Sitting of 26 January 1994

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

  DEATH OF A MEMBER
  2.34 pm
  Madam Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of James Boyce, Esquire, Member for Rotherham, and I desire, on behalf of the House, to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the honourable Member.

Oral Answers to Questions
  SCOTLAND

    Local Government Reorganisation
    Mr. Foulkes: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what delegations he or his Ministers received on the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill led by hon. Members.
    The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): Since publication of the White Paper "Shaping the Future —The New Councils" in July 1993, my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and Local Government has met 12 delegations led by hon. Members to discuss the Government's local government reform proposals. I will make arrangements for details of these meetings to be included in the Official Report.
    Following is the information:
    1 October 1993:

    John Home Robertson MP and a delegation from East Lothian

    1 November 1993:

    Martin O'Neill MP and a delegation from Clackmannan District Council

    5 November 1993:

    Archy Kirkwood MP and a delegation from Berwickshire

    8 November 1993:

    George Foulkes MP and delegations from Kyle and Carrick and Cumnock and Doon Valley Labour Groups

    12 November 1993:

    Norman Godman MP and a delegation from Inverclyde District Council

    26 November 1993:

    Malcolm Bruce MP and a delegation from Westhill

    30 November 1993:

    Dennis Canavan MP; Michael Connarty MP and a delegation from Central Regional Council

    1 December 1993:

    Norman Hogg MP and a delegation from Cumbemauld and Kilsyth

    20 December 1993:

    Robin Cook MP and a delegation from West Lothian District Council

    18 January 1994:

    Brian Donohoe MP; Brian Wilson MP and a delegation from Cunninghame District Council

    19 January 1994:

    Rachel Squire MP and a delegation from Dunfermline District Council

    19 January 1994:

    Jimmy Hood MP and a delegation from Clydesdale District Council

    Ministers also met a number of hon. Members and delegations prior to publication of the White Paper to discuss local government reform issues.
    Mr. Foulkes: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that information. As he will know, one of the delegations —the delegation from Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, which I led—was strongly opposed to the setting up of a south Ayrshire authority. Has he read the reports that state that the Ayr Tories have a blueprint to opt out and flog all the services if they win control of that authority? They have already started by making plans for a Spanish cleansing company to take over a contract.
    Is the Secretary of State aware that we do not want the loony right ideas of Westminster and Wandsworth to be imported into Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would want local authorities to provide services, or ensure their provision, in the most effective way possible, thereby raising the quality of service and reducing the cost to residents. I know, however, that he and his hon. Friends are in some difficulty in this regard. While the hon. Gentleman is a strong advocate of the establishment of a single all-Ayshire authority, his hon. Friends the Members for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) and for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Donohoe) favour a three-authority Ayrshire. The Government have proposed a two-authority Ayrshire. The one thing that unites Labour Members is the fact that they all seem to oppose the continued survival of Strathclyde.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who oppose the establishment of single-tier authorities near to the people are those who represent councillors from the large regions who will find themselves out of jobs—or, alternatively, trade unions acting in respect of officials who will find themselves out of jobs? The Government's proposals have been welcomed; they are certainly most welcome on Tayside.
    Mr. Lang: I welcome my hon. Friend back to the House. I am grateful for his support for single-tier, all-purpose authorities.
    It is significant that every party in the House supported the principle of single-tier authorities at the last general election. Some Opposition Members may have forgotten the commitments that they made at that time.
    Mr. Wallace: Will the Secretary of State confirm that he has received representations on the Government's proposals for water and sewerage, contained in the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill, as well as representations on local government boundary questions? The president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has referred the Prime Minister to the findings of the System 3 opinion

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    poll, which showed overwhelming opposition to the Government's proposals. In his reply, the Prime Minister said that the proper approach was for Scottish opinion to be given expression through Members of Parliament. How does the right hon. Gentleman propose to determine Scottish opinion in a way that will satisfy him?
    Mr. Lang: For one thing, I hope that we can get the Bill into Committee so that we can start looking at it. Opposition Members seem remarkably reluctant to allow the Committee to get under way. They deny all the established conventions and procedures of the Committee of Selection—[HoN. MEMBERS: "No."] They shout "No" now. I very much hope that that means that we can get the Bill into Committee. We can then pursue the testing of opinion about these matters.
    Mr. Kynoch: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the controls on employment practice included in the Bill will be widely welcomed by many Conservative Members who have led delegations to him, particularly in the light of further revelations in the newspapers over the weekend about the employment practices of Monklands district council? Is my right hon. Friend fully confident that the body that he can set up to examine excessive salary increases during the reorganisation will indeed be effective, and will produce meaningful results?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend identifies an important matter. There was certainly strong feeling during the last reform of local government that there were abuses over the re-employment, sometimes at vastly enhanced salaries, of some local authority officials. The provisions in the Bill prevent that from happening again.
    Mr. Welsh: Has the Secretary of State received a delegation of English Tory Members desperate to join the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill Committee? What qualification do English Tory Members have for membership of the Committee since they did not attend the Second Reading debate or speak in it? They have no electoral mandate whatever in Scotland and it is a purely Scottish Bill. Does the Secretary of State need English Members to prop up local government in Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: It is significant that I have not yet received the delegation of English Conservative Members opposed to the Government's proposals that was promised by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). Like Scottish Members, English Members are part of the United Kingdom Parliament. It is here, in the United Kingdom Parliament, that we are proposing to legislate to reform Scottish local government.
    Mr. Raymond S. Robertson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in referring to Monklands district council, a Sunday newspaper carried the headline "Corruption in John Smith's Backyard"? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best thing that could happen to Coatbridge and Airdrie is the abolition of that disreputable council which the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) and the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), who is in his place, have signally failed to condemn?
    Mr. Lang: With regard to the allegations, my hon. Friend may say that; I could not possibly comment. As for
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    Monklands district council, I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government's proposals provide for the abolition of Monklands district.
    Mr. George Robertson: Why are the Government so scared of having a majority of one in the Standing Committee on the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill? That is the precise mathematical formulation that their strength in the House would give them. Is it the fact that, having decided to gerrymander the local government map in Scotland, they want to gerrymander the majority in the Committee to force it through? Is it not the truth that the Government have now lost all enthusiasm for this costly, unnecessary, unwanted gerrymandering exercise and that the Secretary of State wants an artificial majority of two in the Committee so that he can abandon responsibility for what he has started?
    Mr. Lang: As the hon. Gentleman ought to know, but perhaps does not, the selection of the Committee is a matter for the Committee of Selection. The Labour party has been gerrymandering that Committee and preventing it from starting work on the Bill. The hon. Gentleman's credibility on these matters is somewhat shattered. On 17 January, for example, he quoted with approbation that expert and authoritative journalist Mr. Brian Meek. He might like to know that the journalist whom he regarded as expert and authoritative said on Monday:
    "The Labour party's opposition to single-tier councils is duplicitous, dishonest and disgraceful. They are desperately seeking to protect jobs for the comrades and are quite corruptly, in my opinion, spending public money to that end".
    Those are the views of a journalist of whom the hon. Gentleman said:
    "His words and views must be of some consequence in Scotland".

    Highlands and Islands (Economy)
    Mr. Macdonald: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the economy of the highlands and islands.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): The establishment of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the success of the campaign to secure objective 1 status have greatly strengthened confidence in the economy of the highlands and islands. I share this confidence and am committed to the policies on which it is based.
    Mr. Macdonald: The Minister must know that two issues are causing great concern, especially in the west highlands and the outer islands. One is the continuing crisis in the salmon industry because of Norwegian dumping and the continuing blockheaded refusal of the Treasury to endorse the safeguard actions that are necessary to protect that vital industry. The other is of more concern to my constituency and concerns the apparent proposals now emerging from some officials in the Ministry of Defence to wind down or close down the testing range in the Uists. I ask the Minister for a commitment that the Scottish Office would fight to the bitter end any such attempt. He knows as well as anyone that that would devastate the economy of the southern isles.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman raises two important issues. On salmon, we welcome the Commission's introduction of emergency safeguard

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    measures in the form of minimum import prices, which provide a ternporary floor in the market while the longer-term problems facing the industry are addressed. We welcome the Commission's request to the farmed salmon industry to update information submitted to it about alleged Norwegian dumping in 1991. It would be helpful if the representatives in the hon. Gentleman's constituency forwarded the evidence to the Commission so that it can carry out the necessary investigation. I shall keep in touch with the hon. Gentleman on that.
    As for Benbecula, as the hon. Gentleman will know, the Ministry of Defence is carrying out its review and hopes to complete it in the near future. An announcement will be made as quickly as possible. I will ensure that the points that he has made are put before the Ministers concerned.
    Mr. Matthew Banks: Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the success of Highlands and Islands Enterprise? Does he agree that the economy of the highlands and islands is inextricably linked with the rest of Scotland, which, significantly, now enjoys lower unemployment than the rest of the United Kingdom? On average, it has not been lower since the 1920s. Does he further agree that it is significant that Scotland enjoys record levels for manufactured exports, for investment in wholesaling and retailing and for manufacturing industry —something of which Scotland should be rightly proud?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Many of the points that my hon. Friend has made are absolutely right. For the first time since the 1920s, unemployment in Scotland is now below the United Kingdom average, and has been since January 1992. Manufactured exports were at a record level in 1992. Highlands and Islands Enterprise is doing very well and its funding—some £76 million for next year —is substantial. When one takes into account the fact that some of the funds for tourism and marketing will be transferred, that represents an increase. Its morale is very good.
    Mr. Maclennan: Does the Minister recognise that, although objective 1 status was a welcome achievement in the highlands, there is now widespread concern that the Government are undermining that achievement by slashing public expenditure and waiting for the European Community to pick up the tab? Does he not realise that not only are those cuts damaging to the highland economy but they risk the effectiveness of objective 1, because they will deny the additionality principle, which is a key to the Community's financing of those projects?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The funding is additional. The £250 million funding represents the highest per capita allocation in the United Kingdom for objective I and recognises the special circumstances of peripherality and sparsity of population.
    There have been many successes recently in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. Rockwater won a £25 million contract for 80 jobs at its fabrication yard near Wick; Caithness Glass is creating some 20 new jobs within the next two years; and Norfrost is to create at least 120 jobs. The prophecy of doom and gloom is not met by the facts.

