that domestic fuel prices, on average, have fallen by 17–5 per cent. in real terms since their peak in 1983.

  Medical Reports
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will require medical reports, undertaken on behalf of his Department for the purposes of benefit claims, to be typewritten in the interests of clarity; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hague
  The provision of medical reports for benefit purposes is a matter for Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member with such information as is available and a copy will be placed in the Library.
  596

  Item

  1979 Per cent

  1992 Per cent

  Housing

  43

  57

  Washing machines

  56

  75

  Dishwashers

  n/a

  n/a

  Refrigerators

  84

  99

  Source: Family Expenditure Survey

  Notes:

  1. Ownership of dishwashers is not recorded in the Family Expenditure Survey.

  2 Ownership of personal computers or word processors is not recorded for 1979.

  Housing Benefit
  Ms Gordon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people received housing benefit in Tower Hamlets for the last three years, broken down into local authority tenants, housing association tenants and private tenants.

  Mr. Burt
  The latest available information is in the table.

  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. David Hinchliffe, dated 25 October 1993:
  As Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency it is my responsibility to answer questions raised about relevant operational matters. I am therefore replying to your recent Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security, asking if he will require medical reports, undertaken on behalf of his Department for the purpose of benefit claims, to be typewritten in the interests of clarity.
  I should explain that it is the responsibility of the Benefits Agency Medical Services (BAMS) to provide advice and written reports following medical examination to support the adjudication of benefit claims.
  Whilst some reports are already typed, in response to the stated requirements of their customers, BAMS are now piloting various schemes in different parts of the country to determine the most cost-effective way of providing typed reports for all benefits. They are committed to implementing this improvement in the service they provide as soon as is practically possible.
  Until the change can be implemented, all doctors working for BAMS continue to be reminded of the importance of writing clearly when they have to provide a handwritten report.
  I hope you find this reply helpful. A copy will appear in the Official Report and a copy will be placed in the Library.

  Disabilities Allowances
  Mr. Miller
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has for changes to the facilities available to right hon. and hon. Members in respect of the hotline service for the disability living allowance in Blackpool; and if he will make a statement.
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  Mr. Hague
  The administration of disability living allowance is a matter for Mr. Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member and a copy will be placed in the Library.

  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Andrew Miller, dated 25 October 1993:
  As Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency it is my responsibility to answer questions raised about relevant operational matters. I am therefore replying to your recent Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security, asking if there are any plans for changes to the facilities available to honourable and right honourable Members in respect of the DLA hotline service.
  The hotline continues to operate in Blackpool and achieve a 48 hour call back service. There are presently no plans to alter these facilities. However, as the performance for handling DLA claims is now being sustained at a high level, we will have to consider at some point whether there remains a need for the service in the same form to be maintained in the future. Members will be advised of any changes if, and when, we propose such changes.
  I hope you find this reply helpful. A copy will appear in the Official Report and a copy will also be placed in the Library.

EMPLOYMENT

  Overseas Staff and Premises
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the cost for the current financial year of his Department having(a) premises and (b) personnel overseas; and what were the comparable figures for (a) 12, (b) 24, (c) 36 and (d) 48 months ago.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The figures set out in the table show the Employment Department's costs for premises and personnel overseas in 1992–93 and in 1993–94 to date. Information for the financial years 1991–92, 1990–91 and 1989–90 is not readily available.

  Year

  Premises costs

  Personnel costs

  1992–93

  —

  £979,585

  1993–94

  —

  £565,893

  (to end September)

  Energy Efficiency
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what research has been undertaken by his Department on the job creation potential stemming from the development of energy efficiency programmes in the United Kingdom.

  Miss Widdecombe
  The Department has not undertaken any such research.

  Jobs, Birmingham
  Dr. Lynne Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many new vacancies were notified to jobcentres in Birmingham in each of the last 12 months.

  Miss Widdecombe
  The information is given in the table and is also available from the NOMIS database in the Library.
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  Vacancies notified to Jobcentres covering Birmingham local authority district

  Date

  Number

  October 1992

  2,669

  November 1992

  3,134

  December 1992

  2,055

  January 1993

  1,556

  February 1993

  2,095

  March 1993

  2,041

  April 1993

  2,177

  May 1993

  2,433

  June 1993

  2,042

  July 1993

  2,309

  August 1993

  2,722

  September 1993

  2,390

  Jobs, Lancashire
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many vacancies are currently available at jobcentres in Lancashire offering jobs at(a) £3.10 an hour or less and (b) £3.50 an hour or less.

  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. Gordon Prentice, dated 26 October 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 the number of vacancies currently available at Jobcentres in Lancashire offering jobs at (a) £3.10 an hour or less and (b) £3.50 an hour or less. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.
  Unfortunately, I am unable to answer your question without disproportionate costs being incurred. There are 25 Jobcentres in Lancashire and it would be necessary for each to carry out a separate survey, as the information requested is not routinely collected. However, details have been obtained from a sample of four of the larger Jobcentres in the county namely Burnley, Blackpool North, Blackburn and Lancaster. On 22 October these offices held a total of 747 vacancies offering jobs at £3.50 an hour or less, including 511 offering £3.10 an hour or less. For each of the four offices some vacancies from adjacent offices have been included because of arrangements to circulate information within travel to work areas.
  I hope this is helpful.
  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.

  Farm Accidents
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the number of people killed in farm accidents in England and Wales in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Deaths occuring on farms cannot be separately identified. The fatal accidents in agriculture and horticulture reported to the enforcement authorities in England and Wales under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrencies Regulations 1985 are set out in the table.
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  Fatal Accidents in the Agriculture and Horticulture Industry1 Reported to the Enforcement Authorities in England and Wales, 1987–88 to 1991–92

  Year2

  Employees3

  Self employed

  Members of Public4

  Total

  1987–88

  18

  24

  7

  49

  1988–89

  16

  20

  13

  49

  1989–90

  14

  21

  11

  46

  1990–91

  17

  16

  13

  46

  1991–92

  12

  24

  2

  38

  1 As defined by standard industrial classification 1980, class 01

  2 Year commencing 1 April.

  3 Including trainees.

  4 Killed as a result of someone else's work activity.

  Fireworks
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what standards are required of imported fireworks relative to those manufactured in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  In deciding whether or not to grant an importation licence, the explosives inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive applies the same standards to those required of domestically manufactured fireworks.

  Sheltered Placements
  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what considerations underlie the prohibition on local authorities which operate their own sheltered placement schemes from offering further placements where funding is available from Remploy Interwork.

  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. Eric Illsley, dated 26 October 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 local authority Sheltered Placement Schemes (SPS). This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.
  There is nothing to prevent a local authority which acts both as a sponsor and a host organisation of SPS from also having Interwork placements within their organisation.
  I hope this is helpful.
  As decided by the Administrative 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.

HEALTH

  Health Service Reforms
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the latest report she has received from the Guy's and St. Thomas' national health service trust relating to health service reforms in London.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Guy's and St. Thomas' hospital trust are currently exploring options for the siting of their services as required by "Making London Better". I expect to receive a report from the trust board by mid-November.

  Hospital Treatment
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on progress on pacing of treatment in hospital.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Early evidence indicates that, overall, hospitals are managing their workload effectively over the year. Guidance was issued by the National Health Service Management Executive to ensure that monitoring systems are in place so that local managers can identify problems early and take action to maintain a balanced activity throughout the year.

  GP Fund Holders
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will review the working of general practitioner fund holders; and if she will make a statement.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The fund-holding scheme has been a remarkable success since its introduction in 1991. In England, one in four patients are benefiting from fund holders' services. From 1 April 1994, about one in three patients will benefit.

  The purpose of the scheme is to deliver better care for patients, to achieve better value for money, and to give general practitioners more influence in the service provided to their patients. There is clear evidence to show that it succeeds on all three counts.

  Mr. Duncan Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many smaller family doctor practices are planning to join the fund-holding scheme in April 1994 by joining together; and if she will make a statement.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  More than 350 small practices have expressed an interest in joining the fund-holding scheme from April 1994 by joining together as groups to hold a fund. This is the largest cohort of small practices coming forward so far.

  Dr. Twinn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioners have expressed an interest in joining the fund-holding scheme in April 1994; and if she will make a statement.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  More than 800 practices are preparing to join the scheme from April 1994. From that date about one in three of the population will be covered by a general practitioner fund holder.

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been made in extending the range of services which can be provided by general practitioner fund holders.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  From 1 April 1993 fund holders have been able to purchase community health services from their patients, and can receive payment from the fund for performing secondary care procedures at practice level. We keep the range of services for which fund holders can contract under constant review.

  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what provision exists(a) to assess whether a fund-holding general practitioner practice was over-funded in its initial year of operation and (b) to recover funds from a fund-holding practice that has been overfunded.
  601
  Dr. Mawhinney
  Regional health authorities are responsible for setting fair budgets for general practitioner fundholders. If budgets are set incorrectly, for example because of data problems, regions agree with fund holders how to resolve the problem. Excessive surpluses can be returned at the end of the year and regions hold contingency reserves for cases where budgets are set too low.

  Occupational Health
  Mr. Roy Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients the national health service treated in 1990–91 and 1991–92 for(a) occupational health related diseases and (b) industrial accidents.

  Mr. Sackville
  This information is not available centrally.

  Barnet Health Authority
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement about the number of patients treated by the Barnet health authority in 1992–93 and 1982–83.

  Mr. Sackville
  Between 1982–83 and 1992–93 in-patient and out-patient activity both went up by approximately 5 per cent. to 42,906 and 226,317 respectively. Over the same period daycase activity trebled to 9,627.

  Treatment in Barnet from April 1992 is provided by the Wellhouse Trust, comprising Barnet and Edgware hospitals. Previously the hospitals were managed by Barnet health authority.

  Residential Care
  Mr. Illsley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received from representatives of residential care homes regarding assessments by local authorities.

  Mr. Bowis
  I have regular meetings with care home representatives at which we discuss various issues including local authority assessments.

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make it her policy to monitor the effect of the deregistration of residential care homes for vulnerable people upon service provision to their inhabitants.

  Mr. Bowis
  I am aware of a few homes in the drug and alcohol field which have been deregistered. These services have been and are continuing to be monitored by Goldsmith's college, whose first report was published on 28 July and a copy of which is available in the Library.

  Domiciliary Care Agencies
  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will introduce legislation to require the registration and inspection of domiciliary care agencies.

  Mr. Bowis
  We have no plans to introduce such legislation.

  National Health Service
  Mr. Kynoch
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to make the public aware of how they can help the national health service to provide a better service.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Every opportunity is used to emphasise how important the public's help is to the national health service in providing a better service. When the patient's charter was launched two years ago it included a section on how patients could help the NHS. More recently the Department of Health has developed and issued throughout the NHS a "Help Us to Help You" information pack. This initiative will stimulate and encourage local campaigns.

  Sir David Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what percentage of the gross domestic product was spent on the national health service in the most recent year for which figures are available; and what was the percentage in 1978.

  Mr. Sackville
  Total national health service expenditure in the United Kingdom was equivalent to 6.1 per cent. of gross domestic product in 1992–93, compared with 4.7 per cent. in 1978–79.

  Harlow Wood Hospital
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the future plans for the Harlow Wood hospital, Nottinghamshire.

  Mr. Sackville
  No final decision has been made on the long-term future of the hospital. I understand that the North Nottinghamshire health authority is considering various options to secure orthopaedic services for local people.

  Patients Charter
  Ms Eagle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the patients charter.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Since the patients charter came into effect in April 1992, patients throughout the national health service have seen the benefits in terms of better services. The patients charter has stimulated many innovative ideas and much good practice at local level and the efforts of the national health service should be applauded.

  Health Information
  Mr. Couchman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps have been taken to improve the provision of information on health matters for patients.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The Government are committed to improving the information available to patients and the public about the national health service and health matters. The patients charter emphasises that patients have a right to be given detailed information on local health services. The national freephone health information service was launched in January this year, providing a free and confidential service to patients on a wide range of health issues, including information on diseases, treatments, self-help groups and local services. The freephone number of HIS is 0800 66 55 44.

  The Government provide £36 million per year for the funding of the Health Education Authority, which

  603
  promotes a wide range of health education and advice, both directly to the public and through others. The Department also produces information on such areas as help with charges for prescriptions, optical and dental treatment and the costs of travel to hospital.

  Care in the Community
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received about the role of voluntary groups in care in the community.

  Mr. Bowis
  We have received a variety of representations from different voluntary organisations. We meet regularly with many of them and we greatly value the contribution they make to the care of individuals whether in their own homes or in community-based residential establishments.

  Mental Health Facilities
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients in 1991–92 were retained in the hospital system under sections 2 or 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983 because(a) suitable accommodation outside the hospital was not available or (b) an alternative but less restrictive mental health facility was not available.

  Mr. Bowis
  This information is not collected centrally.

  Child Care, Lambeth
  Mr. Fraser
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the delivery of child care services in the London borough of Lambeth; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Bowis
  Following the social services inspectorate report of April 1992 into child protection services, Lambeth has been asked to provide regular reports on these services in the borough. The latest report covers the period up to 1 October 1993 and shows that, despite some work towards achieving improved standards in management and quality of services, there are continuing causes for concern, including an unacceptably high level of unallocated casework. Lambeth will be asked to send a further report by 1 March 1994. In addition, Lambeth is addressing recommendations in a recent social services inspectorate report on three of its children's homes.

  Charitable Trusts
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what advice she has offered or will offer district health authorities who now no longer manage patient services regarding the transfer of district charitable trust funds to hospitals for the benefit of patients.

  Mr. Sackville
  The administration of charitable funds is the responsibility of the trustees. We have given advice on the legal process required when trustees' responsibilities are transferred from health authorities to national health service trusts. The latest such advice (FDL(93)24) was issued in March 1993, and will be placed in the Library.

  Offenders (Mental Disorders)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she will reply to Dr. John Reed, principal medical officer at her Department to his recommendations made 604
  last November in respect of improvements to the treatment of offenders with mental disorders; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Bowis
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, South (Mr. Yeo) gave my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) on 27 November 1992 at cols.873–74.

  We have endorsed the guiding principles of the joint Department of Health/Home Office review, which point in particular to services being provided, as far as is compatible with public safety, in more local and less institutional settings. In addition we have reaffirmed the policy that, wherever possible, mentally disordered offenders should be cared for and treated by health and social services rather than in the criminal justice system.

  The implementation of these recommendations falls largely to the agencies concerned at local level. We have made services for mentally disordered offenders a first order priority for the national health service in 1994–95. This means that health authorities are required to work with personal social services and criminal justice agencies to develop strategic and purchasing plans for services for mentally disordered offenders, based on the recommendations of the interdepartmental review. Regional health authorities are currently carrying out an assessment of the need for these services which builds on an initial assessment last year.

  We have increased central capital funding for mediurn secure psychiatric services from £3 million in 1991–92 to £17 million in 1992–93, and have made available a further £22 million in 1993–94. We have also made a total of £422,000 available in 1992–93 and 1993–94 for pump-priming of local multi-agency initiatives to help mentally disordered offenders. We have received many imaginative proposals and have so far allocated funds to 61 schemes. The Home Office has provided funds to assist the development of Court assessment and diversion schemes. At least 60 of these schemes are now operating in England, of which 26 are receiving central funding this year.

  The committee which we set up to advise the Department of Health and the Home Office on action to follow up the review has been appointed and has held its first meeting. We fully recognise the importance of sustaining the development of these services and will take full account of the committee's advice in taking this forward.

  Warner Report
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the current situation in respect of the Warner report.

  Mr. Bowis
  Following publication of the report in December 1992, local authorities were asked to improve methods of recruitment and vetting of staff responsible for children in residential care. On 1 July this year, local authorities were asked to address other recommendations in the report and to submit progress returns to the Department. On 22 July I announced the membership and the terms of reference for the children's residential care support force in a reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) at columns 291–92.

  Life Expectancy
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make it her policy to institute standard and objective means to monitor healthy life expectancy among the population aged over 50 years.

  Mr. Bowis
  We have recently commissioned research to help us to measure healthy life expectancy more accurately and to identify the factors we need to target to increase healthy life expectancy among older people. The results will be available early next year.

  Peripheral Nerve Damage
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will consider holding centrally information on the number of patients treated for peripheral nerve damage by(a) regional health authorities and (b) district health authorities; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Sackville
  Information is collected centrally in the hospital episode system on the number of episodes of in-patient treatment for peripheral nerve damage, as well as those where operations are carried out. The latest England and regional data are published in "Hospital Episode Statistics. Volume 1: Finished Consultant Episodes by diagnosis, operation and specialty, England: Financial year 1989–90", a copy of which is available in the Library.

  Drug and Alcohol Services
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement outlining the outcome of her departmental review of drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

  Mr. Bowis
  The report carried out for the Department by Goldsmith's college was published on 28 July. I issued a press statement at the time of publication and my hon. Friend the Minister for Health wrote to local authorities to draw their attention to matters raised in the report which required their further action. Copies of the press release (H93/896) and the report are available in the Library.

  Tinnitus
  Mr. Hanson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list the current Government financial support to voluntary organisations dealing with tinnitus for the year 1993–94.

  Mr. Sackville
  Under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 the Government are providing £22,500 this year and for the next two financial years to the British Tinnitus Association.

  Mr. Hanson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list central Government's financial initiatives with regard to the treatment of tinnitus for the year 1992–93.

  Mr. Sackville
  People suffering from tinnitus may receive treatment under normal service funding arrangements.

  Child Immunisation
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she can provide a league table of childhood immunisation take-up rates in regional health authorities and local health authorities.
  606
  Mr. Sackville
  The information can be found in table 7 of "Vaccination and immunisation 1991–92 Summary Information from Forms KC50, KC50A and KC51" produced by the Government Statistical Service. Copies of which are available in the Library.

  Optometrists
  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if an agreement has been reached with optometrists providing general ophthalmic services on their remuneration for the year beginning 1 April.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Representatives of optometrists have been consulted about the national health service sight test fee and the fee for domiciliary visits. As yet no agreement has been reached about the level of fees for 1993–94.

  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the relationship between the functions provided for optometrists and ophthalmic medical practitioners in respect of general ophthalmic services; and to what extent they are subject to the same terms of service.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Optometrists and ophthalmic medical practitioners may be registered with a family health service authority to provide national health service sight tests under the general ophthalmic services. In this respect they are subject to the same terms of service.

  Schizophrenics
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research her Department has undertaken into the number of schizophrenics killing(a) themselves and (b) others.

  Mr. Bowis
  In 1991 the Department established the confidential inquiry into homicides and suicides by mentally ill people being conducted by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. This aims to cover all homicides and suicides by people who are currently in contact with the mental health services or who have been in contact within the last 12 months. Information is collected in respect of the various diagnostic groups, including schizophrenia.

  Long-term Medication
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list the chronic medical disorders requiring long-term medication for which there is no exemption from the payment of prescription charges.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Medical conditions which attract exemption from national health service prescription charges are listed in leaflet P11, copies of which are available in the Library. No other medical conditions confer this entitlement.

  Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what provision has been made in the current financial year and each of the last four financial years for research into myalgic encephalomyelitis; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Sackville
  The main agency through which the Government support biomedical and clinical research is
  607
  the Medical Research Council, which receives its grant-in-aid from the office of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The MRC has been funding a study at the Institute of Psychiatry for four years where researchers are attempting to find ways to help myalgic encephalomyelitis sufferers cope with their disease and regain their health. The estimated cost of this project is £91,000. The Department and the MRC are always willing to receive and consider soundly-based research proposals in competition with other applications. The Department also keeps in touch with research being funded by bodies such as the Linbury Trust.

  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the current assessment of the number of people in England suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis; and how that figure is obtained.

  Mr. Sackville
  We are currently awaiting an evaluation of data from existing studies which is being undertaken by the myalgic encephalomyelitis task force with funding from the Department. A draft report is being prepared for discussion in early 1994.

  Diabetics
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people are diabetics dependent on insulin injections; and in what form and at what level of disaggregation the information is held by her Department.

  Mr. Sackville
  This information is not available centrally.

  Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence she has linking the incidence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome with transmission of a virus at dental surgeries.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  None.

  Dentistry
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will investigate the consideration underlying the decision not to invite the General Dental Practitioners Association to attend the working group of the Dental Practice Board which prepared the publication, "Access to Information" held by the Dental Practice Board.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Membership of the working group which considered access to information held by the Dental Practice Board was kept to a minimum to enable it to work effectively. The dental profession was represented by members from the General Dental Services Committee.

  Year

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94 (Current allocation)

  Running costs (£)

  29,933,505

  29,402,541

  42,883,317

  33,922,969

  Capital (£)

  339,000

  483,712

  511,745

  6,415

  Child Supervision Orders
  Ms Corston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many supervision orders with restriction requirements were made under provisions of the Children Act 1989 during each of the last two years for which figures are available.

  Mr. Bowis
  The Children Act 1989 came into force on 14 October 1991. Information is not yet available about the number of supervision orders with restriction requirements.

  Ophthalmic Services
  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what criteria govern the settlement of the remuneration of contractors who provide general ophthalmic services; and what changes there have been in the criteria in 1993–94 relative to previous years.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  National health service sight test fees are determined by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, following consultation with the profession, in such a way as to ensure that there are adequate general ophthalmic services, of the right calibre. In doing this, regard is had to recruitment, retention and motivation factors, within the amount that can be afforded. These criteria have been used consistently for several years, including 1993–94.

  Dame Jill Knight
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health by what amount(a) optometrists and (b) ophthalmic medical practitioners providing general ophthalmic services are remunerated for their practice expenses.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Optometrists are currently paid a fee of £12.75 for each national health service sight test they carry out, which covers both pay and expenses. These elements are not considered separately.

  Ophthalmic medical practitioners are paid a fee of £10.15. This contains a pay element of £7.53 and an expenses element of £2.62.

  NHS Management Executive
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the expenditure of the NHS Management Executive in each of the last five years.

  Mr. Sackville
  Expenditure figures for the National Health Service Management Executive from 1990–91 onwards are as shown—figures are not available prior to 1990–91. Figures have not been adjusted for inflation and are not directly comparable from year to year because of organisational changes between the NHSME and the rest of the Department.

  Emergency Contraception Pill
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans she has to investigate the deregulation and over-the-counter provision of the emergency contraception pill.

  Mr. Sackville
  The suggestion that emergency contraception should be available from pharmacies without a prescription was made in a recent article in the British Medical Journal on 18 September. The article and reactions to it are being studied in the Department.

  Junior Doctors
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many junior doctors have been working over the new deal target of 83 hours after 1 April in each trust or directly managed unit and by region.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The number of junior doctors and dentists in each region contracted for more than an average of 83 hours a week at 1 April 1993 is shown in the table:

  Number

  Northern

  0

  Yorkshire

  18

  Trent

  0

  East Anglian

  3

  North West Thames

  89

  North East Thames

  101

  South East Thames

  9

  South West Thames

  21

  Wessex

  4

  Oxford

  31

  South Western

  2

  West Midlands

  33

  Mersey

  0

  North Western

  59

  Total

  370

  Information for trusts and directly managed units is not available centrally.

  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the average number of hours being worked by junior hospital doctors in the week of 18 October 1992.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  This information is not available centrally.

  Prempak C
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if Prempak C hormone replacement therapy treatment will be treated as a single prescription for charging purposes in the future.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  A prescription charge is payable in respect of each quantity of a drug or appliance dispensed, unless the patient is entitled to charge exemption or remission. Prempak C contains two separate preparations differentiated by colour and two prescription charges are, therefore, due when these items are dispensed. The fact that for convenience and, as an aid to patient compliance, the two preparations are supplied in one pack does not alter the patient's liability for prescription charges. We have no plans to change these arrangements.

  Medicines Evaluation Agency
  Mr. Luff
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will publish the results of the survey of key pharmaceutical companies regarding their preference for the siting of the European Medicines Evaluation Agency.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Thirty-nine major pharmaceutical companies from within and outside the EC were asked to rate the seven cities which are bidding for the European Medicines Evaluation Agency against 13 different aspects that were considered to be crucial to the success of the agency. Responses to this poll, commissioned from NOP Consumer Market Research, are still being received.

  The interim results, based on responses from about half of the companies, reveal that for every aspect the total number of votes cast for the EMEA to be located in London was greater than for any other city. The degree to which London was the preferred location was, throughout, so overwhelming that the total number of votes cast for London exceeded the total of votes cast for all the other cities put together, by a factor of about four to one.

  Out of 12 additional factors which the companies themselves suggested were relevant to the siting of the EMEA, London was preferred on 10 of these.

  This shows clearly that the international pharmaceutical industry rates London the best place for the EMEA, by an overwhelming margin.

  NHS Dental Services
  Mr. Khabra
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement about the future payment of fees for dental services within the national health service.

  Mr. Sackville
  We will announce proposals for the future system of remuneration in the general dental services in due course.

  Royal Free Hospital
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many representations she has received regarding the proposed closure of the renal unit at the Royal Free hospital ; and what proportion of them indicated that hardship would occur if it were implemented.

  Mr. Sackville
  We have received a large number of representations regarding the Royal Free hospital following publication of the renal specialty review group's report. This report identified University College/ Middlesex hospital as a preferred site for tertiary renal services in the north-central sector of London. The specialty review report's are independent advice to Ministers and not policy. Any major proposals to change services will be subject to full public consultation.

  Organ Transplants
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what latest conveniently available statistics she has on the shortage of donor organs for transplant.

  Mr. Sackville
  Increasing the supply of donor organs is a Government priority. The table shows the numbers of organs transplanted in 1992 and the numbers of patients awaiting organ transplants at 31 August 1993.
  611

  Number

  Transplanted in 1992

  Kidney

  1,641

  Heart

  301

  Heart and lung

  53

  Lung(s)

  89

  Liver

  501

  Awaiting at 31 August 1993

  Kidney

  4,610

  Heart

  244

  Heart and lung

  189

  Lung(s)

  116

  Liver

  100

  Note:

  Figures supplied by United Kingdom Transplant Support Service Authority.

  Regional Health Authorities
  Mr. David Porter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on how she will advertise vacant chief executive and chairmen posts in regional health authorities before such authorities are reduced in number.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The selection of chief executives is a matter for each individual authority, although it is our general expectation that most senior national health service managerial posts should be advertised. We do not consider it appropriate or necessary to advertise for candidates for appointment as chairman of a regional health authority, as there are many suitable ones already known to us both in other NHS bodies and from outside the NHS.

  Nursery Education
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the latest available figure in England and Wales for the number of two to five-year-olds in the population; what percentage of them have pre-school day nursery places provided by(a) local authorities and the public sector and (b) the private sector; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Bowis
  The information available is shown in the table. Information is collected on the number of places in registered, private and voluntary, day nurseries but not the number of children attending.

  Day nursery provision and population data: England

  Amount

  Number of children aged 2 and under 5 at 30 June 19911

  1,926,000

  Number of children provided with a day nursery place2 by a local authority at 31 March 1992 as a percentage of all children aged 2 and under 5

  1·6 per cent.

  Number of places3 in registered day nurseries (private and voluntary) at 31 March 1992 as a percentage of all children aged 2 and under 5

  4·8 per cent.

  Notes:

  1 Estimated resident mid year population.

  2 All children under 5 on the register of local authority provision or placed by local authorities in registered provision.

  3 Includes places exempt from registration.

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list by wave and salary band the projected expenses of(a) trust chairs and (b) non-executive directors.
  612
  Dr. Mawhinney
  Chairmen and non-executive directors of national health service trusts are eligible to claim allowances for travel and subsistence costs necessarily incurred on trust business. The payment of such expenses is a matter for the appropriate trust: details of such payments are not available centrally.

  Wessex RHA Chairman
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list the circumstances in which the chairman of Wessex regional health authority tendered his resignation; when it was accepted; and what were the details of the financial settlement.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Sir Robin Buchanan tendered his resignation in order to concentrate on his role as chairman of the National Health Service Supplies Authority. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State accepted his resignation on 26 August 1993. The date of his departure has yet to be agreed. There has been no financial settlement.

SCOTLAND

  Children's Hearings
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what arrangements he proposes for the organisation of children's hearings following the reorganisation of local government in Scotland.

  Mr. Stewart
  The Government's proposals for the children's hearings system are set out in the White Paper on Local Government Reform (Cm 2267) and on Child Care Policy and Law (CM 2286).

  The only organisational change proposed is the establishment of a children's reporter service for Scotland. This will be managed by a chief reporter responsible to a part-time board appointed by the Secretary of State. Against the background of the reform we see that step as the most advantageous way of ensuring consistency and the highest standards of professional practice among reporters across Scotland. Children's panels will continue to be appointed for local authority areas, thereby maintaining their links with the local communities which they serve. Children's panel advisory committees, which nominate panel members and monitor their performance, will continue on a similar basis.

  Forestry
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when the Government expect to complete their forestry review; and when the findings of the review will be published.

  Sir Hector Monro
  My right hon. Friend and his fellow forestry Ministers expect to receive the advice of the forestry review group early next year. They will then require some time to consider it and come to a view on what the next stages in this work should be.

  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list those persons and organisations that have submitted evidence to the interdepartmental working party on the future of the Forestry Commission.

  Sir Hector Monro
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer that I gave him on 27 May at column 739.
  613
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make it his policy to initiate a programme of public and parliamentary consultation on the recommendations of the interdepartmental forestry review group.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Forestry Ministers will decide what the next stages in this work should be once the advice of the forestry review group has been received in the new year.

  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current reporting time scale of the interdepartmental forestry review group.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Forestry Ministers expect to receive the advice of the forestry review group early next year.

  Winter Working Hours
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland to what extent farmers and building employers are subject to legal constraint on which hours to start work in winter.

  Mr. Lang
  There is no employment legislation governing the times when adult workers can be employed in the farming and building sectors. Environmental protection legislation concerning pollution and noise levels and health and safety at work legislation may, however, have a bearing on how early particular work can start.

  Water Disconnections
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consider collecting and holding centrally information on the number of industrial water disconnections made by water authorities; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  I have no plans to collect and hold centrally such information.