    Local Government Reorganisation
    Mr. Norman Hogg: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next expects to meet the officials of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to discuss local government reorganisation; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Chisholm: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet COSLA to discuss the provision of local authority services.
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and Local Government and I are due to meet representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on Friday, as part of the normal consultation on local government finance matters. I hope that their policy of non-co-operation will not prevent them from turning up.
    Mr. Hogg: Does the Secretary of State recognise the serious situation that those who live in new towns face —the double jeopardy of local government reorganisation and the winding up of the new towns agency? Will he make a particular point of discussing those matters with councillors Gray and McKenna?
    Mr. Lang: If the councillors or the convention in general wish to raise those matters at our meeting this week, I shall be happy to discuss them. The meeting will be concerned primarily with the substantial sum of money that the taxpayer, through the Scottish Office, gives to local government—approaching £6 billion. Those are the matters with which we shall be primarily concerned at our meeting.
    Mr. Chisholm: Why does the Secretary of State propose to waste large sums of taxpayers' money at a time when Scottish local authorities are facing the biggest cuts in Government grant since the Conservatives came to power in 1979? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the real-terms cut in Government grant to Lothian region will be 4 per cent. once the transferred community care money is stripped out, and that is bound to mean service cuts and big council tax increases? Will the right hon. Gentleman also tell us why Edinburgh district council is not getting one penny in housing support grant, with the result that that council faces the terrible choice of slashing repairs or raising rents beyond the rate of inflation?
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to debate the housing support grant when the order is brought before the House in due course. The hon. Gentleman talks about waste. I assume that he is associating that with the proposals to reform local government. That will not lead to waste; it will lead to substantial savings. As for expenditure on local government, the Government-supported expenditure will rise by more than 3.5 per cent. next year and per capita in Scotland under this heading is substantially higher—at 34 per cent. more per head of the population—in Scotland than it is in England.
    Mr. Hood: The Secretary of State seeks to abolish elected regional councils and to replace them with unelected, unaccountable quangos. How much taxpayers' money will be paid in salaries and pensions to those unelectable, unaccountable quangos?
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman seems to misunderstand our proposal. We do not propose to replace regional councillors with quangos; we propose to reform the two-tier structure, in some cases around existing regions and in some cases around existing districts, and to achieve a single-tier, all-purpose local authority structure which will apply throughout Scotland and which will create more efficient and stronger local democracy.
    Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Will my right hon. Friend remind Opposition Members that the majority of local authorities are Labour controlled and that the waste of money is the result of them spending pensioners' and taxpayers' money unnecessarily, and often on themselves?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. and learned Friend is right in that there has undoubtedly been some waste in local government over the years. When I contemplate the planned expenditure by Strathclyde regional council of no less than £500,000 on propaganda linked to its own survival, I think that the money could be better spent by providing better services to their local residents.
    Mr. Kirkwood: Does the Secretary of State agree that it is in the best interests of COSLA, as it is in the best interests of the House, that the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill should be considered by a Committee that best reflects the balance of the parties in the House? Speaking as a member of the Committee of Selection and as someone who is keen for the standing Committee to start its deliberations as early as possible so that important issues such as Berwickshire can be discussed, I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the Committee can start next Tuesday as long as he rises to the Dispatch Box now and says that he is prepared to accept a Committee comprised of 25 members.
    Mr. Lang: As a member of the Committee of Selection, the hon. Gentleman should know that those are matters for the Committee of Selection, not for me. I am keen for the Committee to start its consideration as quickly as possible and I am keen to have a substantial Committee so that the Bill may be fully and extensively debated. I look forward to making progress in Committee. I shall approach the Committee stage in a positive frame of mind as seeking to improve the Bill in the time-honoured way and to achieve at the end of the day a reform of local government around which all parties can rally.
    Mr. Maxton: As the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) seems determined to continue the smear campaign against Monklands district council and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to tell the House that the Government auditors who carried out the Monklands district council audit this year have, as reported in the Glasgow Herald this morning, given the council a clean bill of health? Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore instruct his hon. Friends to stop this campaign which is designed purely to try to discredit my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition and has nothing to do with Monklands district council?
    Mr. Lang: One of the qualities of this place is that it allows free speech to all hon. Members. If hon. Members choose to show their disquiet about aspects of how Monklands district council or any other district council is
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    run, that is their privilege. What is perhaps surprising is that the hon. Gentleman finds it necessary to draw attention to the auditors' clean bill of health.
    Mr. McLeish: I am talking about a real scandal. Will the Secretary of State answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes)? When will he intervene to tackle the right-wing excesses of Tory-controlled Kyle and Carrick district council? Will he confirm that the lunatic council has agreed to build houses and desecrate land at Burns cottage in Alloway, one of the most important heritage sites in Scotland? Is it a matter of building homes for votes? Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that the council has torn up a contract for cleansing which has two years to run, is barring the in-house tender and that Provost McDonald has admitted that he has had discussions with Spanish contractors?
    Will the right hon. Gentleman condemn such actions, or are they merely a forerunner of what we can expect under the gerrymandered local government reorganisation—Tory flagships such as Wandsworth and Westminster? In Scotland we simply do not want them. Why does not the Secretary of State abandon local government reorganisation?
    Mr. Lang: It is notable that Labour Members complain about what they regard as offensive criticism of one local council, but immediately indulge in it themselves in respect of another. There are suitable safeguards on behaviour for all local councils. There is also a commission on local authority accounts and the parliamentary commissioner, and local authorities themselves have substantial statutory responsibilities. I am confident that the appropriate processes will be applied as necessary in Kyle and Carrick, as in the case of any other council.

    Forestry
    Mr. Pawsey: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current estimated area of forestry land in Great Britain; and what the figure was in (a) 1984 and (b) 1964.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Sir Hector Monro): The area of forest land in Great Britain is currently 2–4 million hectares, compared with 2.2 million in 1984 and 1.7 million in 1964.
    Mr. Pawsey: I thank my hon. Friend for that extremely helpful reply. What percentage of broadleaf trees is there in the woodlands and forests of the United Kingdom, and what plans are there for a further expansion of forestry in the United Kingdom? Does he agree that the balance of payments is important, and what part do timber products play in our balance of trade? Does he also agree—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I think I have an Adjournment debate on my hands. Come on, Mr. Pawsey —that is enough.
    Mr. Pawsey: I shall leave it at that then, Madam Speaker.
    Sir Hector Monro: Trees take a long time to grow.
    I thank my hon. Friend for the great interest that he is taking in tree planting. Last year, 14,000 hectares, or 40 per cent., of tree planting was of the broadleaf variety, which is most encouraging. Planned planting in 1994–95 is

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    32,960 hectares, on private and commission land, and planned planting for the year after is 33,500 hectares, so that the Government well appreciate the importance of increasing tree planting, especially for the timber industry.
    Dr. Reid: Does the Minister understand that the proportion of forestry in the area covered by Motherwell district council is very small, but that, despite that deficiency, it has made a grand job of tackling the tragic consequences of the decline of the steel industry? Will his colleagues, therefore, please meet representatives of Motherwell district council to hear their strong opposition to the crazy plans to abolish the council and their opposition to the rest of the plans for local government reorganisation in Scotland?
    Sir Hector Monro: The hon. Gentleman is pretty ingenious in bringing in local government. I certainly welcome the planting of broadleaf and other varieties of tree in the Motherwell area. I know that the Lanarkshire Development Agency has taken particular interest in the environment of the area, and I am sure that, in years to come, we shall be glad that there has been so much additional planting there.
    Mr. Gallie: Is my hon. Friend aware that timber harvested in the remote areas of the west of Scotland is currently transported by barge through the port of Troon to Caledonian Paper in Cunninghame, South? Does he agree that this means of transport is environmentally friendly, saves much wear and tear on our roads and improves the environment considerably? Does he also agree that it is a
    Sir Hector Monro: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is an important means of transport, and especially for
    bringing timber from the island. I agree that Caleclonian Paper is an important industrial facility for Scotland. I am glad that such a large proportion of Scottish timber goes there to contribute to its success.

    Housing
    Mr. McMaster: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet representatives of tenants' organisations to discuss housing needs in Scotland.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: My right hon. Friend has no plans to meet tenants' organisations to discuss housing needs in Scotland and it is for local authorities to assess the housing needs of their areas. I often meet tenants and hear their concerns at first hand and Scottish Office officials regularly meet housing authorities to discuss their assessment of housing needs.
    Mr. McMaster: Does the Minister agree that the recent Scottish Homes survey into house conditions in Scotland is a damning indictment of the current hopeless housing policy? At a time when thousands of Scots live in clamp, decaying and often derelict houses, why does he concentrate all his energies on trying to get Scottish Homes tenants to opt out of the public sector? Will he take the opportunity today to make it clear to tenants that they can choose Scottish Homes as a landlord, and will he ensure that Scottish Homes lets those tenants know that? While he is at it, will he also give them the real democratic choice of
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    opting for district councils as landlord?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: First, as far as the national house condition survey is concerned, the facts
    must be seen in perspective. The costs are 3 per cent. only of the total market value of the stock, which is about £88,000 million. I recognise that putting all that right, especially in relation to condensation and damp, will take some years, but substantial resources of £527 million have been made available to local authorities this year. Much will also be done by private landlords and owner-occupiers and there is about £372 million of funding for Scottish Homes.
    As far as choice is concerned, Scottish Homes' purpose as a national housing development agency is to play an increasing enabling role in assistance for local authorities. As to choice for tenants at the ballots, for practical operating reasons Scottish Homes has decided that the ballot paper will contain two options. The hon. Gentleman is correct that tenants can opt to reject the choice if that is their wish, but the best possible choice will be put before them, they will be involved in the sifting process beforehand and the wish of the majority will prevail. Any tenant who feels strongly opposed to transfer can make his views known during the consultation process and suggest other options. In addition, tenants will have the opportunity to make representations directly to the Secretary of State, who has to approve any voluntary disposal once it is cleared by the majority.
    Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Can my hon. Friend advise the House how many tens of thousands of houses in the possession of local authorities are unoccupied?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I can tell my hon. and learned Friend that the census revealed that about 98,000 houses are vacant and, of those, fewer than 30,000 are public sector stock. We are carefully considering the issue of empty housing and we are engaged in a number of prospective initiatives to bring empty housing back into use.
    Mr. Menzies Campbell: The Minister will be aware that the Ministry of Defence proposes to transfer service housing to a housing trust. Would it not make more sense for service housing to be transferred to local housing associations so that once service needs have been met any additional housing can be made available to meet local needs?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I discussed the subject yesterday with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence. A considerable number of houses that were surplus to requirements have already been sold. A housing trust will be set up, but, of course, housing association activity can be involved only where the price is reasonable as far as the housing associations are concerned. Obviously, if the price is not reasonable it would be unfair to press Scottish Homes unduly when local authorities have a great many other priorities in Scotland. I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that rapid progress is being made in Scotland and I am glad to confirm that.
    Mr. McKelvey: Nevertheless the Minister will recall, with joy, I am sure, his visit to Kilmarnock last week when he saw for himself the progressive work of the Kilmarnock

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    and Loudoun district council on housing business. Officials told him then that there is a desire among tenants now in Scottish Homes houses to transfer directly to that council. We seek an extension of democracy, so that all the choices are available to tenants. It would save time and money if those choices were given to tenants now.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: It will, of course, be for Scottish Homes to decide whether there are special housing circumstances which would make the local authority an appropriate alternative landlord. I expect that in coming to a conclusion Scottish Homes will weigh three factors—the number of properties involved, their location, and the percentage of houses already held by local authorities. I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that his local council already has a relatively high percentage of the stock in his constituency. No doubt that will be one of the factors that Scottish Homes will weigh during the process.

    Children Act 1989
    Mr. John Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what proposals there are to introduce a children Bill with similar provisions to the Children Act 1989.
    Mr. Lang: Our proposals for the reform of Scottish child care policy and law are set out in the White Paper, "Scotland's Children", which we published last August. We hope to bring forward a Bill when we are ready to do so.
    Mr. Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is anomalous that children in Scotland do not have the same protection that children in England receive under the 1989 Act? Can he tell me what representations he has received since the White Paper was published last August?
    Mr. Lang: I assure my hon. Friend that we attach every bit as much importance to that subject in Scotland as is attached to it south of the border. The procedures are different, and have been different for a long time, in some respects. I do not see a weakness in that, so long as the provisions are efficient. As for representations, the publication of the White Paper was itself the culmination of a protracted and prolonged consultation process, and it draws together a number of submissions and reports on issues that have been the subject of consultation, to help us to develop an integrated approach to that important subject.
    Dr. Godman: Why are Ministers and their compliant officials dragging their feet on this important issue? The English legislation went through the House six years ago. As convenor of the Scottish all-party group on children and child law reform, I tell the Secretary of State that there is a critical need for such legislation, especially for children with disabilities and special needs—and the disruption to local government that will be caused by the Secretary of State's appalling legislation makes that need even more critical. Those children should be at the forefront of legislation going through the House now.
    Mr. Lang: Legislation is certainly necessary on some aspects of our proposals, but we should keep the matter in perspective. A substantial proportion of the proposals that have been the subject of consultation and are touched on in the White Paper can be implemented, and indeed are being
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    implemented, without the need for legislation. However, where legislation is needed we shall introduce it at the appropriate time.
    Mr. Trimble: I notice that there is a similar delay with the equivalent legislation in Northern Ireland, where we, too, are five years behind the English legislation. Is it a matter of policy to delay the legislation, or are there particular problems in framing it, as in Northern Ireland, where there seems to be a lack of resources in the parliamentary draftsman's office? Is there the same problem in Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: I am happy to be able to reassure the hon. Gentleman that there is no such problem in Scotland. Indeed, a substantial number of provisions are already being implemented. When we are ready to introduce considered legislation for the remainder we shall not hesitate to do so.
    Mrs. Fyfe: In the International Year of the Family, has the Secretary of State realised that, to our shame, we have the worst child care in Europe, and that we have been waiting for more than five years for a children Act? His White Paper last August claimed that such a Bill was a priority, yet there was not a word about it in the Queen's Speech. Clearly, gerrymandering local authority boundaries has a higher priority than looking after children. Does the right hon. Gentleman's reply to the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) mean that we shall have to look for bits and pieces of legislation tacked on to other Acts? When are we ever to have a decent, comprehensive children Act, such as one, as hon. Members have pointed out, which was passed in England five years ago? Why is the Secretary of State so neglectful of children in Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Lady considerably misrepresents the position and I am surprised that, above all, in an area which should not be subject to cross-party dispute, she should seek to talk Scotland down. The provisions for Scotland are already in place, are in operation and are envied worldwide. The children's hearing system, especially, is something which many other countries look to with considerable admiration.

    Poverty, Glasgow
    Mr. David Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what plans he has to assist Glasgow district council to tackle the problems of poverty in Glasgow; and if he will make a statement.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart): The needs of Glasgow are fully taken into account in the level of central Government support to Glasgow district council, in accordance with the principles agreed with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in the distribution committee. We are also making available extensive resources for Glasgow through Scottish Homes, Scottish Enterprise and other agencies, as well as the urban programme.
    Mr. Marshall: Has the Minister read the Glasgow poverty profile produced by Glasgow district council? Is not he horrified at the appalling health and unemployment statistics? Is he aware that people living in Glasgow are two and a half times more likely to die before reaching retirement age than those living in more affluent areas?

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    Does not he realise that poverty is killing people in Glasgow? Will he accept the health board's recommendation that special targeting and expansion of investments is absolutely essential, or do his Government not give a damn about the poor?
    Mr. Stewart: After decades of municipal socialism in housing, in planning and in education, I am not at all surprised that there are problems in Glasgow. The hon. Gentleman mentioned unemployment and I hope that he is pleased that unemployment in his constituency has dropped by well over 500 in the past year—2,500 down on the figures for January 1987.
    I emphasise the facts to the hon. Gentleman that Glasgow district council—[Interruption.] If hon. Members would listen, they would find some figures of great interest to them. Glasgow district council receives the highest Government support per tax unit of any district council in Scotland, 40 per cent. of the urban programme is spent in Glasgow and in housing, in the current year, Glasgow district council receives £88.2 million for its housing revenue account and £25 million for its non-housing revenue account. There are many other parts of Scotland that look with great envy on those figures.
    Mr. Wray: Does the Minister agree that poverty and deprivation bring crime and drug abuse? Is he aware that the baron trade of drugs is bringing in around £188 million in Glasgow, feeding 12,000 addicts? The addicts are feeding themselves with tamazepan, tenagesic, cannabis, lysergic acid diethylamide, librium and valium. What will the Government do about the fact that many youngsters find the morgue a common place in Glasgow?
    Mr. Stewart: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is a serious problem of drug abuse in Glasgow. As hon. Members will hear in answer to a later question tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy), we have set up a Scottish drugs task force. I have no doubt that, if the question is reached, my right hon. Friend will be able to detail fully the Government's measures.
    Mr. Davidson: Does the Minister agree that one of the main causes of poverty in Glasgow is unemployment? Would he agree that the management and trade unions of Kvaerner in Govan should be applauded for its new adult apprenticeship scheme which was launched yesterday to retrain workers who are surplus to requirements? Would he also agree that the decision by Scottish and Glasgow Enterprise to recommend that that company should sack those workers before they are eligible for Government assistance is to be deplored? What does the Minister expect people who are made unemployed from shipbuilding in Govan to do? Does he expect them to start sheep ranching? Will he consider resigning?
    Mr. Stewart: If the hon. Gentleman is asking me to resign, the answer is no. With regard to Kvaerner Govan, the Government look to employers to train their own work forces, as employers benefit most from such investment. With regard to training for work, the programme to which the hon. Gentleman specifically referred, funding is finite and must be targeted where the need is greatest. Therefore, we are specifically targeting training for work at people who are unemployed for six months or more. That group
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    needs most help to get back to work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that two thirds of those who become unemployed leave the register within six months.

    Religious Education
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about religious education in Scottish schools.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Education authorities in Scotland are required by law to provide religious education in their schools. Guidance is set out by the Scottish Office Education Department, by circular and in national guidelines on religious and moral education which form part of Scotland's five to 14 curriculum programme. These confirm the Government's support for religious education.
    Mr. Greenway: May I urge my hon. Friend to stick to religious education in all schools, that it be Christian centred and not influenced by the absurd recommendations of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority of England which suggests that children up to the age of 16 shall study five world religions? Does my hon. Friend agree that studies of that kind will lead to no knowledge of any world religion? That will be a denial of civilisation which is based on Christendom. Christianity should be the centre of religious education with only one other religion at the most.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: We put the emphasis on that right in our guidelines. We have made it clear that Christianity, as the main religion in Scotland, will form a major part of religious education. The guidance is that syllabuses of religious education should, in all schools, be based on Christianity as the main religious tradition of Scotland. However, they should also take account of the teaching and practice of other principal religions. The guidelines are clear in their intention to ensure awareness of all the main world religions. We do everything in our power to ensure that the values of honesty, liberty, justice, fairness and respect for human dignity are implemented in that process.
    Mr. Dalyell: What response is the Scottish Office making to the concerns of Archbishop Winning that the local government proposals would undermine the capacity for Roman Catholic education in Scotland?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: We expect to see maximum continuity in schools. There are provisions in the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill to deal with that and we expect to debate them fully in Standing Committee. No changes are proposed with regard to the existing statutory provisions on Catholic education.
    Mr. George Robertson: Returning to Archbishop Winning's letter to all hon. Members, may I draw the Minister's attention to what Archbishop Winning calls his real and growing fear about the impact of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill on Catholic schools in Scotland? The Minister must recognise that Archbishop Winning's concerns about the arbitrary and wholly ill-considered plans in the Bill for school catchment areas are shared by many others in Scotland of other denominations and of none.

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    Will the Minister now recognise that the expensive plan for butchering Scottish local government should be put back until there has been proper consideration through an independent review into all the implications for areas as vital as the education of Scotland's children?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The sooner we are in Standing Committee, the sooner we will debate those matters fully and in depth. Local government boundaries should not adversely affect Catholic schools or the existing provision for Catholic education.

    Hospital Waiting Lists
    Mrs. Ray Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what new initiatives the health service in Scotland has undertaken to reduce hospital waiting lists.
    Mr. Stewart: My noble and learned Friend the Minister of State recently announced the distribution of funds totalling more than £3 billion to health boards for 1994–95, which, together with efficiency savings, gives an increase of 5.3 per cent. in available resources. It is for individual health boards to use the resources provided to take forward initiatives that will secure continuing reductions in waiting times.
    Mrs. Michie: Is the Minister aware of the waiting list initiative at Canniesburn hospital, whereby patients from health boards in the west of Scotland will be offered treatment in the private sector in Glasgow or south of the border? Is it not ludicrous that national health service surgeons should have to tackle the backlog within the private sector? Will the Minister therefore confirm that my constituents in the Argyll and Clyde health board area who require such treatment might have to travel to England for it? If that is so, the once proud national health service in Scotland has reached a pretty pass.
    Mr. Stewart: I can tell the hon. Lady precisely what the situation is. There has been insufficient capacity at Canniesburn hospital to treat all remaining "long waiters" for plastic surgery, which I think is what the hon. Lady refers to. Therefore, Greater Glasgow health board, with the other west of Scotland health boards, took an initiative. It put the contract out to a full competitive tendering exercise, and it went to the Bon Secour Health System, which is held in the highest regard. I thought that the hon. Lady would have welcomed that extra provision for her constituents.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that when the waiting lists and waiting times in the Glen Garry and Meigle catchment areas were calculated, future projections of population trends were taken into consideration? If so, will my hon. Friend confirm that the figures will be made available? The regional authority, the local authority and most of my constituents believe that calculations on the future of Meigle cottage hospital are flawed and consequently should be looked at again.
    Mr. Stewart: I appreciate that my hon. Friend is speaking a constituency Member. I assure him that either my noble Friend the Minister of State or I will be very happy to meet him to discuss the detailed figures which lay behind the decision on Meigle hospital.
    Mr. Connarty: Is the Minister aware of the tragic deaths of Rose McCormack and her son Jack in the town
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    of Grangemouth before the festive season? Their bodies lay undiscovered for seven weeks. The child died of starvation. Will the Minister join Opposition Members in passing on the Government's deepest sympathy to the family, the neighbours and the town of Grangemouth? I am not trying to allocate blame, but will the Minister assure me that there will be an internal inquiry to find out how the bodies of a nine-month-old child and an insulin-dependent mother could lie undiscovered for such a long period?
    Mr. Stewart: I join the hon. Gentleman's expressions of concern and sympathy to the relatives and friends involved. I assure him that an inquiry is under way. My noble Friend the Minister of State will be happy to meet him to discuss the matter.
    Mr. Kynoch: Is my hon. Friend aware that Aberdeen Royal hospital, an NHS trust, the formation of which all Opposition parties opposed, is now treating a record number of in-patients, out-patients and day patients, and is carrying out a record number of operations? Is not that the best way to reduce waiting lists? The sooner that Opposition parties realise that our reforms are working in the best interests of patients, the better.
    Mr. Stewart: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the concrete facts, which indicate that trust status works and improves services to patients. Clearly, Opposition Members have lost the battle over trust status. The Government have gone from strength to strength in terms of improvements, which are there for people to see for themselves.
    Mr. Ernie Ross: The Minister may believe that, but I draw his attention to constituents of mine, such as the man of 72 who was approach my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) at church on Sunday. This 72-year-old man had to be helped into church, having waited for four months for an angiogram. The Minister cannot dodge his responsibility for the waiting lists, which continue as a result of his failure to provide proper funding for the health service.
    Mr. Stewart: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot comment on the individual case to which he refers, as I do not know the details. However, I can say that the funds allocated by my noble Friend the Minister of State will allow for an increase of 2.5 per cent. next year in the number of patients treated. That is over and above the increase of 28 per cent. per annum in the number of in-patients treated in 1993 compared with 1979, and represents an increase of 225 per cent. in the number of day patients treated during that period. These figures, beyond any shadow of dispute, indicate a pattern of continued improvements in health care in Scotland under the Conservative Government.

    Drugs Task Force
    Mr. McAvoy: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has had any progress reports on the work of the Scottish drugs task force; and if he will make a statement.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The Scottish drugs task force, which is led by my noble Friend the Minister of

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    State, has had three meetings and is meeting again on Friday 28 January. It expects to publish its report by the summer.
    Mr. McAvoy: Is the Minister aware that a survey conducted recently by the Greater Glasgow health board confirmed that 12,000 Glasgow patients are considered to be misusing drugs? Does the hon. Gentleman know that in 1991 there were 24 sudden deaths among drug injectors in Glasgow and that in 1992 the figure rose to 73? The majority of the people involved live in deprived areas. The links between deprivation and drug abuse are clear and proven. This is a really tragic situation, which is affecting more and more people. When will the Government fund a strategy to tackle it?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I can say, first, that we shall consider very carefully the submissions of the Greater Glasgow health board. But drug misuse is not confined to any one section of society. Under the urban programme, we are currently funding about 20 drugs-related projects in Scotland, at a cost of some £1.6 million. We look forward to receiving the recommendations of the Select Committee and the representations by the task force of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), which was set up recently. The Scottish Office task force, which has 16 members, will give this matter very high priority indeed.
    Mr. McAllion: Does the Minister accept that there is a link between drug abuse and the prevalence of poverty and housing deprivation? If so, when will he do something about the 423,000 houses in Scotland that are affected by damp, serious condensation or mould? In particular, what will he do about the fact that, in the main, these damp-ridden boxes are inhabited by pensioners, people who are sick or disabled and benefit claimants? Does he agree that it is tragic that, as opposed to the situation in Westminster, there will be no designated housing or social policy for these people? Unlike the people in Westminster who benefit from Tory policies, people in Scotland do not vote Tory and are therefore punished.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The targeting of resources to where they are needed most is absolutely necessary. I refer, for example, to the treatment of houses that are severely damp. We have submitted to local authorities' recommendations on this matter and on the question of housing that is below tolerable standard. I can confirm that the urban programme will include a very sympathetic look at applications relating to areas with an especially high incidence of drug abuse.
    We need a concerted approach, not just by the police but by the social work, education and health authorities. Expenditure arising from drug-related problems is currently about £40 million a year. That is evidence of the fact that we take this matter very seriously indeed.
    Mr. McFall: It is a step forward that we now have ministerial recognition that there is a serious drug problem in Scotland. Does the Minister realise that the main problem lies with young people aged under 24 who comprise 55 per cent. of the drug misusing population? Research from the Greater Glasgow health board and the Home Office shows without doubt that heavy drug abuse is most prevalent in areas that are characterised by high unemployment, low income and inadequate housing. giving rise to a situation of hopelessness with young people.
    Does the Minister accept as a first principle that one cannot tackle the ever-increasing drug problem without dealing with its causes? Is not it time for a deprivation policy to be urgently included in the Government's timetable?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: What is absolutely necessary is to have a co-ordinated policy, and that is why we have had a national campaign using media publicity. That is aimed specifically at deterring young people from using illegal drugs. It is also directed at parents, because they can play a vital role in discouraging their children from engaging in that extremely undesirable and dangerous pursuit. Those matters, as I have mentioned, will be taken seriously.