  Orthodontics
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what information he has on the number of private practices in orthodontics; and how many practices are providing NHS treatment.

  Mr. Stewart
  No information is held on dental practices which provide private treatment only. According to health board information there are around 50 practices undertaking NHS treatment in which a specialist practitioner provides only orthodontic services to patients. In addition to these specialist orthodontic practitioners, other general dental practitioners may provide orthodontic

  Table B

  Orthodontists recruited to the NHS by health board

  Scotland

  Ayrshire and Arran

  Fife

  Grampian

  Greater Glasgow

  Lothian

  Tayside

  Year ending 30 September 1991

  11

  1

  —

  2

  2

  5

  1

  Year ending 30 September 1992

  7

  1

  3

  2

  —

  —

  1

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how many patients are waiting for day care orthodontic
  614
  as well as other treatment, but these practitioners cannot be identified separately. NHS orthodontic treatment may also be available through the community dental service and the hospital dental service.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the practices within each health board which have opted out of providing NHS orthodontic care.

  Mr. Stewart
  Since July 1992 no practices which offer a specialised orthodontic service have opted out of providing NHS orthodontic care. Eleven general dental practitioners have, however, withdrawn from providing NHS general dental services and these may have included dentists who undertook some orthodontic treatment.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many orthodontists are currently in NHS hospitals, and in the community, within each health board area; and how many orthodontists were recruited to the NHS within each health board during the last four years.

  Mr. Stewart
  The number of orthodontists employed in the NHS at 30 September 1992, the latest date for which information is available centrally, is shown in table A. Information on the number of orthodontists employed in the community is not available centrally.

  The number of orthodontists recruited to hospitals in the NHS in the 2 years to 30 September 1992, the latest date for which information is available centrally, is shown in table B. Prior to September 1991, the specialties of orthodontics and paediatric dentistry were combined. Therefore, orthodontists can be identified separately only from that date.

  Table A:

  Orthodontists employed by health board, at 30 September 1992

  Number

  Whole-time equivalent

  Scotland

  54

  38·3

  Argyll and Clyde

  2

  2·0

  Ayrshire and Arran

  2

  1·5

  Borders

  1

  0·7

  Dumfries and Galloway

  3

  1·1

  Fife

  8

  5·9

  Forth Valley

  2

  2·0

  Grampian

  6

  1·5

  Greater Glasgow

  11

  9 1

  Highland

  4

  3·1

  Lanarkshire

  2

  2·0

  Lothian

  6

  5·5

  Orkney

  0

  0·0

  Shetland

  0

  0·0

  Tayside

  7

  3·9

  Western Isles

  0

  0·0

  treatment within each health board for (a) less than three months, (b) three to six months, (c) six to nine months, (d) nine to 12 months and (e) over one year;

  (2) what is the average waiting time for orthodontic treatment within each health board;
  615
  (3) what was the number of patients waiting for orthodontic treatment for (a) less than three months, (b) three to six months, (c) six to nine months, (d) nine to 12 months and (e) over one year for each year since 1988.

  Mr. Stewart
  The numbers of patients awaiting in-patient or day case treatment in orthodontics and paediatric dentistry are relatively small. At 30 June 1993, the latest date for which information is centrally available, the in-patient waiting list for Scotland totalled 14 and there were no patients on the day case list. The majority of orthodontic and paediatric dentistry patients treated outwith the general dental service are seen at consultant out-patient clinics and the average waiting time for new out-patient referrals is set out in the table.

  New outpatient referrals to orthodontics and paediatric dentistry

  Quarter ended 30 June 1993

  Scotland

  Health board of residence

  Number

  Mean wait1

  Argyll and Clyde

  1,330

  112·8

  Ayrshire and Arran

  615

  175·3

  Borders

  230

  43·8

  Dumfries and Galloway

  362

  122·7

  Fife

  1,212

  97·7

  Forth Valley

  498

  570

  Grampian

  992

  167·4

  Greater Glasgow

  922

  103·3

  Highland

  474

  104·1

  Lanarkshire

  941

  109·0

  Lothian

  382

  74·2

  Orkney

  —

  —

  Shetland

  —

  —

  Tayside

  727

  94·7

  Western Isles

  1

  128·0

  SCOTLAND

  8,686

  111·6

  1 Days.

  Source: SMRO.

  Hospital Waiting Lists
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps his Department is taking to monitor the performance of health boards, NHS trusts and individual hospitals in meeting the waiting time targets set for patients, in accordance with the patients charter for Scotland; and what action he proposes to take against any of these bodies failing to achieve the targets set for them.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The monitoring of the performance of health boards in relation to their responsibility to secure treatment for residents within such waiting time targets and guarantees as may apply is an ongoing function of the management executive of the NHS in Scotland. It is for individual boards to ensure delivery of such targets and guarantees through their contracting arrangements with NHS trusts and other hospitals. The success of boards in tackling such matters is addressed at the annual accountability review meeting which the management executive holds with every board.

  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what are the waiting time targets set for Tayside health board, in accordance with the patients charter for Scotland, in each of the(a) general surgery, (b) orthopaedic surgery, (c) ophthalmology, (d) ear, nose and throat, (e) urology and (f) gynaecology specialties.
  616
  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The waiting time targets for in-patient or day case treatment currently applying to residents of Tayside health board are as follows:

  (a) General surgery—90 per cent. within six months.

  (b) Orthopaedic surgery—90 per cent. within nine months.

  (c) Ophthalmology—90 per cent. within six months.

  (d) Ear, nose and throat—90 per cent. within nine months.

  (e) Urology—90 per cent. within 12 months.

  (f) Gynaecology—90 per cent. within three months.

  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what guarantees of treatment within a set time has been given by Tayside health board in accordance with the patients charter for Scotland for(a) hip replacement, (b) knee replacement, (c) cataracts and (d) for any other treatments.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The following are the current treatment guarantees applying to residents of Tayside health board:

  Hip replacement—within 12 months.

  Knee replacement—within 12 months.

  Cataract removal—within six months.

  Hysterectomy—within six months.

  Pelvic floor—within six months.

  Hernia—within six months.

  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what targets have been set by Tayside health board for informing patients of how long they will have to wait for an appointment at an out-patient clinic.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: As an added reassurance to patients about the length of time they may expect to have to wait for an out-patient appointment following referral by their GP all health boards introduced out-patient waiting time guarantees from 1 April 1993. The guarantees which apply to residents of Tayside health board are as follows:

  General surgery—within 12 weeks.

  Orthopaedic surgery—within 20 weeks.

  Ear, nose and throat—within 16 weeks.

  Ophthalmology—within nine weeks.

  Urology1—within 12 weeks.

  Gynaecology2—within nine weeks.

  1 Guarantee does not apply to referrals for infertility or impotence.

  2 Guarantee does not apply to referrals for infertility.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the longest length of waiting time for national health service patients at any trust hospital and for what operation or treatment.

  Mr. Stewart
  Information on current waiting times for specific operations or treatments (other than those selected on a national basis to which guarantees apply) is not centrally available.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will instruct health boards to make accessible fast-track monthly waiting lists, similar to those made available by regional health authorities in England.

  Mr. Stewart
  No. Officials of the management executive of the national health service in Scotland, with officials of the information and statistics division of the Common Services Agency, are working with health boards and national health service trusts to ensure that the quarterly waiting times information is as up to date as possible.
  617
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what is the average waiting time for(A) private and (b) NHS (i) day-patient and (ii) in-patient (a) treatment and (B) operations at (1) Vale of Leven district general, (2) Falkirk and District royal infirmary, (3) Southern General, (4) Victoria infirmary, (5) Raigmore hospital, (6) Perth royal infirmary and (7) Stirling royal infirmary;

  (2) what is the longest length of waiting time for private patients at any trust hospital; for what operation or treatment; and for how many weeks.

  Mr. Stewart
  Information on waiting times for patients currently waiting for in-patient or day case treatment in NHS hospitals does not differentiate between NHS and private patients.

  Roads
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the volume of local traffic between East Lothian and Berwickshire on the A 1 trunk road; and what proportion of the traffic on the road at Dunglass bridge is attributable to such local journeys.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The average annual daily traffic on the Al between the Lothian/Borders boundary and the Al 107 junction at Tower Farm in 1992 was 6,300 vehicles per day. The volume of local traffic with an origin or destination in Borders region is estimated from junction counts and other surveys to be around 1,200 vehicles per day. It is not possible from the information available to identify the proportion of that traffic which is undertaking local journeys between east Lothian and Berwickshire.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the progress of his plans to upgrade the A 1 trunk road to dual carriageway standard, giving the timetable for dualling each section and the target date for completion of dualling in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Proposals have been published for the dualling of the Al between Tranent and Haddington, and for local dualling schemes south of Dunbar and between Lemington and Howburn. Subject to the completion of statutory procedures, these three schemes which are valued at approximately £40 million could commence next year. The preparation of a further five dualling schemes valued at a total of £45 million is currently being progressed to take forward the Government's desire to dual fully the Al between Edinburgh and Newcastle. Further progress will depend on the overall availability of resources, the relative claims of schemes elsewhere and the other normal criteria for bringing schemes forward.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the volume of local traffic making journeys of 25 miles or less on(a) the Al trunk road at Meadowmill, (b) the former A 1 road west of Tranent and (c) the A198 at Meadowmill; and what proportion of the total traffic at these points is represented by such local traffic.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The traffic studies carried out as part of the Tranent to Haddington dualling proposals do not readily identify the volume of local traffic making journeys of 25 miles or less, nor did the studies include those roads west of Tranent.
  618
  The average daily traffic flow is of the order of 21,600 vehicles on the Al west of Bankton roundabout and 14,800 vehicles on the A198. On the A 1 at Meadowmill some 10,600 vehicles per day (49 per cent.) is traffic travelling from or to the surrounding area between Musselburgh and Haddington. On the A198 at Meadowmill, about 99 per cent. is local traffic.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish a table showing the numbers of minor, serious and fatal accidents on the Al road in Scotland for the last five years; and if he will make a statement on the effectiveness of high-profile policing, speed cameras and enhanced road markings and signs in reducing serious and fatal accidents on the A 1 over the last two years.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The numbers of personal injury accidents on the Al between Bankton roundabout and the National Borders for the past five years are as follows:

  Fatal

  Serious

  Slight

  Total

  1988

  9

  18

  35

  62

  1989

  6

  24

  40

  70

  1990

  7

  22

  47

  76

  1991

  3

  13

  39

  55

  1992

  8

  6

  29

  43

  It is expected that the route action measures taken on the Al will make an important and significant contribution to improving road safety on the Al. The reduction in the total number of personal injury accidents in 1991 and 1992 indicate an encouraging trend. The speed cameras on the route came into operation on 30 August this year. It is already clear from our monitoring that there has been a substantial reduction in vehicle speeds with the greatest reductions in speed recorded for the fastest 25 per cent. of drivers. This can be expected to result in further improvements in road safety.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many days the B6355 road between Gifford and Duns has been closed due to severe weather during the last 10 years.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The B6355 is a local road and not one for which the Secretary of State has responsibility. Matters relating to the B6355, including winter maintenance, are the responsibility of Borders regional council, which is the local roads authority.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on his policy for low-flow grade separation in planning for the dualling of trunk roads; and what is the relative accident rate at junctions with and without such grade separation on the Al and elsewhere.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The choice of junction type for new dual carriageways and where existing dual carriageways are to be upgraded will depend on traffic flows on the main and side roads and other local conditions.

  The only low-flow grade separation constructed to date is on the Al at Lamberton. This junction was opened to traffic in August this year and it is therefore not yet possible to compare its performance in terms of road safety with other junctions on the route.

  Gay Men (Health Services)
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish a list of the services provided by each health board targeted to gay men.

  Mr. Stewart
  Health board services generally are available to all, including gay men. Comprehensive information about particular services provided specifically for gay men is not held centrally.

  Heart Surgery
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will give the waiting times for each health board for coronary artery bypass grafting and angioplasty.

  Mr. Stewart
  Information on waiting times for coronary bypass grafts at 30 June 1993 is shown in the table. Information on patients currently waiting for coronary angioplasty is not available centrally.

  Average waiting times for coronary bypass grafts for patients on waiting lists at 30 June 1993

  Health board of residence

  Number of cases

  Mean wait (days)

  Argyll and Clyde

  68

  174

  Ayrshire and Arran

  54

  146

  Borders

  28

  172

  Dumfries and Galloway

  23

  110

  Fife

  52

  151

  Forth Valley

  56

  196

  Grampian

  61

  173

  Greater Glasgow

  260

  197

  Highland

  22

  117

  Lanarkshire

  82

  183

  Lothian

  122

  134

  Orkney

  0

  0

  Shetland

  0

  0

  Tayside

  66

  183

  Western Isles

  3

  84

  Outside Scotland

  9

  39

  TOTAL

  906

  170

  Environmental Protection Agency
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many of the responses he has received to the consultation paper on the proposed Scottish Environmental Protection Agency advocate that the agency should be given responsibility for the management of water catchments.

  Sir Hector Monro
  The responses advocated that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency should be given responsibilities relating to the management of water catchments in addition to those it will inherit from river purification authorities.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what duties the proposed Scottish Environmental Protection agency will have(a) in the conservation and enhancement of the natural heritage and (b) in aspects of water resource management other than pollution control.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Scottish Natural Heritage is the statutory body with primary responsibility for the conservation and enhancement of the natural heritage. Last year's consultation paper "Improving Scotland's620
  Environment—The Way Forward", made it clear that the Government also intends the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to have a statutory duty in relation to conservation of the natural heritage.

  SEPA will inherit all the responsibilities of River Purification Aurthorities. In the light of views expressed in response to the consultation paper my right hon. Friend indicated in his reply to the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) on 25 February at column 722 that we intend to give the agency enhanced powers of control over water abstraction. The responses to the consequent consultation paper "Abstraction Controls: A system for Scotland' are currently being considered.

  Breast Cancer
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what plans he has for(a) breast cancer care and treatment and (b) research into the genetics of breast cancer; and how much will be spent on each this year and is planned in succeeding years.

  Mr. Stewart
  The Scottish figures for morbidity arid mortality associated with cancer in general and breast cancer in particular are a matter of concern to the Government. It was with that specific concern in mind that we established the Scottish breast cancer screening programme in 1988. The primary target of the programme is to reduce mortality in the screened population in Scotland by 30 per cent. overall. By next year all Scottish women between the ages of 50 and 64 will have been invited for screening.

  This is only one strategy in the fight against breast cancer. The work of the Scottish Cancer Therapy Network established by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Office Home and Health Department is geared to the delivery to patients of the most effective and up-to-date treatment. The network will be setting up a working party to look specifically at breast cancer. Both the network arid the Scottish cancer co-ordinating and advisory committee are looking at service provision in relation to all types of cancer. The committee has established a clinical arid molecular genetics sub-committee to look at the possibility of identifying a gene responsible for the commonest forms of cancer, including breast cancer. The breast screening programme is organising a consensus conference in April next year on the treatment of small tumours. This will encourage dissemination of best practice in relation to breast and other types of cancer.

  Total funding of the breast cancer screening programme is £3.8 million in 1993–94. A total figure for expenditure on all aspects of breast cancer care and treatment is not held centrally.

  The Chief Scientist Office is funding a number of research projects concerned with the genetic aspects of breast cancer. Funding in the current financial year amounts to some £72,000 and in 1994–95 will total £95,000. A number of other projects are under consideration for future years, but no firm figure for funding is available at this stage.

  Mrs. Ray Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what investigations have been carried out regarding the validity of creating breast cancer treatment teams operating in hospitals.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 22 October 1993]: The treatment of any condition is a matter for the judgement of

  621
  the clinicians involved. The team approach has evolved in all of the specialist breast clinics in Scotland as that which provides the optimum care of patients. I am not aware of any independent investigation of the validity of this approach. Both the Scottish cancer co-ordinating and advisory committee and the Scottish cancer therapy network are, however, considering service provision and can therefore be expected to examine this approach to treatment. A further opportunity will be provided by a consensus conference in April next year on the treatment of small tumours.

  Mrs. Ray Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what funding is available for breast cancer research in Scotland; and if he will give details of each project and details of the funding of each since 1980.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 22 October 1993]: The Government are committed to encouraging research into breast cancer. The main Government agency for medical and related research is the Medical Research Council (MRC), which receives its grant-in-aid from the Office of Science and Technology under my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I understand that MRC expenditure into breast cancer was £2.7 million in 1990–91 and £1.6 million in 1991–92, the latest years for which figures are available.

  The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Office has identified cancer services as one of its priority areas and has, since 1980, funded a wide range of research and development projects dealing with breast cancer at a total cost of £0.729 million. The projects funded by CSO are shown in the table.

  R and D projects on breast cancer funded by Chief Scientist Office (1980–93)

  Year and project

  £s

  1981

  Women's reasons for declining an opportunity for breast screening

  6,677

  1982

  Development of telediaphanography

  1,933

  An economic analysis of screening for breast cancer

  27,821

  The prediction of response to systemic treatment in patients with advanced cancer of the breast

  51,711

  1983

  Edinburgh Breast Cancer Screening Project

  123,783

  1985

  Maintenance of special pathological services for breast cancer screening pathology

  100,000

  Bile acids and bile acid metabolites in the serum of women with benign and malignant breast disease

  11,299

  Steriod receptor assays: current role in the therapy of breast cancer and influence of methodical developments

  30,920

  1986

  Economic evaluation of mobile breast cancer screening in areas near Edinburgh

  26,612

  A study of women's response to mobile breast screening

  10,338

  The relationship of cellular DNA to response in breast cancers treated with hormones

  14,702

  622

  Year and project

  £s

  1987

  Follow-up study to measure the impact of services for the early detection of breast cancer on breast cancer mortality

  7,728

  1990

  UKCCCR breast cancer screening trials

  139,000

  1991

  Potential of immediate specimen—slice ranography to optimise pathological data in breast-conserving cancer therapy

  13,361

  1992

  Molecular pathology of cytochrome P450 in breast cancer and other malignant tumours

  64,971

  Ultrasound imaging in the symptomatic breast clinic: diagnostic management and psychological impact

  4,775

  Second round mamographic screening: will tailored invitations increase uptake?

  14,588

  1993

  Genetic analysis in families with breast and/or ovarian cancer in the West of Scotland

  78,551

  Total

  728,770

  Infertility Treatment
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many couples received assisted conception treatment in 1991 at each of the Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh units.

  Mr. Stewart
  This information is not held centrally.

  Public Transport
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how many seats are available for bus passengers between East Lothian and Berwickshire on scheduled weekday services, and how many passengers are actually carried;

  (2) how many seats are available for bus and train passengers between Musselburgh, Prestonpans and Wallyford and the rest of East Lothian on scheduled weekday services; and how many passengers are actually carried.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information requested is not available centrally.

  Tourism
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the number of business members(a) of the East Lothian tourist board and (b) from Berwickshire on the Scottish Borders tourist board.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The number of business members of(a) the East Lothian tourist board and (b) from the Berwickshire area of the Scottish Borders tourist board is 310 and 150 respectively.

  Cystic Fibrosis
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what information he has on cystic fibrosis patients(a) being refused repeat prescriptions, (b) being refused drugs

  623
  by doctors on grounds of cost, (c) being refused appointments or home visits by general practitioners and (d) experiencing difficulties in obtaining community physiotherapy.

  Mr. Stewart
  I have no information about patients experiencing these difficulties. Any patient who has a complaint about their treatment should raise the matter in the first instance with their health board.

  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland which hospitals offer levels I, II, II, and IV services for cystic fibrosis patients.

  Mr. Stewart
  There are two major specialist centres (Level I/II) in Scotland: at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow and the Western General, Edinburgh. A local specialist service (Level III) is provided by Grampian Healthcare NHS Trust in Aberdeen. General localised services (Level IV) are provided across Scotland by district general hospitals and clinics but specific information on these services is not held centrally.

  Nuclear Waste
  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on Scottish Nuclear's application for consent to construct a dry store for waste nuclear fuel at Torness following the public inquiry in December 1992.

  Mr. Stewart
  The Secretary of State has received the Report of the Public Inquiry into Scottish Nuclear's

  Deaths from selected causes in each Health Board Area 1990

  ICD

  Cause of Death

  Health Board Area

  1990

  Scotland

  Borders

  Forth Valley

  Dumfries and Galloway

  Fife

  Grampian

  Highland

  Lothian

  Tayside

  Orkney

  Shetland

  Western Isles

  Argyll and Clyde

  Ayrshire and Arran

  Greater Glasgow

  Lanarkshire

  010–018

  Tuberculosis

  39

  —

  3

  —

  —

  2

  —

  3

  1

  —

  —

  —

  4

  3

  17

  6

  180

  Malignant neoplasm of cervix

  162

  6

  6

  8

  13

  12

  4

  19

  18

  —

  —

  —

  19

  10

  35

  12

  201

  Hodgkin's disease

  45

  —

  2

  2

  7

  5

  1

  8

  2

  —

  —

  —

  2

  2

  5

  9

  393–398

  Chronic rheumatic heart disease

  205

  3

  12

  —

  10

  21

  4

  34

  15

  —

  —

  —

  31

  13

  40

  22

  460–519

  Diseases of the respiratory system

  7,231

  184

  350

  189

  437

  605

  207

  989

  589

  30

  21

  51

  595

  556

  1,672

  756

  493

  Asthma

  148

  8

  8

  4

  9

  19

  3

  18

  13

  2

  1

  1

  9

  19

  24

  10

  540–543

  Appendicitis

  7

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  4

  —

  550–553

  Hernia of the abdominal cavity

  62

  2

  4

  1

  2

  7

  3

  13

  3

  —

  —

  1

  8

  5

  9

  4

  574,

  Cholelithiasis and

  46

  1

  1

  1

  3

  7

  2

  7

  1

  —

  1

  —

  3

  2

  11

  6

  575.0,

  cholecystitis

  575.1

  630–676

  Maternal deaths

  4

  —

  1

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  —

  Deaths from selected causes in each Health Board Area 1991

  ICD

  Cause of Death

  Health Board Area

  1991

  Scotland

  Borders

  Forth Valley

  Dumfries and Galloway

  Fife

  Grampian

  Highland

  Lothian

  Tayside

  Orkney

  Shetland

  Western Isles

  Argyll and Clyde

  Ayrshire and Arran

  Greater Glasgow

  Lanarkshire

  010–018

  Tuberculosis

  56

  —

  2

  1

  3

  3

  1

  6

  4

  —

  1

  1

  7

  4

  19

  4

  180

  Malignant neoplasm of cervix

  175

  3

  11

  6

  9

  15

  7

  21

  13

  —

  2

  1

  16

  14

  40

  17

  201

  Hodgkin's disease

  35

  —

  5

  —

  1

  5

  1

  4

  3

  1

  —

  1

  2

  4

  4

  4

  393–398

  Chronic rheumatic heart disease

  180

  5

  8

  5

  17

  7

  2

  36

  10

  —

  —

  —

  13

  9

  42

  26

  460–519

  Diseases of the respiratory system

  7,068

  175

  384

  225

  476

  625

  250

  927

  547

  27

  16

  48

  549

  576

  1,530

  713

  493

  Asthma

  161

  3

  9

  3

  11

  19

  10

  24

  15

  2

  —

  1

  11

  24

  20

  9

  540–543

  Appendicitis

  10

  —

  —

  —

  1

  1

  1

  2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  2

  1

  2

  —

  550–553

  Hernia of the abdominal cavity

  59

  3

  3

  4

  2

  7

  2

  9

  2

  —

  —

  —

  5

  4

  13

  5

  574,

  Cholelithiasis and

  57

  —

  4

  4

  4

  3

  2

  10

  4

  —

  —

  —

  7

  5

  11

  3

  575.0,

  cholecystitis

  575.1

  630–676

  Maternal deaths

  9

  —

  1

  1

  —

  —

  —

  2

  1

  —

  —

  —

  1

  2

  1

  —

  624
  application to construct a dry store for spent nuclear fuel at Torness. My right hon. Friend will announce his decision in due course.

  "A Partnership for Good"
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many telephone calls were received by the Scottish Office new central inquiry unit in the first three weeks of operation in connection with the Government's policy paper, "A Partnership for Good"; and what costs have been incurred by his Department in operating this scheme.

  Mr. Lang
  Since the launch of the Scottish inquiry line on Thursday 30 September the central inquiry unit has received 585 calls. Set-up operational costs amount to £26,871 and the annual costs of operating the scheme have been estimated at around £28,500. These figures exclude initial publicity costs of £150,000 necessarily incurred to make the new arrangements known to the public.

  Mortality Statistics
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the total number of deaths each year since 1990 for(a) tuberculosis, (b) malignant neoplasm of the cervix, (c) Hodgkin's disease, (d) chronic rheumatic heart disease, (e) all respiratory diseases, (f) asthma, (g) appendicitis, (h) abdominal hernia, (i) cholelithiases and cholecistitis and (j) maternal deaths for each health board area.

  Mr. Stewart
  The figures requested are given in the tables:
  625

  Deaths from selected causes in each Health Board Area 1992

  ICD

  Cause of Death

  Health Board Area

  1992

  Scotland

  Borders

  Forth Valley

  Dumfries and Galloway

  Fife

  Grampian

  Highland

  Lothian

  Tayside

  Orkney

  Shetland

  Western Isles

  Argyll and Clyde

  Ayrshire and Arran

  Greater Glasgow

  Lanarkshire

  010–018

  Tuberculosis

  46

  2

  4

  2

  3

  1

  —

  5

  2

  —

  —

  1

  7

  2

  9

  8

  180

  Malignant neoplasm of cervix

  183

  2

  16

  9

  13

  11

  4

  30

  16

  —

  —

  2

  13

  13

  32

  22

  201

  Hodgkin's disease

  38

  2

  3

  3

  1

  4

  —

  9

  4

  —

  —

  —

  1

  4

  4

  4

  393–398

  Chronic rheumatic heart disease

  186

  —

  10

  6

  13

  15

  5

  37

  7

  1

  —

  —

  16

  7

  49

  20

  460–519

  Diseases of the respiratory system

  6,999

  149

  368

  182

  480

  609

  227

  936

  580

  28

  29

  58

  569

  480

  1,559

  745

  493

  Asthma

  115

  5

  10

  3

  5

  16

  4

  17

  10

  1

  —

  —

  4

  15

  16

  9

  540–543

  Appendicitis

  10

  —

  —

  1

  —.

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  3

  —

  2

  4

  550–553

  Hernia of the abdominal cavity

  53

  1

  2

  2

  2

  6

  4

  5

  —

  —

  1

  1

  6

  2

  11

  10

  574,

  Cholelithiasis and

  49

  2

  1

  2

  1

  3

  5

  4

  4

  —

  —

  —

  8

  —

  15

  4

  575.0,

  cholecystitis

  575.1

  630–676

  Maternal deaths

  7

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1

  —

  2

  2

  Special Waste
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consider collecting and holding centrally information on the categories of special waste arisings; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Detailed information concerning consignments of special waste is held on registers kept by waste regulation authorities which, in Scotland, are district and islands councils. At present I do not have a need to collate this information centrally.

  Ethnic Health Unit
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will create an ethnic health unit along the lines of that established by the Department of Health.

  Mr. Stewart
  My right hon. Friend has no plans to do so, but a working group has been set up to produce guidance on meeting the particular health needs of ethnic minority communities.

  Brain Injury Rehabilitation

  1992–93

  Scotcare

  Astley Ainslie

  Royal Edinburgh

  Total

  Board of Origin

  Number of Patient Weeks

  Per cent.

  Number of Patient Weeks

  Per cent.

  Number of Patient Weeks

  Per cent.

  Number of Patient Weeks

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  A and C

  55

  12

  0

  0

  0

  0

  55

  3

  9

  A and A

  0

  0

  0

  0

  95

  7

  95

  5

  7

  Borders

  0

  0

  63

  9

  39

  7

  103

  6

  2

  D and G

  22

  5

  20

  3

  0

  0

  42

  2

  3

  Fife

  6

  1

  78

  11

  52

  9

  137

  8

  7

  FV

  36

  8

  150

  20

  48

  9

  233

  13

  5

  Grampian

  27

  6

  0

  0

  61

  1

  88

  5

  10

  GGHB

  182

  40

  0

  0

  0

  0

  182

  10

  18

  Highland

  12

  3

  3

  0

  0

  0

  15

  1

  4

  Lanark

  24

  5

  0

  0

  0

  0

  24

  1

  11

  Lothian

  0

  0

  423

  57

  242

  43

  665

  38

  15

  Tayside

  92

  20

  3

  0

  26

  5

  121

  7

  8

  Orkney

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Shetland

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Western Isles

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  1

  TOTAL

  456

  100

  741

  100

  564

  100

  1,761

  100

  100

  Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning
  Mr. Wallace
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the number of sampling points and the frequency of sampling in each islands and district council

  Brain Injuries
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many patients have been treated since the start of the Scottish Office national programme for the rehabilitation of the brain-injured at each of the three nationally designated brain injury units at Mondarstown castle, the Astley Ainslie hospital and the Royal Edinburgh hospital; what is the breakdown of patients from each referring health board for each unit; if he will list for each health board the total number of patients who have used the service since it started; and if he will express these numbers as a ratio per 100,000 of the population in the health board area.

  Mr. Stewart
  The information is not available in the form requested. The following table, based on 1992 figures, shows the number of patient weeks for which a central subsidy was paid to each individual health board. This is also shown as a percentage of overall occupancy at the unit concerned. The final column shows the proportion of patients originating in each health board area as a percentage of total patients in the three units.

  area where samples have been taken to test for the incidence of paralytic shellfish poisoning between 1 January and 30 September.

  Mr. Lang
  The information from commencement of the annual sampling programme in April 1993 is set out in the
  627
  table. The frequencies are normally weekly or fortnightly as indicated. However, when test results indicate that PSP toxins are present at a significant level the frequency of sampling is increased in the areas concerned.

  Site name

  Island or district council

  Frequency of sampling

  1.