Points of Order
3.30 pm
Ms Joan Walley: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Have you received any request from the Secretary of State for Transport to make a statement about what seems to be a significant oil pollution incident in parts of Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland, including Wigtown? There appears to be marine diesel fuel and heavy oil involved, and it is crucial that we find out what has happened, because there seems to be no mention of the incident on Lloyd's Register. Can we have a statement on the matter?
Madam Speaker: No Minister has informed me that he is seeking to make a statement today, but of course those on the Treasury Bench will have heard what the hon. Lady said.
Mr. Norman Hogg: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. This afternoon, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) and the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) have returned to the smearing of my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition in relation to Monklands district council.
It ought to be brought to the attention of the House that today's edition of The Herald, a respected newspaper —
Madam Speaker:
Order. I should like to hear the hon. Gentleman's point of order for me.
Mr. Hogg: The point of order is this, Madam Speaker. The House is being constantly abused, and two senior Members of this House are being constantly attacked and smeared by Government Members. The Government auditor for Monklands has now given the council a clearance certificate from the Audit Commission, and there is no basis whatever for allegations of corruption or of improper behaviour.
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I can deal with the matter. The hon. Gentleman is a long-standing parliamentarian, and I think that he is trying to prolong the debate. As to the hon. Gentleman's remarks on questioning, if the questioning had been out of order, I would have ruled it so. I should like the House to get back to debating policies, and not personalities.
Mr. Phil Gallie: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Order. It does not relate to the previous point of order, does it?
Mr. Gallie: No, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: I will take the hon. Gentleman at his word.
Mr. Gallie: Is it permissible for the hon. Member who represents one constituency to mention the name of an industrial complex in the constituency of another hon.
288
Member? If so, was it in order for the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Donohoe) to have hurled abuse at me from a sedentary position?
Hon. Members: Yes.
Madam Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows the answer to his first question. As he heard me say earlier, the House should get back to policies and leave personalities out of debates.

NORTHERN IRELAND COMMITTEE
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 99(2) (Matter relating exclusively to Northern Ireland).
CHILDREN (NORTHERN IRELAND)
That the Matter of the proposal for a Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1994, being a Matter relating exclusively to Northern Ireland, be referred to the Northern Ireland Committee for its consideration.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

  AUDITORS
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Auditors (Financial Services Act 1986) Rules 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  ACCOUNTANTS
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Accountants (Banking Act 1987) Regulations 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  AUDITORS
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Building Societies (Auditors) Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c. —[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Auditors (Insurance Companies Act 1982) Regulations 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  CULTURAL OBJECTS
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Regurn of Cultural Objects Regulations 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SI'EAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto,MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, (& c.).
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto,MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  BUILDING SOCIETIES
  Motion made, and Question put,
  That the draft Building Societies (EFTA States) Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c. —[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Not fewer than 20 Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, MADAM SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  SHERIFF COURT FEES
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
  That the Sheriff Court Fees Amendment (No. 2) Order 1993 (S.I., 1993, No. 2957) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Question agreed to.

  Statutory Instruments (Debates)
  3.35 pm
  Sir Peter Emery: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Is it perhaps correct to point out that Standing Order No. 101(3) was introduced by the Procedure Committee specifically to allow non-contentious statutory instruments to go straight into Standing Committee? As a result of the action of hon. Members today, we shall have a debate of perhaps 15 to 20 hours on non-contentious statutory instruments. If that is the case, the sooner we get Jopling introduced, the better for everyone.
  Madam Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is commenting on the findings of a Select Committee. I assume that all Members here, by the individual action they take, know precisely what they are doing.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will have noted the two interventions in the past week of the Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure. Are you aware that some of us are disturbed by the way in which he is clearly backing the Government in his interventions while he remains Chairman of the Committee? Some of us believe that, if he persists in doing so, a resolution of the House will be required to deal with the problem.
  Sir Peter Emery: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. If people listened, they might notice that I have tried to further a unanimous recommendation of a Select Committee of the House to introduce some modernisation of Standing Orders—I refer to Jopling. I shall go on doing so, because I believe that it is my duty so to do.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The right hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) suggested that statutory instruments should be sent upstairs because they are non-controversial. Is it not true that Statutory Instruments can often be as long as, or, indeed, longer than, major primary legislation, and that they affect millions of people? Is there not a good case for taking more statutory instruments on the Floor of the House, where they are subject to full scrutiny, rather than pushing them upstairs into a Committee? It is time that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that.
  Madam Speaker: We are now entering into a debate on procedure. I shall not allow that to take place.

  Leasehold Law Reform
  3.38 pm
  Mr. Richard Page: I beg to move,
  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law regarding privity of contract and estate for future but not existing leases; and for connected purposes.
  If the small—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) would be quiet, he might learn something for the benefit of his constituents. If the small business sector compiled lists of restraints and barriers to trade, it would not be surprising to find commercial leaseholds and the law relating to them, if not at the top of the list, almost at the top. It is for that reason that my Bill concentrates on how smaller businesses might be helped by changes to commercial leasehold law.
  Part of my effort is motivated by the fact that I and all hon. Members have recently seen more and more boarded-up shops and vacant shop fronts standing out like blackened teeth, disfiguring the towns and villages of our constituencies, and contributing to the rundown of community life. My Bill will help to reverse that decline, by giving small businesses a fairer deal when undertaking commercial leaseholds. It will give confidence to small business men who take the plunge and start a new business.
  My Bill will enable consideration of upward-only rent reviews, privity of contract and compensation if rates are found to be too highly assessed. It is normal for a small business entering into negotiations with a landlord to be faced with a gross imbalance of power. While that imbalance has been partially corrected by the recession, there is no doubt that normal service will be resumed once the property market recovers. It is not surprising that small business men find themselves having to sign contracts, which normally they would be considered insane to sign.
  Big businesses are big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves. They can employ lawyers and accountants to argue their case on leasehold negotiations. Smaller businesses do not have that strength. It is because of that imbalance of power that I believe that the Government should go further to introduce leasehold reforms to protect the interests of smaller business. That is the purpose of the Bill.
  My greatest concern is over privity of contract—whereby an individual taking a lease assumes liability for rents due many years later from organisations with which he may have had no connection and for which he has no responsibility. I have heard of cases in which, decades later, individuals have been presented with demands for tens of thousands of pounds and, as a result, have been subjected to personal bankruptcy. The hand of the landlord can reach out literally to the edge of the grave. That unfairness should be redressed.
  In addition to the proposed limitation of privity to the immediate successor, I recommend that the sword of Damocles be removed after a reasonable but specific time. Lease lives have diminished—the average lease life here is about 15 years, and in the United States it is much shorter. That is still far too long for the individual to be liable for rents—he may have moved on, sold up or even retired.
  Therefore, for smaller businesses of less than approximately 3,000 sq ft, there should be a five-year limit, after which responsibility is diminished. That would prevent some of the worst cases of personal hardship
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  caused by privity of contract in commercial leases. Surely five years is long enough for the landlord to assess whether the new tenant is good enough or to find another tenant.
  I am aware of the need to rebuild investor confidence in the commercial property sector, but I am concerned that such a consideration may override all others. As I said, commercial landlords are in a much stronger position than the smaller business man, which is reflected in the majority of leasehold agreements. The landlord has the ability to obtain agreements, not only on privity of contract, but on upward-only rent reviews.
  It seems strange, to say the least, that landlords are content to set new rentals according to current market conditions, while future reviews remain blind to any change of circumstances that might affect property values. I cannot think of any other traded commodity that can only rise in price. Upward-only rent reviews should therefore be prohibited. Instead, rents should be adjusted according to market conditions.
  The wholesale abolition of upward-only rent reviews would bring sense to a nonsensical practice. The commercial property market is not unique: other capital-intensive industries that have no plan for the long term. The fluctuations in the commercial aircraft industry make life in the property market seem almost secure. I do not accept, therefore, that commercial landlords need special allowances for their circumstances.
  Together with privity, upward-only rent reviews inflict tremendous commercial and personal harm on small businesses and their owners. Even the industry's own representative, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, has acknowledged that
  "real hardship is being suffered and that, in some cases, paying rents above market levels can be a contributory cause of insolvency."
  Limited compensation measures should be introduced to provide some redress for a small business that is driven from a property by an upward-rent review, only to see the landlord let that property at a lower rental. That compensation would be offered within a specific period of two years. A compensation scheme would encourage flexibility, and would surely benefit all concerned.
  I speak with some experience, because I know of a constituent who was charged a rent of £13,000 a year. That was too expensive for him, and he went into bankruptcy. Within a few months, however, his landlord, who had refused to agree to a lower rent, relet the property for only £10,000 a year. My Bill would introduce changes that reflect current market conditions.
  I accept that a deal is a deal, and that what is past is past. The measures contained in my Bill would therefore not be retrospective. The small business sector is the one that will provide jobs as the economy expands. It is the acorn from which the oak can grow. I sincerely recommend the Bill to the House, because it would amend commercial leaseholds to give small businesses a better chance of getting started and a fairer deal.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Richard Page, Mr. John Fraser, Sir Michael Grylls, Mr. Peter Thurnham, Mrs. Angela Browning, Mr. James Couchman and Mr. Spencer Batiste.

  LEASEHOLD LAW REFORM
  Mr. Richard Page accordingly presented a Bill to amend the law regarding privity of contract and estate for future

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  but existing leases; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 22 April and to be printed. [Bill 39.]

  OPPOSITION DAY
  [2ND ALLOTTED DAY]

  Housing
  Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister.
  3.47 pm
  Mr. Jack Straw: I beg to move,
  That this House, noting that investment in housing has more than halved since 1979, whilst housing benefit costs have rocketed, that homelessness has trebled, that for the one million who face negative equity the dream of home ownership has turned into a nightmare, and that half a million building workers are on the dole, condemns the failure of the housing policies of Her Majesty's Government, the latest proposals to remove the basic right of the homeless to a permanent home, and the mean and nasty consequence of government policies which led Westminster City Council to spend millions on designated sales schemes which have harmed tenants and owner occupiers alike; and calls for policies to secure real choice between tenures, which revive housebuilding through the phased release of capital receipts, which make more effective use of a socially responsible private rented sector, deal humanely with the homeless, and provide better advice and protection for home purchasers.
  Britain faces a housing crisis unparalleled for four decades. In the past 18 months, the Labour party has published five separate documents setting out its proposals to tackle that crisis. If the Government had any sense, they would adopt them today. Those documents set out a clear strategy and a call for action to deal with that housing crisis.
  The right to a decent home is fundamental in a civilised democracy. Without that basic entitlement, it is almost impossible to exercise all the other rights that we all take for granted. We now are faced with a Government, however, who see themselves as having little responsibility for ensuring that every one of our citizens has a proper home. We have a Government who, in the face of such a crisis, have decided to slash still further their pitiable capital investment budget.
  The biggest problem is the lack of adequate housing supply. What makes the Government's response even worse is the fact that the resources are there to make a start on tackling that crisis. They exist in the form of more than £5,500 million of accumulated capital receipts, which are currently locked away in council bank accounts by order of the Government. We believe that those receipts should be used to buy up empty and repossessed homes and to build new homes. With the number of housing starts down by 100,000 on the level achieved by the Labour Government, before 1979, that emergency house building programme is desperately needed.
  Only absurd Treasury dogma stops those receipts from being invested in housing now. How can the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction explain to the young couple who want to set up a home before starting a family that they may have to wait indefinitely, because his Government will not let their local council build homes with money which it already has, but which is locked in the bank by Government order?
  It was difficult enough for the Government to justify their refusal to allow local authorities to spend their capital receipts before the 1992 autumn statement; it is virtually impossible now. In the 1992 autumn statement, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer—the right hon. Member for

  295
  Kingston upon Thames (Mr. Lamont)—conceded the exact principle for which we have argued: that councils should be able to use all their current capital receipts to rebuild houses and rehouse people. If the receipts could be unfrozen for 13 months, why could they not be unfrozen for another year? If current receipts could be reinvested in housing, why could not the same apply to accumulated receipts?
  Mr. Gary Streeter: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his proposal would add £5.5 billion to the public sector borrowing requirement? How does he square that with the assurance given by his hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) that the Labour party has no firm spending commitments?
  Mr. Straw: This is the difficulty that the hon. Gentleman and all his hon. Friends faced last year. If it was right to unfreeze capital receipts last year—notwithstanding the way in which the PSBR is defined—why is it wrong this year, when the housing crisis is even worse?
  What lies behind the Government's prohibition is an irrational hatred of council housing. They believe that there is only one legitimate form of housing tenure: home ownership. They have a one-club housing policy, which is as profound a failure as their one-club economic policy. Labour believes in real choice among different forms of housing tenure, which is why we have published proposals for flexible tenure.
  Potential owners should be given more flexible choice in regard to home ownership. Shared ownership schemes should be offered by social landlords, allowing people to own as much of a home as they can afford while paying rent for the rest. They could then "staircase" up to full ownership as income and circumstances permit it; we believe, however, that they should be able to "staircase" downwards as well. Reducing the mortgage element that people pay and turning mortgages into rent is surely better than turfing families out of their homes when they cannot manage mortgage repayments.
  If there is to be real choice between different forms of tenure, we need a healthy private rented sector. Conservative Members routinely pay lip service to that; yet the proportion of households renting private homes has halved since 1979 and there are more than 800,000 empty private homes. Since 1989, deregulation has been a profiteers' charter, just as deregulation in 1957 did not lead to an increase in the private rented sector—as Conservative Ministers then claimed—but led to a collapse in that sector, and to Rachmanism.
  In a speech last week, launching what was described as
  "a swingeing attack on the Government's housing policy",
  the chief executive of the Halifax building society spoke of
  "a polarisation of tenures between owner-occupation and housing association or local authority renting. Little choice exists."
  Britain suffers from the lack of a viable alternative to social renting or owner occupation. Labour has presented proposals to encourage the development of a new, socially responsible private rented sector.
  Home owners and potential buyers have not been helped by the Government's one-club policy, either. They have been given precious little protection against the unscrupulous and irresponsible behaviour of some mortgage lenders. Many thousands of households are trapped in homes that are worth less than they paid for
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  them, with mortgages that they cannot afford. Labour wants tougher regulation of mortgage lenders, and better advice and protection for home purchasers.
  The measures that I have outlined have been demanded for years by housing organisations, building firms, home owners and tenants alike. They are common-sense measures, which ought to be utterly uncontroversial. Not long ago, even a Conservative Government would have based their policy upon them. In 1924, the first Labour Government had to establish the basis for a common-sense housing policy, and it will be our job after the next election to re-establish it.
  Although it was often a matter of intense debate, for many decades after the war a broad post-war consensus existed between the parties about the balance and purpose of housing policy right up until 1979. There were mistakes as Government and councils tried to make up the massive deficit of houses caused by bombing and slums beyond repair, but those mistakes were shared.
  Today, almost every Conservative speech on housing is peppered with references to 1960s tower blocks, as though they were a Labour invention, but it was the 1944 Abercrombie plan agreed by the wartime coalition which had the idea of tower blocks, and the 1951–55 Conservative Government who began the error of forcing tower blocks and industrialised buildings on councils whether they wanted them or not. New subsidy arrangements by the Conservative Government in the mid-1950s encouraged tower blocks against the building of traditional homes by increasing the subsidy on buildings of six storeys or more.
  Under pressure from private construction firms, the then Conservative Housing Minister, Sir Keith Joseph, became an evangelist for tower blocks, telling the House in November 1962 and again in December 1962 of the necessity
  "to take advantage of industrialised techniques which make smaller demands on available labour in order to meet this larger programme".—[Official Report, 13 November 1962; Vol. 667, c. 22.]
  At least at that time, both sides recognised the importance of a mix of tenures. Whilst the majority of people—an increasing number—rightly wanted to own their own homes for the rest of their lives, there would always be a need for affordable, decent homes to rent which had to be provided through councils and housing associations.
  That broad consensus changed in 1979, with the first election of the present Administration. The Conservative manifesto of that date committed the incoming Government to legislating on the right to buy and to measures to revive the private rented sector. It was wholly silent on any positive role for the social housing sector.
  Since 1979, council house building has been virtually abolished, but building by housing associations has only spasmodically reached levels attained by Labour. The overall consequence is that the number of social housing units being built each year has dropped from 100,000 a year with Labour to 35,000 —or one third—under the Conservatives.
  Nor has private housing fared much better. Overall starts are down 110,000, from 270,000 under Labour in 1978 to 160,000 under the Conservatives in 1992. During that period, public investment in housing has halved, at today's prices, from £13 billion in 1978 to £6 billion in 1991–92 and it is still falling, with a cut of £500 million

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  imposed by the current Housing Minister on even the parsimonious plans for next year proposed by the current Home Secretary.
  What is crazy about Government policy on public housing is that, as investment has been halved, personal subsidies, so derided by the Conservative party, have shot up. In the wake of massive and unjustified increases in rents, housing benefit costs have risen by 55 per cent. in real terms in just five years, now standing at £7.3 billion —£1.5 billion more than we invested in housing—while the social security bill for the payment of mortgage interest alone has risen fourfold in real terms in five years and now tops £1.1 billion.
  The consequence is greater misery in all tenures than any of us can remember for owner-occupiers, tenants, the homeless and building workers, 500,000 of whom have lost their jobs. More than 1 million home owners are trapped in their own homes, unable to move because their houses are worth much less than they paid for them and much less than their mortgage. Some 35,000 people are more than six months in arrears; 60,000 families lost their homes in 1993 through mortgage repossessions; waiting lists have increased by 200,000 and number of homeless people has gone up threefold.
  Council rents have been forced up at 2.5 times the rate of inflation, and housing association rents are now so high that, as the Environment Select Committee reported:
  "Welfare ghettos are now being created where only those on housing benefit can possibly afford to reside, and once there are forced to stay on the dole rather than to take lower paid work available."
  The Government talk about rolling back dependency on the state, but they have increased dependency on the state with every policy. In 1979, only one in 12 people of working age was dependent on the state. It is now down to one in six. Many of those people are desperate to get back to work, but are trapped on the dole by the insane housing and social policies of the Government.
  That situation is almost entirely of the Government's making. Had they established a system by which councils were able to reinvest the proceeds of council house sales in renewing and rehabilitating the social housing stock, a substantial part of this crisis would never have happened. Had they not switched from investment to personal subsidy, they would have saved the public purse millions of pounds and not created welfare ghettos.
  Mr. Streeter: What about the £6 million?
  Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman wants to know where the money will come from for investment. He must look at council house receipts, the amount that is being squandered year after year on housing benefit and other subsidies that subsidise the policy of excessively high rents.
  The Government are not renowned for accepting their share of the blame. "The buck stops anywhere but here" is what should be inscribed on every Minister's chair. Never has there been a group of people more ill fitted to lecture the rest of us on individual responsibility than the collection of handwashers and scapegoaters on the Government Front Bench.
  Seventeen years ago, the late and good Stephen Ross, the Liberal Member for the Isle of Wight, piloted through the House his Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, with the active support of the Labour Government and many Conservative Members as well. That Act brought in overdue reform. It ended the unfairness of the old law that
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  allowed some councils—usually Conservative—to evade responsibilities for the homeless, and gave those who were homeless through no fault of their own some highly qualified rights of access to local authority accommodation.
  That Act has all-party support and survived the test of time, as even Lady Thatcher recognised when she was Prime Minister. The 1977 provisions were consolidated by the Conservative Government in the Housing Act 1985 and were amended—only slightly—by the Government in the Housing and Planning Act 1986. The Act was the subject of a major review by the then Secretary of State, the late Lord Ridley, in 1988.
  The conclusions were announced by his successor, Chris Patten, who, on 15 November 1989, said:
  "We believe that the Act remains important … The present terms of the Act strike a reasonable balance between the interests of the genuinely homeless and others in housing need. We do not intend therefore to change the law, but we have proposals—
  which were sensible—
  to make it work better."
  He went on to say:
  "The real and long-term remedies
  to the levels of homelessness
  "are to be found in an effective housing strategy, based on the contributions of the private and the public sectors".—[Official Report, 15 November 1991; Vol. 160, c. 243–244.]
  I could not have put it better myself.
  Mr. Stephen Milligan: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the situation in my constituency, where the number of homeless people has fallen sharply over the past 18 months, the number of people accepted as homeless has fallen and the number of people in temporary accommodation has fallen, but at the same time 443 people on the council waiting list have been waiting for a long time? Of those, only one family was rehoused last year. Given the limited resources, are not the Government right to change the rules to ensure that people on low incomes, who have a normal family life, do not have to become homeless to get a council house?
  Mr. Straw: I am glad that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. He has just damned himself out of his own mouth. He said that the number of people accepted as homeless has dropped in the past six months. I suspect that, in Eastleigh, that is not a very high proportion at all. He knows that there are hundreds on the waiting list and that only one was rehoused last year. Why is that the case? It is not because the homeless are jumping the queue, but because of the fundamental failure of the Conservative Government and his council in collapsing the house building programme.
  If the hon. Gentleman wants to do something for the people on the waiting lists in Eastleigh or anywhere else, he should join us in the Lobby tonight—join us in unfreezing capital receipts and in giving his council and every other council the right to spend the money that they have raised from the sale of council houses on housing those who are homeless and those on the housing waiting list as well.
  Despite the continuing squeeze on resources, councils and voluntary organisations have continued to support the conclusions of the 1989 review of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. Many, especially Labour-controlled councils, have made sterling efforts to cut numbers in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, in some cases to eliminate bed-and-breakfast accommodation altogether—