  Eyemouth, St. Abbs

  Berwickshire

  Fortnightly

  2.

  Musselburgh

  East Lothian

  Fortnightly

  3.

  Elie; Pittenweem

  North East Fife

  Weekly

  4.

  Eden Estuary

  North East Fife

  Fortnightly

  5.

  Montrose

  Angus

  Fortnightly

  6.

  Aberdeen

  Aberdeen

  Weekly

  7.

  Fraserburgh

  Banff and Buchan

  Fortnightly

  8.

  Banff

  Banff and Buchan

  Weekly

  9.

  Lossiemouth; Burghead

  Moray

  Fortnightly

  10.

  Tain

  Ross and Cromarty

  Weekly

  111.

  Moray Firth Scallop Grounds

  Moray

  Weekly

  12.

  Wick

  Caithness

  Fortnightly

  13.

  East Orkney Scallop Grounds

  Orkney

  Weekly

  14.

  South Scapa Flow

  Orkney

  Fortnightly

  15.

  North Scapa Flow

  Orkney

  Weekly

  16.

  Kirkwall

  Orkney

  Weekly

  17.

  Stronsay

  Orkney

  Fortnightly

  18.

  Sanday

  Orkney

  Fortnightly

  19.

  Westray

  Orkney

  Fortnightly

  20.

  South East Shetland

  Shetland

  Fortnightly

  21.

  North East Shetland

  Shetland

  Fortnightly

  22.

  North West Shetland

  Shetland

  Fortnightly

  23.

  South West Shetland

  Shetland

  Fortnightly

  24.

  Kyle of Tongue

  Sutherland

  Fortnightly

  25.

  Kinlochbervie

  Sutherland

  Fortnightly

  26.

  Lochinver

  Sutherland

  Weekly

  27.

  Ullapool

  Ross and Cromarty

  Fortnightly

  28.

  Little Loch Broom

  Ross and Cromarty

  Weekly

  29.

  Loch Ewe

  Ross and Cromarty

  Weekly

  230.

  North Minch Scallop Grounds

  Ross and Cromarty

  Fortnightly

  31.

  Stornoway; Loch Erisort

  Western Isles

  Fortnightly

  32.

  West Lewis

  Western Isles

  Fortnightly

  33.

  North Uist

  Western Isles

  Fortnightly

  34.

  South Uist; Loch Boisdale

  Western Isles

  Fortnightly

  35.

  Loch Dunvegan

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  36.

  Loch Harport

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Fortnightly

  37.

  Loch Eishort

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  38.

  Scalpay

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  39.

  Portree

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Fortnightly

  40.

  Loch Torridon

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  41.

  Loch Kishorn

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  42.

  Loch Hourn

  Skye and Lochalsh

  Weekly

  43.

  Mallaig

  Lochaber

  Fortnightly

  344.

  South Minch Scallop Grounds

  Lochaber

  Fortnightly

  45.

  Ardtoe

  Lochaber

  Weekly

  46.

  Loch Sunart; Loch Teacuis

  Lochaber

  Fortnightly

  47.

  Isle of Ulva

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  48.

  Loch Spelve

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  49.

  Oban; Loch Etive

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  50.

  Loch Leven

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  51.

  Loch Melfort

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  52.

  Islay Scallop Grounds

  Argyll and Bute

  Weekly

  53.

  Loch Sween

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  54.

  West Loch Tarbert

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  55.

  Campbeltown

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  56.

  Tarbert

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  57.

  Upper Loch Fyne

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  58.

  Kyles of Bute

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  59.

  Loch Striven

  Argyll and Bute

  Fortnightly

  60.

  Cumbrae

  Cunninghame

  Fortnightly

  61.

  Ayr

  Kyle and Carrick

  Fortnightly

  62.

  Loch Ryan

  Wigtown

  Fortnightly

  63.

  Luce Bay

  Wigtown

  Fortnightly

  64.

  Solway Cockle Beds

  Nithsdale

  Fortnightly

  65.

  Kirkcudbright

  Stewartry

  Fortnightly

  628

  1 11. Moray Firth Scallop Grounds—Also bordered by Banff and Buchan, Nairn, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness.

  2 30. North Minch Scallop Grounds—Also bordered by Sutherland, Western Isles, Skye and Lochalsh.

  3 44. South Minch Scallop Grounds—Also bordered by Skye and Lochalsh, Western Isles, Argyll and Bute.

  NHS Trusts
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the estimate of the number of(a) day-patient and (b) in-patient private patients that will receive (i) operations and (ii) treatment this year in each trust hospital; and what proportion that will be of the total number of patients treated in each case.

  Mr. Stewart
  This information is not available centrally. It is expected that, as in the previous year, a record number of NHS patients will be treated.

  Radioactive Waste
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the state of the sea discharge pipeline for liquid radioactive waste from AEA Technology's nuclear facilities at Dounreay.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Discharges to sea from AEA Technology's facilities at Dounreay are regulated by means of an authorisation issued under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960. Under the authorisation, discharges have to be within authorised limits and are required to be made through the main effluent pipeline. The authority is also required to maintain and keep in god repair the system by which the waste is discharged. Her Majesty's industrial pollution inspectorate carries out regular inspections at the site and I am satisfied that these requirements are being met.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress has been made by his Department in rectifying the environmental hazards posed by the Dounreay waste shaft, identified in the report commissioned by his Department from R. M. Consultants of Abingdon.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The Dounreay waste shaft, as presently managed, does not present an environmental hazard. As regards the longer-term options for the shaft, R. M. Consultants were asked to examine a number of possible management options. However, an unequivocal best option has not been identified and studies are being continued by AEA Technology.

  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he commissioned the radiologocal research survey of the Solway coastal area from the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre; how many copies of the report of the survey have been printed; to whom or to which organisations it has been distributed; and if he will publish a summary of the main finding of the survey.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The survey was commissioned in December 1992. The final report from the contractors is expected in December 1993 and will be pubished in accordance with normal Scottish Office practice. The report will contain a summary of the main findings and a copy of the report will be placed in the Library of the House.

  Water Services
  Mrs. Ray Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the letter of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) referred to in his answer of 27 July, Official Report, columns 963–64, regarding water disconnections, if he will list the six respondents to the consultation paper on local government reform who stated that they were in favour of allowing water service providers the power to disconnect supplies.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 22 October 1993]: Further examination of the responses has shown that two were wrongly classified. Of the others only two were unreservedly in favour of disconnection of domestic customers for non-payment. Of these responses one was almost certainly ironical and the writer of the other requested confidentiality. Copies of the relevant responses which are not confidential are available through the Library of the House.

  Mrs. Ray Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the letter of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) referred to in his answer of 27 July,Official Report, columns 963–64, regarding meetings with foreign-owned water supply companies, if he will give details of when the two meetings took place, which Scottish Office Ministers were present and which water companies were represented; and if he will make a statement regarding the involvement of foreign-owned water companies in the new water boards.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 22 October 1993]: Scottish Office officials met representatives of the companies concerned, at the request of the companies, on 17 March 1993 and 27 April 1993 respectively. The meetings took place under terms of commercial confidentiality. No Ministers were present.

  The proposed new water authorities will be wholly public bodies. The private sector will have a role, as now, in providing goods and services under contract. The negotiation of these contracts will be a matter for the new water authorities.

  Environmental Consultation
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on progress following the consultation on the document "Improving Scotland's Environment—The Way Forward".

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: I refer the hon. Member to the answer my right hon. Friend gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) on 25 February at column 722.

  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list those organisations who have submitted comments on the proposals contained in the document "Improving Scotland's Environment—The Way Forward"; if he will place the representations in the Library; and how many of the comments received have been favourable and how many have been adverse.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Altogether 159 organisations responded. Copies of the responses which we were not asked to treat as confidential have been placed in the Library. While local authorities
  630
  and river purification boards did not, in general, support our proposals, most other respondents, particularly those from industry, were broadly in favour.

  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will set aside the proposals contained in the document "Improving Scotland's Environment—The Way Forward" until after the proposed reform of local government in Scotland has been completed; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: No. Our proposals for the agency are fully consistent with the forthcoming reorganisation of local government.

  Sheep
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement providing details of the operation of the allocation of sheep quota from the national reserve; and when he expects to be in a position to accept applications from sheep producers for allocation of quota from the reserve.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Details of the operation of the national reserve of sheep annual premium quota are currently being finalised. The statutory instrument authorising Agriculture Departments to invite applications to, and make allocations from, the national reserve will be laid before Parliament as soon as these arrangements have been settled.

  Local Government Reorganisation
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what meetings took place about the proposed linkage of Berwickshire and East Lothian in advance of publication of the White Paper which involved local district councillors;

  (2) what meetings took place about the proposed linkage of Berwickshire and East Lothian in advance of publication of the White Paper which involved special or political advisers to the Secretary of State for Scotland and local representatives for either Berwickshire or East Lothian;

  (3) if he will place in the Library a list of those who made representations on the proposal to link Berwickshire and East Lothian in the context of local government reform in Scotland;

  (4) if he will make a statement on the reasons for the White Paper suggesting that Berwickshire should be joined to East Lothian; and who made the suggestion.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: In reaching their decisions on the proposed boundaries for the new single-tier authorities that were included in the White paper "Shaping the Future—The New Councils", the Government took account of the responses to the consultation paper "Shaping The New Councils", and to a wide range of other factors including costs, the efficient delivery of services, accountability, economic development considerations, population and geography. No meetings were held with local authorities or other interest groups to discuss specific boundaries relating to Berwickshire and East Lothian prior to the publication of the White Paper. Since publication, however, I and my colleagues have met with a number of individuals and organisations from Berwickshire, East Lothian and other

  631
  parts of Scotland. A total of 417 individual letters have also been received about the proposed Berwickshire and East Lothian council. I have placed in the Library a list of those who have made representations. In addition, local campaigns about the Berwickshire and East Lothian proposals have generated postcards, pro forma letters and petition signatures.

  Mr. Home Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the transitional costs of the restructuring of local government; and if he intends those costs to be met from local or national resources.

  Mr. Stewart
  The Government's White Paper, "Shaping the Future—The New Council" estimated that transitional costs in the range of £120 million to £196 million would be incurred over a 15-year period. The Scottish Office has invited local authorities to submit estimates of the genuinely additional costs they expect to incur in the financial year 1994–95 and my right hon. Friend will be taking account of these in determining the level of the local government finance settlement for that year. Similarly the funding of costs in future years will be the subject of consultation with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in the normal way.

  Farm Statistics (Miscalculation)
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the reasons for the miscalculation in the statistics showing the amount of cereal production in Scotland for the years between 1989 and 1991.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: There has been no miscalculation in the amount of cereal production in Scotland between 1989 and 1991. The European Commission recently agreed that the original base areas, provided on 16 September 1992, for the arable area payments scheme introduced this year should be adjusted in the light of information from claims submitted under the new scheme. This technical adjustment, between the less favoured area and the non-less favoured area base areas, did not alter the total base area originally provided.

  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what are the estimated losses per hectare that will result from miscalculation of statistics from farmers in the non-less favoured areas for cereals, oilseed rape, peas and beans and set-aside land;

  (2) if he will make a statement on the increase in the amount of land to be set aside next year; and whether compensation is to be paid on the additional areas set aside.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Officials are working with the EC Commission to determine the revised rates of payment under the arable area payments scheme. These revised rates result from the adjustment in the distribution of land between the less favoured area (LFA) and the non-less favoured area (non-LFA) and from the overshoot in cropping in the non-less favoured area.

  An announcement on the revised rates and on next year's additional set-aside requirement will be made as soon as possible.

  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he has taken to ensure that the 632
  European Commission is aware of the effects of the changes as a result of the miscalculation of statistics for cereal production in Scotland; and what assurances he has had that the EC will not seek to exact penalties by way of further areas of set-aside in the coming year.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: As soon as it became apparent from the claims submitted this year under the arable area payments scheme that an adjustment to the base area figures orginally submitted to the EC Commission was necessary, my right hon. Friend personally pressed the Commission to agree to a technical adjustment of the Scottish base areas. The Commission has now agreed to the necessary technical adjustment of the LFA and non-LFA elements within Scotland's total base area; and my right hon. Friend and I are most grateful to the Commission for agreeing to that re adjustment.

  There remains an overshoot in the non-LFA area which reflects an increase in cropping in that area. The EC regulations governing the arable area payments scheme stipulate that the effect of this overshoot is to reduce arable aid payments within the non-LFA area proportionately in the current year and to increase the set-aside requirement in the coming year by the percentage by which the regional base has been exceeded, that increase being uncompensated.

  My right hon. Friend and I fully recognise that any penalty will be unwelcome to arable farmers. We cannot, however, vary the total Scottish base area, which reflects data already formally submitted to the Commission; nor can we adjust the area base control regime in mid-stream. The Scheme is designed to penalise areas in excess of base areas on which aid is claimed; and we cannot simply wish away the problem of over-cropping and the resultant additional one-year set-aside requirement.

  Set-aside Land
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) when he expects to meet representatives on the Scottish National Farmers Union to discuss proposals to mitigate financial losses that may result from the increased amount of land set aside;

  (2) what proposals he has to compensate farmers who can prove they have suffered loss as a result of changes to the rules on set-aside.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: My right hon. Friend and I fully recognise that any special set-aside requirement will be unwelcome to arable farmers. The EC regulations governing the arable area payments scheme, however, stipulate such an additional one-year requirement where an overshoot over base area has occurred; and they make it clear that this additional requirement is uncompensated. As I explained to representatives of the National Farmers Union of Scotland when I met them on 13 October, we cannot vary the total Scottish base area, which reflects statistics already lodged with the EC Commission and to which each member state is committed. Nor can we adjust in mid-course the area base control regime to which the Government are committed. The scheme is specifically designed to penalise areas which are in excess of base areas on which arable aid is claimed.

  The additional set-aside requirement resulting from the overshoot should be seen in the context of the very significant continuing benefits to Scottish arable farmers

  633
  and to the rural economy generally of the arable area payments scheme under the common agricultural policy. Notwithstanding the penalty, farmers in the non-LFA area alone will receive some £80 million in arable area payments in 1993, with a further £12.5 million in payments in the LFA area. Moreover, the reduction in arable area payments to non-LFA farmers resulting from the overshoot in fact broadly equates with the global return generated from the additional land, over base area, brought into cropping this year.

  Mental Illness
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what plans he has to continue the mental illness specific grant in 1993, 1994 and 1995; whether the funding of service developments in the treatment of those suffering from traumatic brain injury will continue as an eligible category ; what will be the sums of money provided for mental illness specific grant in the afore-mentioned financial years; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: Following an internal review of the scheme, it has recently been decided to continue the grant for at least another three years until 1997. Projects to assist people with acquired brain injury will continue to be eligible for grant.

  In 1993–94, grant of £7 million supports projects worth £10 million. The level of grant for future years will be announced as part of the local government finance settlement for those years.

  The scheme will be subject to a further review in 1996, based on a full study expected to report towards the end of 1995.

  Pollution Appeals
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to announce the decisions in respect of the two appeals brought by the Inverclyde district council against H. L. Friel and Son Ltd. and Stephen Friel under the terms of the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 634
  1989 and the Controlled Waste (Registration of Carriers and Seizure of Vehicles) Regulations 1991; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: I expect that the decisions in respect of the appeals by H. L. Friel and Son Limited and Stephen Friel against Inverclyde district council's refusal to register them as carriers of controlled waste will be issued soon.

  Arable Area Payments Scheme
  Mr. Martlew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the amounts in hectares of the take-up under the arable area payments scheme in 1993 in Scotland for(a) cereals, (b) oilseeds, (c) protein crops excluding vining peas and (d) set-aside and the simplified scheme; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The areas claimed under the arable area payments scheme in 1993 in Scotland by commodity, and for set-aside, are as follows:

  Hectares

  Cereals

  317,621

  Oilseeds

  61,781

  Proteins (excluding vining peas)

  4,150

  Set-aside

  70,637

  Simplified scheme

  56,428

  Mr. Martlew
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the number of applications in each region in Scotland under the(a) main arable area payments scheme and (b) the simplified scheme in 1993; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  [holding answer 25 October 1993]: The number of applications in each region in Scotland under the arable area payments scheme in 1993 is as follows:
  635

  Less-favoured area (LFA)

  Non-less-favoured area (NON-LFA)

  Combined claims (LFA and NON-LFA)

  Main scheme

  651

  3,205

  478

  Simplified scheme

  3,306

  1,687

  125

  Combined claims are those which include both LFA and non-LFA land.
  636

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich.
Lord Burnham—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

Overseas Domestic Servants: Abuse
Lord Hylton Lord Hylton asked Her Majesty's Government:
What new measures they are proposing in order to prevent abuse and exploitation of domestic workers from overseas in the light of the case of Miss Cindy Dindial as reported in The Times of 28th September 1993.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, in May 1991 we introduced tighter controls on the arrangements whereby in certain circumstances domestic servants from abroad may accompany their employer to the United Kingdom. These arrangements are kept under review but there are no plans at present to introduce further measures.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply. Is it not the case that measures so far have been ineffective in preventing abuse? Will the Government come forward with something that will stop imported domestic servants working 19 hours a day, seven days a week, for £50 a month, and in addition being terrorised by their employers and, in this particular case, beaten with rolling pins?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, is right to say that the measures are ineffective. Some 8,000 people accompany their employers for a visit, and about 500 per year come for a longer stay. Of course the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred is appalling but so are all cases in which people break the law.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that this case is only the tip of the iceberg and that girls in that position need a counselling service? Is he aware of the case of Elsie Cabasan who, when she escaped, was arrested, detained in police cells for five days and then sent to a detention centre? If we allow human beings to come into this country as part of the personal luggage of wealthy visitors, have we no obligations to them?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I would not go along with the description which the noble Lord, Lord Archer, has just given about those who accompany their employers. As a concession, and outside the immigration rules, people who come to this country may bring their employees with them. However, they may only do so provided the employee has been in their employ for a year if they are coming for a visit or for two years if they are coming for a longer employment. Employees ought
766
to know what their employers are like. Before they come here the entry clearance officer interviews them, gives them a leaflet showing them exactly what their rights are and gives the employer the same rights. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Archer, that it is intolerable if people come to this country and misbehave in the way mentioned by the noble Lord and by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the noble Earl not agree that the simplest way to help these unfortunate women would be to allow them, in approved circumstances, to change their employer? They are held in what amounts to near slavery because they have no opportunity to leave their employer without being deported as an illegal immigrant.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, on the face of it that sounds an attractive suggestion. However, people would then come into this country in the guise of working for one employer and, having got here, would then change their circumstances and work for another employer. That would be a gross breach of the immigration rules and our procedures.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, perhaps I may reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said. Experience of working for an employer in another country where it is possible to change employers is not necessarily good experience of working for that employer in a country where it is not possible to change employers. Since the Minister said that it would be a breach of the immigration rules for these people to change employers, should they not have work permits so that they can change employers within the confines of the immigration rules?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said that there is a difference between coming to this country where one cannot change employers and working in a country where one can. Nobody has to come with their employer. It is the free choice of the person concerned. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that such people should be given work permits. Work permits are not given for this type of employment. It is an exception outside the rules.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, should we not draw some comfort from the fact that this lady came to this country with her employers, was disgracefully treated and suffered assault, the case was tried in the British courts and the perpetrators of the assaults went to gaol, as should happen with anybody else who is treated in that way?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, has put his finger right on the point, as usual. He is absolutely right. A criminal act was occasioned. The people were found, they were brought to book and they went to gaol. However, one cannot prevent people from misbehaving.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, is not the heart of the matter that the immigration laws are totally inadequate to deal with the situation of these people?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, no, of course it is not.

NHS North-West Region: Waiting Lists
2.43 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn Lord Taylor of Blackburn asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to reduce the long waiting lists for National Health Service patients in the North-West Region to see consultants.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, the North-West Region is committed to driving down all waiting times. It has already ensured that no patient waits for more than two years for any treatment; and that no patient waits more than 18 months for a knee, hip or cataract operation. The region aims to reduce waiting times for all specialties to 18 months by 31st March 1994. The region has set a target for 97 per cent. of patients to be seen within 26 weeks by 31st March 1994 for their first out-patient appointment. The sum of £6 million has been earmarked in 1994–95 to make progress on those targets and the results will be carefully monitored.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I wish that I could agree with the Minister that that was true. I have had drawn to my attention a lady in her mid-70s who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. Her appointment to see the consultant will be roughly 24 months after the request was made. That does not tie up with what the Minister said. Will the Minister consider requesting trusts and area health authorities to publish waiting lists consultant by consultant, month by month, so that doctors and patients know exactly how long they are likely to wait?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I fully endorse the noble Lord's suggestion. In fact, some regions are already doing that. The Trent Regional Health Authority publishes details of its waiting lists each month. It is a good suggestion. I believe that that alone would put pressure on health authorities to ensure that waiting times tumble even faster.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the North-West Region is not the only area in which people wait a long time to see consultants? To what extent has the fact that one waits a long time to see the consultant in the first place enabled the health authorities and the Government to claim that one waits a slightly shorter time for treatment?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, nationally, half of all admissions to hospital are immediate because they are emergency cases. Of those admitted from waiting lists, half are within five weeks and nearly three-quarters within three months.
I understand the noble Baroness's point about out-patient waiting times. The Government have insisted that every region sets its own targets for first
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appointments for out-patient waiting times. We recognise that there is a crisis of diagnosis as well as of treatment if people have to wait too long.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the Minister accept that, quite apart from the length of time patients have to wait to see their consultants, there is a continuing and lengthening waiting period until they have their operations? I refer to the figures for last month compared with a year ago. The waiting list figure had increased by 90,000 to a total of 1,034,000. That is the highest waiting list figure since the National Health Service was established.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we are treating more and more people year on year. It is interesting to note that, if one looks at the number of people waiting for treatment it has actually remained at 10 per cent. of the number of patients treated. That figure has been constant for over 20 years. However, the more patients treated, the more the list appears to grow. We have to try to break that link.
The waiting times are reducing. The number of people who need treatment is increasing. But that is not the point. The point is the length of time those people have to wait.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the most disturbing feature underlying the noble Lord's Question is that the figures for waiting lists in the North-West area have been increasing month on month? Those figures were 95,342 in June; 96,194 in July; and 96,591 in August. In that context, will the Minister indicate the projected waiting list figure for the North-West area on 31st December of this year?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I should like to reiterate to your Lordships' House that it is important to look at how long patients wait, not how many are waiting. Since March 1991 the North-West Region has reduced the number of patients waiting over one year from 14,004 to 7,600 at the end of August 1993. That is a 46 per cent. reduction. I think that that is a tremendous achievement. At one time we thought that waiting lists were here to stay. Through the reforms, the measures we have taken and the amount of money we have invested in the waiting list fund, waiting times are tumbling.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, in the days when the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was Secretary of State, the names of those who were given dates for their operations were removed from the operating lists? Hence the operating lists in those days were shorter.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend is better at history than 1 am.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the Minister agree that many people are not being put on lists because they know that they will have to wait such a long time? The figures are therefore being distorted in any case.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, that is not true at all.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, when my noble friend Lord Ennals was Secretary of State for Health and I was chairman of an HMC, we were in a position to have much shorter waiting lists for the same group than today?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, medicine has changed radically during those years. Today we do things that we would never have dreamt of all those years ago. Hip replacements are now becoming almost routine where people used to spend their last days in wheelchairs and even bathchairs, going further back. That is not the case today. Cataract operations ensure that people end their days being able to read the newspaper—I am not sure whether or not that is a good thing! We really cannot compare things with 20 years ago.

NATO: Membership
2.50 p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton Lord Belhaven and Stenton asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their policy towards the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic to NATO following the statement by President Yeltsin in August to the Polish President that he had no objection to Poland's application to join NATO, which was followed recently by a demand by the Russian Government that those countries should not be admitted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, we are considering with our NATO allies how to develop further the alliance's relationship with the countries of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We expect some decisions on this to be taken at the NATO summit on 10th January next year.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, which is encouraging so far as it goes. Does he agree that if the countries which I have mentioned—but not the Soviet Union—continue to progress and develop as they are doing at present, they need to feel secure? Does the Minister consider that there is some urgency in the matter and that if the West does not act now, it may once more, as in the past, prove to be too late? Can my noble friend say to what extent those countries, literally at the heart of Europe, would be supported by NATO should they come under the threat of attack or intimidation?
Lord Henley: My Lords, we do not consider there to be a security vacuum in central or eastern Europe. Obviously, I understand the concerns of my noble friend. He will appreciate, however, that these important matters, with all the possible implications of enlargement of the alliance, require careful consideration. He will also appreciate that we must ensure, whatever steps we take, that we do not unintentionally create new divisions in Europe by unnecessarily antagonising others.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, will the Minister agree that it is desirable to promote closer links on military and security matters with the former communist countries of eastern Europe? If he does agree, can he put a little flesh on his first Answer and say how the Government intend to promote such links?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am not sure there is much flesh that I can put on the remarks I made earlier. What we and others have repeatedly stated is that our security is inseparably linked with that of all European states, whether formerly east or west. But these are complicated issues. They require careful consideration at the summit in January next year.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, can I press the Minister further? At the recent meeting of NATO defence Ministers, an initiative was discussed which I believe has become known as "Partnerships for Peace". Can the Minister say how the existing members of NATO intend to take that further?
Lord Henley: My Lords, "Partnerships for Peace" was a plan put forward by the Americans at the recent meeting to which the noble Baroness refers. Again, it will be something that will be considered at the summit in Brussels in January. It is for the summit to consider those matters.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that those of us who saw the skill and gallantry with which the Polish forces operated in Italy during the last war feel strongly that Poland would be a useful addition to NATO?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I understand exactly why my noble friend feels as he does about the debt we owe to so many gallant Poles of the last war. However, as I said, it is a matter of importance. There are considerable implications to any additions to NATO. As I made clear in my first Answer, we have to consider what the implications of an extension of NATO might be for others in the region.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, while I do not detract for one moment from what the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, says about Poland, is it not true that the threat mostly to the security of those countries is not from without and will not be for some time? It is from their ethnic minorities and problems with their boundaries, with which NATO is not qualified to deal. Therefore, may I put to the Minister that it is quite right to go slowly on the matter and that the Government should not hurry?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. The message I was trying to get over is one that is neither positive nor negative. It is one of considering all the implications of any additions, whatever the country, to NATO.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I recognise that this is an extremely difficult problem. However, will the noble Lord agree that the anxieties of the central European countries for their security, in view of their history, is natural and totally understandable? If they

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were brought into NATO, it might seem to Russia to be confrontational. Therefore, some formula must be found which will satisfy the need for the security of those countries without causing an affront to Russia. Is not a possibility which might be borne in mind that they should be associated in some way with the WEU and that the guarantee should be jointly between WEU and Russia?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I can only say that I take note of the last suggestion of the noble Lord. Obviously, as I believe I have made clear, we understand the desire of those countries, for historical and other reasons, for security. We also understand the fears of the Russians. It is getting those two points over; that is why, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, stressed the need to move cautiously.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, while I agree in part with the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, should we not be working towards a non-aggression pact covering both eastern Europe and the Balkans?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the Question relates to NATO. We believe that NATO has been one of the great success stories of our security since the last war. It has proved enormously effective in preserving peace for the whole of Europe. Any extensions to NATO we would have to consider in the light of the possible outcome for the effectiveness of NATO. But, certainly, the desire of Her Majesty's Government is for peace throughout the entire region.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, said, there are practically no ethnic minorities in Poland and no frontier disputes between the three countries which I have mentioned or between those countries, as I understand it, and Slovakia which I did not mention?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, will have noted what my noble friend said. The important point that the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, was trying to make was the need to move carefully in this area.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, will the noble Lord reassure our friends in Poland that, while NATO may or may not be the most appropriate security organisation in the years to come, the security and integrity of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will be foremost in our thoughts in the formation of whatever new security organisations may emerge?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord will know that the security and integrity of Poland and the other countries in eastern Europe are much in our minds. I can assure the noble Lord that—although this goes slightly wide of the question—we offer a great deal of assistance to Poland and other countries through the Know-How Fund, the Polish Stabilisation Fund and the various European Community programmes.