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  as Camden has done, for example, despite worse pressure from the homeless, with three main-line stations in its area, than adjoining Westminster, which continues to have to house hundreds of the homeless in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
  Mr. Streeter: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Straw: Not again: I shall spare the hon. Gentleman.
  No council or voluntary organisation that I can identify, except, I think, Westminster and Wandsworth—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—has made any call for a further review. There the policy, broadly accepted, rested until the Conservative party conference last October.
  The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) once attributed the success of his right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) at Tory party conferences to, I paraphrase, the right hon. Gentleman's elegant anatomical knowledge of the body politic of the Conservative party. But no such skill is possessed by other members of this Administration. They know only where to find the cesspit of the Tory party, and their only appeal is to whip up the crudest, the basest, prejudices inside their party.
  How they succeeded at the Conservative party conference. The Secretary of State for Social Security won the biggest ovation of the week, so The Daily Telegraph told us, with an attack on alleged foreign scroungers. The Secretary of State for Education launched what may now be seen as a rather injudicious attack on "parents who walk away". The Home Secretary roamed even wider. Single parents with more than one child could have their benefits capped, he mused, and their rights as homeless people severely restricted.
  But the man who played the most disreputable role at the Conservative party conference last October, was the man who, until then, had enjoyed a reputation as the most liberal and humane man in this Administration—none other than the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction. His speech signalled that, not content with blaming the unemployed for being jobless, the Government were now going to blame those without a home of their own for being homeless. The specific target of his attack was single parents, especially younger single parents.
  Since Christmas, the Government have recognised that the "back to basics" scam of last October has been a catastrophe for the Tory party. Hopeless denials have come from the Tory party that anything was ever said about private morality, while the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction sought to salvage his reputation by pretending that deliberate queue-jumping by single mothers
  "was not the case I was making for reform",
  as he told me in a letter.
  References to single mothers have been excised from the consultative document. In addition, there is a most revealing omission which speaks volumes in the brief for this debate, presented and prepared by the Conservative research department, which a well-wisher in that extraordinary department has sent me.
  The brief is of no more general reliability than the brief issued on Haringey recently, which alleged that two town halls in Haringey had been demolished, both of which are
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  still standing. But if we trawl through it, we find endless extracts from the Minister's speech at the Conservative party conference, except the one extract that earned him all the publicity, the one extract that he wishes he had never said.
  Let me remind the House what he said:
  "How do we explain to the young couple … who want to wait for a home before they start a family … that they cannot be housed ahead of the unmarried teenager expecting her first, probably unplanned, child?"
  Every prejudice one can think of is plumbed in every word. As it happens, single mothers of whatever age have never had priority in the homeless queue, and the right hon. Gentleman knew that when he made his disgraceful speech.
  The 1989 review also made it clear that no homeless person had an automatic right to housing, whatever his or her condition. Indeed, the opening section of the review went out of its way to say:
  "It is important to remember that the legislation does not require councils directly to provide homes for people. A council's task is to assess people's need, and then, if satisfied that they genuinely do need accommodation, to help them secure it. Authorities may use their own stock to do so, or may make arrangements for people to be housed by a housing association or other provider in the private sector."
  It goes on to say that people presenting themselves as homeless must satisfy three separate tests, and that only if they meet the necessary criteria will they be offered any kind of housing, temporary or otherwise.
  Last Thursday, the right hon. Gentleman published his so-called consultation paper, to universal condemnation from all those who have to deal with the homeless. That is no wonder, for, if implemented, its proposals will set back the clock 30 years or more. Fine words such as
  "continuing to provide homes for families and vulnerable individuals"
  trip easily from the right hon. Gentleman's lips, but Conservatives had better understand what the proposals mean.
  The proposals mean that councils will no longer be obliged to provide accommodation for applicants while investigating their application. They will be obliged to secure accommodation for homeless households for a limited period only. They will have no responsibility to help people who have been asked by friends or relatives to leave not their own home but someone's else home if the council believes that they can reasonably continue to live there without what is called "undue strain".
  The overall consequenced of the proposals is that many homeless families will not be eligible for accommodation unless they are physically on the streets—not only homeless but roofless. In addition, many families will be moved from one borough to another, from one set of accommodation to another. What will that do for the basic rights of those families, and especially for those of their children?
  We must ask again where the demand for the change is coming from. It is not coming from those who have to deal with the homeless; nor is it a response to the facts. A leaked internal Cabinet paper showed that there was no evidence to link single parents with higher levels of crime or other social disorder. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that single mothers deliberately become pregnant to jump the queue, as the right hon. Gentleman insinuated at the Conservative party conference.
  I now read an interesting quotation:

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  "I have yet to meet a 'single mother' who has deliberately become pregnant in order to gain housing or financial advantage."
  They are the words of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), the Minister for Roads and Traffic, as reported in The Journal in Salisbury last week. He was right, and the Conservative Members who have sought to scapegoat young single mothers for their own failure should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
  The general household survey published yesterday revealed that the number of single families has altered little since 1990, shortly after the previous review was published. During Question Time only last Wednesday, the Minister of State was trumpeting the fact that the number of homeless acceptances had fallen in each of the previous six quarters. So where is the problem that requires the Government's extraordinary solution?
  The problem does not lie with the legislation or its enactment. Of course, there is a reason that waiting lists have lengthened, and to near-infinity in Westminster, as I outlined at the beginning of the debate.
  If, at a time of rising household formation, one halves investment in housing, stops councils building any new homes, cuts the total number of new homes in the social housing sector to a third of what it was under Labour, and forces hundreds of thousands into mortgage arrears through crazy economic and social policies, one will of course end up with a crisis—one for which not the homeless, those on housing waiting lists or those trapped in homes worth less than their mortgages are responsible but one for which the Government are patently responsible.
  The Government's policy on the homeless has nothing whatever to do with housing need and everything to do with the desperation and political bankruptcy of the Conservative party. Yes, this is a "back to basics" policy, but it is back to the Victorian basics of the Poor Law and the Vagrancy Acts, when the homeless were chased across parish boundaries so that they did not become a burden on the ratepayers—a technique already applied, with disastrous social consequences, by Westminster city council, which sent housing officers scampering across the country to Wigan and to my constituency of Blackburn, offering those astonished boroughs £400 a head if they would take Westminster's responsibilities for its homeless people off its hands.
  Yes, "back to basics" is a moral issue; a matter of public morality and of decency. That policy is amoral, indecent, and unworthy of any Government in the late 20th century—and worthy, above all, of the Minister.
  Our motion speaks of the mean and nasty consequences of Government policies. That phrase comes from the formal instructions that were given by the Conservative leadership in Westminster to housing officers, who were told to be "mean and nasty" with the homeless.
  What has been revealed in the district auditor's report on Westminster is not simply an embarrassment to the local Conservative association. It was central Government's neurotic hatred of council housing which created the climate in which Dame Shirley Porter could set about the social cleansing of Westminster. What started as Tory dogma has ended in the corrupt gerrymandering of Westminster city council's designated sales scheme.
  The victims of that policy are, first, the homeless in Westminster, whose needs were mocked by watching decent council homes being boarded up for sale some time, maybe or never.
  Mr. John Marshall: The hon. Gentleman complains about vacant houses in Westminster. Is he aware that, under the housing investment programme application in April 1993, 2 per cent. of the Westminster housing stock was empty, but in Hackney the percentage was 9.2 per cent., in Waltham Forest 4.6 per cent., in Tower Hamlets 4.6 per cent. and in Lambeth 3.6 per cent.? Should not the hon. Gentleman's motion tackle those Liberal and Labour councils and not Westminster city council?
  Mr. Straw: I have been kind and gentle to Conservative Members. I warned them about not listening to or following Conservative party research documents. I have seen the same one. Unfortunately, I have here a Department of Environment "housing investment programme all items" print. It shows for Hackney, not that 9 per cent. of the homes are empty and available for letting, but 1.54 per cent. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Marshall rose—
  Mr. Straw: I will not give way.
  That 1.54 per cent. is way below the average for local authorities, and seven times below the level of the Government.
  Mr. Marshall rose—
  Mr. Straw: I will not give way.
  Hon. Members: Do your homework!
  Mr. Marshall rose—
  Mr. Straw: I will not give way. I will spare the hon. Gentleman his embarrassment.
  I was saying, Madam Speaker—
  Mr. Marshall: On that very point—
  Mr. Straw: No; I do not want a very point. The hon. Gentleman was wrong. If he has an argument, he had better take it up with the Department of the Environment, which provided me with those figures.
  Mr. Malcolm Chisholm: It is upside down.
  Mr. Straw: As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) says, I think that the hon. Gentleman has read the figures upside-down—1.6, not 9.1.
  The first victims of the policy followed by Westminster city council were the homeless. The second victims were the residents, whose council spent £21 million on what the district auditor said was an unlawful housing policy. Many former tenants were sold a false prospectus and are now stuck with maintenance bills they cannot pay, in homes they cannot sell.
  Much attention has rightly been paid to the effect of designated sales on the homeless, who were treated little better than chattels, but many of the supposed gainers also ended up as losers.
  The objective of the policy was obvious. As the district auditor said in his report, it was motivated by considerations of electoral advantage. The intention was to change the electoral base in 18 wards through the sale of council property to people who were likely to be Conservative voters.
  Mr. Hartley Booth rose—
  Mr. Straw: No, I have to get on.
  The link between Westminster city council and the Government is not based simply on similar policy objectives and land deals. There is now overwhelming evidence that Westminster city council involved Ministers. Not only was the Prime Minister happy to commend the example set by Dame Shirley Porter to other local authorities, not only did the present Secretary of State for Employment describe Westminster's policies as a stunning success, but we now know that Ministers were present at key meetings in which Westminster Conservative councillors discussed the designated sales policies.
  The right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), who is now a Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office—I told him that I would raise the matter today—has already admitted to being present to at least two seminars with Westminster councillors, in 1986 and 1988, at which the designated sales policy was discussed. He could hardly have denied being present, because one of those meetings took place in his room.
  The Secretary of State for National Heritage has explained to me that he could not be present today because of a ministerial engagement, and I entirely accept that. The right hon. Gentleman was also present at the meetings, and in a statement to The Observer he said that
  "he was aware there was a political dimension"
  to the policy. The right hon. Member for Westminster, North went further, and his spokesman said:
  "Of course he knew about the designated sales policy and
  supports it. This policy is fantastically popular in Westminster."
  Mr. Booth rose—
  Mr. Straw: No, many other hon. Members want to speak.
  Perhaps it is the involvement of members of the Government in meetings with Westminster councillors which explains another curious aspect of the saga—the fact that the Government have fallen uncharacteristically silent about the whole affair. They are latter-day converts to the "due process" idea when allegations are made against councillors who are members of their party—a subscription which they did not exactly take out when the allegations were about councillors from other parties.
  Ministers are now trying to say that a district auditor's report that took more than four years to complete does not provide sufficient evidence to enable us to make a judgment about the policy that Westminster council pursued.
  Mr. Booth: Will my hon. Friend—
  Mr. Straw: No—and I am not your friend, anyway.
  Ministers are at great pains to emphasise the idea that the district auditor's recommendations are only provisional. That is true, and those named in the report are entitled to due process. However, Ministers conveniently gloss over the fact that the district auditor is in no doubt that the designated sales policy was
  "unlawful, unauthorised, and to the detriment of the interests of local taxpayers".
  Westminster council has not felt obliged to restrict its discussions of the report, and now, notwithstanding the ludicrous leaflets that it was putting out a few days ago, it has decided to abandon the policy, because it recognises how wrong it was. It is high time that Ministers who were involved up to their necks in what was going on in Westminster had the guts that Westminster councilors
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  have, and at long last admitted that the policy was wrong. They should understand that they can condemn the policies without in any sense prejudging whether those responsible for them committed unlawful acts.
  What happened in Westminster was not an aberration, but the natural consequence of Conservative housing and social policy, bearing the indelible fingerprints of Conservative central office, of local Conservative Members of Parliament and of a succession of Ministers.
  The pathetic brief put out by central office for the debate today gets up to the usual nonsense of trying to denigrate the record of Labour councils. I say "trying", and it is indeed very trying, because even that effort backfires. The brief contains a list of rent arrears as a percentage of the rent roll. Top of the list, with £16.8 million owing—more than one third of the total rent roll—is Brent, an authority which has been Conservative for the past four years.
  We need no lectures from the Conservative party about efficiency or probity in housing, or in public life generally. If the Tory party wants to get back to basics, it should start examining the beam in its own eye before looking for the mote in the eyes of others. Of course what is owing should be collected. That is why Ministers should start with the £1.7 billion in uncollected tax, and the several billions of pounds in tax that the Inland Revenue says should come from the black economy.
  Of course no public sector house should be empty a day longer than is necessary. So Ministers had better explain why there were 25,000 empty Government properties last March—seven times the empty property rate for local authorities. Ministers had better start applauding the record of councils, especially those such as Hackney, which, with less than 2 per cent. of its stock empty and available for letting, has the best record in any sector. Most such authorities are Labour.
  If Ministers want to pick on a council, they would do best to choose that of the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), the Secretary of State for the Environment. Again, if we consider figures from the Department of the Environment, we find that that council has only 40 properties left under its ownership. I would have thought that that would not be difficult to manage. Of those 40, 13—a third—are lying idle. According to figures from the Department of the Environment, that is the highest proportion of houses lying idle of any authority in the country. With 1,463 persons on the waiting list, surely it should not be difficult to fill those dwellings, but perhaps that is someone else's fault too.
  Labour wants tenants to get value for money and affordable homes to rent to be available. That is why rents in Labour areas are much lower than in Conservative areas. The Tory party is trying to price up tenants in work out of their own homes. Of the six London boroughs with the highest rents, every one is Tory. The highest rent to be found anywhere in the country is in Conservative Ealing —the borough of the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction—where the average council rent of £66.06 a week is more than twice the national average.
  Just as Labour Governments have had the best housing policies, so Labour councils have had, and continue to have, the best housing policies. Of the 25 most efficient housing authorities recently named, 11 are Labour-controlled, three are Labour-dominated and just four are Conservative. That list comes from none other than the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction.

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  The Government have failed home owners and tenants alike. They have created a crisis and sought to scapegoat others for their moral, financial and political failure. We need a Government who will end that crisis, provide for those in need and ensure real choice of tenure. The Labour party will provide that Government.
  4.26 pm
  The Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction (Sir George Young): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
  "welcomes the fact that the Government is set to surpass its manifesto commitment to produce 153,000 homes in the first three years of this Parliament by 25,000; notes with approval the reduction in the number of families accepted as statutory homeless and temporarily housed in bed and breakfast accommodation; notes that the size of the nation's housing stock has grown faster than population growth over the last 15 years and its quality has improved and that the mortgage rate is now at its lowest since the 1960s as a result of the Government's economic policies; commends the Government's policies to secure decent housing for those in need, to provide a safety net for vulnerable people faced with losing their home and to provide more opportunities for home ownership; and calls on Her Majesty's Opposition to condemn the actions of those Labour-controlled councils who wasted taxpayers' money through mismanagement of their housing stock, failure to collect rents and the imposition of high council taxes."
  It is a coincidence that, on the day after I had pointed out to the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) at a public debate on housing that the Labour Front Bench had not held one Supply day debate on housing in the whole parliamentary session, the Order Paper should have shown a response to that suggestion.
  I welcome the opportunity to set out our record on housing and to describe the wide range of initiatives which we are promoting to bring decent housing to those in housing need. I shall do so on a day when we have good news from the construction industry of a 14 per cent. increase in orders in the last quarter of 1993 and when new orders for private housing are 38 per cent. up on the same period in 1992.
  Mr. Bruce Grocott: Will the Minister give way?
  Sir George Young: Let me make some progress and then I shall give way. I want to contrast our portfolio of ideas on this side of the House—[Laughter.]—with the empty rhetoric of Opposition Members. In its latest editorial, the magazine funded by Shelter, "Roof', says about the housing policies of Opposition Members:
  "perhaps the biggest change of all needs to come from the Opposition parties. There is a huge policy vacuum there, waiting to be filled with imaginative ideas."
  Before I move on, I shall deal with the question of Hackney council. The hon. Member for Blackburn may have read, inadvertently, from the wrong line. The figures that we have in the Department from local authorities show that in Westminster the total number of management vacancies—[Interruption.] I shall give both figures. In Westminster, the total number of management vacancies as at 1 April 1993 was 92. In the London borough of Hackney, the figure was 1,091. There were 0.6 per cent. management vacancies in Westminster and 4.7 per cent. in Hackney. The total vacancies, not just the management voids, in Westminster were 331 and in Hackney, 3,750. The percentages are as follows: 2 per cent. for Westminster and 9.2 per cent. for Hackney.
  Mr. Straw: I have a copy of the printout. I was quoting the figures—[Horn. MEMBERS: "Apologise."] The person who should apologise is the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall). He had the figures the wrong way around—[Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. Seated interventions are not helpful.
  Mr. Straw: The Minister is up to his usual tricks of trying to include, in his figures of empty houses available to let, houses awaiting demolition, houses awaiting major repair and those awaiting renovation. Let us consider the proportion of homes available for letting, in respect of which I have not misread a line. According to the printout, the percentage for Labour-controlled Hackney in Greater London is 1.54.
  Sir George Young: The figures are clearly on the record and I read them out a few moments ago. Those figures were supplied to my Department by the local authorities concerned. The 1.9 per cent. is actually the figure below 4.7 per cent. and relates to Lambeth.
  However, it is worth repeating the figures. Hackney has 10 times as many empty local authority properties as Westminster. There are 3,750 such properties in Hackney as opposed to 331 in Westminster.
  Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that Hackney has a greater percentage of its housing stock empty and available to be sold than Westminster? Should not the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) have pointed that out?
  Sir George Young: The day the Labour party tries to shelter behind the efficiency of the London borough of Hackney is the day when Labour loses all credibility.
  I want to place in a broader context some of the issues referred to by the hon. Member for Blackburn. Since we came to office, the housing stock has grown from just under 21.5 million homes in 1980 to 24 million homes in 1991. If we convert that into homes per 100 people, it is clear that in 1980 there were 38 homes per 100 people and that there are now 41 homes per 100. In addition, the condition of that stock has improved. The English house condition survey shows that there are an estimated 160,000 fewer unfit dwellings across all tenures than there were five years ago. There are more homes; they are better heated and have more standard amenities and better insulation.
  Each year, more of those in housing need are being rehoused than when we started. We are making better use of the public housing stock, with lettings in 1992–93 running at more than 500,000 compared with 473,000 in 1979–80. New lettings, rather than new builds, are the currency that really matters for those on the waiting list and those in housing need. The right to buy has brought home ownership within the reach of hundreds of thousands of families.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister give way?
  Sir George Young: No, I will not give way at the moment.
  Nearly 1.5 million people throughout Great Britain have benefited from a policy which is so successful that Opposition Members have now been forced to accept it. Before the hon. Member for Blackburn lectures us about

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  capital receipts, let him recognise that there would have been no capital receipts if we had taken his advice not to proceed with the right to buy.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The Minister referred to the right to buy. Will he take this opportunity, as the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction, to condemn the actions of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) who used an intermediary to buy the council house next door to his home in Gayfree street at a £50,000 discount? Was not that an abuse of the scheme? Will the Minister responsible for housing condemn those actions?
  Sir George Young: No, I will not. [Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister, and indeed any hon. Member who is addressing the House, is entitled to be heard, however unpopular the remarks might be.
  Mr. Straw rose—
  Sir George Young: I am not giving way. I must make some progress.
  Mr. Straw rose—
  Sir George Young: I am not giving way. I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman. I want to make some progress.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn touched on the private rented sector. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman had the face to talk about the private rented sector when Opposition Members' policies led to a decline in the private rented sector for 60 or 70 years. The Housing Act 1988 has arrested and reversed 70 years of decline of the private rented sector. The latest figures suggest that it has increased in size in recent years to more than 9.5 per cent. of the housing stock. I welcome the Labour party's belated conversion to the merits of making better use of the private rented sector and the abandonment of its dogmatic hostility to private landlords.
  We are tackling rundown estates by creating new housing action trusts to begin the work of regeneration, working with tenants to secure a better future. Five housing action trusts have already been established, and residents at Stonebridge Park in Brent will vote shortly on whether to set up a sixth. Housing action trusts are yet another bright idea that Labour failed to welcome at the time. Elsewhere, we have promoted the redevelopment of unpopular estates with the private sector, diversifying tenure and creating a human scale environment with effective local management.
  By harnessing the resources of the private sector to housing association development, we have added £2.6 billion to investment over the past six years, providing over 70,000 homes more than would otherwise have been possible. We look set to exceed by 25,000 the number of new homes to which we committed ourselves in our manifesto.
  We are tackling the problem of rough sleeping on the streets of central London, where the problem is at its worst, with a closely targeted, practical package of measures in the rough sleepers initiative, which is significantly bringing down the numbers on the streets. As Shelter's magazine, "Roof', said after the initiative got off the ground:
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  "Homeless people are finally beginning to disappear from the streets. And not into hospitals, prisons or cemeteries, as so often happened, but into good quality accommodation provided through a unique partnership between the Government and the voluntary sector."
  Mr. Geoffrey Hoon: If the rough sleepers initiative is so successful in London, why does the Minister not agree to extend it to other towns and cities where there is a problem of homelessness?
  Sir George Young: Funds are available from my Department to help projects that bring direct help to the single homeless. Outside London, for example, we are helping Bristol with about £250,000 in grant. I urge local authorities outside London to look at the model that we have adopted in London and see whether, in partnershipwith voluntary organisations, it can be replicated elsewhere.
  Mr. Alan Howarth: My right hon. Friend should be congratulated on the rough sleepers initiative, which powerfully demonstrates his compassionate concern for the homeless. Does he agree that voluntary organisations have an indispensable part to play in the policy? Will he therefore consider further with colleagues in the Home Office how to ensure continuation of the funding which the voluntary services unit has provided for six charities involved in the rough sleepers initiative and the homeless mentally ill initiative? There is a question mark over the future of that funding. Will my right hon. Friend see whether he can secure its continuation?
  Sir George Young: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I applaud him on his perceptive article in today's issue of The Guardian, which I read with great interest. The answer is yes, I am in close dialogue with my hon. Friends in the Home Office and in the Department of Health whose co-operation in the rough sleepers initiative I greatly welcome. I will pursue that matter.
  As a result of the policies that I touched on a moment ago, the figures on homeless households accepted by local authorities for rehousing are now falling for the first time since the original legislation was set up in 1977. The figures for the previous quarter were the sixth in succession to show a decline in the year-on-year figures. The number in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has dropped dramatically by 41 per cent. over the past year.
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: As the representative of a south-east London constituency, I should like to say that among the things that local residents have noticed most are the programmes aimed at providing proper heating and proper insulation in some of the massive tower blocks and estates that were constructed 10 to 20 years ago. I want to convey to my right hon. Friend the thanks of those people, who are now able to keep warm on £5 a week instead of being cold on £20 a week. Thanks to the help of various Government Departments under schemes such as the EMMAUS project, people who are roofless, jobless and lonely have found what is almost a secular monastery, where they can rebuild their self-respect, enabling them to return to normal society.
  Sir George Young: My hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention to the heroic work done by many voluntary organisations and by some local authorities to help the homeless. I applaud, in particular, the work of the

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  EMMAUS project in Cambridge, which I look forward to visiting soon. My hon. Friend has also reminded the House of the estate action programme, which focuses on some of the worst estates, where properties are most difficult to let. Under that programme, homes have been renovated and life has been made more comfortable for tenants.
  Dr. John Reid: I should like to put a point to the right hon. Gentleman who, in better times, has given me some assistance with my arrangements. Let me give him a chance to extricate himself from the pack of ravenous Tory wolves whom he fell in with—inadvertently, I hope—at the Tory party's conference. What I understand him to have said on that occasion is not what he is reported as having said. He said that it was difficult to explain to a young married couple that they could not have a house because some young girl had unintentionally fallen pregnant. Will he confirm that he was not suggesting that young women were becoming pregnant intentionally for the purpose of securing a council house, and thus dissociate himself from some of the ravenous Tory wolves who have been peddling that cheap story for the past few months?
  Sir George Young: I would not describe my hon. Friends in the language that the hon. Gentleman has just used. I hope that it will not be too long before normal relations between the two sides of the House can be resumed and the informal arrangement to which the hon. Gentleman referred is restored. I shall come in a moment to the question of access to social housing. In one respect the hon. Gentleman is right: I did not suggest that young ladies became pregnant intentionally in order to secure a council house. The principal advocate of that case is the BBC, which devoted an entire "Panorama" programme to support for the proposition. I believe that there are other grounds for reviewing the legislation on homelessness, and I shall deal with them when I have made some progress.
  Against the background which I have just outlined, I can say that we have a good housing record. However, I am determined to do even better. Of course we need more good-quality homes. Of all our people, 78 per cent. want to be home owners. How do we help those people? Economic policies creating the right conditions for sustainable growth, low inflation and low interest rates have meant that the affordability of homes for purchase is at its best for many years. That means that more and more families will be able to buy their homes as the economic recovery gethers pace and as builders construct more dewellings.
  The Labour party's motion, by referring only to public sector housing investment, demonstrates the Opposition's usual knee-jerk reaction of assuming that the state must always provide. It measures success only by public investment in housing and ignores the very substantial contribution that the private sector has made in meeting housing need.
  I am happy to say that the latest figures for mortgage repossessions show a fall in the number of homes repossessed by lenders and show that the number of possession orders applied for by lenders is down—there were 10,000 fewer in 1993 than in 1992—and that the number of people in arrears on their mortgages has fallen by 10 per cent. 'Those figures are further welcome news for borrowers and are good for housing market confidence at a time when housing starts in the three months to November are up by 34 per cent. on the same period last
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  year, when housing transactions in the last quarter are up by 24 per cent. on a year ago, when chartered surveyors forecast that the housing market recovery is set to continue through 1994 and when mortgage rates are at a 25-year low of just under 8 per cent.
  We are determined to continue to work to improve the nation's housing. We are encouraging local authorities to make use of the planning system to achieve mixed and balanced communities, bringing more private investment into affordable housing, and we shall see the benefits of those policies even more as the recovery continues. For example, through our planning policy guidance note 3, we are encouraging local authorities to enable local people to secure affordable homes in the areas where they live, instead of having to move elsewhere. Local authorities are encouraged to include in their district plans obligations on developers to include in substantial new investments affordable homes for local people.
  Large-scale voluntary transfers are giving councils the chance to transfer their stock to new owners, bringing in fresh capital and private sector management expertise. So far, 23 authorities have transferred—I hope to see many follow their lead—which will enable my Department to focus its resources on those authorities that have not yet transferred.
  The right to manage, which will come into force in April, will give tenant groups the opportunity to take over the management of their homes, making an investment of their time and commitment in a better future for their communities and breaking free from intransigent and sometimes paternalistic local authorities.
  Compulsory competitive tendering will also challenge monopoly control of council housing management, bringing private sector expertise into the day-to-day business of running council estates. I want tenants to be fully involved in that process. Tenants will, of course, benefit from the value-for-money improvements that flow from greater competition.
  Then we have the new rent-to-mortgage scheme and the extra funds for cash incentives that were announced in the Budget. Those measures expand yet further the opportunities for home ownership, and cash incentives will help families in need by creating even more lettings in the social housing stock.
  Mr. John Battle: The Minister must not be allowed to run away from his review. Is it not the truth that the initiative for the review of the homeless came from Wandsworth borough council? It is contained in the paper that was put to the housing committee on 4 November, which says:
  "Once the private rented sector is fully regenerated, it should be possible for local authorities to move to an assessment and emergency housing role for homeless families, but not retain a responsibility for permanent housing. The local authority could be obliged to offer temporary accommodation for, say, three to six months, after which time the family would have to find private rented accommodation … this can only happen when the private sector is regenerated and provides a reasonable range of choice."
  Does the Minister believe that the private sector is fully regenerated and ready for people to be pushed into a temporary situation?
  Sir George Young: I regret having given way to the hon. Gentleman. As I said a moment ago, I shall come shortly to the question of access to social housing and the review of the homeless. At that stage, I shall gladly answer his question as fully as possible.