"Foreigner": Definition
2.58 p.m.
Lord Desai Lord Desai asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the term "foreigners", as used by the Secretary of State for Social Security, includes citizens of European Community countries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Viscount Astor): My Lords, yes.
Lord Desai: My Lords, is it quite right that he should do so? Is the Minister aware that under the law which we passed there cannot be a distinction between UK citizens and nationals of other European Community countries? Is it not unconstitutional for the Secretary of State to use the term, having just participated in the Maastricht debate as part of the Cabinet which wanted to put Britain at the heart of Europe?
Viscount Astor: No, my Lords, it is not. Of course it is right to say that we are all citizens of Europe now. But Article 8 of the Maastricht Treaty introduces the concept of citizenship of the European Union. This confirms some existing rights and introduces some new ones; for example, the right to vote in local elections. It does not give an unrestricted right to settle in any of the member states. We want to stop benefit tourism, and we are considering a number of measures in this area that would bring us into line with other member states of the Community, including a residence test similar to that of our EC partners.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is it not an unfortunate term to use? Does the Minister agree that we got used to terms such as this during the pro- and anti- Maastricht debate? Is it not apparent that some Ministers are now moving to language which seeks to imply difference between ourselves and our colleagues in Europe, and is that not a very disturbing development? We saw it at the Conservative Party Conference, did we not?
Viscount Astor: No, my Lords. I reject what the noble Lord says. We are citizens of Europe. We are still subject to the Crown in this country. We do not owe our allegiance to President Mitterrand any more than the French owe their allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen. If the word "foreigner" is derogatory, how is it that for many years we have called the department which is dedicated to improving our relations with other countries the Foreign Office?
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a very satisfactory French phrase: "Vive la différence"?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am sure that the House is grateful for the comment of my noble friend.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the term "foreigner" is the right one? I married an Englishman in 1940. I took him to Sweden in 1945. I was told that an Englishman is

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never a foreigner, wherever he is, in whatever part of the world he happens to he in. Would it not therefore be better to refer to these people as "non-nationals"?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I looked up the definition of the word "foreigner". It says: a person from another country; or alien. I looked up the definition of the word "alien". It says: a person who is not a citizen of the country where he is living, or a being from another world. I have to tell noble Lords that we are not aware of any extra-terrestrial benefit fraud yet.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that I agree with him that his definition of the word "foreigner" is correct, and any English national who goes to Berlin or Paris will find that the same definition is practised there? Arising from this question, can the Minister give an assurance that after the Maastricht Treaty comes into operation on 1st November, there will be no duties placed on so-called citizens of the European Union? Also, can he ensure that Mr. Lilley's policies, if I can put it that way, are put into operation by ensuring that no laws are imposed on the people of this country by foreigners without the consent of the British Parliament?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord that the measures announced earlier this year by my right honourable friend to restrict access to income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit to persons from abroad, admitted on the condition that they are no burden on the public purse, apply only to people from outside the European Community. The proposal to introduce a test similar to the residence requirement in other European Community countries will apply to everyone, including citizens of other member states and citizens of non-member states.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the term "foreigners" is a marked improvement on the term much beloved of the Foreign Office not so many years ago; namely, "aliens"?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, it is quite simple. If we go to someone else's country, we are a foreigner in that country. It is in no way a derogatory term; it is a fact of life.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that "Welshman" means foreigner? Are Welshmen foreigners in their own country, and would he like to take the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lords, Lord Bonham-Carter and Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, that they are of course not foreigners in this country, and never will be.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the people of Wales will be extremely grateful to the noble Viscount. He gives us some assurance to go on with. Is he aware that we regard ourselves as both Welsh and British?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely important point.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, perhaps I may belatedly but genuinely welcome the noble Viscount to his new portfolio. We should have welcomed him last week. It is clear that he is enjoying it.
The Minister will have heard Mr Lilley's speech at the Conservative Party Conference denouncing EC nationals for "scrounging" (to use his word) off our social security system. Is the Minister aware of the Written Answer given by Mr. Burt, the junior Social Security Minister, in June, when he wrote:
"The only group of EC citizens and their families who can claim social security without qualification",
for example, child benefit,
"are those who are working or who have worked in the, United Kingdom."—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/93; col. 143.];
in other words, those who have paid British taxes and British national insurance? Did the Secretary of State know that? If he did not, surely he should. But if he did, why was he apparently misleading Tory Party conference and the country with such xenophobic remarks as "benefit tourism"?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I have to say to the noble Baroness that the Secretary of State knew rather better the rules that apply than the noble Baroness does. Different considerations apply to different benefits and different categories of people. Not all EC nationals have unrestricted right to live anywhere in the EC. Only workers have unconditional right to live anywhere in the Community and have equal access to benefits and other services. Others have the right to live in another EC country only if they have enough income not to need to claim safety net benefits from their host state. That is the position.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is it not possible to take far too seriously the remarks made by Ministers of the Crown at their own party conference when there is perpetual competition—and, indeed, "competition" is the operative word—for the usual spate of standing ovations?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord looks at our conference so carefully; that he obviously studies it in great detail and follows it with such care.
Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, like most Members of this Chamber, I am a foreigner in most parts of the world, including here. I heard Mr. Lilley's speech. I must say that it was on television; I was not actually there. If he did not intend to use the word "foreigner" in a derogatory sense, what did he actually mean?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, what he said was:
"It is beyond the pale when foreigners come here expecting our hand-outs".
That is the point. We do not want benefit tourism. It is important that everybody in this country gets the benefits to which they are entitled. If people in this country get benefits to which they are not entitled, it is only taking away money from those who should get the benefit.
Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, did the Minister hear his inflection on the word "foreigner"?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I think that I have explained the definition of the word "foreigner" quite clearly, and I have explained quite clearly what the Secretary of State said, what he meant, and the changes that we intend to introduce.

Business
3.8 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to say a word about the length of speeches in today's debate standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Windlesham. As the debate has been limited to five hours, all speeches should be limited to a maximum of 11 minutes, apart from the mover, the Minister in reply and those winding up. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length he would be doing so at the expense of other speakers in the debate.

Humber Bridge Bill [H.L.]
London Docklands Development Corporation Bill [H.L.]
London Local Authorities (No. 2) Bill [H.L.]
Malvern Hills Bill [H.L.]
River Calder (Welbeck Site) Bill [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The purpose of this Motion and of the next one in my name is to allow the promoters of certain Private Bills which have not completed their legislative stages in the present parliamentary Session to be carried over into the next Session, when, if their promoters wish it, proceedings on them may be resumed in this House or in the other place. These Motions are purely procedural, and in agreeing to them the House is in no way passing judgment on the merits or otherwise of the Bills in question.
Moved, That the promoters of each Bill have leave to suspend any further proceedings thereon in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that notice of their intention to do so is lodged in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than 12 noon on Tuesday 2nd November next and that all fees due on or before that day have been paid;
That such Bill be deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than 12 noon on the second sitting day in the next Session with a declaration annexed, signed by the agent, stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill at the last stage of the proceedings thereon in this House in the present Session;
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That the proceedings on such Bill in the next Session of Parliament be pro forma in regard to every stage through which the Bill has passed in the present Session, and that no new fees be charged to such stages;
That the Private Business Standing Orders apply to such Bill in the next Session only in regard to any stage through which the Bill has not passed during the present Session;
That in the case of any Bill against which there is any petition outstanding—

(i) any such petition which has been presented (if not withdrawn) stand referred to any Select Committee on the Bill in the next session;

(ii) any minutes of evidence taken before a Select Committee on the Bill during the present session stand referred to any select committee on the Bill in the next Session;

(iii) no petitioners be heard before any Select Committee on the Bill in the next Session unless their petition has been presented within the time stipulated for the deposit of petitions in the present Session or deposited pursuant to Private Business Standing Order 109(b);

(iv) Private Business Standing Order 110 have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 109" were omitted.—(.)—(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons requesting their agreement thereto.

Greater Nottingham Light Rapid Transit Bill
Dunham Bridge (Amendment) Bill
King's Cross Railways Bill
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the promoters of each Bill have leave to suspend any further proceedings thereon in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that notice of their intention to do so is lodged in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than 12 noon on Tuesday 2nd November next and that all fees due on or before that day have been paid;
That if the Bill is brought from the House of Commons in the next Session the agents for the Bill deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by them stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill which was brought from the Commons in the present Session;
That the proceedings on such Bill in the next Session of Parliament be pro forma in regard to every stage through which the Bill has passed in the present Session, and that no new fees be charged to such stages;

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That the Private Business Standing Orders apply to such Bill in the next Session only in regard to any stage through which the Bill has not passed during the present Session;
That in the case of any Bill against which there is any petition outstanding—

(i) any such petition which has been presented (if not withdrawn) stand referred to any select committee on the Bill in the next Session;

(ii) any minutes of evidence taken before a select committee on the Bill during the present Session stand referred to any select committee on the Bill in the next Session;

(iii) no petitioners be heard before any select committee on the Bill in the next Session unless their petition has been presented within the time stipulated for the deposit of petitions in the present Session or deposited pursuant to Private Business Standing Order 109(b);

(iv) Private Business Standing Order 110 have effect as if the words "under Standing Order 109" were omitted.—(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons requesting their agreement thereto.

Criminal Justice: Royal Commission Report
3.11 p.m.
Lord Windlesham Lord Windlesham rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (Cm 2263).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, whose report we are debating today, was set up in 1991 following an announcement by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons on the same day that the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions for murder of the Birmingham Six. It was an immediate response by the Government, and one which was unlikely to have been available at any time during the previous 11 years, no Royal Commission on any subject having been appointed since Mrs. Thatcher, now the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, formed her first administration in 1979.
Now, two years later, the first thing to say is that the revival of this grandest of all instruments of independent inquiry has been thoroughly justified by the report published in July. The fact that the commission's chairman, the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman of Doxford, is to make his maiden speech in the debate, gives that debate an added significance. The House will also look forward in particular to hearing the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, and two other maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. As he was a vice chairman of the Parole Board for part of the time when I was chairman, I hope that I may be allowed to extend a special welcome to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd.
It befits a report which has been prepared under the
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eye of such an eminent sociologist as the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, that so many of the 352 recommendations are supported by detailed research findings. The commission undertook an extensive research programme resulting in no less than 22 separately published studies. These form an important contribution to knowledge about many aspects of the administration of criminal justice and will be of permanent value.
In addition to Professor Michael Zander's Crown Court study with Paul Henderson, there are, for example, highly relevant findings on the contentious issue of the right of silence, which divided the members of the commission. On the basis of the research, no conclusive evidence was found to support the widely held belief that silence is used disproportionately by professional criminals, nor that silence in the police station leads to improved chances of acquittal.
The majority of the commission took the view that to allow adverse inferences to be drawn from silence at police stations would make little difference to experienced professional criminals, but would put at risk vulnerable suspects, possibly leading to more convictions of the innocent. On this issue therefore, as on several others, the results of empirical research into what actually happens in the course of police investigations, pre-trial processes and at the trial have to be reconciled not simply with received opinion but also with the fundamental principles of justice which underpin, or should underpin, the criminal law and procedure. Of those fundamental principles, I think we can all agree that the most important is the presumption of innocence until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
In any system of criminal justice worth the name, the requirements of justice—touched on, although not made explicit in the preamble to the commission's terms of reference—need to permeate the operation of the system and to guide the efficient use that is made of resources. There has been some criticism of the commission for failing to adopt a more principled approach, expressed in terms of a theoretical structure, and for giving too much weight to the functional considerations of cost and efficiency. The noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, will be well aware of that line of criticism. Perhaps we shall hear some echoes of it in the debate today. But, in what I have to say, I, like the commission in its report, shall be pragmatic, not straying very far out onto the hallowed ground of principle.
For principles there are in the report. Make no mistake about it. Two of the most hotly contested principles are the right of silence, to which I briefly referred, and the proposal to curtail the entitlement of the accused to elect for jury trial when charged with an offence triable either way—that is, either summarily in the magistrates' court or on indictment in the Crown Court. But I have little doubt that other speakers will cover very thoroughly those controversial subjects.
Instead, I shall confine the remainder of my speech to two topics only: the support of victims and witnesses; and the proposed Criminal Cases Review Authority.
The report contains 11 recommendations at least, depending on how they are counted, which relate to the

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interests of victims. Here I declare an interest as president of the organisation Victim Support. In his Blackpool speech the Home Secretary, Mr. Michael Howard, made a feature of saying that he accepted them all. Specific recommendations included:
"Priority should be given to establishing witness support schemes in all Crown Court centres"—
that was recommendation 197 in the Royal Commission report—and the recommendation that victims should be kept informed of the progress and outcome of their cases.
One might think that encouraging news for Victim Support. But negotiations with the Home Office have been stalled for the necessary funding to carry out the additional work that Victim Support is being asked to take on. The Crown Court witness programme, pioneered by Victim Support over a period of several years, is now established in a number of Crown Court centres and the decision by the Government to fund it is very welcome. But for several months now there has been no money to extend the programme beyond the existing 36 Crown Court centres in which it operates. In 17 more, the plans are well advanced to provide a service of support for victims and other witnesses in court that was so strongly urged by the commission and accepted, your Lordships will remember, by the Home Secretary.
Inquiries made of the Home Office have elicited the reply that there was no new money in the Home Secretary's Blackpool speech and that the level of funding will depend on the Chancellor's Autumn Statement. Therefore, if, despite the expectations which have been raised, there is not the necessary funding recommended by the commission and accepted by the Home Secretary, there will be a profound sense of let-down. I use no stronger language than that; but others will.
The priority given to the court project should not be at the expense of maintaining and developing the basic work being done throughout the country, mostly by volunteers, in so many local victim support schemes. As reported in the Guardian today, months of talks with the Home Office have failed to produce any results, despite the fact that everyone agrees that it is crucial for support to be available as soon as possible after the crime has occurred.
The feelings of victims of crime and the public sympathy for them in their suffering or loss are easy to exploit for various purposes, including the pursuit of political capital. But resounding statements of intent will always backfire and do so quickly unless they are followed by the allocation of resources to honour them.
I turn now to the original purpose of the report. It is one that should never be lost sight of in the cornucopia of procedural recommendations and was the impetus of the commission's establishment in the first place; that is, the correction of miscarriages of justice. In recommending that the Home Secretary's power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal should be transferred to a new body, independent of government, the commission made its most predictable proposal.
Almost all of those who gave evidence to the Royal
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Commission argued that changes were needed in the current, and strongly criticised, procedures for considering and investigating allegations of miscarriages of justice where normal appeal rights have been exhausted. The objections were both of principle—that the role assigned to a Minister under existing legislation is incompatible with the constitutional separation of powers between the courts and the executive—and of practicality; that is, that the Home Office has adopted such a restrictive approach that only a handful of cases of alleged miscarriages of justices, where it is claimed that there has been a wrongful conviction (790 were notified to the Home Office in 1992 of which 634 involved a custodial sentence) succeed in passing through a dense bureaucratic mesh. That still leaves the Home Secretary with what many people regard as an impossibly difficult task to carry out.
At first sight it would appear that Whitehall is not clinging to the Home Secretary's existing powers—flawed as they so evidently are in application—with its habitual possessiveness. That may be because a former Home Secretary—Douglas Hurd—had frankly told Sir John May's inquiry into the case of the Maguires of his opinion that the responsibility for investigating alleged miscarriages should be separated from the responsibility for law and order and the police. His view of that incompatibility was subsequently endorsed in oral evidence given to the commission by the then Home Secretary and two of his predecessors.
So far, so good. But word is getting about that the Government do not intend to include that proposal in the criminal justice legislation which has been forecast for the next Session. Whyever not? The inadequacies of the present procedure and its inordinate length are such that a large backlog has built up of cases calling for investigation. There is no prospect whatever that the understaffed and overworked Home Office division can make any impact on the backlog even if the will was there.
It is true that the powers and composition of the new body, and its relationship with the Court of Appeal, will call for careful definition. But not everything needs to be written into a statute. Indeed, some public bodies—the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Broadcasting Standards Council—were set up in advance of any statutory authority at all. Moreover, the Home Office has already had several months to cogitate on how to implement one of the most conspicuous, widely forecast and least controversial of the commission's proposals.
If the government draftsman is unable to do the job in time—I ask your Lordships to remember the speed with which the extremely complex amendments to the sentencing provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 were drafted and enacted earlier this Summer—the organisation Justice, whose imprint can already been seen in many places in the statute book, is working on amendments which can be considered when the Bill is before Parliament. My noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon is chairman of Justice and may have more to say on that later.
I conclude by giving two reasons for early action. The setting up of an independent review body to

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investigate alleged miscarriages of justice has an importance that transcends its function. It is a touchstone of the Government's willingness to legislate, and to do so at the earliest possible moment, on the root cause of one of the blackest episodes in the modern history of the English criminal law and its administration. More than that, if legislation is not introduced soon, there is a risk that the rapidly-changing political climate may ensure that it never happens. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (Cm 2263).—(Lord Windlesham.)
3.28 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the House is grateful to my noble friend Lord Windlesham for introducing this debate and enabling your Lordships to discuss the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. I take the opportunity to congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, and his commission on their remarkable achievement. The undertaking of a review of the whole of the criminal justice system of England and Wales—Scotland, of course, likes to make its own arrangements—is, by any standard, a magnum opus, and the noble Viscount and his colleagues on the Royal Commission carried out their task with great assiduity and with remarkable dispatch.
At least one of the advantages of the report—by no means the only advantage, nor the main one—is that it has stimulated the noble Viscount to make his maiden speech. That is something to which we will all look forward. The debate will also be enhanced, as my noble friend Lord Windlesham said, by two other maiden speeches, those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton. We look forward to hearing them too.
In considering the report, we have to keep in mind the need to strike the right balance between, on the one hand, the public interest in the detection and punishment of crime, and, on the other hand, the individual interests both of the defendants and of the victims of crime. It is important to remember that the Royal Commission's terms of reference were to examine the effectiveness of the criminal justice system both in convicting the guilty and in acquitting the innocent.
There was widespread concern about the operation of our criminal justice system which came to a head a few years ago when, after 17 years in prison, the Birmingham Six had their convictions quashed. This was after—18 months earlier—the Court of Appeal had granted the appeal of the Guildford Four. And there were other cases, too. And so a "judder" went through the nation's confidence in the criminal justice system. Was it really all right? There were many reasons for this judder of confidence. but it was there, and it had to be addressed. That is why the Royal Commission was set up.
Your Lordships may be aware of the speech which was made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to the Conservative Party Conference three weeks ago about measures to promote law and order, a speech to which my noble friend Lord Windlesham referred. A very good one it was too, if I might say so,
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despite all the hoo-ha which subsequently followed. In that speech my right honourable friend outlined the action which he intends to take in response to around 30 of the Royal Commission's recommendations. I think that that is a pretty good start, and the Government are still carefully considering the other recommendations, which number more than 300. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I try and expand a little upon my right honourable friend's speech, by looking in more detail at some of the issues which are covered by the Royal Commission's report.
One of the issues which the Royal Commission addressed was the question of victims. It made 11 recommendations to the Government about them and the Government accept all of them. In an effort to help criminals to get away from the path of crime and to get back onto the straight and narrow, we have over the years made the error of giving too little consideration to the plight of the victims. Efforts to help victims are essential if the criminal justice system is to maintain the confidence of the public. We intend to address that.
The Royal Commission also addressed the question of corroboration of evidence. The proposal to abolish the requirement, in sexual offence cases., for judges to warn the jury of the danger of convicting on the complainant's evidence alone has been widely welcomed. And we intend to implement that recommendation. The judge will still, of course, be required in all cases to sum up in a way which assists the jury, and which ensures, in particular, that the case for the defence is properly put.
We also intend to put into effect all the recommendations for legislation on corroboration which the Law Commission made in its 1991 report and which have been enthusiastically endorsed by the Royal Commission.
Justice is quite clearly not served when a criminal can avoid conviction by interfering with a jury. At present, if a jury were to be successfully nobbled—and if justice were as a result to be perverted—then the defendant in the case could walk away scot-free. That simply cannot be right. We intend to change the law so that new trials can take place, and that justice can be done—and can be seen to be done.
Public confidence in the operation of the courts is likely to be eroded so long as people, who are themselves awaiting trial, are nevertheless permitted to serve on juries. The Royal Commission made a recommendation that we should stop this. We have accepted this recommendation.
The Royal Commission also made a number of proposals which were concerned with the investigation of crime. One area where the Government have decided to depart from the recommendation of the majority of the Royal Commission and to follow the view of the minority, is to allow inferences to be drawn from a suspect's silence. I know that this is an area in which many people hold different and quite strong views; and with justification. The term "the abolition of the right of silence" is misleading. It is not a matter of imposing any new obligation on the suspect or on a defendant to provide information. He can still remain silent, but in future, the judge and the jury may be told that the

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defendant decided to stay silent and decided not to answer a question—and the jury will be able to draw such inference from that silence as it may think fit.
The Royal Commission also made a number of recommendations on the subject of DNA. The Government accept the recommendation to allow the police to take—and to keep—samples of DNA. It is important that they should be given the full use of improved scientific knowledge to help them in the fight against crime. The Royal Commission recommended that the police should be allowed to take DNA samples from those who are arrested for "serious arrestable offences" as well as for burglary and assault. The Government intend to go a step further. We shall be proposing that DNA should be treated in precisely the same way as are fingerprints—by giving the police the power to obtain samples for all recordable offences. Of course, it will not be necessary to take a sample in all cases—indeed it would be very costly and cumbersome to do so—but the police will have the option to take a sample where they think it is desirable. And in so doing they will be able, over time, to build up a database of information.
My right honourable friend has also announced his intention to give the police powers to impose conditions on police bail. We agree with the Royal Commission that this will help to prevent unnecessary appearances in court.
The Royal Commission recommended that police cautioning should be put on a statutory footing, so that the actual practice of cautioning should be applied more consistently than it is at present between different police forces. This recommendation remains under consideration. In the meantime, my right honourable friend will be consulting all chief constables about new guidelines on how cautioning should be used.
The Royal Commission also recommended the establishment of a Criminal Cases Review Authority, a point to which my noble friend Lord Windlesham referred, with, I thought, a certain amount of scepticism concerning the part which my department is playing over this. I can tell your Lordships that my right honourable friend has accepted this recommendation in principle. The Royal Commission—quite reasonably—did not offer a detailed scheme as to how this should work. Some further consideration will therefore be necessary before we are in a position to bring forward the necessary legislation. We will, though, do so as soon as we have been able to settle the details of the new system.
The Royal Commission made 352 recommendations—a fair quiver-full—and I realise that I have not begun to touch on large areas upon which it reported. No decisions have been taken on many of those recommendations. They are important, and they deserve careful consideration and diagnosis. Some of your Lordships might say—if your Lordships were unkind, and I am sure that none of your Lordships would slip into that disagreeable category—that the Government have plucked out a few recommendations from a carefully balanced and comprehensive report, just to suit their convenience. That is simply not so. What we have
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done is to move quickly on those areas where it is practicable to do so. It does not mean that we consider these to be the only important recommendations. Indeed, a number of the recommendations which I have not mentioned deal with very important and very complex matters and will need a lot of very careful consideration.
We are working on the Government's response to these recommendations. And I can assure your Lordships that the views and the opinions which your Lordships express in today's debate—and, indeed, on other occasions too—will be greatly valued; and this will help the Government to formulate their overall response to the Royal Commission's report.
3.37 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, after paying a sincere tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for his wisdom and prescience in putting down this Motion for debate, I should like to say a word to the three maiden speakers. I know that they will all be frightened. We all are when we make our maiden speech. I do not know whether it will encourage them to know that someone in my position can be frightened even now after a number of years in the House when I find myself, as an amateur, speaking with so many people with far greater expertise than I possess myself.
When I am speaking in the company of the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, and the Lord Chief Justice, among others, I am well aware that I am the shadow; and when we are discussing the Runciman Report, the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, is the substance. I am reminded, looking at my position, of the story in Bernard Shaw's Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. She describes the Bishop of St. Pancras dying and going up to the Pearly Gates. When he is not received with instant rapture he says, "But you must let me in. I am the Bishop of St. Pancras". The angel looks at him sternly and says, "I am St. Pancras".
The starting point for me, speaking at the Dispatch Box, must be that as we have not seen any legislation as a result of this report we do not have a party line on all of the recommendations in the Royal Commission's report. Indeed, I am well aware, from his publications, that my noble friend Lord Williams of Mostyn disagrees with me—or I venture to disagree with him—on a number of issues which may become clear in the course of debate. What we are concerned about is that there should be a fully informed debate on these important issues.
At the same time we are concerned that we should not exaggerate the role of the criminal justice system in the terms of reference of the report. It should not be thought that this is a report about crime or law and order. After all, only a very small minority of criminal offences are detected and come to court. In addition, only a proportion of those cases result in convictions. We should not delude ourselves that, by correcting the errors of the criminal justice system, we have somehow struck a blow for law and order. It is detection and prevention above all which are the determinants of crime.

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Having said that, the Royal Commission has taken a logical approach to the issues which were placed before it in its terms of reference. It has concentrated the large bulk of its recommendations on getting the criminal justice system right. In recognition of the fact that it will never be possible to do that entirely, it has looked at how to correct mistakes which will arise in the criminal justice system in order to correct miscarriages of justice. All I can do in the very brief time available to me is to "cherry-pick", which I believe is the word that will be used when the Government come to publish their responses to the commission's report. I shall pick out a few of what I consider to be some of the most important issues in terms of public policy.
Perhaps I may refer very briefly to the right of silence, particularly at the police station, and without fear of adverse comment from the prosecution or the judge. Clearly, nobody can stop there being a right of silence. but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is right when he says that those who would suffer from a diminution of the right of silence would not be the professional criminals but those who are less sure of themselves and who are more likely to be intimidated and feel that using their right of silence could be used damagingly against them. I believe that the Royal Commission has come to the right conclusion on that matter.
However—and this is probably where I shall find myself in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Williams of Mostyn—I believe that that right conclusion has been undermined by the recommendations which the commission make about the disclosure of the defence. I acknowledge that the line has already been breached with alibi notices. I acknowledge that it is only proposed that defence disclosure should be made known to the jury al a later stage. I acknowledge that that disclosure is confined only to ticking a list of possibilities.
Nevertheless, I question whether the number of ambush defences is enough to justify this fundamental change in the way m which we approach the law. I believe that the requirement that the defence should be able to respond to the actual prosecution and not to some projected future prosecution, should be paramount.
I now turn to the corroboration of confessions. This matter has been dealt with already to some extent by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. I believe that Scotland has it right here. The evidence of Scots' law which requires some corroboration—not complete corroboration otherwise confessions would be worthless—shows that it is possible to achieve that without damaging the legal process. However, I believe that Scotland has it wrong when it comes to the issue of jury trial where it is for the Procurator Fiscal to decide whether an each-way offence should go before the sheriff court, the district court or the high court. I feel very dubious about the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The numbers concerned may be considerable but they are not overwhelming. The evidence which has been produced about cases which go to the Crown Court when they are each-way offences, and at the request of the defendant; do not seem to give much support to the view that this is a right which is misused. Yet it is the
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case that the Crown Court acquits a higher proportion of alleged offenders than the magistrates' court. Therefore there is some justification for the accused to seek that protection.
I shall have to pass over pre-trial reviews although it is an enormously important issue. I wish to deal with something which appears in the report but which does not achieve a great deal of prominence. I refer to the problem of case listing in the Crown Court. The commission seems to give the impression that the listing problem is largely one of the administration of justice. In my view the commission's own research suggests a different conclusion. It reveals that approximately half of prosecuting counsel and nearly a third of defence counsel are not briefed earlier than the day before the trial, and that is despite the fact that 95 per cent. of prosecuting counsel and 93 per cent. of defence counsel believe that they have had enough time to consider the case.
I suggest to your Lordships that those two facts cannot be reconciled. It cannot be the case that a process which has been continuing between solicitors arid their clients and between the Crown Prosecution Service and counsel over a period of weeks or months, can be taken over by a new advocate at the last minute without there being some diminution in the effectiveness of that process. I am expressing a personal view which is that the initiative of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in seeking to extend the right of audience to members of the Crown Prosecution Service and to solicitors in the Crown Court is fully justified by the evidence which has been produced by the Royal Commission.
I turn finally to perhaps the most important issue of the report—that is to say, how to deal with miscarriages of justice and the role of the Court of Appeal. Historically it is plain that there has been a series of attempts, starting with the initiation of the Court of Appeal in 1907, to secure wide powers and terms of reference for that court. But successive courts of appeal have themselves sought to restrict those powers. That was true after 1907, after 1965 and the Donovan Report, and it is true even after the provisions of the 1968 Act which speak about the power to relieve lurking doubts. That is a power which has hardly been used in the intervening period.
The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, rightly said that the numbers referred to the Court of Appeal by the Home Secretary are very small. I believe that the figure is a maximum of 10 out of a total of 800 applications. The important point which has to be made in looking at what the Court of Appeal does is that it should not be concerned only with errors in the trial. It should also be concerned with pre-trial malpractice. In that regard I fully agree with Professor Michael Zander when he said in his dissenting note:
"The moral foundation of the criminal justice system requires that if the prosecution has employed foul means the defendant must go free even though he is plainly guilty".
That leads me to my final point which concerns the Criminal Cases Review Authority. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has rightly said that this is a matter which could and should receive the urgent attention of

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the Government and that it should come before Parliament in the next Session. He has also rightly said that if for some reason (which we would deplore) it would not be possible to bring legislation forward immediately, there should be a non-statutory body comparable to the early setting up of the Broadcasting Standards Council or the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. The urgency of this matter reflects the fact that, despite the upsets to earlier convictions which were the basis on which the Royal Commission was originally set up, there are still many cases of injustice outstanding. After the report was published, the Taylor sisters were released. There are still many cases which require urgent attention. The Royal Commission has done an excellent and worthwhile job. It is now the responsibility of Government and Parliament to continue that work.
3.49 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, from these Benches we congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman of Doxford, and his fellow commissioners on their report. We look forward very much to the maiden speech of the noble Viscount who is to follow me. We look forward also to the two other maiden speeches that we are due to hear today.
On these Benches we take the view that this is not a matter on which to take a party line. The views that I express—and those which my colleagues express—are very much individual views on a very important subject. It does not seem the right kind of subject on which to take a strict party line.
The Royal Commission clearly looked with great care at some of the obvious problems besetting our criminal justice system, and to its conclusions and observations a great deal of weight must be given. The fundamental purpose of any system of criminal justice in a civilised country is to secure the conviction of those who break the law and to deal with them and to safeguard the innocent. The two basic questions are whether in our present system, given the enormous development of internationally organised crime, backed by abundant financial resources, particularly in the drug, terrorist and commercial spheres, we achieve the first objective, and then, given the notorious cases in which our appeal courts have held that persons who have been convicted and who have served long sentences should not have been convicted, whether we reasonably achieve the second objective.
I have long concluded that we need a basic re-assessment of the efficacy of our legal system, to the extent even of taking a good hard look at some of the sacred cows of that system. All lawyers in this country are educated to believe that we have the best and fairest legal system in the world and, indeed, it has served us well. But that very belief, and the refusal to look at other countries, sometimes prevents our sensibly looking at essential weaknesses. I am bound to say that after a lifetime of enjoying hugely the adversarial system—and having believed in it for most of that time—I have had increasing doubts about whether, unaltered, it provides the best means of achieving justice. In the United States,
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there have been pretty ludicrous developments which we are in danger of replicating here unless we stand back and take a more objective view of the whole purpose of our system and perhaps alter it.
I would not advocate adopting the French system of a thorough-going inquisitorial system. I regret, however, that the Royal Commission did not devote more time and thought than the five paragraphs (11 to 15) of chapter one of the report to introducing an inquisitorial element at an early stage of inquiries into really serious crimes, such as terrorist and drugs offences. The commission was obviously interested in the matter and made a range of inquiries. But its view was, I think, too cautious and perhaps constrained by time. Paragraph 12 states:
"we do recognise the force of the criticisms which can be directed at a thoroughgoing adversarial system which seems to turn a search for the truth into a contest played between opposing lawyers according to a set of rules which the jury does not necessarily accept or even understand".
The commission added that it took a pragmatic view and sought simply to strengthen our current system.
We could start by having a few examining magistrates. Perhaps I should re-word that. If an accused person is brought before an examining magistrate within, say, 48 hours of his arrest and the outline of the case against him is made by police officers under the supervision of the interviewing magistrate, I see no reason why he should not be asked to comment on it. The accused person can still elect to exercise the right to silence because nobody can deprive him of that. Provided that the magistrate ensures that the accused person has had access to legal advice, if the accused person then makes no observation or maintains his silence I think that that is a matter on which a court can comment later. Perhaps we could start with a few such examining magistrates in our main centres of population, limited in the first instance to serious crimes, and see how the system works. If it works well, it might point the way to a consideration of expanding both the number and powers of such magistrates.
The Runciman Commission is of the view that only when the prosecution has been fully disclosed should the defendant be required to offer an answer to the charges made against him at the risk of adverse comment at the trial or of any new defence that is then disclosed. I see no reason why the accused should not be invited to make a reply earlier—we must be realistic—before the prosecution has been fully disclosed but when a proper outline of the prosecution's case is made. The accused should be cautioned that at a subsequent hearing his failure to answer or reply might be commented upon. However, I do not see any justification in a caution for saying that an "adverse" comment or its equivalent would necessarily be made. Together with many others, I know from experience that there is sometimes a very good reason for silence. It is not, as Bentham's famous dictum so simply claimed,
"Innocence claims the right of speaking, so guilt invokes the privilege of silence".
It is not always so. Silence can be invoked because of embarrassment. People find themselves in an embarrassing position—more embarrassing than the charge. Silence can be exercised in order to protect a relative or

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friend. It can be exercised because an innocent person is scared, shocked or has been advised (wrongly or rightly) to say nothing. A jury can draw its own inferences and, in my experience, often does, but I do not think that a police constable should be allowed to try to influence a reply to a charge in such circumstances by threatening a person who has been arrested with the virtual certainty of an adverse comment.
I should now like to deal with the real problem—the clever, disciplined and highly organised criminals who know how to manipulate the system in order to minimise the chances of conviction. One cannot force them to talk. If the prosecution does not have the evidence to convict them, no amount of comment (adverse or otherwise) by a judge or the prosecution will make up for that deficiency. However, if there is prima facie evidence of guilt, I do not see why a jury should not draw an adverse inference from silence if that right of silence is maintained in the kind of structured interview before an examining magistrate that I have in mind. I therefore come to the conclusion that there is a case for allowing the judge or the prosecution to comment on silence provided that we have first taken the steps to create the right forum for inquiry.
I read with great interest a recent article on confession evidence by a distinguished leader at the Bar, which stated boldly:
"Confessions are the worst and most unreliable evidence you can find and should be regarded as no evidence at all".
In my experience, a confession could be the worst of evidence, but it could also be the best of evidence. I echo the words expressed by the commission in paragraph 67 of chapter four:
"It is … generally accepted that confessions have hitherto taken too central role in police investigations".
It then states the reasons why that should be so. But if we follow the majority view of the commission which states that although a judge should give a strong warning about the dangers of relying on confession evidence alone it is not necessary to have a requirement of any supporting evidence, I fear that police practice will not change. It is essential that there should always be some other evidence supporting acceptance of the confession. For example, if we had an interrogating magistrate, as I have suggested, then the affirmation before him of the truth of the confession could easily be enough.
I may be old-fashioned, but I deplore the majority view which favours abolishing the prohibition on a barrister interviewing witnesses other than his own client, or experts, before the trial. That could lead to many difficulties. support entirely the view of Professor Zander, who was supported by Mrs. Newbold, given in the paragraphs referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. When there has been a gross breach of the rules by the prosecution—sometimes the fraudulent presentation of a case—whatever the evidence against the accused may be, it should follow that the conviction is quashed; otherwise the very moral basis of our law tends to disappear. I support the minority view on that point.
4 p.m.
Viscount Runciman of Doxford: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for giving me the opportunity to address your Lordships for the first time in a debate occasioned by the publication of the report of the commission which it was my privilege to chair. I am also grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for his generous remarks about the assiduity and dispatch with which we addressed our task. But I speak with more than the usual diffidence which attends any maiden speaker because I am conscious not just of the convention which requires me to avoid being controversial on a set of topics about which as, I well know, feelings can run pretty high, but I am conscious that I know a great deal less about the criminal justice system in England and Wales than a great many Members of your Lordships' House, not just those sitting on these Benches.
That said, I have to say that I found a two-year climb up an almost vertical learning curve, which it was for me, an interesting but sometimes also a dizzying experience. It left me at the end with the impression of a criminal justice system which is indeed in urgent need of reform in a number of significant areas, but which, considering the relentlessly increasing demands which are placed upon it, copes remarkably well for quite a lot of the time.
I am sure I shall have other opportunities to address the specific responses made here and elsewhere to specific proposals put forward in the commission's report; but I can say thus far that I have not heard any argument either in favour of the commission's recommendations or against them of which we were riot aware during the course of the deliberations which led up to our making them.
I can also say that I remain unrepentant about our refusal to engage, as some of our critics have wished us to do, in what one might call debate at the level of the higher thought. I have not been surprised that we have been criticised on one side for failing to take advantage of a golden opportunity, as some see it, to recommend the abolition of a discredited adversarial system and the introduction of a system unequivocally committed to the search for the truth. I have been equally unsurprised by those of our critics who claim that we have neglected a golden opportunity to reaffirm the virtues of our present adversarial system to the point indeed, as some would have it, of refusing to accept terms of reference which required us to have regard to the conviction of the guilty as well as to the acquittal of the innocent.
But what has surprised me to some extent is that some of our proposals have been treated as more controversial that I, for one, believe that they are. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that it is not, or certainly should not be, controversial that if there is reason to suppose that an innocent person is languishing in prison for a crime committed by someone else, that that person's case should be investigated by an independent, pro-active, adequately resourced, well-staffed review authority with the powers necessary to do the job as thoroughly as it needs to be done.

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It seems to me also that there is nothing controversial about seeking at the same time to minimise the risk that juries will, as inevitably they may sometimes do, convict an innocent defendant, and to do everything possible to minimise the risk that they will fail to convict a defendant whose guilt has been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
I believe that I can, without being controversial, be a little more specific: it seems to me that there is nothing controversial about a recommendation that chief constables should have, and use, powers effectively to discipline members of their forces who have been found involved in malpractice; that there is nothing controversial in a recommendation that suspects should have access, as of right, to competent—I underline the word "competent"—legal advice in police custody; that there is nothing controversial about the recommendation that the facilities of the public sector forensic science laboratories should, as far as practicable, be made available to the defence as well as to the prosecution; I see nothing controversial in the recommendation that witnesses, particularly witnesses who have themselves been victims of serious crime, should be safeguarded fully against the possibility of reprisal or intimidation; I see nothing controversial in the recommendation that relevant and probative evidence should not be withheld from juries on account of outdated and over-restrictive rules of evidence; I see nothing controversial in the recommendation that counsel whose conduct at or prior to trial falls below the acceptable standard, should be penalised effectively; and I see nothing controversial in the recommendation that judges should not just be properly trained but should be sufficiently frequently retrained for the increasingly difficult and demanding job that the system requires them to do.
There is one other general point which I should like to make and which touches upon the anxiety which has been voiced by some speakers, both here and outside, about, to use the phrase that was used earlier this afternoon, "cherry picking". Anyone who is familiar with the criminal justice system will be aware of the close interdependence between its constituent parts. Reforms which are intended to uphold and safeguard the rights of suspects and defendants must not be allowed to undermine the ability of the police and the CPS to do the job that we all want them to do.
Equally, reforms which are directed rightly towards ensuring that guilty defendants do not walk free must not be allowed to compromise the twin principles of the burden and standard of proof in which we all believe. As I hear myself saying that, those propositions sound to me to be so uncontroversial as to be positively banal; but I hope that I and others who have voiced that anxiety are wrong in expressing a fear that some of our recommendations may find favour at the end of the day at the expense of others, when the chances of their success, once implemented, will depend to a large degree upon their being treated as integrated parts of a coherent whole.
In that connection, and lastly, perhaps I may respond,
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again without risk of being unduly controversial, to some of what has been said about the so-called right of silence.
I was surprised to learn that the Government proposed to disregard a recommendation which was endorsed not only by the Law Society but by the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association and which echoed what had been said unanimously on that occasion by our predecessors on the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure. It is a topic on which although feelings run high perhaps they run higher than would be justified in the light of the evidence to which reference has been made today on the difference that a change of the kind proposed would in fact make to the outcome in contested trials.
It is important that there should be no question of the threat of adverse comment at a trial being such that juries could ever be invited to conclude from the mere fact of a suspect's refusal to answer questions in police custody that that suspect was therefore and for that reason to be presumed to be guilty of the offence with which he or she is charged. My understanding, informal as it is, is that there is no intention that that shall happen under the change which is being considered.
What matters in the discussion that will continue on these often contentious issues is that those to whom our recommendations are addressed do not allow the vehemence with which some points of view will no doubt be put forward by either side to distract them from the one overriding priority. That priority is that everything must be done to help juries to get it right without in any way compromising the essential safeguards which the system must continue to provide for both suspects and defendants.
4.12 p.m.
Lord Alexander of Weedon: My Lords, it is a personal privilege and a pleasure to congratulate on behalf of the whole House the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, on his excellent maiden speech. Few can have made their first contribution in this House by speaking to the report of the Royal Commission of which they were chairman. Not surprisingly, the noble Viscount was authoritative. He was also brilliantly lucid and he trod the tightrope of convincing us that the proposals that he mentioned were neither banal nor controversial. We are fortunate indeed that with the noble Viscount's talents and skills he gave so generously of his time to the difficult and important issues which affect the criminal law.
The Royal Commission was set up three years ago amid widespread loss of confidence in the police and the legal system caused by miscarriages of justice. By the time it reported, the pendulum had swung. There was, and is, an atmosphere of near panic about the failure to prevent crime and to catch, convict and punish criminals. Both those contrasting concerns are valid. Only if we can convict as many as possible of the guilty and acquit the innocent will our system of law carry respect. It has not succeeded always in recent years in meeting either need particularly well. It is vital that there should be change. It is vital that the system should become less cumbersome and more efficient.

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Many of the recommendations in the report reflect the long-held views of Justice, the all-party group which promotes law reform. Justice, with its wide experience of investigating alleged miscarriages of justice, has long believed that there should be an authority independent of the Home Office to investigate complaints of wrongful convictions. I agree with every word which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said on the issue. With respect to my noble friend the Minister, I share the scepticism of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, about the performance of the Home Office in this area. So we welcome the strong Royal Commission endorsement of the proposal and hope that it will be given early effect.
The recommendation can have come as no surprise to the Home Office and it should be implemented in the coming Session. Our experience is that C3, the department of the Home Office responsible for this work, is often tardy in its response, reluctant to be open in communicating fresh information and appears, as the Economist stated earlier this year, to start from the presumption that a conviction is well-founded. I hope, and I am encouraged by the cross-party support, that there will be legislation to set up such an authority this Session.
Miscarriages of justice have mostly been attributable to three causes: first, to false confessions; secondly, to unsatisfactory forensic evidence; and, thirdly, to mistaken identification. So I welcome the proposals to increase safeguards for suspects outside and inside the police station as well as those for improving and monitoring the standards of forensic evidence available to both prosecution and defence. I believe that the proposals to safeguard against mistaken identification are important. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, that it is crucial that the whole package of recommendations in these areas should be implemented swiftly. Taken together, they will significantly diminish the prospects of a wrongful conviction.
All those proposals are common sense and pragmatic. So, too, in my view is the recommendation that it would be wrong to exclude uncorroborated confessions in all cases. I believe that the majority of the Royal Commission was right to say that, provided proper safeguards and screening processes take place, and that the jury is given a proper warning, the jury should generally be the judges of whether the confession has the ring of truth about it. But the safeguards must be clear. No confession should be admissible unless recorded in the presence of a solicitor or unless it clearly appeared from the recording that the suspect had declined the offer of a readily available lawyer.
I have deliberately dealt first with the need to learn the lessons of past miscarriages of justice and to guard against them. For it is only if we do this that we can with any confidence move on to meet the other powerful concern that the guilty escape conviction all too often. It is said that only 2 per cent. of crime results in conviction. Many of the measures needed to reduce and to detect crime lie outside the power of the legal system. The complex Social causes, the role of crime prevention and the skills and resources of the police lie outside the
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ambit of this debate. But what is certain is that efforts to combat crime need the underpinning of an efficient trial process.
There is currently a deep disquiet about whether our system, with its cumbersome procedural safeguards and adversarial context, is designed to get at the truth. A typical view, expressed by a chief constable in a letter to The Times not long ago, was:
"… [It] is still more concerned with rules and rituals than with people. It is in fact a game—one which is adversarial, non-conciliatory and theatrical".
Anthony Trollope, were he here, would say that little had changed in more than the century since he satirised our system in Orley Farm. Habit dies hard. I believe that we must streamline the trial process so that we can focus on the central issues in dispute.
I agree that the charade of committal proceedings should go and that there should be effective and early pre-trial procedures to clarify and to define the issues ahead of trial. I believe that that is fair to juries, to victims and to witnesses and that it is in no way unfair to the defendants. It is wholly reasonable, once the prosecution case has been fully disclosed, that the defendants, advised by a lawyer, should be required to disclose the nature of their defence. It seems to me common sense. The reasons of the Royal Commission, which are given in Chapter 6, paragraph 59 of the report, warrant brief citation. It states:
"With one dissentient, we believe that there are powerful reasons for extending the obligations on the defence to provide advance disclosure. If all the parties had in advance an indication of what the defence would be, this would not only encourage earlier and better preparation of cases but might well result in the prosecution being dropped in the light of defence disclosure, an earlier resolution through a plea of guilty, or the fixing of an earlier trial date. The length of the trial could also be more readily estimated, leading to a better use of the time both of the court and of those involved in the trial; and there would be kept to a minimum those cases where the defendant withholds his or her defence until the last possible moment in the hope of confusing the jury or evading investigation of a fabricated defence".
I find that reasoning compelling, but in saying that and in believing passionately that we must streamline our creaking system, I do not share the view of those who have suggested recently that the right of silence of those in police custody should in any way be weakened. True it is that some hardened and seasoned people take full advantage of it, but a police station is a frightening place for many and the vulnerable may often be too overawed to do themselves justice in such an environment. I share the concern of the Royal Commission that to erode the right of silence at that early stage could enhance the risk of convicting innocent people. We should weigh very carefully before we go down a route which was thought about and rejected by the Royal Commission.
There are many other difficult issues on which there is no time to touch today. We should rationalise our formal approach to sentence discounts for guilty pleas so as to make them more open. But we must take great care with any formal system of plea bargaining. Careful safeguards will be necessary to avoid an innocent person thinking that it will be in his best interests to plead guilty.
I believe also that we should look closely at many of our technical rules of evidence. Those rules are designed

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to exclude prejudicial material, but they sometimes shut out evidence which has common sense probative value. We trust juries to decide the basic issues but we do not always trust them sufficiently to weigh evidence which may carry weight with a sensible person.
I am glad that the Royal Commission calls on the Bar to improve its standards and practices in certain important respects. Efficient management and early involvement in cases is a key element. In recent years the Bar has played a notable part in promoting proposals for greater efficiency in criminal and civil justice. The Seabrook Report on the efficient disposal of business in the Crown Court, the Roberts Report on long fraud trials and the joint report with the Law Society on civil justice are notable examples. The standards of many at the Bar are high, but in such a front line profession, considerable further improvement is called for. I welcome the assurance that the Bar Council will address positively the report's recommendations.
Finally, in recent years our prolonged adversarial system has not wholly served us well. It has been unable to prevent some serious miscarriages of justice, yet it provokes dismay that it is so ritualistic and is so little of an apparent search for truth. To modify it so as to preserve what is best and to fashion it to modern needs is no easy task, but of one thing I am sure: it must be attempted; and it must be attempted soon.
4.22 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gosforth: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman of Doxford, not only in respect of his chairmanship of the Royal Commission and its recommendations, but also on the superb maiden speech which he made today. As one would expect of a Northumbrian, he has brought a breath of fresh air and some incisiveness into the argument. I am sure that all noble Lords will hope to hear from him not only on this subject but on other subjects too in the future.
The recommendations of the commission are a very notable contribution to our criminal law. Their main characteristic is the careful balance which they seek to maintain between the interests of the suspect and those of the state. They must be seen as a package and many of them are interdependent.
I agree with and support most of the recommendations. Some of them are controversial and no doubt there are those who will consider some of the other recommendations to be controversial. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that any selections or rejections which are made when drafting legislation do not upset the proper balance and do not produce unforeseen consequences.
I am concerned about the present zeal for moving fast in this field. I know that lawyers are always regarded as being conservative but there can be too great a haste in changing institutions which have evolved gradually over a long period, and which have acquired checks and balances as they have proceeded. I am concerned that the zeal for reform and the enthusiasm for implementing recommendations may lead to over-hasty legislation. We do not wish to have to revise the next Criminal
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Justice Act within months of its enactment as happened with the 1991 Act. Therefore, I am glad to have the Home Secretary's assurance that the judiciary will be informed fully in good time of the progress of developing proposals.
I ask the indulgence of the House for a moment to comment on the current controversy on sentencing policy which has figured so largely in the press. I much regret that, when differences of view emerge, they are reported in more and more extreme terms. The differences are magnified; points of agreement are ignored; and the debate is represented as a contest. As a judge, I should like to reaffirm what should be a truism; that the duty of the judiciary is to apply the law laid down by Parliament. As regards sentencing, that law is now principally contained in the Criminal Justice Act 1991, as amended. The policy of that Act remains that imprisonment should be imposed only where the seriousness of the offending or the protection of the public requires it. I am quite sure that the judges will apply that policy.
Having said that, I am strongly of the view which has already been expressed by one previous speaker that the most important deterrent to criminals is the likelihood of detection, rather than the nature or length of the sentence. "Will I be caught?" is uppermost in the villain's mind rather than, "Will I get three years or five?". At present public anxiety is that the level of detection is low and, even when detected, many offenders are not prosecuted. The courts can only deal with those who are brought before them. Therefore, I hope that, in their avowed aim to give a high priority to law and order, the Government will lay emphasis on detecting and preventing crime and that all the resources necessary to that emphasis will be made available.
I welcome greatly those recommendations of the commission which have not received a great deal of comment but which are concerned with the beginning of the criminal process; namely, investigation, the way in which the police should go about their business and the way in which they should be monitored, trained and inspected. Those are fundamental to a healthy criminal justice system.
At the opposite end of the process, I welcome the recommendation to set up a criminal cases review authority. However meticulous and fair the judicial process is, no human institution can be infallible. It is necessary to have a review procedure and it should be conducted by an independent body. In that regard it is extremely important—and here I may not agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham—that we should not proceed too quickly. It is important that that new body should be properly constituted and set up. It is important to think carefully about who should make up its members; and not only who should be the chairman, but from what walk of life he should come. We should think carefully about what its powers should be and what the powers of the Court of Appeal should be when a reference is made by it. I hope that due care will be given to that and that, when that body is set up, it will be set up after careful consideration as regards its constitution and function.

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I applaud the commission's exhortation to judges and lawyers to shorten trials. I have indicated already that in my view judges should become more interventionist, not by being hostile, peppery or crusty, but by politely keeping the trial on the rails and addressing the issues. The Bar Council has already taken steps to raise and monitor standards of advocacy by new guidelines which have been issued. But it would be much easier for judges to intervene effectively if the issues were clearly defined from the start of the trial. I therefore welcome the recommendation that the defence should be required to disclose what the nature of its case is. As I understand it, that can only happen once the prosecution has fully disclosed its case. I cannot for the life of me see what is unfair about requiring the defence at that stage, knowing all that has been put against it, to say in the broadest terms what is the defence.
Professor Zander takes a different view. But, on the other hand, he accepts the propriety of that which has been in place for years: namely, the requirement of an alibi notice where alibi is relied upon. An alibi notice is required not merely to indicate the general nature of the defence but also the particulars of it—for example, the witnesses, the timings, where he was and so on. If one can swallow that, what is so difficult to swallow about simply requiring in any other kind of defence a general statement of either identity, self-defence, consent or whatever it may be?
It seems to me that this reform is long overdue. I welcome the recommendation that it should be implemented. It will also assist in determining the scope of the disclosure to be made by the Crown. Recent decisions of the courts, following the miscarriage of justice cases, have placed an enormous burden on the prosecution to disclose unused material. That often amounts to an immense volume of paper. Presently, the Crown has no knowledge in many cases as to what would he relevant to the actual defence to be raised.
I turn now to two controversial recommendations. The first is the proposed abolition of the right to jury trial for either-way offences. I am opposed to it and was glad to note that it did not figure in the Home Secretary's 27 points. Election for trial by jury is not only a legal right, it is also part of our national culture. The large number of late pleas of guilty when a defendant has elected to be tried in the Crown Court is an inadequate reason for removing such a fundamental right. The Royal Commission's proposal is that the decision, if the Crown and the defendant cannot agree, should be left to the magistrates; in other words, the magistrates are to be left to decide whether they can try the case fairly or whether it ought to be sent for trial to a higher court.
Suggestions as to the criteria that might be applied include whether or not the defendant has a reputation that is worth preserving. In other words, one might find that the respectable person who has no previous convictions will be allowed to have a jury trial because his reputation is thought to be important, whereas someone who has a previous conviction, and therefore not such a reputation to lose, may be told that he can make do with a trial before the justices. It is accepted by the commission that, where reputation is at stake, it has
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long been considered that jury trial is appropriate. I strongly recommend that that state of affairs should remain.
Although the present form of the right dates only from the mid-19th century, the principle of trial by one's peers dates from Magna Carta. "So what?" it was recently said, "We don't usually govern our affairs by what applied in 1215". But certain fundamentals are timeless. If we are to bin Magna Carta because it is old hat, what hope is there for the Bible?
I trust that your Lordships will allow me a moment's indulgence because I wish to raise the issue of the right of silence. I strongly support the Government's intention to change the law, providing that there are proper safeguards. There is much emotional and ill-informed comment on the issue. What is at stake is not the right to silence. Of course, no one should be forced to answer the police or to testify; but should a suspect have an absolute immunity from comment on his silence? I believe that, in appropriate cases where there is a prima facie case raised—and that is most important, as the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, emphasised—it should be open to the judge to decide that comment can be made. However, it must be at the judge's discretion.
There is a wide spectrum of cases. At one extreme is the vulnerable borderline and subnormal youth who would be clay in the hands of the police or of prosecuting counsel. A judge would probably not allow any comment to be made about his silence. However, at the other extreme there may he a defendant, with all his wits about him, who instructs his counsel to attack the police. His counsel suggests that they beat him, planted drugs on him and invented their sighting of him at the scene. He then sits tight and does not support those allegations in the witness box. It is surely repugnant to common sense that in such a situation the jury should not be told that they can take into account his failure to support his positive and serious allegations in the witness box.
There are many issues that I should have liked to raise, but I believe that I have taxed your Lordships' patience for long enough. I shall now, belatedly, exercise my right of silence.
4.35 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, in making my maiden speech, I must first thank your Lordships for the warm welcome and for the guidance that I have received both from noble Lords and from the staff of the House since being introduced into your Lordships' House just under two weeks ago. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for having initiated the debate and to the noble Viscount. Lord Runciman of Doxford, whose important and crucial report we are discussing today. I should indicate that I am not a legal practitioner and that I speak with some trepidation among such a learned gathering. After listening to the profound speeches that have already been given, that trepidation has only increased.
I grew up and started my political life in a multi-racial area of Leeds, and soon became aware of the discrimination in society. Over the past 40 years, I

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have attempted to help remove, or at least alleviate, some of that discrimination. The Royal Commission's report, under the heading "Public Confidence" on page 6 states:
"Any member of the public who becomes involved in the system of criminal justice … should be treated fairly, reasonably and without discrimination".
That is a sentiment which I believe we can all applaud. The report goes on to say that evidence was received on behalf of both minorities and women, who did not feel that they are fairly or reasonably treated, that the system is discriminatory against them. The commission is to be congratulated upon recommending that there should be further research and a system of ethnic monitoring to establish the extent to which members of ethnic communities suffer discrimination within the criminal justice system. However, the commission does not make a similar recommendation in respect of women.
I fully appreciate that there are differences of view on the treatment of women in British justice. There are those who hold the view that women are treated more leniently than men. Conversely, others believe that women are sentenced more harshly than men for their failure to accord with what is considered proper female behaviour. But, whichever viewpoint you hold, the common element is that men and women do receive different treatment in the criminal justice and penal systems. There is a genuinely held belief that the criminal woman is too often forgotten. It is precisely because there are such conflicting and strongly held views that there is the need for the facts to be ascertained and critically examined.
Women represent 17 per cent. of all known offenders and less than 4 per cent. of the prison population. That small number should make it easier to cater for their circumstances. But, in reality, the reverse is true. Women are tacked onto a system primarily geared to men, even though the pattern of offending shows marked gender differences. Sexual offences, burglary, robbery and crimes of violence are in the main male crimes, while a quarter of convicted female prisoners are in gaol for offences of theft, handling, fraud and forgery. That figure would include the woman who was sentenced to 21 days in prison for non-payment of a £48 fine. She could not pay the fine because she had three children, an unemployed husband and was relying on social security as her only means of support. It would also include the young mother whom magistrates sentenced to 28 days' imprisonment for non-payment of a £400 fine for electricity fraud, even though she had made an offer to pay an amount each week. Despite the prison sentence the fine will still stand. What happens to her when she comes out of prison and still cannot pay the fine? Does she go back to prison?
The likelihood of a woman being sent to prison has doubled in the past decade, with three times more women than men receiving a custodial sentence for first offences, although those offences tend to be of a less serious nature. Similarly, women are three times as likely as men to be denied bail at their first court
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appearance. Yet only one quarter of the women remanded in custody subsequently receive a custodial sentence.
Given the evidence that women defendants rarely commit offences on bail, the number of women remand prisoners could and should be massively reduced. For example, should a 60 year-old woman who had recently been widowed be remanded in custody for six weeks for non-payment of poll tax? With more than half the women in custody having dependent children, 12 per cent. of whom are in care, this practice cannot be defined as real justice either to the woman concerned or to her children.
I am sure that we in your Lordships' House recognise the devastation to the family when the mother is removed from the home. All those with sentencing roles should be reminded of that and encouraged to consider non-custodial sentences such as extending the use of community service or, when appropriate, issuing a police caution. Although the use of community service is increasing, it is granted to twice as many men as women. That service could be extended, the work appropriately chosen and rigorously supervised. Surely it makes economic sense for child care to be provided for, say, two days a week rather than to put the mother in gaol and perhaps the children in care.
My noble friend Lord Ashley of Stoke is to be congratulated on bringing before this House a Private Member's Bill in response to the plight of battered wives who kill violent partners and who face a murder conviction or a life sentence unless they can successfully plead diminished responsibility or provocation. It is, however, encouraging that the report of the Prison Reform Trust inquiry is to recommend that judges should have discretion in imposing sentences for murder.
Crime cannot go unpunished, but real justice must mean that nobody is, or feels, disadvantaged because of sex or colour. Within our criminal justice system much has to change while it is perceived to be discriminatory. We must ensure that all people receive fair and equal treatment under the law. Only then will they have true confidence in our system of criminal justice.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, it is my privilege on behalf of your Lordships to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, on her most interesting and extremely well-informed maiden speech, which centred on the topic of discrimination. That is a very important topic, on which no other noble Lord has yet spoken. This is the first occasion on which I can claim to speak on behalf of all your Lordships in giving these congratulations.
The noble Baroness stood in the shoes of Lord Underhill, a personal and much-loved friend of many of us in this House, as a national organiser for the Labour Party. To boot, she is a Yorkshirewoman. Her speech has left us with a firm impression of her commitment to women's rights. We hope to hear further contributions to our debates not only soon but often, and not only on this but on many other subjects.

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If the debate is a curtain-raiser to another criminal justice Bill then so be it. The hope is that the ink is not yet dry on the draft of that Bill, which it is said is to be presented to us in the next Session of Parliament. However, I, for one, go along with the caution expressed by the Lord Chief Justice. The noble and learned Lord did riot express himself in the terms I shall use—but then he would not. For heaven's sake let us take a little time and get it right this time rather than rush it. At all events, the assurance given by my noble friend Lord Ferrers from the Front Bench is welcome. It is good to know that on this occasion my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will not shoot from the hip and shatter our contributions as if they were a set of pottery dolls in a fairground shooting gallery, as has happened in the past.
There is no forum other than your Lordships' House, with a mix of political affiliations or none and with a wealth of relevant expertise, which can take note not only of the recommendations of this report but also of the impact which it has already had and may have on the policy of the Government as regards the much-needed reform of criminal justice. That policy has already begun to recognise that we have entered into a new and horrifying dimension of crime—referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman—not only as regards the quantity of crime but also the quality of that crime. We now see offences which not so very long ago were all but unknown or inconceivable.
The initiative of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in his Blackpool speech and reflected in his 27-point programme—both of which, due to the courtesy of my noble friend Lord Ferrers, I have had the opportunity to study with great care—is most welcome. Already it is proposed to implement certain recommendations of the Royal Commission. The hope is that other recommendations to which reference will be made may also be implemented in the Bill.
Although this is essentially a political matter—the responsibility lies with the Government and therefore inevitably the decision is political—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, that the approach on all sides of the House should be essentially on a non-political basis. As usual in your Lordships' House, I speak merely for myself. We can then surely make common cause on the need for reform of the system so as to achieve a better ordering of what, frankly, is a disordered society. Inevitably, there is scope for disagreement as to how that may best be achieved. Hence the immense value of today's debate. To my mind the criticism, as reported in the press, that the attitude of government is "short sighted and irresponsible" or "unconstitutional" in usurping judicial discretion on sentencing is wholly misconceived if one looks at the documents. How the press have gained that impression, I do not know.
There is one aspect of the proposals of my right honourable friend, referred to by my noble friend Lord Ferrets, with which I am wholly unable to agree. The concept that in a rape case it is either "offensive" or "unjustified"—I use the words in the document—for the judge to warn the jury of the danger of convicting only on the evidence of the complainant is totally wrong. I
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take the contrary view. It is essential that the judge should be able to, and should, give such a warning. It is immaterial whether the subject of the alleged rape is male or female; or indeed whether the judge is male or female. The manner in which that matter is expressed in my right honourable friend's document is not acceptable. With that exception, however, I support the attitude of my right honourable friend.
Keeping one eye firmly on the clock—there is no time today to debate but only to indicate, and one therefore has to be selective—I come to the sacred cows. Of course there is no such thing as the right of silence. The question is whether the judge can comment on the fact that nothing has been said. However, I draw a distinction between what happens at a police station to which I go with my noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon, and what happens in court. I believe that the judge should have the right to comment in court if the accused gives no evidence and assuredly when he has made a sustained attack upon witnesses for the prosecution.
I support also the concept of defence disclosure. I can see no objection to it. Such disclosure would save a lot of time. There is nothing unfair about it. By importing that concept one imports to some degree the inquisitorial procedure. I can see no objection to importing it to some degree. I see no objection to the, proposals put forward by the Lord Chief Justice. In a case where an attack has been made upon the witnesses for the Crown, and the defendant does not go into the box to stand up to cross-examination, I can see no objection to the judge being able to comment adversely.
The second sacred cow relates to confessions. I am afraid that I take the view that there have been far too many fabricated confessions which have resulted in convictions, quashed after years of imprisonment. I favour the system in Scotland and adopt the minority view of the commission at pages 62 and 63. I conclude by again expressing the hope that the Government will pay serious attention to all the observations made in the debate.
4.55 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I feel that I too should apologise for putting my name down to speak this afternoon so soon after taking my seat in your Lordships' House for the first time a fortnight ago. But there were two reasons for that. I hope that your Lordships will at least sympathise with the first. I felt sure that the longer I put off making my maiden speech, the shakier I should feel—if indeed it were possible for a human being to feel shakier than I do at this moment.
The second reason was that by chance I was a member of the court whose task it was to hear the appeals of the Birmingham Six when their case was referred back to us for the second time by the Home Secretary in 1990. As your Lordships will remember, the appeal was not opposed by the Crown Prosecution Service. However, even so, the hearing took several days, and it was on the 14th March 1991 that we announced our conclusion that the appeals must be allowed and the convictions quashed. As the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has already observed, it was on

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that very same day that the Home Secretary announced the setting up of the Royal Commission. As we were walking back from the Old Bailey to the Law Courts, I vividly recall the headlines in the evening papers. I vividly remember my sense of relief—and I might even say of delight—when I read that the chairman of the Royal Commission was to be my noble friend Lord Runciman. I knew then that the investigation would be extremely thorough; that nothing would be spared; no holds would be barred and no sacred cow exempt. When the report was published—and it was surely published more quickly than one had any right to expect, certainly in relation to other Royal Commission reports—I knew that the recommendations would be sane and balanced, and that the report would be extremely well put together. And so it has proved to be. I should not like noble Lords to think that I have read every single word that has fallen from the noble Viscount's pen. Nor do I know whether it is in order for one maiden to pass any comment on another. However, if that be in order, I would say to the noble Viscount, "Well done".
I say nothing about the more controversial recommendations—the so-called right of silence and the further restrictions which are proposed on trial by jury. Those matters have already been well covered and will no doubt be covered again during the remainder of the debate. I wish to mention only two matters which were widely canvassed in the press at the time of the hearing of the Birmingham Six appeal.
The first, which in a sense is almost as fundamental as trial by jury itself, is this. It was said, if your Lordships remember, that our whole system of justice was in some way at fault; that we should abandon our adversarial system with which we were all brought up, for it only served, so it was said, to obscure the search for truth. Instead, we should adopt the inquisitorial system as practised in France and other continental countries.
I can only say—and here I may disagree somewhat with the noble Lord, Lord Hooson—that I, for my part, was heartily glad when that suggestion was rejected, as I read paragraph 14—or at any rate it was not endorsed by the Royal Commission.
The second matter concerns the question of evidence of confessions. As your Lordships know, the present rule is that a confession is only admissible at all when challenged if the prosecution can prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was voluntary. That is to say, that it was not obtained by oppression or the threat of oppression in any shape or form. But it was said by some that that was not a sufficient protection. Confessions, it was said, should only be admissible if they were confirmed or corroborated by some other evidence, however insignificant that evidence might be in the case as a whole. It was observed that this was or seemed to be the law in Scotland.
There are two things to be said about that. First, such an innovation would not have made any difference at all in the Birmingham Six case, where there was of course ample corroboration afforded by the scientific evidence. So such an innovation would not have made any
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difference to the verdict of the jury in that case. The same is I think true of all the other notorious miscarriages of justice in recent years.
The second thing to be said is that there would be a serious downside to any such proposal. Every year, a number of defendants come before the courts—not perhaps in the most serious cases—in which there is no evidence other than the defendant's own confession. I can see no reason—and again I may differ from the noble Lord, Lord Hooson—why such defendants should not stand trial and let the jury decide whether their confessions be true or false. Where a confession is strictly proved—and that is the vital condition—it remains, in my opinion, the best possible evidence of guilt. To let a defendant off just because there is no other evidence against him save his own confession—perhaps quite trivial evidence—would offend my sense of justice. So I am glad that the commission rejected that proposal too in paragraph 87 of its report. It would surely be a most retrograde step to reintroduce the concept of corroboration, with all the problems that anyone sitting in the courts knows that it causes, just when we are trying to get rid of that concept in other branches of the law.
I am grateful to your Lordships for listening to these few observations on what I believe to be a most valuable and important report.
5.4 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, it is a tremendous personal pleasure to be able, on behalf of the whole House, to congratulate the noble and learned Lord on his maiden speech. If I may say so, knowing him as I do, it is typical of him that as a former "miler" he has lost not one second in coming to this House and making the speech that he made: a civilised, sensible and relevant speech. Knowing him, I am sure that he will avail himself of the new judicial freedom to fulfil the wish of all of us to hear him on many another occasion. He will bring a waft of bracing and emollient Sussex air to our deliberations in the House.
Turning to the noble Viscount's report, as flattery is in the air, I shall say at once that he has produced a remarkable document and made a remarkable speech. Above all, we have heard his sensible and wise remarks about the right of silence. A massive burden of work bears witness to the awesome task of completing the report in the clearest prose in the space of two years.
Having worked all my professional life in the criminal justice system, I awaited the report with keen anticipation. In the result, I have one general criticism and one major disappointment, but much unstinted praise. By far the most important recommendation is of course the maintenance intact of the right of silence in the police station and at trial. The similar decision of the 1981 commission is endorsed, after the most intense research. Two Royal Commissions in 12 years! What more does the new Home Secretary want? The recommendation is not surprising, as the right reflects the very basis of the English criminal law. It is somewhat of a surprise that I should spell this out to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice. When crime is in the news and the police are under pressure,

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suffering the grievous loss that they have, a calm appraisal of our fundamental rights is more than ever necessary.
Our accusatorial system rests on two principles: the presumption of innocence and—the other side of the coin—the privilege against self-incrimination. The two are bound together in the right of silence. This last is described in the recent case of Lam Chi Ming by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Griffiths, as deeply rooted in the law and
"as the most fundamental rule of the English criminal law".
In the everyday confrontation of the citizen and the state in the shape of the police, the citizen is made aware of that right through the obligatory caution:
"You need not say anything unless you wish to do so".
The report cites at page 49 a House of Lords case last year in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mustill, says of the right of silence that it bestows on the citizen who exercises his right,
"an immunity from adverse comment".
That is the reality of the right of silence, a right not written in inverted commas and a right which I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, surprisingly still exists.
The 1981 commission said:
"To use a suspect's refusal to answer police questions as evidence of guilt would be to compel a reply, to subvert the very principle of the onus of proof".
The report at page 55 uses these words which I cannot emphasise too strongly:
"There are too many cases of improper pressures being brought to bear on suspects in police custody, even [with] the safeguards of PACE… for [us] to regard [such a proposal] with equanimity".
Those principles of English common law are now enshrined in Article 6 of the European Convention, yet, if I heard it aright this afternoon, the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice, wishes to undermine that right. He wishes, as I heard it, to put the operation of the right of silence into the discretion of the judges.
These principles are the citadel which, throughout my professional life, has always been the ultimate target of the autocrat, the "I know best" brigade and the puffed up politician. The police are of course eager to have the power to force the citizen to speak—to get him to incriminate himself—so that he will say to himself, "If I speak, if I am silent, either way I make the prosecution case". That is why in this country, when in custody, his only weapon is the right to say "No".
The tough reality of the police station and the cell is, as the commission found, that even with PACE and tape-recorders, one's words can be twisted, changed or omitted to provide the missing evidence that the interrogator so urgently requires. That is why those who prosecute and defend, the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association, those who work the system, prosecutors and defenders alike, support the finding of the Royal Commission. I suggest that those who say so glibly, "The innocent can have no fear; it is the criminal who manipulates the system", and those politicians who wish to destroy with one blast of Blackpool air the very base of the English criminal law, should ponder the further words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Griffiths, in his reference to the matter of self-incrimination in the case that I have quoted:
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"It is better by far to allow a few guilty men to escape, than to compromise the standards of a free society".
That is the issue that underlies the right of silence. Once the prosecution is unalterably settled, and the accused has legal assistance, or is in the presence of a judicial officer, then some disclosure by the defence would not., in my view, offend the right of silence.
I now turn to my disappointment. I had hoped that the report would start with a comprehensive analysis of how the system had failed in the appalling series of miscarriages of justice, and why it was that a public lack of confidence had replaced what once was a very general feeling of pride and approval. Far from finding, as one commissioner has said, that the main structure of the system was basically sound, I had hoped that the report would grapple head on with the malpractice of the police, the culture of dishonesty and often corruption that, for instance, successive commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, from Robert Mark onwards, have tried so hard, but failed, to stamp out.
I had hoped that the report would address the abysmal failure of trial judges to recognise the dangers and weaknesses of the cases presented to the different juries, and their repeated failure to set right the injustices on appeal. I had hoped that it would examine the failure of the lawyers in their overriding duty to the court to see that such miscarriages of justice do not come about. Are there not structural changes to he brought about in all these areas? I fear that the wood at the guts of this inquiry will be lost in the 350 trees of recommendation. It will be so easy for any government to say, "Look, we've carried out 300 recommendations, yet failed to get to the very basis of the problem".
The report failed, I fear, to outlaw uncorroborated confession; untape-recorded admissions; confessions made incommunicado in custody; evidence obtained by police malpractice; and convictions upheld where police malpractice is established. It has removed the right to trial by jury, as we have heard, in 35,000 cases for financial reasons, and it seeks further to undermine jury trial by the disastrous idea of letting researchers loose into the jury room. Those points are the negative side of this very brilliant report.
The commission has achieved a very great deal. It has worked enormously hard. But I fear that miscarriages of justice may still too easily occur.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, this is one of those very distinguished Royal Commission reports which may be expected to make a very real contribution to the improvement of our system, in this case our legal system. We are fortunate that the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, was the chairman of the commission, and we have heard the formidable clarity this afternoon which he has evidently brought also to the work of the commission.
We were also fortunate enough to hear the informative and moving maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, brought great and

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very relevant experience to the debate. We should be very grateful to my noble friend Lord Windlesham for introducing a debate of such very high quality.
The central theme of the debate is no doubt the rights of the accused, and of the victim—the balance between the need to convict the guilty and to acquit the innocent. But perhaps I may address one particular theme, which was touched on by the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, in his remarks; namely, the position and standing of the police. Paragraphs 96 to 103 of the report deal with the issue of police discipline.
The bedrock of our system of order in this country, and a key part of our system of justice, depends upon the very high standing in which the police are properly so widely held. It is a sadness that the occasion for the report of the Royal Commission was a very sad series of miscarriages of justice, some of which did not reflect well upon the operation of some members of the police force. What has been so damaging, in my view, to the good standing in the public eye of the police force has not simply been these miscarriages of justice—there will be bad apples in the barrel and there will be miscarriages of justice—but the failure in the majority of cases to discipline those police misdemeanours which on some occasions have clearly occurred. The report states:
"We doubt whether the existing arrangements for police discipline do now command general public confidence".
My central point this evening is that it is unfair to the vast majority of the police that this situation should pertain. It is unfair to the vast majority of our police who do their work so effectively and well that those few bad apples in the barrel are allowed to remain in the barrel, as it were, without effective discipline.
There is a widespread view in this country, which I have heard quoted at times, that it is in some way disloyal to question the behaviour of individual members of the police force, even when that behaviour may seem to be suspect. There is a suggestion in some quarters that it is not always appropriate to question police evidence. I do not believe that that view does justice to the police. However, it is a serious error from which the judiciary itself has not been entirely immune. The most famous case is of course that of the Birmingham Six, which activated the report that we are now discussing. It will be recalled by some Members of this House that six years after the conviction of the Birmingham Six, there was a civil action in which the Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, terminated the proceedings with these words:
"If the six men win, it will mean the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary, and were improperly admitted in evidence, and that the confessions were erroneous".
He argued that this was such an:
"appalling vista … that the action must be permitted to go no further".
So those six men had to wait another 11 years in prison for their case to be accepted and for their convictions to be quashed, as we heard only a few moments ago.
Something went seriously wrong. When things go so seriously wrong and the course of justice has been perverted—I speak now in general terms as I do not
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wish to deal particularly with the case of the Birmingham Six which has been brought to a conclusion (I refer now to the police officers) which may or may not be entirely satisfactory; I am sure that it is not appropriate to try to deal with specific cases in this House—we and the police are entitled to expect some action. We are entitled to expect that, when misdemeanours have occurred, the matter where appropriate, will be brought to trial or (and perhaps in any case) subjected to coherent disciplinary procedures. In particular it should not follow the course of taking early retirement on medical grounds before disciplinary proceedings are concluded. That was a point made in the Royal Commission's report.
I recall that on that last point there has been a statement from the Home Office to the effect that the procedure of taking early retirement on medical grounds before disciplinary proceedings have been concluded has now been terminated. I should be grateful if my noble and learned friend, who will be replying to the debate for the Government, will confirm that point for me. I found no mention of it in the Home Office consultative paper of March 1993.
It is clearly an irony that the six persons were wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. We must therefore infer that the perpetrators of the outrage for which those six people were convicted have presumably gone free and remained free. If I were a member of the police force, I should deeply resent that just a handful of bad apples (if I may continue to use that image), a few dishonest policemen, were bringing the police force into disrepute. I should sense a lack of leadership in the Home Office and among senior police authorities in that this situation had been allowed to persist for so long, and I should feel that the good name of our police demanded a better response. Therefore I welcome warmly the recommendations in the Royal Commission's report which I hope will lead to discipline being treated as a separate issue altogether from criminal prosecution and the doubtful dodge, safeguard or, shall I say, refuge of double jeopardy being scrapped. If I were a policeman in such a position, I should advise both the Home Office and the Government that it is poor service to the high standing and good name of the police to allow the present situation to continue.
I hope that when my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench comes to reply, he will confirm that retirement on medical grounds before disciplinary proceedings are concluded is no longer permitted. Perhaps more significantly he will be able to confirm that the Government will implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission in relation to police discipline.
5.24 p.m.
Lord Dainton: My Lords, many noble Lords who have already spoken and some who have yet to speak in the debate have extensive knowledge of the law and our courts of justice. I have no such knowledge. I enter the debate for another reason. Your Lordships may recall that the Select Committee on Science and Technology established a sub-committee to inquire into the forensic

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science service of the United Kingdom. It did so because of the crucial role that forensic science can and has played in criminal cases: on the one hand, in prosecuting the guilty and preventing charges being brought or leading to the acquittal of innocent people; and, on the other hand, when that evidence is flawed and innocent people are deprived of their liberty, of which the notorious miscarriages of justice in recent years, to which reference has frequently been made this afternoon, are a constant reminder.
The report of the sub-committee, published in March, is favourably referred to at paragraph 5 in Chapter 9 of the Royal Commission's report. I should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, for that reference. I also want to congratulate him on his maiden speech, which was conducted, as I believe must rarely be the case, it seemed to me without a note. As chairman of that sub-committee, I should like to comment on that chapter and on some other related points.
Your Lordships may in fact be aware that in England and Wales (to which the report refers—not to Scotland) general forensic science services are provided by the laboratories of the Forensic Science Service, which is now a new agency of the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory and an expanding but quite unregulated private sector, while specialist services are offered by the Defence Research Agency and the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. If justice is to be served, the quality of those services must be the highest attainable and be presented to the court as completely and unambiguously as possible.
The extent to which those aims can be achieved depends on the technical competence, the personal and professional integrity of the individual responsible forensic scientist who is called in as an expert witness, the efficiency, tone and management of the laboratory in which that scientist works, the skill of those collecting samples to be examined (the scene of crime officers) and finally the efficacy of the court's procedures. It is important to recognise that the forensic scientist is not a servant of the court nor is he or she paid by it. His evidence is adduced by counsel who use it in the adversarial context of the court in a dialectic which some, including myself, may regard as akin to scientific inquiry.
To the Select Committee it seemed self-evident that individual forensic scientists, whatever their other qualifications, should be tested and registered as fit to practice. All those active forensic scientists, whether public or private, as well as prosecutors and the police who submitted evidence to the committee strongly supported that view. That conclusion should not, and does not, prevent the judge from hearing whom he pleases. We believe that the Government should be responsible for the administration of a registration process of individual forensic scientists and should be assisted by what we call the Police Advisory Board (to which I shall return later), in which the relevant public and private constituencies should be represented, including the relevant professional bodies.
The Royal Commission was reluctant to go so far. But it considers that professional bodies should keep a register of members suitably qualified to act as expert
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witnesses in particular specialties. After a great deal of reflection on those two slightly different approaches, I still prefer the Select Committee's solution.
Turning now to the quality of the laboratories in which the forensic scientists work rather than that of the individuals, the Select Committee and the Royal Commission are in broad agreement on the necessity for external scrutiny of the quality assurance procedures operated by the laboratories and the results of those scrutinies as well as on the need for some overall supervisory body for forensic science. It would be called a council by the Royal Commission and the public advisory board by the Select Committee.
In their evidence to the Select Committee, the laboratories themselves told us that they would welcome such a board. It is important to recognise the great progress that the public laboratories have already made with their own quality assurance procedures in recent years. That is something which appears to have gone largely unnoticed.
First, one of the striking features of British forensic science is that it is highly cost-effective. It has been shown that it doubles the chance of the clear-up—I use that term neutrally—of police investigations at costs which are less than those for CID or fingerprint input. It seems inevitable that demand for it will grow and in that one can foresee dangers. The numbers of private practitioners may increase, and if they are unregulated it will be bad for the whole system. If the requisite standards are to be maintained, that sector must be subject to the same rigorous registration arid accreditation processes as we believe should exist in the public sector.
Secondly, direct charging for services, whether in an internal market or the external private market, causes the purchasers of forensic science who have limited budgets to be extremely cost-conscious. Misplaced efforts to economise can then have deleterious effects which at their worst could result in a future miscarriage of justice. Less dramatic, probably more frequent and certainly important, is a diminished access to forensic science. When costs are in part met by legal aid, which is both limited and often late in payment, that is particularly likely. That is why the Royal Commission's recommendation 284 that legal aid claims made in advance of scientific work being commissioned,
"should be processed and paid promptly and at least interim payments made",
is so important and to be welcomed. There is also a danger that when charges are reduced to capture custom, too little work will be devoted to that research on which future effectiveness depends. That too is acknowledged by the Royal Commission and the Select Committee. Both seek to encourage research; they recognise that pace-setters in research should exist and that universities have a valuable part to play as host to at least one centre of excellence. In the Select Committee's view, only a small amount of money is needed to secure those ends; it is a small premium to pay for an insurance against declining standards and the serious consequences that that may entail.
The list of desiderata on which the Royal Commission and the Select Committee are broadly

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agreed is long and I have time only to mention a few. What we both consider is essential if those reforms are to be achieved is that some body should be set up under the auspices of the Home Office—call it a policy advisory board or a council—which would be charged with keeping an eye on the adequacy, the organisational relationships and the quality of the various forensic science services in England and Wales and with the power to recommend measures for improvement. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of work for it to do. Is it too much to hope that after consideration of both our reports the Government will come forward with some arrangement which will accommodate our joint concerns and views?
If justice is to be served the full import of any forensic evidence must be fully comprehended by the court. Much therefore depends on the manner of that presentation to secure the maximum comprehension by the court and especially by jurors, few—if any—of whom are likely to have anything but the most partial understanding of scientific method, its powers and its limitations. In proposing procedures to reduce misunderstanding, the Royal Commission and the Select Committee are at one. Both insist that when scientific evidence is being led, the prosecution counsel must conduct a pre-trial conference with his expert witness, and both recommend a pre-trial review before a judge when evidence is disputed, the ultimate aim being to provide the court with a clear account of what evidence is agreed and what is disputed, so as to minimise scientific argument in front of the jury. Both the Commission and your Lordships' Select Committee wish to give scope to expert witnesses to use visual aids, to clarify or add to their evidence if they think that to be necessary and the judge concurs. Like the committee, the Royal Commission sees the need for a review of the hearsay rule, which restricts the admissibility of scientific evidence performed by a competent assistant of the witness and also for some training for criminal lawyers in the basis of forensic science.
In a majority of those matters studied by both the Royal Commission and the Select Committee there is a remarkable coincidence of views which I hope will powerfully strengthen the case for the acceptance by government of the appropriate recommendations. I hope your Lordships will agree. After all, those of your Lordships who are learned in the law will instantly recognise that "coincidence" is "corroboration" under another name, while scientifically literate noble Lords will adopt the mathematical approach that says that the probability that both the Royal Commission and the Select Committee are wrong is mathematically the product of the chances of error of each and therefore, dare I suggest, quite minute.
5.36 p.m.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Windlesham for giving us this opportunity to debate the important report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. As other noble Lords have said, over 300 issues are dealt with by the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, and his members of the
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commission. It would be tempting to say a few words about each of them. However, this evening I shall confine myself to just three.
The rise of crime is a concern in practically every country worldwide. It is the responsibility of government to lead a nationwide partnership to cut crime. The public expect effective action and look to Ministers to give them confidence by the use of significant measures. I wish to refer to the delays which occur throughout the legal system. I accept wholeheartedly the old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. I passionately believe that the situation where someone has a serious charge hanging over them month after month should be ended as soon as possible. The strain is on families as well as defendants, and for someone who is eventually acquitted the trauma must be horrendous.
I realise that everyone working in the system is trying their utmost to cut out delay, but the system seems to be longwinded and in need of bold action. For instance, too many cases, for various reasons, end up in the Crown Court. One of those reasons is the right of the defendant in "either-way" cases to choose the venue of his trial. In this country we have over 27,000 magistrates, all of whom are well trained, having been appointed because they are believed to have such necessary qualities as impartiality, fairness and common sense. It always seems strange to me, therefore, when a Bench has come to a view that a case is suitable to be heard in a magistrates court, that the clerk then turns to the defendant and says, "You have heard the magistrates say that they are willing to hear your case. Now it is up to you to say where you would like your case to be heard—here or in the Crown Court".
All too often the choice is the Crown Court. The reason may be that the defendant just wishes to put off the day of the trial; perhaps he thinks that he has a better chance of acquittal in the Crown Court. However, if one has a judicial system in which one believes and for which one has respect, and which deals with 93 per cent. of all criminal cases, why should not the court make that vital decision? Obviously clear guidelines would be given and criteria developed to assist in coming to that decision. I believe that more cases would then be heard in the magistrates' courts, freeing up the Crown Courts to concentrate on the more serious cases. I am concerned about those who opt for the Crown Court and then change their plea at the court door. In addition to the delay caused to the whole system, the cost of such proceedings to the taxpayer is formidable.
The technical development of DNA fingerprinting is an important tool in the fight against crime, so I am delighted that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has accepted the recommendation of the commission and indeed intends to extend the use of DNA to anyone who has been arrested in connection with a recordable offence. I would go further, my Lords. In recent days the question of ID cards has been raised again. I restate my belief that we should have such cards for everyone and DNA records. I am sure that the public would see it as a sensible and positive initiative. After

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all, the development of cards today is such that nearly all of us have at least one and have become accustomed to their use.
The right of silence is an issue which always causes great debate. I take a very simplistic view. I believe that no one has anything to fear from being asked reasonable questions about where they were and what they were doing. Safeguards are now in place, such as tape-recorded interviews, which give adequate protection. Evidence shows that in one-fifth of all Crown Court cases the defendant makes some use of the right to silence. It is certainly used by hardened criminals who I believe abuse the privilege.
The most important role of the judicial system is to ensure that the guilty are convicted; but equally importantly, that the innocent are acquitted. I welcome the Home Secretary' s prompt action in accepting some of the most important recommendations and I very much hope that in the coming Session we shall have the necessary legislation brought before this House.
5.41 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness. I gather that she was once chairman of the Conservative conference. I am sure that her views as expressed today would have been very acceptable there. I hope that she does not find the atmosphere here too gentle, civilised and sophisticated for her taste. As time goes on, she will get used to it.
I am very happy to take part in the debate initiated in such stylish fashion by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. Years ago the daughter of Professor Gilbert Murray wrote a book called The Good Pagan's Failure. I would say that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is an example of the good Conservative success, which is a rather paradoxical reflection. If I had my time again I would not exactly be a Conservative, as I was once; but if I were a Conservative, I would be the same kind of Conservative, if I may put it that way, as the noble Lord.
We have had some distinguished maiden speeches, if it is not impertinent of me to congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I must mention my noble friend Lady Gould. When I was much younger people were terrified and horrified at the thought of Transport House. However, my noble friend comes before us as the acceptable and attractive face of Transport House. What more can one say?
I intend to speak briefly and well within my 11 minutes. I shall not deliver another speech on penal reform because penal reform, curiously enough, is not the subject before the House today. Penal reform is concerned with the sentencing and treatment of convicted persons. We are concerned with prosecuting the guilty and at the same time trying to avoid convicting the innocent. There are many noble Lords present who have much more right to speak on that subject than me. I shall confine myself to a few thoughts about miscarriages of justice.
I have had a good deal of first-hand contact with some of the people involved, most of all with someone called Mrs. Maguire, a woman who was shamefully
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maltreated and spent years in prison as a result of the grossest of stupidity—to use no stronger word—on the part of the whole system. Various members of the family were treated very badly. Her son was 13 when he was arrested. He spent three years in custody. Noble Lords may say that no legal provision could cope with that, but that was, in my opinion, the most horrifying fact of the whole story. At any rate, here was this lady, Annie Maguire. She was convicted of running a bomb factory. She would not know how to make a bomb any more than most of us would. But that is what happened. She spent many years in prison. I therefore want to ask whether, under the proposals of the Royal Commission which we are discussing today—I am not too sure where the Government come in here—that could happen again. I want to focus on that quite simple issue in that single case.
The fact that Sir John May was a member of the Royal Commission is a strong argument for the view that that situation is well catered for. Sir John May did more than anyone else through his inquiries finally to vindicate the Maguires, so if Sir John May says that the proposals of the Royal Commission are adequate, many people will feel that that should be good enough for most of us. Nevertheless, I am bound to give the House the opinion of Mr. Logan, the solicitor who worked all those years for the Maguire family and others involved in these miscarriages and who is still fighting the battle to secure adequate compensation. Mr. Logan, on reflection, considers that it is most likely that even under the Royal Commission's proposals the same thing could happen, up to the point where the appeal is rejected.
I must state that opinion. No one knows the subject as well as Mr. Logan, after all these years. He recognises that if an independent authority is set up—I am still not sure (perhaps we shall be told more tonight) whether the Government are to set up this independent authority; I do not think that we were told that—justice will eventually be done rather sooner than it was done in that. case. Nevertheless, unless something more drastic than the proposals of the Royal Commission is adopted, unfortunate people like the Maguires and others will spend years in prison. A great injustice would occur. That is an opinion, I agree. Noble Lords can take it or leave it as they like. But it must be put on the record.
I want to make it plain, if only for Mr. Logan's professional reputation, that he is not against the whole report of the Royal Commission. He favours it. In particular, he favours the setting up of an independent authority. He favours the Royal Commission, but he thinks that there are weaknesses when it comes to trying to prevent miscarriages of justice. Mr. Logan singled out 13 issues involved in the miscarriages. Four out of the 13 are covered in the report. The other nine are not covered. In particular, the corroboration of confessions is not covered adequately by the Royal Commission.
I place before the House that consideration. We must realise that we should not go away and think, "There will not be any more miscarriages of justice". We must not suppose that that will happen. People being what they are, with the possibility of dishonesty and so on, everything cannot be covered. However, it is within our power to do much more than we are doing, or the Royal

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Commission is doing, to avert miscarriages of justice. I hope that the Government will at least take note of the opinion of that gentleman who I personally suggest has a unique right to speak on the matter.
5.49 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, with so many maidens present, I must spare one of my precious 11 minutes to say how welcome their speeches all were. To one of them, the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, I would say that we are often accustomed to having to wait too long for the end of a speech in this House; it really is a pleasure to find that one has had to wait a great deal too long—four years too long—to hear the beginning. I hope that we hear many more quite soon.
I propose to look at only two aspects of the matter before your Lordships' House—one specific and the other general. The specific one relates to the proposal in paragraph 19 of chapter 6, which was referred to by my noble friend Lady Seccombe, to limit the option of going for trial by jury in cases of the theft of items of limited value—below £200 is the optimum level.
We have rehearsed that question in this House in connection with an earlier Criminal Justice Bill. Arguments were advanced which I believe were then summarised very ably, as one would expect, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Taylor of Gosforth. I hope that your Lordships will consider for one moment what those arguments were. If I recall them correctly, the first was that such an option is a legal right. I remind your Lordships that the origin and control of the legal right is parliamentary. That is the function of this House and another place with the Crown. So nothing is sacred from that point of view.
The second argument is that it is part of our culture. I believe it is in a state of decline with increasing violence. It is materialistic, xenophobic and a largely incompetent culture which needs to be changed. The fact that something is part of it does not argue that it should not be changed as well. The third argument is that the accusation of theft is peculiarly damaging to the accused's reputation. I am not sure whether I believe that it is more damaging to an accused than assault on a policeman, driving a motor car while drunk or obstructing a policeman in the pursuance of his duties. As I understand it, all those offences are triable only by the magistrates, and are all imprisonable. In any case, surely reputation is relevant only on first conviction. I cannot see that there is any danger to the reputation of a convicted shoplifter or thief when he or she comes for trial for the second time. These convictions are appealable in any case. If magistrates were not to be allowed to hear cases of those accused of offences which were damaging to the reputation if they were sustained, the magistrates would have nothing left to do.
The next argument appears to be that magistrates would not be fit people to decide whether the question of reputation was of sufficient weight to justify referral to the Crown Court. In view of the volume of business with which they already deal with the confidence of the nation and the judiciary, that seems to be a strange consideration. It is particularly strange to suggest that
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magistrates might think that the reputation of a doctor was more valuable than that of a bricklayer. The comparison invited in the recommendation was a quite different one which magistrates would be capable of making.
All this would be to me a fairly academic discussion had I not been in charge of Her Majesty's prison service for three years. During that time I was exercised, as my successors are now, about the conditions of overcrowding in our prisons, particularly in the remand wings. It came to my notice recently that of the business in the Crown Court in Greater London, I believe 10 per cent. of the business and 8 per cent. of the time of the court was taken up with cases of this kind before juries. In the remand wings I saw queues of people waiting to get to the Crown Court which was occupied hearing such cases or, as my noble friend Lady Seccombe said at an earlier stage, not hearing them because the plea had been changed at the doors to the courtroom.
To those of your Lordships who believe that there is no price to pay for resisting this recommendation, I recommend a visit to Reading gaol or any other local prison in the hotter months of the year. Noble Lords will find three young men stifling for 23 hours a day very often, together for a part of that time, with the results of slopping out. That is not something to which noble Lords would condemn their children when they were untried and unconvicted. Technically innocent people are kept unnecessarily long in those conditions as a result of this provision.
The question is even more important than that, because a reduction of that population, which this reform would bring about, would reduce the number of people in the remand wings. Because the prisoners there are unconvicted and untried, they have many more privileges than those serving long sentences. They absorb a hugely disproportionate amount of staff time as a result, and consequently the effects on the long-sentence prisoners of being locked up and not getting education or work, is disproportionate. As noble Lords would have gathered, I feel strongly about that. I ask the Government to consider this recommendation very seriously. I for one will join others in the Lobby if the legislation necessary to implement it goes to a Division.
The other matter to which I draw attention is the context in which this report is written. I do not mean the immediate context of the particular trial and the result which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, in whichever unpronounceable location he chooses to be, referred to in his very able maiden speech. I refer to the history and society in which we live to which I have already referred. It is appropriate to talk about the context because anything looks different according to its context. A bull looks very different if it is seen in a farmyard pen; or if it is seen in a field in which one has chosen to have a picnic; or indeed if it is seen in a china shop.
This document comes to us at a moment when it seems to me quite clear that respect for all our institutions, including the judiciary, this place, and it may be parliamentary processes and democracy themselves, are being called into question and receiving

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less than their former respect. It is a time when material gain is being seen by increasingly large proportions of our population as the only mark of success and the only means of acquiring fulfilment in life. That is a disastrously mistaken view of the purpose of creation and one which leads to endless unhappiness.
We are a violent and selfish society. As a result, the pressures which as a society we put on the judicial system are, as the noble Viscount said in his speech, relentlessly increasing. If that is the case, why do we not try to reduce them? It is important to begin improving the system which deals with them; but the product is too much. There is something wrong in society. Our children are getting the wrong end of the stick. Why is that? What can we do about it? If this were a debate on education, I would go back through the secondary and primary schools and finish up with vigour and fervour in among the teacher training colleges because I believe that we have to establish standards of morality, discipline and ethics which have been lacking for a generation at a disastrous cost to this nation.
But that is a debate on another subject.
I look later in the stream at the young people in whom I have taken a close interest for many years, who find themselves emerging from school onto the streets with nothing to do. Every child who comes into this world and every young man and girl who goes out from school has a spark of initiative, enthusiasm and energy to devote to life which can go in one of two ways. Those attributes have to be used because they cannot be bottled up, otherwise there will be an explosion. Either one builds something or smashes something. Crudely put, that is the choice before our children. We have to give them the chance to build. If they cannot do it through employment or further education, then we must find other means of building.
Those means are to hand. They are provided by countless voluntary workers throughout the country providing outward bound courses, jazz bands, football teams, climbing frames, adventure playgrounds, and so forth. I have 30 seconds left in which to speak. I know that my noble friend Lord Ferrers has been waiting for me to put in a plug for the Home Office. Perhaps I may say how much I support its initiative in the treatment of offenders in the community, and more particularly its diktat that 5 per cent. of probation service resources shall in future (but I regret not until 1995–96) be devoted to the voluntary sector in this field. Although there is not the time now to read them to your Lordships, I have figures which show that, even at the optimum, that will yield less than £10 million and less than is needed. I use my last 30 seconds—stolen from your Lordships' time—to ask my noble friend to put his hefty and notable shoulder behind the wheel to give more impetus to that portion of Home Office policy.
6 p.m.
Lord Wilberforce: My Lords, after most warmly congratulating the Royal Commission on its remarkable report and after thanking the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for initiating this debate, which, again, I warmly do, I move straightaway to the points which I desire to put to your Lordships. I refer to the section of
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the report which deals with forensic scientific evidence. It is an important part of the report, taking up the whole of chapter 9, with 17 pages and some 30 recommendations. Although it is less eye-catching than some of the other subjects such as the right to silence and the necessity for an independent body to look at miscarriages of justice and is, I am sure, of less human interest than the considerations that have just been expressed so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, it is of importance of itself in three ways.
First, a very large number of cases are affected by forensic scientific evidence. On page 156 the report estimates that there are 10,000 cases per year in the Crown Court involving some scientific evidence—no doubt many are routine and trivial and deal with the existence of cannabis or something like that. The House of Lords Select Committee Report, which I shall call the "Dainton Report", shows that in 1991 the forensic science laboratories handled over 90,000 cases, with 400,000 exhibits. So, there are a lot of cases and a lot of money is involved.
Secondly, there is the increasing sophistication of scientific evidence. Tests for nitroglycerine and the presence of blood are getting more and more difficult to understand and to check, and we now have DNA profiling, about which I shall say more later.
Thirdly, there is the possibility of a miscarriage of justice in such cases which, when it does occur, may he spectacular and hard to put right. I shall not list all the cases, but shall mention some which your Lordships will recognise. I refer to the Birmingham Six, the Maguire Seven and to the cases of Judith Ward, Confait and many cases in Australia—let us not overlook those—including the paradigm of all cases, the Chamberlain case of the dingo dog. When such cases occur, they are extremely damaging to the community's opinion of the quality of justice. The effect may be disproportionate, but there is no doubt that each one has a large effect on the public's confidence in the administration of justice.
Most of this ground has been well covered by the Select Committee and I can say what the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, sitting next to me, did not say, which is that the report is a remarkable one of which this House can feel justly proud. It deals with all the material which the Royal Commission was then able to incorporate into its own report. It deals with all the things that matter up to and including, in some ways, the trial of a case. I shall not go over again the ground that was so well covered by the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, about matters such as organisation, procedure, presentation of evidence, disclosure, liaison, training, legal aid, the code of practice and the giving of evidence in court. All those subjects were soundly dealt with by the Select Committee and the Royal Commission and are probably none the worse for being basically matters of common sense. They would probably have evolved anyway under the pressure of good practice. Nonetheless, it is good to have them set out explicitly in the Royal Commission's report. I am sure that they will command universal consent and can be carried out without money or legislation. They will undoubtedly improve the

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quality of justice, make it easier to convict guilty people and make it more safe that the innocent will be acquitted.
But, when all that is done, there will inevitably remain the problem of the serious, difficult, contested case involving scientific evidence on both sides, when miscarriages can occur. This worries me. The question that I put to your Lordships is, "Can we accept that such cases are left to the normal process of decision by a jury trial?" That point has hardly been touched on by the Royal Commission. Of course, we shall hear it said, "Don't underestimate the jury. British juries are very reliable and usually get the right result in the end". We shall be told—as the report tells us on page 157—that, in a study carried out by the Royal Commission,
"jurors … claimed to have understood the scientific evidence without much difficulty",
and that 94 per cent. of the judges consulted said that the scientific evidence was readily understandable by the jury.
That will be said, but we must relate those statistics to the study that was made. One finds that the study covered 800 cases in two weeks of February 1992, which, of course, may not have caught any case of serious difficulty. That that is the case is confirmed by Research Study No. 11—a very useful study—which examined 27 cases, all of which I have looked at. All were of a relatively simple character, such as cases involving cannabis or other drugs, blood tests and fibres of clothing. The great majority were not contested in court. There are still left undealt with the serious, complicated, contested cases.
Against the simple statistics that I have just quoted, I should like to make three points. First, there are some very bleak remarks in the Dainton Report. Paragraph 5.16 states:
"We also perceive a widening gulf of knowledge between the scientists and the lawyers and jury … The level of scientific literacy in the population at large is notoriously low; the capacity of scientists to express themselves intelligibly to a scientifically deprived audience has often been criticised; and these chickens come home to roost when a scientist is forced to explain complicated matters to an uncomprehending jury, under examination by barristers who may be unable or unwilling … to … bridge the … gap".
Strong words.
Secondly, I could give a good quotation from the Chamberlain case in words approved by the High Court. Time does not allow me to give the total quotation, so I shall give your Lordships one sentence. It states:
"no juror could reasonably have failed to acknowledge that, reason as he might, he was not in a position to assure himself of the correctness of a conclusion against the opinion of two professors",
beyond reasonable doubt.
Thirdly, I turn to DNA profiling, which the Royal Commission rightly foresees as likely to be used more and more. Briefly, as your Lordships understand, this rests in the end on statistical evidence. DNA profiling can prove a man's innocence straightaway, but if it does not do that, it does not prove him guilty. All that it does is to say that there is such and such a chance that he is guilty—either a large or a small chance that he is not the person concerned. It is an estimate of probability—one in a thousand, one in 10,000, one in a million or
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whatever the scientists say. That leaves us with this difficulty: how do the statements of probability, which is what the scientists give, match up with the concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" which is what the lawyer has to find? We find the Government Chemist saying—I quote from the Dainton Report—
"the prospects of getting across concepts of risk and uncertainty to courts are very complicated and difficult".
Where does this leave us? There is, of course, the lazy solution in which one says that this is part of the price of the jury system. One could say, "This is the system—good and bad. Errors may occur. They will not occur often but they will be corrected. It is just part of the price that we have to pay". The trouble with that is that the correction is very difficult for the courts to make. The Irish cases show that the ordinary processes of justice are fallible. The Australian cases show the same. The Chamberlain case had to go to the High Court, but even then was not corrected. Moreover, any correction takes a long time. Mrs. Chamberlain spent six years in prison. That is far shorter than what many of the Irish accused were called upon to endure. Unless careful care is taken—I address this remark to the Home Office—one cannot believe that that time will not be increased by the introduction into the machinery of an independent review body. There are grave doubts about that.
The alternative to the lazy solution is to provide, in exceptional cases, the assistance of expert assessors. The Royal Commission mentions that point but does not deal with it, except to say that it is not in favour of the suggestion. One cannot go into that here. The argument is clearly parallel to that which one finds going on in relation to serious fraud cases. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, is not in his place and is not going to speak. It is clear that in a case of serious fraud the position has to be re-examined. One cannot leave it where it is. That may carry with it an examination of the question whether in some cases assessors of some kind should not be added on to the machinery of jury trials.
We should not shrink from introducing some modification of the pure, undiluted jury system—basically, we are all in favour of the jury system—when that is demanded by the complicated and technological circumstances of modern life. In that, and that only—I say this with the great deference—I believe that the Royal Commission's excellent report needs to be taken a little further.
6.11 p.m.
Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, I hope that the House will be indulgent to a layman speaking between two noble and most learned Lords. Several speakers have spoken of achieving a balance between the accused and the victim. The noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, referred to that point in his superb maiden speech. As a layman, I believe that greater emphasis needs to be put on the victims and potential victims. By potential victims, I mean those who may become victims if a guilty person is declared to be innocent and is freed.
Is it too much of a heresy to challenge the principle that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free than for

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one innocent person to be convicted? That principle was established many years ago, fairly, and in accordance with our principles of justice, but it was in days which were less violent than now when we had the death penalty for murder. Times have changed greatly. We live in a time of terrorism, of murder of the police, burglars carrying firearms and crimes of violence all around us. Should we now weigh in the balance more carefully the injustice that will be done to someone who is wrongly convicted against the injustice and suffering that will be caused to the victims of those who are wrongly released?
Some way of redressing that balance might be for the new authority to be able to deal with cases where the CPS finds new evidence after someone has been declared to be innocent. I am aware that that goes against the principle that no person shall be tried twice for the same offence, but it puts the odds in favour of the potentially guilty person who may have been wrongly convicted, if his case can be reopened, while someone who may have been wrongly freed cannot, as I understand it, have his case reopened.
On a less contentious subject which is relevant to the debate and which touches upon problems similar to those raised by my noble friend Lord Elton, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Taylor, made the point that it is very much better to prevent crime than to deal with it. Sadly many young people today leave school maladjusted and start a career of crime soon after leaving school. As well as education in schools, there is a great need for what might be called pastoral care, a point referred to by my noble friend Lord Elton, to steer the energies and thoughts of young people into more constructive channels immediately they leave school. An organisation with which I have been connected for some time, Schools Outreach, tries to do just that. It has well trained people who go into schools at their invitation. They are welcomed by the schools. They give just that kind of pastoral care. Schools that have had the advantage of working with representatives from Schools Outreach praise their work greatly.
Where Schools Outreach has done work, it has been highly successful. Its work could be greatly expanded but for the lack of funds. My noble friend Lord Ashbourne—I have tried to help him—has tried for a long time to obtain grants from the Department for Education to support the excellent work done by that organisation. We have had an almost entirely negative response. The ball has been passed between the Department for Education and local authorities and back again. One cannot support the organisation unless the other does, and so on. The result is that the grant made to that splendid body has been minuscule. Better value is obtained from spending money on reducing crime and stopping young people from beginning a life of crime than spending a huge amount of money on trials and convicting criminals. I hope that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench will take that point away and ask his right honourable friends to adopt a more positive and generous attitude to Schools Outreach and similar organisations. I am sure that there are many more such organisations of which I have no knowledge.
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Lastly, I shall refer briefly to forensic science, a point covered by the noble Lord, Lord Dainton. I served on the Science and Technology Select Committee of your Lordships' House under his chairmanship. I am glad to see Recommendation No. 274 in the report. It is in line with the recommendation of our committee. I should like to see it go much further. That recommendation is that the new council for forensic scientists should keep accreditation under review. I would prefer to go further than that and have a register of qualified forensic: scientists. Anyone can practise as an accountant, an engineer or a secretary, but if one wants to ensure high quality one goes to a chartered accountant, chartered' engineer or chartered secretary. It should be the same for forensic scientists. It is not an easily definable qualification, but I believe that with care we could find. a way of registering forensic scientists. The courts would know that a person registered on that list would be responsible and able to deal with the difficult matters with which forensic scientists have to deal from time to time.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, in a characteristically passionate speech, emphasised that in his opinion one of the most important matters in the Royal Commission's admirable report was its recommendation to retain, as it now is, the existing right of silence. That being his view, I have decided to limit myself to that one issue. In a case (The Queen v. Director of the Serious Fraud Office ex parte Smith) decided last year, which concerned the director's right to pretrial interrogation under the: statute, my noble and learned friend Lord Mustill, who I am delighted to see is by my side, said that the subject of the right of silence causes strong but unfocused feelings.
The lack of acuity of thought on this important: subject is due to three errors. With the deepest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, I believe he has made all three. The first is the confusion that is caused by the misdescription of the right with which we are concerned. We are not concerned with the privilege against self-incrimination, which is exactly the issue on which he addressed most of his remarks; nor are we concerned with what was said on that subject in another case by my noble and learned friend Lord Griffiths. We are concerned with the limited question of whether an adverse inference should be drawn from silence.
The second error is that there is, or so it is assumed, some immemorial right which is deeply ingrained in the common law which gives rise to this so-called right of silence. In the case of Murray v. The DPP, which was decided last year, my noble and learned friend Lord Slynn, having heard considerable case law on the subject, as did the whole Appellate Committee, observed:
"It is clear that there was at the common law a divergence of view as to whether, and if so when and in what manner, a judge might comment to the jury on a failure to give evidence".
Some 10 years ago this House debated the recommendations of the 11th report of the Criminal

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Law Revision Committee on Evidence. With other Law Lords the late Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, spoke:
He said:
"It certainly has never been the law of England … that a man could not be convicted on the evidence of his silence".—[Official Report, 14/2/73; col. 1624.]
He gave two clear examples. The first was the well-known doctrine of recent possession, under which a person found in the possession of recently stolen property who, when asked, gives no explanation as to how he come into possession of it can be inferred by the jury to be either the thief or the receiver of that stolen property. Where is this deeply ingrained rule in that regard? His second example was that of the outraged father whose daughter has been assaulted. In a public space he remonstrates with the suspected man, who fails to answer the charge in circumstances in which one would expect an ordinary reasonable person to answer. That is clear evidence from which guilt can be inferred.
The question therefore arises: whence comes the assertion that this so-called right is one of the fundamental pillars of our freedom or, to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, "reflects the very basics of the English law"? There are only two sources and they are not very old. The first is Section 1 of the Criminal Evidence Act 1898. The main function of that Act was to give the accused person for the first time ever the right to give evidence. Prior to that it was forbidden, essentially on the basis that if he gave evidence he ran the risk of prejudicing his immortal soul. Section 1 provided that only the judge may comment on the failure of the accused to give evidence. Exactly why that provision was included in the Act is difficult to follow. It is a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation that the judge, who is meant to hold the balance between the prosecution and the defence, shall have any burden to take a point which the prosecution is forbidden to take. That was the genesis of the proposition; that the judge only and not the prosecution can comment on the failure of an accused person to give evidence.
Whence comes the prohibition to comment on an accused's failure to answer questions put by the police? I am sorry to have to say that that is entirely the fault of the judges. The first addition of the Judges' Rules, published in 1906 or 1908, provided the terms of a caution. It is well known to your Lordships; that a person is under no obligation to make any statement and that if he does so it may be used in evidence. It followed from that that, having told the accused that he was under no obligation to say anything, it would be monstrous, he having accepted the invitation and said nothing, adversely to comment on his silence. Those are the only two foundations from that time immemorial foundation of the very system of British justice. That is the second error and an error made by the noble Lord.
The third error is to suppose that, if the right of silence were abolished, there would be a substantial shift in the obligation of the prosecution to discharge the onus upon it, which is fundamental, to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. That is a confusion of thought. The onus has absolutely nothing to do with what evidence can or cannot be taken into consideration.
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What is being contemplated is the abrogation of a rule which prevents certain material being put before the jury. That material is there to facilitate establishing guilt. It has nothing to do with diminishing the onus upon the prosecution to prove its case.
Your Lordships are probably well aware that as long ago as 1967 there was introduced the provision that a person who wishes to rely upon an alibi must give notice of that to the police. The heavens did not fall when that provision was passed. But that exists precisely in order to facilitate the work of the police in establishing the case that they wish to bring. If no notice is given, the alibi cannot be used without the consent of the court. If details of the alibi are given, the police are in a position to be able to investigate its validity. It is all designed to facilitate proof; it has nothing to do with shifting the onus.
The present law is quite indefensible. I shall not worry your Lordships by quoting Jeremy Bentham, whose view is well known. He said that if all the crooks were gathered together one could not think that they would wish to invent a more useful restriction than that which already exists.
In an article in the New Law Journal for 1987 Professor Glanville Williams gives the example of an accused person who relies on an alibi. Because he does not wish to be cross-examined he has the evidence of his family called but he does not give evidence himself. Is it really common sense that the judge should be restrained from saying, except in the most colourless of terms, "Well, members of the jury, you may think that it is a remarkable thing", and so forth?
I am not concerned with whether the abolition of the rule results in another 50, 100 or 200 people being convicted. I am concerned that we should get rid of artificial rules which are repugnant to common sense. I am concerned that there should be a change of attitude by the lawyers. I remember from my own past that the first thing you did when a heavy defence case was brought in to you was to ask, "Has he said anything to the police?" If the answer was no, you gave a great sigh of relief and congratulated the defendant. That should be reversed. The present situation should be that the lawyer says to the accused, "If you have not already put your defence on record, then we must lose no time about it". That will enable the police more effectively to investigate the case and often to discharge from any future prosecution the very person who is suspected.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, this is an extremely interesting report, on which I wish to mention only a few points. First, I wish to reinforce the points made by my noble friend Lady Seccombe, which were made even more forcefully by my noble friend Lord Elton. That is the fundamental and controversial point set out in recommendation 114 that, in the absence of agreement by the CPS and the defence, magistrates should be able to decide the mode of trial.
That is opposed on the grounds that it strikes at the root of the constitutional right enshrined in Magna Carta of trial by one's peers. But that is to ignore the modern magistracy which comprises a group of ordinary people

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of reasonable intelligence who are elected for their ability to comprehend, to be fair and unbiased. They have experience and are deliberately chosen to represent a cross-section of society, both politically and by background. They are probably a far better cross-section than a random sample on a jury. Therefore, trial by magistrates is trial by one's peers.
I am delighted that the right of silence is to be reduced. That matter has been taken up extremely ably by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. It will be interesting to see whether the proposal that the jury should be able to take silence into account will be effective. But certainly there is a variation in the degree of culpability to be inferred from silence. An innocent person has nothing to fear from saying that he was not at the scene of the crime. On the other hand, a motorist after an accident might unfairly incriminate himself while he was not fully aware of what happened. In such circumstances, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, mentioned, a solicitor will usually advise his client to say nothing for fear of falling in the trap and unjustly incriminating himself. Therefore the inference to be drawn from silence is not clear cut. However, the right to silence has been abused and some change must be made.
Recommendations 132 to 138 propose compulsory defence disclosure before trial. That is attractive in theory as it would enable some issues to be crystallised, and in some cases it may lead the prosecution to drop its case. However, in practice, those may be pious hopes. Much more importantly, it erodes the principle that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution and conflicts with the recommendation of the commission that the right of silence should be maintained. Therefore, while disclosure of the defence line is desirable, it will have to be introduced with considerable care.
Recommendation 157 as regards canvassing sentence before the trial judge is a good system. That has always gone on in many parts of the country despite the disapproval of the Court of Appeal. It saves time and money and is fair to all concerned.
One point not covered in court design is the separation of witnesses from the accused. In a contested case even a word or a look can intimidate when the witness and the accused see each other close to before entering the courthouse. I believe that the separation of witnesses and accused should be taken into account, particularly in strongly contested cases.
I am particularly glad that recommendation 101 proposes that victims of crime should be kept informed of the outcome of a case. At present nothing is heard, and the public either blame the police or the courts for failing to follow up a reported crime. The result is either that people no longer bother to report crimes because they believe that nothing will happen and it is a waste of time or they may take the law into their own hands. It must be possible for a victim to be informed of the outcome of a case when it is finally concluded.
Very often witnesses fail to turn up at court. That results in much wasted time for other witnesses and costs the court and other individuals a great deal of money. As contested cases are always heard on an agreed date, the defence should be able to ensure that
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witnesses are present. If it is known that they are unable to attend through illness or for other reason, the case: should be put off by arrangement with the clerk. beforehand. That would remove the necessity for other people to attend in vain. The recommendation as regards pretrial reviews would also increase efficiency.
Where a witness does not turn up without an excuse the case should be presumed to proceed without him. The result would be that solicitors and defendants would take a great deal more trouble to ensure that their cases and witnesses were ready to go ahead. That would save: a great deal of time and money. One recent case came before the court for a fifth or sixth time because an insurance company would not provide a copy of an insurance certificate which a defendant had lost. Perhaps that company should have had costs awarded against it for wasting court time. However, the manager has now been summoned to attend.
To support that, there is no doubt in my mind that the new rules governing legal aid have had a dramatic effect already by reducing the number of adjournments requested by solicitors, who now prepare their cases in time. They are therefore asking for fewer adjournments.
In the end it is a question of finding arid punishing the guilty and acquitting the innocent. Perhaps I may tell a tale. I was at a magistrates' conference in Durham. At: the end of the course, there was an exercise in which we were divided into groups. Some magistrates sat as the Bench and others acted the part of the defendant, and so on, as had happened in Durham Court for real. At the end, the Bench of which I was a member decided that the defendant was guilty. Indeed, the man had been found guilty in Durham court when his case was tried. However, all the other six Benches found him riot guilty. That makes one think.
This is a very interesting and comprehensive report. I believe that it will set the stage for criminal justice for many years to come. I hope that the recommendations are swiftly enacted.
6.38 p.m.
Lord Benson: My Lords, I wish to speak on only three subjects. First, I wish to say with all the conviction that I can muster that I support the views of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, on the subject of jury trials. But I do not believe that there is any ground to be gained by pursuing that elusive hare this evening.
Secondly, I have no legal or technical knowledge to know when the right of silence should be applied or relaxed. That is an extremely intricate question. However, I believe that the right of silence should be abolished. As I understand the practice of justice in this country, an impartial tribunal is appointed which is required to inquire into the facts of the case, riot some but all of the facts. How it can possibly arrive at a proper and fair decision when some of the facts are deliberately concealed from that tribunal passes my comprehension. As I understand it, in civil litigation all the facts must be disclosed by both sides. If that is necessary in the pursuit of justice in civil litigation, I see no reason why it is abandoned in criminal litigation.
My third point is different, and I speak on the subject with a certain amount of technical experience. I believe

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that in serious fraud trials it is imperative that the defence should disclose fully what is the defence and the names of the witnesses at the time of the preparatory hearing. That is not the case at present. The matter was examined most carefully by the fraud trials committee under the chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill. I was a member of that committee. We recommended that the full prosecution case should be disclosed to the defence. We then said that we thought that the defence should disclose the general nature of its defence, but need not disclose the names of witnesses. Those recommendations were duly enshrined in legislation.
Looking back with hindsight over a period of eight years, I believe that the latter was a very feeble recommendation for the Roskill Committee to make. The reason behind it was a certain diversity of view among members of the committee. However, I believe the real reason was that we were already breaking new ground on the right of silence and we did not want to go too far in the initial stages.
The whole object of the procedures in serious fraud trials now is that both sides should disclose the situation so that the issues can be narrowed, with the result that matters which go before the jury are reduced in number and volume. However, that does not take place because defence lawyers do not disclose the defence either fully or properly; they use the loose wording of the legislation to enable them to do that.
If the proposed change was made in the legislation, I believe that it would have a dramatic effect on serious fraud trials. Many of the charges on the indictment would not be pursued. If the defence fully disclosed its case, some of the charges would not be worth pursuing. However, it would have another very important effect in that there would be many more pleas of guilty. In many cases, the defence case would prove to be so weak that there would be no object in the accused pursuing his defence and a plea of guilty or plea bargaining would be likely to take place.
I have studied the Royal Commission's report on the latter and I am happy to see that in paragraph 61 of Chapter 7 it supports the view that I have been trying to express to the House. However, it was only a majority view. When the new legislation is drafted, all I urge is that the majority view of the Royal Commission's report on the issue should be adopted.
6.42 p.m.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, we have heard a series of most distinguished speeches, not least from the three maiden speakers. We are dealing, I suppose, with a problem that arises, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, as part of our disordered society. Perhaps we should put the matter in its perspective. The social evils that surround us are far too widespread to be cured by any changes, however radical, in our criminal justice system. Those of us who are lawyers and who sometimes have an inflated idea of our own importance in putting the world to right, should perhaps recognise that our role is really rather limited.
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Indeed, if one looks at the particular social evil which is linked with the question of our criminal justice system, one realises that the system in itself plays a very minor role. I refer, of course, to the apparent breakdown in law an order. The criminal justice system impinges on that in many ways. However, far more important than lawyers in dealing with the problems associated with the breakdown of law and order are the contributions that should be made by our politicians, our economists, our social workers, our bishops, who sometimes sit on the Benches opposite, our journalists and, above all, our parents and teachers. They have a far more important role to play.
What we seek to do with our criminal justice system is, I believe, agreed by everyone present. It was referred to by my noble friend Lord Hooson as being simply the fact that in an efficient and cost-effective way we try to ensure that most guilty people are convicted and sentenced appropriately and that the very minimum of innocent people are convicted or, indeed, arrested and charged. The difficulty is that it is only the individual concerned who knows whether he is innocent or guilty. All that the rest of us can do is try to make intelligent inferences from careful observation while recognising that we may well be wrong.
After some 35 years or so of involvement at the criminal Bar in almost every capacity, except that of a prisoner, I have come to the conclusion that if one accepts—as, of course, one does—that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, then the overwhelming majority of defendants against whom the case is proved are convicted. I say that because of one's own observation and, indeed, the observation of most trial judges who have had to handle criminal trials and listen to the verdicts of juries over and again during their careers. It has been shown by analysis that the views of most of those judges are that, in practically every case, they have found it impossible to disagree with the verdict of the jury. Therefore, when we come to consider, for example, the limitation of the right to trial by jury, let us not become involved in any discussion of the view that in some way juries may be softer or easier to persuade than a single judge.
However, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of guilty defendants are convicted, it is still suggested—apparently by the Government—that some guilty defendants are avoiding conviction by exercising what we have all agreed to call the right of silence, even if it is not a very accurate description. The Royal Commission examined the issue with considerable care. Perhaps I may read to your Lordships the words of the report's conclusion at paragraph 22 on page 54:
"The majority of us … believe that the possibility of an increase in the convictions of the guilty is outweighed by the risk that the extra pressure on suspects to talk in the police station and the adverse inferences invited if they do not may result in more convictions of the innocent".
That was the view of the majority of the Royal Commission. However, the Government have indicated that they take a different view. In what was probably not a very carefully considered speech at the Conservative Party conference, the Home Secretary indicated that the right of silence was about to come under substantial modification by government legislation. Perhaps I

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should not criticise the Home Secretary: party conferences are not the right venue for carefully considered observations.
We all listened with great respect to the virulent attack of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, on my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington who is, I believe, an old sparring partner of the noble and learned Lord. I can only say that it was extremely courteous of the noble and learned Lord to disguise what was really an attack on the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, and the Royal Commission by pretending that my noble friend Lord Hutchinson was the target.
The so-called right of silence is a far more involved issue than discussion has so far revealed or the Government have indicated. It is not simple. A whole series of matters have to be borne in mind. For example, there is a defendant's attitude when he is first apprehended at the scene of the crime. What weight, if any, is to be attached to his silence at that time? There is the position when he is first taken to a police station. There is the position when the police have made up their minds that he should be arrested and have cautioned him. Those two situations, which are very different, are again radically affected by the question of whether a solicitor is present and whether the solicitor has advised the defendant to say nothing or to answer the questions. All those considerations materially affect the position and give rise to different sets of circumstances.
Finally, there is the situation at the trial. I believe that that is the aspect on which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice concentrated. That also gives rise to totally different considerations.
Having looked at those six, eight or 10 different situations in which a defendant may choose to be silent, if one is to abolish the right of silence one has to consider what inferences the jury ought to be left to draw from the fact that the defendant has been silent. Is it suggested that guilt can be inferred from silence? Is it seriously suggested that, if a man is arrested in this country and says nothing, without any further evidence a jury could find him guilty? Not even the Home Secretary would hesitate to reject that proposition.
Or is it suggested that silence can perhaps corroborate other evidence of guilt? In other words, is it in itself of some evidentiary value? That again is an odd situation. It is not one that I have heard suggested, but I do not know what the position is at present nor what the Government propose should be the effect of abolition of the right of silence.
There is a third possibility, which I suspect the Government may have in mind—namely, that in certain circumstances it may form the basis of a legitimate comment by the judge or prosecuting counsel in relation to the defendant who at the trial has given an explanation as to his innocent involvement in the case. It might be appropriate to say to the jury that before they decide whether there is anything in that explanation they should bear in mind the fact that when the defendant was given the chance to make that statement days or weeks earlier he chose not to take it.
Those are quite different circumstances and different criteria. It would help very much if before we got much further with this debate the Government were to make it
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clear in what circumstances they propose to modify the right of silence and what weight they would propose to invite a jury to attach to the fact that a defendant has been silent.
I appreciate that there is a superficial commonsense attraction behind some of this. However, to take an extreme case, if in the dock there is a politician who has spent the whole of his life desperately fighting to appear in the media and to answer every question that he is asked and a great many questions which he is not asked, it might well stretch credulity to the utmost to say that it was not in the least unusual that that defendant had chosen not to say a word when the police invited him to give an explanation in the police station a few days earlier.
While the proposal has a certain superficial commonsense about it, I doubt whether it goes further than that. Like the majority of the members of the Royal Commission, I believe that it is clear that in a police station the great majority of ordinary, decent people are capable of becoming nervous, confused and frightened of authority, and that in general circumstances it would be wholly wrong to draw a hostile inference from their silence. I therefore believe that the Royal Commission and my noble friend Lord Hutchinson are correct and that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, is mistaken.
That is the position in relation to a measure which the Government propose to introduce and which they hope will increase the number of guilty people convicted. As to ensuring that the innocent are acquitted, in my experience, very few people who were in no way involved in the commission of the offence with which they were charged have nevertheless been convicted of its commission. I believe that the number of cases is very small and that they are usually, although not always, the result of an honest case of mistaken identity. I very much welcome the proposals which will deal with that possibility.
Very occasionally there are cases in which it appears that false confessions have been faked or extorted. The question arises as to whether those cases are such as to give rise now to the requirement that any confession should be corroborated before a jury can act upon it. I believe, along with the Royal Commission, that that would be a wholly unnecessary and retrograde step. As the Royal Commission pointed out, and as is self-evident if one thinks about it, a significant number of people against whom there is no other evidence make confessions, go to court and are perfectly content to plead guilty and never for one moment afterwards attempt to plead their innocence. None of those people could even be charged if we were to say that confessions were not in themselves capable of being adequate evidence.
Obviously, where the only evidence is a confession, the judge will have to exercise his discretion in controlling the proceedings and making appropriate comments to the jury. However, as audio and visual recording techniques improve, those warnings may become much less necessary.
In the recent series of notorious trials—and I am not referring to any in which I was involved, because I

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happen to belong to a dwindling band of lawyers who believe that it is totally improper to comment on cases in which one has been involved personally—convictions have been quashed. The general public have come to believe that this was because confessions were invented by the police. Analysis of those cases shows that in most of them that was not so. In most cases the convictions have been quashed because it has been demonstrated that the police evidence about the taking of the confessions was fabricated and was untrue. Whether the confessions themselves were true was not the issue at stake. I could develop that point a little further but I do not propose to do so at this stage because I have already exceeded the time allowed, even for one winding up.
I join in congratulating the noble Viscount on the report of the Royal Commission. Unlike most reports this one is clearly not going to be pigeon-holed. Some of the proposals will be adopted. Others will be refuted by the Government. I hope that we shall have a chance to debate all of them in full when the legislation is brought forward.
6.58 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I endorse wholeheartedly the thanks which noble Lords have expressed to the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman. I do so on two bases: first, the masterly quality of the report and, secondly, the quality of his maiden speech. As he will remember, I gave evidence to his commission, at my own request. I know now the feelings of a private soldier cross-examined by 11 field marshals. I echo also the thanks of the House for the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lady Gould and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I have known the latter, in different circumstances, through my appearances before him. I have always found him to be a judge of grace and discrimination.
It is invidious to single out members of the Royal Commission, but I shall wilfully sin by mentioning two: Professor Zander, who has laboured in this particular vineyard for so long, and Sir John May (Lord Justice May as was) who undertook the courageous task of untangling the monstrous wrongs that were done to the Maguires knowing that it would be unpopular with his colleagues, as it was.
The debate is an opportunity which may not recur these many years. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, rightly pointed out, it is only for 100 years or so that a defendant has been able to give evidence at his own trial. It was even less than 100 years ago that the modern Court of Criminal Appeal came into existence. We on this side do not wish the debate to degenerate into a political football. It has not done so this evening; we hope that it will not do so in the months to come.
There are four questions to be addressed in defining the characteristics of a criminal justice system which will be acceptable to all? First, the guilty should be detected, charged, convicted, and suitably punished. Secondly, the innocent should not be charged; if charged they should not be convicted; and if convicted they should be promptly discharged on appeal. Thirdly,
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our system should conform to the standards of the civilised society in which it operates. Those standards should include as a minimum a tender consideration for the rights of victims, a consideration far too long lacking. Finally, the system should be efficient and cost effective.
Many noble Lords have adverted to the fact that our present thoughts are running hand in hand with another debate, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, among others has contributed with such distinction. I hope that those who have criticised the noble and learned Lord will take upon themselves the burden of reading what he said. It is disagreeable, to me at least, to hear uninformed packs snapping at feet of such distinction. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said that the Home Secretary's speech at Blackpool was not considered. I am afraid that it was carefully considered.
Our stance is governed by the four principles I have mentioned. On this side of the Chamber we wish to take a calm and considered view, recognising that the only sure and certain foundation for a criminal justice system in this country is public confidence.
I turn briefly to victims. I know the work that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has undertaken over the years. I have had the privilege of working with victim support groups. Victims are not simply complainants. They are relatives. They are witnesses. And all of them, in different ways, suffer the strains which our system puts upon them. In particular one thinks of complainants in rape cases, or children who complain that they have been wickedly abused. I do not overstate it when I suggest that the wounds which our system imposes upon those complainants are sometimes as bad as the original wrong done to them.
I suggest that at the very least judges who try allegations of sexual abuse against children should be part of a nominated panel, properly trained and properly selected in the way that judges were trained and selected under the Lord Chancellor's scheme under the Children Act. It is intolerable that complainants or witnesses in that class of case should see, or have the fear of seeing, the defendant in the same court building. It is important, as the report of the commission states, that there is a proper use of segregated facilities for witnesses and complainants in such cases. It is the very least that a decent system should provide. It is only through organisations such as Victim Support that we practitioners have begun to realise the wrong in which we have colluded. It is essential that video testimony should be used not just for child complainants or witnesses but for witnesses generally. It saves time. It stops people being alienated by our cumbersome procedures. It is cheap and efficient. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, pointed out, there will be no new money.
The independent review body is long overdue. It has always been a constitutional monstrosity, utterly incapable of support, that the Executive in the form of the Home Office should have anything to do with the referral to the Court of Appeal of alleged miscarriages. Our stance is plain. That independent review body should be set up as soon as possible. It must be properly equipped. It must have good investigative facilities so

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that secondment to such a body is regarded as a career move or a career benefit for a senior police officer or a lawyer. We believe that ultimately it must remain for the court system to decide on miscarriages although the independent review body has a significant role to play.
On the right of silence, it was a pleasure to witness yet again the scalpel of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, attacking the problem in the way that he did. I do not ultimately agree with his analysis, so one of us may be mistaken. The analysis put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, is the one that matters, as anyone who has practised in the criminal courts knows. When a human creature is in a police station in custody, unhappy, uneasy and weakened, it is foolish to think that abolition of the right of silence in our criminal system will not increase miscarriages. We need to distinguish, as did the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, between the situation of a man in a police station, who may not be properly advised, and subsequent events. We are adamant that the right of silence in the police station must remain.
As the Lord Chief Justice pointed out, when the case is fully known, by the prosecution as well as by the accused, and the prosecution has presented it to the accused, it may not be unreasonable, as the Royal Commission suggests, that the broad nature of the defence should be tendered. I bear in mind the pre-emptive strike that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, made. I see the attractions of that approach. But the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, asks—we would wish the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate to deal with the question in specific detail—what is the Government's claimed approach to those who say nothing at trial? Is it to allow, as the Lord Chief Justice said., the presiding judge and judge alone, and not the prosecutor, to be able to say such words as, "You have heard the attacks made on the prosecution. No positive evidence has been called by the defendant or evidence given by the defendant himself to destroy those"? That is one situation. We await the answer to the question with some eagerness: what are the Government talking about when they refer to the right of silence?
I listened to the historical analysis of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and his chiding—it may have been direct or indirect—of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson. However, the point is this. The moral underpinning of the right of silence on challenge in the police station is this. The state in our country is not all powerful. The state is not authoritarian and does not have overweening power. The fundamental point is that in this country at least the citizen's self is his castle. His ducal acres or his council flat do not matter in that context. It is his "self' which is his castle. That is the castle which we wish to protect when a man or woman is in a police station in those circumstances of weakness.
We should bear in mind that every one of the headlined miscarriages of justice with which we are all so tarred started to take on its own illegitimate life in the police station. Are we now to embark on that journey for short-term political advantages? I am sorry to use those words.
There is extremely valuable material in the report about the training and monitoring of judicial
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performance. My view on judges, which I have expressed to your Lordships on a number of previous occasions, is that the quality of the judiciary in this country is of a remarkably high standard. We are fortunate. The proposals of the Royal Commission, which I personally endorse, are simply an attempt to improve, maintain and secure the standards which the judiciary attains. It is important that there should be training and retraining after appointment. A circuit judge at present is obliged to go on a seminar which lasts one week every five years. As the report pointedly makes plain at page 140 and the following pages, that is simply not acceptable. Most judges regard it as not enough for their everyday purposes.
I agree with the remarks of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice that judges must, in a curious way, become more interventionist in the conduct of the trial and pre-trial and perhaps less interventionist in the way that they sum up cases. If that is to be done, nominated judges need to be appointed at an early stage in serious criminal cases. They must have the control of the case; they have to identify the issues if they can, with the assistance of the lawyers; and they need to isolate the real issues. All those are matters of practice and should be taken as part of the general prescription in the report of the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman, not on the basis of the cherry-picker or, as I believe is the case in Woolworths, of going to get your "pick'n-mix" when you are about to pay on the way out.
There will be no derogation on our side from the value of jury trial. Those who wish to deprive others of it find difficulty in answering the question which I sometimes put to them: "If you or your wife were charged with shoplifting a pound of bananas from Tesco, which forum would you want? Or at least, which forum would you like to be able to elect?" I have never heard anyone suggest that they would not wish for themselves or their close relatives the right to trial by jury. Of course, they turn philosophical when I put the question to them about someone else.
It was said by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that remand places are over-full. I entirely agree. The noble Lord makes such a comment—and I agree with it—at a time when the Home Office is reducing provision for bail hostels and when Crown Court sittings are being cancelled on every circuit. On my own circuit and that of the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, 500 judge days have been cancelled for this coming year—two judge years. Why? Because the fee income to the Lord Chancellor's Department has gone down by £40 million.
On plea bargaining or plea canvassing, as the noble Viscount's report calls it, first, it happens every day in every court. Secondly, there are no safeguards at all for defendants at the moment because it is all fudged in secret. My view is that if a defendant wishes to know his likely sentence and if it is expressed that it must be at his initiation and his choice alone, I see nothing wrong with it, as long as those discussions are recorded, transcribed and no effect can be given to the plea canvass or plea bargain for a particular period of time. Shall we say 24 or 48 hours? There would be safeguards for those who are at present left with no safeguards at all.

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The point that we commend to your Lordships is that plea bargaining does not have as its first attraction the saving of time and money, though those are necessary incidentals. The chief point about plea bargaining is the moral value to, and effect on, the victim, the complainants, the witnesses and the public of the public acceptance of guilt by an accused person who is truly guilty.
There are many other matters within this admirable report. I have had an opportunity to touch on very few. Apart from the fact that it is at the police station that things have always gone wrong in the headline cases, a significant aspect of most recent miscarriages—not the Maguires because they made no confessions—is the over-reliance on confession evidence. It has been the bugbear of our criminal system in this country. At the least, a confession, we suggest, should not be admitted into evidence unless it is in the presence of a solicitor or tape recorded, preferably video recorded, or affirmed subsequently in the presence of a judicial officer or confirmed by other material. That may be claimed to be the panacea in Scotland, but all the conversations that I have had with our legal colleagues in Scotland indicate that it is not necessarily such a marvellous system in practice.
Those are the brief thoughts that I must put before the House. I commend yet again, with the deepest respect, the quality of this extraordinary report which has done such a public service.
7.15 p.m.
The Lord Advocate (Lord Rodger of Earlsferry): My Lords, I shall begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Windlesham for bringing this matter before the House. It has certainly proved a most interesting subject which has given many noble Lords an opportunity to participate. I should like to thank all those who have participated and made such a contribution to this initial—because it can only be initial—discussion of the Royal Commission's report.
Perhaps I may also first congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, on her contribution in her maiden speech. That gives a forecast of great contributions to come. She already strongly identified a theme which I am sure she will develop in her contributions to debates in your Lordships' House—the theme of the position of women and in this case particularly women in the criminal justice system.
I do not feel able to take up all the points which the noble Baroness made in her contribution, but suffice it to say that the existence of legislation now makes sure that specific information is collected about the treatment of women, as well as ethnic minorities, in the criminal justice system. So it will be possible to obtain information which will be able to focus the discussion of those matters for the future.
Perhaps I may also mention the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. That was another remarkable contribution which came from enormous experience which even came into the particular circumstances of the case which gave rise to the Royal Commission. His speech showed that he has
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great knowledge and wisdom which will be invaluable to the House when it comes to further discussion of the topic.
I now turn to what surely must be one of the most remarkable maiden speeches that has been heard in the House—that of the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman of Doxford. We all noticed with astonishment and profound admiration how he delivered his speech with such fluency and without any apparent reference to notes. He put many of the legal Members of your Lordships' House to shame, even though perhaps we should also be able to do that more than others.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Williams, I had the experience of appearing in front of the remarkable commission. Therefore I was not at all surprised by the clarity of thought which came out in the commission's report, nor at the penetrating way in which so many of the issues were dealt with. Certainly, I found it a challenging—using a polite word—experience, which was, I am sure, very valuable for those of us who appeared before the commission.
When considering the report, one has to take it in its general context, as has been said. Your Lordships have heard contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, my noble friends Lord Elton and Lord Caldecote, who spoke about the wider context in which the Royal Commission worked. I cannot this evening go into that because of the restraints of time. But we all recognise that the Royal Commission, and indeed the whole legal system, operates in a wider context, and that what really matters is somehow or other tackling these wider problems as well as the problems which are peculiarly those of the criminal justice system.
Again, we heard of the aims of any criminal justice system. For my part, I would not quarrel with any of the formulations of which we heard, least of all perhaps with the formulation of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, who set out four principles with which I do not believe anybody could quarrel as being the principles of any civilised criminal justice system. It certainly must be its job to convict the guilty and to punish them appropriately. It certainly must make sure if possible that the innocent are not charged, and certainly that they are acquitted, or that they are released as quickly as possible on appeal. That must obviously be so. It is important that the civilised values of our justice system should be enshrined in it.
However, it is also very noticeable that, as was remarked, this Royal Commission was set up because of genuine worries as to whether the criminal justice system in this country was in a state of crisis; whether it required some fundamental reform, for example, by way of introducing an inquisitorial system. One of the most important aspects of this report is that basically it affirms the soundness of our criminal justice system, and in particular does not suggest that we should depart and introduce some sort of inquisitorial system. It has been said that that question could have been more deeply gone into. But it is important to remember that this was not a Royal Commission, for example, comprising a majority of lawyers. On the contrary, it was a body composed of people who were not lawyers and who were therefore looking at the system, so to

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speak, a little bit from outside. Therefore I think that when we find that they., having looked at it, and having acquired knowledge of other systems, affirm that our system is basically sound, then we who are lawyers and who might feel somewhat reluctant or hesitant to make such a statement about our system, can take comfort in the fact that such a distinguished and objective commission has found that the basic system is in fact sound.
Another very important point which emerges from the report—one which has perhaps not been stressed greatly today—is the importance which is attached by the Royal Commission to the early stages in any criminal case. In particular, it stresses the importance of the role of the police. It points out at the beginning of Chapter Two of the report that it really is the work of the police and the manner in which they conduct their investigation which is of fundamental and critical importance to the functioning of the criminal justice system. And that must be right. It must be important that the evidence which is collected and in due course put by the prosecution in front of the court is as sound as it can possibly be. Therefore, that is why we particularly welcome the emphasis that has been put by the Royal Commission on the need for good police practices, and in particular for training.
The Royal Commission has pointed out that police officers must be properly trained. The new national training package has been devised in order that basic interviewing skills can be refined. That report has now been made available to all police officers. Material has also been incorporated in a new foundation course for police recruits. In other words, a lot of work is going on to make sure that for the future police officers will be trained, and will be sensitive in particular in the way in which investigations are being conducted and in which interviews are conducted. That is an important matter. If the input of the police can be ensured to be good, then that will ensure that the basic material with which the prosecution is working is as sound as it can possibly be. There is no doubt that it is difficult, once a case gets into the system with bad evidence—for whatever reason; it may be concocted evidence, and so on—it is much harder at later stages, even in the Appeal Court, or even with some review body, to put things right. It is much better if possible to make sure that things do not go wrong in the first place.
In this massive report, with its 300-odd recommendations, it is inevitable that there has already been some picking and choosing among recommendations. It has been pointed out that the Government have already accepted some of the recommendations and have not yet announced their decision on others. It has been suggested that the Government will pick some and will reject others. I do not think that I can avoid saying that that is likely to happen. The decisions have not yet been taken. It is likely to happen, and I do not think that that is surprising. I doubt whether any noble Lord who has spoken on more than one or two recommendations today has agreed with all the recommendations of the Royal Commission. Most noble Lords have accepted some and suggested that perhaps another one is not correct. That is not surprising. This is a most difficult,
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controversial and sensitive area, one where the issues have to be discussed and thought about, and where opinions may genuinely differ.
Not all of the recommendations are for the Government. There are some for the Bar, and some for the Law Society, for example. We look forward to those bodies taking the recommendations forward and making in that way their contribution to the improvement of our system.
Among the recommendations that have been accepted are the recommendations in relation to victims I do not think that I need to apologise to any of your Lordships for the fact that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary chose to highlight those in his speech at the party conference. After all, as has been said, the position of victims has been somewhat neglected by the legal profession, and by the criminal justice system, in the past. It is very important that the rights of victims should be recognised and that as much is done for them as is possible. Some of the things that can be done can be done without expenditure of money. They require more a change of attitude than any positive input of resources. Others will require an input of resources. It is no secret that. priorities will have to be determined in deciding which particular proposals should go forward first and which will have to wait. But it can certainly be said that the Government will do everything that they can to assist with the position of victims.
Other proposals will undoubtedly require careful examination which will take some considerable time. My noble friend Lord Windlesham sounded a note of scepticism about the position of the Home Office in relation to the review body. However, if I may say so, there was no reason for my noble friend to be sceptical. If no decisions in these matters have been announced, it is not because work is not going on, but precisely for the reverse reason: that on these matters work is going on.
It is obvious that the Royal Commission had only two years in which to tackle this immense variety of problems. For example, when it came to the matter of the review body, it did not lay down a detailed blueprint for that body or for its relationship with the Appeal Court. That is a matter of great sensitivity and great importance. It is a matter which it is absolutely vital to get right. For that reason I make no apology for the fact that it may be some time before these proposals are formulated and put out for consultation and people have an opportunity to discuss them. It is a matter of critical importance and a matter which there is no point in rushing. It is much better to get it right than to hurry and get it wrong.
One can follow through the proposals in various stages. As I said, there are the police to begin with and then there are other people who contribute to the possible evidence of a trial. In that respect some considerable play was made of the matter of forensic science. If I may say so, there is no doubt, as the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, said, that forensic science is likely to play an increasingly important role in criminal trials. Noble Lords will welcome that. Obviously the more that scientific techniques can do to present to the jury matters

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which can be accepted as reliable pointers to guilt or innocence, the more the criminal justice system should properly be able to carry out its functions.
In that connection the report of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, as well as the report of the Royal Commission made very important proposals in relation to standards, testing and the matter of registration. They are all being considered and in particular consideration is being given to the matter of an advisory council and exactly how it would be set up if it were to be established. As the noble Lord, Lord Dainton, said, and his remarks were echoed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, in a criminal trial the manner of presentation of forensic evidence is of the greatest importance. Again, much will need to be done to ensure that presentation is refined and training is carried out in the best way.
It is very important that we should not have experts who cannot convey their message to the people to whom it matters in a trial; namely, the jury. I noted with great interest the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, who suggested that there may indeed be cases which are too difficult and where the evidence is too complicated to be satisfactorily tried by jury. I noted his suggestion that there may be cases in which a judge with an expert assessor would be more appropriate. As the noble and learned Lord said, that certainly goes wider than what was considered by the Royal Commission, but I am sure that your Lordships noted that very interesting observation.
There was considerable agreement that pre-trial procedures could be streamlined. But there was a notable amount of disagreement among your Lordships on the matter of a right to trial by jury. I stress that that is a matter on which the Government have taken no decision as yet. There are clearly very strongly held views on both sides. We all heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, refer to it as a right going back to Magna Carta. He spoke of it as part of the legal culture of England and Wales. I noticed how quickly the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said that the Scottish position on this matter was quite simply wrong. I simply say that it shows the importance of the particular legal culture in which people operate. It is within that culture that any decision on the matter will have to be taken. It is a very important matter and one on which we shall need to reflect.
The matter of disclosure was also raised in a number of speeches. Disclosure by the prosecution was not touched on at great length, but clearly there are difficult issues involved and issues which are of great practical importance for making sure that trials are not unduly delayed, as the commission indicated. But in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Benson, in connection particularly with serious fraud, we also heard about the disclosure of possible lines of defence. Other noble Lords pointed out that there may indeed be arguments for a wider use of disclosure of lines of defence. Certainly again that is something on which noble Lords will wish to reflect on future occasions.
With regard to the question of trial, the major issue discussed was the right of silence, as it was called. That
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was perhaps the most controversial matter which arose during the course of today's debate. Let me say right away—and I hope to reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman—that there is no proposal that it should be possible for somebody's guilt to be inferred simply on the basis of his failure to explain. On the contrary, what is proposed is that there must in all cases be a prima facie case presented from other material by the prosecution—a prima facie case; in other words, a case to answer.
The question then is whether or not the circumstances are such that the case calls for an explanation and whether or not the failure of the accused person to give the explanation points to there being no innocent explanation of the circumstances. That is the basic idea behind both the proposal and what is done in Northern Ireland at present.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, and other noble Lords asked in what circumstances that would arise. As has been indicated, there are at least two basic circumstances. One can have failure to comment—for example, in the police station, before or after a solicitor comes; again, one can have failure by an accused person to give evidence at trial. In Northern Ireland both kinds of situation are covered.
The question—and this is the way that it is looked at in cases in Northern Ireland and the way it was approached by the Judicial Committee of this House in the case of Murray v The Director of Public Prosecutions—is what inference it is proper to draw using common sense and applying that common sense to all the circumstances of the situation as put before the court. It is obviously the case that the inference to be drawn will vary depending upon the particular circumstances. To take the most extreme example, it may be very difficult to draw an inference of guilt if somebody says, "I did not speak because I was told not to do so by my solicitor". The inference to be drawn from such a statement may be that the person was, for example, following the instructions of his solicitor. But the precise inference to be drawn is an inference which should be drawn as a matter of common sense in all the circumstances as they are before the court.
We heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, a cogent explanation of all the circumstances in which that position in the law has grown up. All that is being suggested is that judges should be able to say to a jury that they should use their common sense and draw whatever inference they can from the circumstances before them and from the failure of the accused person either to have commented at the time in the police station or to have given evidence in the case in the court.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, perhaps the Minister will give way. Is he referring to jury trials or to trials conducted by judges in Ireland? Is he suggesting that juries should draw those inferences?
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry: My Lords, it is my understanding that in Northern Ireland the system applies both to the so-called "Diplock" courts and to jury trials. Whichever approach one chooses, they are basically the same.

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This is a topic upon which it has been said strong views are held. It is asked what has changed since the matter has been considered by other bodies in the past. Some of the changes include the introduction of safeguards provided by PACE; the right of people to have a solicitor and, if they do not have one, in nearly all cases it is of their own choice. In particular there has been the introduction of tape recordings which will allow the jury to hear the circumstances in which the person failed to make any comment at the police station.
Those are significant changes which, in the Government's estimate, make it proper to take the step of changing the law to allow the judge to invite the jury, in appropriate cases, to draw an appropriate conclusion and inference from the failure of the accused person to comment on the accusation before him either at the police station or in the court.
Moving on to the appeal court and the review body, they are perhaps matters which have not been gone into in great detail by noble Lords, but which are clearly of great importance. They will need a great deal of working out. But once the review body comes into effect, it will help to provide a further long-stop which should go a long way to avoid a repetition of the kinds of case which have caused so much pain and misery in the past few years.
Lord Alexander of Weedon: My Lords, perhaps my noble and learned friend will give way. I thank him for his helpful remarks in regard to the review body. I understand, as do others, I suspect, that a detailed structure will take time to work out, as will the relationship with the Court of Appeal. But am I right in understanding from what my noble and learned friend said, that the Government now accept the principle that there should be an independent review body?
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend. I am happy to confirm that the Government accept—and have already announced that they accept—the principle of such a review body. There is no question of the Government seeking to slide out of that or in any way to delay the matter. What is desired is to set the body up in a way which will be appropriate, having regard to the constitutional position both of itself and of the Court of Appeal. It will be necessary also to determine the criteria which the new body will apply when taking on cases.
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Many other issues were raised—the training of the judiciary, plea-bargaining and so forth. But those and other issues will undoubtedly come before the House on another occasion. In the meantime I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. On this, as on other occasions, your Lordships' views will be considered by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary when he comes to take the decisions on the implementation of the report.
7.45 p.m.
Lord Windlesham: My Lords, it only remains for me to thank the long list of speakers in the debate and to add my own congratulations to those which have already been expressed to the three maiden speakers. Each made a notable contribution on the basis of their own experience.
My noble and learned friend the Lord Advocate gave a full and detailed reply to the debate on behalf of the Government, for which we are grateful. He has shown a sure touch in finding his way around the intricacies of English criminal law and procedure. At one point I thought that he was going to give us only an elegant and skilful commentary on what had been said and the points raised. I waited until his closing remarks, in his reply to a well-placed question from my noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon, for the undertaking which I believe we all expect at the end of a debate of this sort; that is, that he will bring to the Home Secretary and to those in the Home Office, who are at this moment formulating policies, the views expressed in this House.
This is not a seminar. It is not a conference on the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. It is a House of Parliament. The recommendations which require legislation will need to be debated arid approved in this House as well as in another place. I know from personal experience that it is not easy for a Minister who is not serving at the relevant department to reflect adequately the weight and thrust of opinion expressed in debates of this kind. But we count on my noble and learned friend Lord Rodger of Earlsferry to do that for us. I commend the Motion to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before eight o'clock.

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