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  I hope that over the past 20 minutes I have outlined a wide range of radical housing ideas being introduced to bring decent homes within the reach of more people. As usual, all that the Labour party can do is sit and listen while the policies are introduced, criticise them initially and adopt them later.
  The Opposition have now embraced the concept of the right to buy and have gradually become more committed to tenants' rights, and more recently they have been won over to cash incentives. The Labour party's support for cash incentives—support that I greatly welcome—is tucked away in a document that the party produced last year, which is rather inaccurately entitled "A Moving Experience". On page 5, under the heading "Making Mobility Easier", tht document says:
  "We support 'portable discounts' which enable people to buy on the private market while freeing up a rented home for others. There should be no restriction on where families who receive such discounts buy a home, so long as the home is suitable for their needs and they genuinely required a discount in order to buy a reasonably priced property."
  I hope that there is all-party agreement that cash incentives have a role to play in a coherent housing policy.
  Ministers in my Department were aware of schemes run by the councils in Bromley and Brent—one of them Conservative-controlled and the other Labour-controlled —in the mid to late 1980s. Under those schemes, the councils paid grants to their tenants to encourage them to buy a home in the private sector. That released their council property for letting to homeless families. Following a study of their schemes, we decided to provide a specific power for local authorities. That was approved by Parliament, and it is now section 129 of the Housing Act 1988. That was extended in 1990 by allowing housing associations to pay similar cash grants under the tenants' incentive scheme.
  The benefits of that policy are clear. It allows local authorities or housing associations to improve the supply of affordable housing for rent, and it is cheaper and quicker to secure those vacancies with a cash grant than with other forms of provision. It is also cheaper than keeping families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and it encourages and increases home ownership. For every one home that can be built for rent, three could be released by a similar investment in cash incentives.
  There has been some comment in the newspapers about grants to people who did not buy a home in the United Kingdom, but used the grant to move abroad. Councils and housing associations were allowed to formulate their own policies, and they could choose whether to place a geographical restriction on where tenants could buy a home with the grant. Both Labour and Conservative-controlled authorities have run cash incentive schemes without such a restriction, but to maximise the benefit to the United Kingdom housing market and to the construction industry, I have decided that all grants under the cash incentive scheme and the tenants' incentive scheme in 1994–95 should be restricted to those tenants who buy a home in the United Kingdom.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn made allegations about Westminster city council. I hope that the House will understand that it is not possible for me to go into the details of the auditor's report. I can say that a cash incentive scheme cannot and should not be run in isolation.
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  Local authority schemes should tackle the housing problems of their areas and ensure that the number of grants paid is the same as the number of people who are rehoused in rented accommodation.
  I will say a word about the designated sales policy, which the hon. Gentleman touched on. As for the principle of a local authority disposing of some of its stock of housing which was originally built or required for letting, that may be a perfectly sensible way of meeting aspects of housing need in an area. Selling at a discount enables people on the waiting list to buy, and that satisfies the wish that is shared by about 80 per cent. of householders who wish to become owner-occupiers. Such sales help to break up the monolithic feel of some local authority estates and can produce more mixed communities.
  The local authority gets a capital receipt, part of which can be reinvested in its stock. All that is good for existing tenants and for those in housing need. Many authorities —Labour and Conservative—have decided that block sale policies have a role to play. I have seen some successful schemes involving the sale of hard-to-let blocks in which no one wanted to live and which the council could not afford to do up. Sometimes, those sales are to individuals and sometimes to developers; for example, at Minster court in Liverpool, and in Salford. The sales can be part of estate action schemes, such as the one on the Bonamy estate in Southwark. Buildings in Holly street in Hackney are being demolished and rebuilt to provide homes for sale and for rent. Disposal of local authority stock can be the right solution and it would be foolish to condemn it out of hand.
  The homelessness review was raised by a number of Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Blackburn talked about a review of the homelessness legislation in the wild terms we have come to expect. The principles behind the proposals that we published last week on reforming the access to local authority and housing association tenancies did draw support from a wide audience. For example, the idea of having a review was welcomed by Shelter, and the London Boroughs Association has now welcomed the thrust of the proposals.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn has asked where the idea for a review might have come from. Did he see the 7 July 1993 edition of The Independent? The headline for the article stated, "Labour slants homes policy against the single parent". The article stated that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who is the chairman of the Labour party, had talked of changing council waiting list systems to reward "responsible couples". The article said that there was a need to transform housing services so that more appropriate housing could be readily available. There was also a need for a housing waiting list structure which positively rewarded those who had tried their best to take responsibility and to have some order in their lives, such as people who were involved in a stable relationship prior to having children.
  The hon. Gentleman went on to say in the article:
  "People … are not fools. If you can't get a house by waiting on the list, you present the maximum number of reasons why you should receive priority. That is not encouraging people to accept responsibility for their own lives and society."
  Mr. Straw: The Minister has trotted out that cutting at least five times, to my certain knowledge. He knows that the last person in the world who would endorse either the review or its conclusions is my hon. Friend, who has called repeatedly for the type of policies which I spoke about this

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  afternoon. Those policies include an extension of the numbers of houses that are built so that the housing crisis is dealt with. Will the Minister now say whether that is the total provenance for the review? Which boroughs called for it?
  Sir George Young: The House will understand the hon. Gentleman's embarrassment at hearing that quotation. However, it is on record, and the article enunciates widely held views. I believe that the hon. Gentleman makes a mistake in trying to distance himself from those views.
  If the hon. Gentleman does not accept what the chairman of the Labour party says, perhaps he will accept the views of a leader writer in The Guardian. Commenting on our proposals the day after they were published, The Guardian—not normally one of the Government's strongest supporters—asked:
  "Who should have priority? A 'registered' homeless family, in temporary but comfortable accommodation—or an 'unregistered' homeless family, stuck in two cramped rooms in the home of a relative."
  The article continued:
  "Sir George Young … believes the criteria should be changed so that the individual needs of all families on the two separate routes to a rented home—homelessness and housing waiting lists—are weighed against each other. In principle he is right … In some areas the only available way to be rehoused is to make yourself homeless. That is simply absurd."
  Those who have read the consultation paper will be in no doubt that we are ensuring that a proper safety net will remain—
  Mr. Straw: Will the Minister give way?
  Sir George Young: No, I am not giving way.
  Mr. Straw rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.
  Sir George Young: I feel that I have given way a substantial number of times to the hon. Gentleman. There are many hon. Members who want to partake in the debate, and I propose to make some progress.
  Mr. Straw rose—
  Sir George Young: I am not giving way.
  Those who have read the consultation paper will be in no doubt that we are ensuring that a proper safety net will remain for families and other vulnerable people who find themselves genuinely without anywhere to live, in a crisis that is not of their own making. I want local authorities to do more to prevent homelessness and do more to enable an increase in the supply of housing. The consultation paper sets out a number of ideas on how local authorities can act more effectively to prevent homelessness, how to give more advice to households on how to secure their own housing and how to build better links with the private rented sector.
  I want people to think positively about how the enabling role of local authorities can be strengthened. I find suggestions that we are somehow going back to the days of "Cathy Come Home" quite absurd. The BBC went so far as to suggest on "The World Tonight":
  "this plan may lead to families being split up if mothers and children are housed"—
  as the report suggested that the Government had envisaged—
  "in special mother and children units, while the fathers are directed towards men's hostels."
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  That is a travesty. There is no question of families being split up, and no one who read the paper could possibly believe that.
  Mr. Nick Raynsford: Does the Minister accept that removing the entitlement of homeless people to have emergency accommodation while their case is being investigated, removing the obligation to provide permanent accommodation and allowing local authorities to assume that, if people can be deemed to have accommodation in the private sector, there is no need to accommodate them will totally undermine the provisions of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977? Will that not leave many families with children on the streets, in which case there is an obligation on social service departments to receive children into care? Will not that split up families?
  Sir George Young: I reject that unequivocally. In a civilised society, there is no question of vulnerable people, which includes families with children, not having a home. I regret and deplore the scaremongering that many people have indulged in since the paper was published.
  Ms Glenda Jackson: Will the Minister give way on that point?
  Sir George Young: I have given way often enough. Other people want to take part in the debate, and I am conscious of the fact that I have taken up a substantial amount of time.
  One of the other issues which was raised immediately after the publication of the document was the concern about the use of temporary accommodation. However, there is nothing temporary about the accommodation that authorities will be expected to provide in discharging their duty. I do not think that one can regard an assured shorthold in the private rented sector which runs for a minimum of six months, and often for many years, as temporary, other than in the sense that it does not guarantee the tenure of that property for life.
  Mr. George Howarth: A few moments ago, the Minister quoted an editorial in The Guardian headed "A policy where the roof leaks." As he quoted that editorial, does he agree with its conclusions? It
  said:
  "This is a sticking plaster reform when fundamental change is needed: unfreezing capital receipts, an emergency mortgage repossession package and a serious Whitehall crackdown on Westminster-style cleansing operations."
  Sir George Young: I intend to say something about capital receipts. I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that, on the specific question of the review, The Guardian said what I said it said, and recognised an anomaly in the present position.
  I envisage local authorities finding good-quality accommodation in the private sector, which some families might prefer to council or housing association homes. We all know from our experience of private sector leasing that such homes can often be available for periods of three years or more. In some cases, that accommodation is of a high standard. It is sometimes more attractive than the stock that many local authorities operate.
  Millions of people live in satisfactory accommodation which does not carry total security, but in which they can lead decent and comfortable lives. One should not assume that the only answer to homelessness is a home provided by a local authority or a housing association. At the same

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  time, one has to do more to bring back into use some of the 800,000 properties standing empty—700,000 of them in the private sector.
  Through accommodation agencies and other initiatives, I want to bring together landlords and tenants and ensure that there is real scope for developing the private sector yet further, providing good-quality accommodation for those who might otherwise be homeless. Already, in many parts of the country there are promising initiatives such as the Derby Landlords Forum, which actively promotes a partnership between the local authority and private landlords in effectively meeting housing need.
  I am encouraged by the success of a commercial accommodation agency in my constituency that successfully places homeless families with private sector landlords and manages the property. I want to build on the best practice that is emerging and to encourage more local authorities to develop partnership arrangements and make faster progress in building links with the private sector.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn touched on the Housing Corporation and housing associations. At a time when public expenditure restraint is necessary to secure sustainable growth, we have had to look squarely at what is possible and consider how best to use the resources at our disposal. We have done that with our proposals for housing associations.
  In conjunction with the Housing Corporation, we have reorganised the investment programme to increase the output of new lettings from the cash available. We have done that by bringing in more private sector finance, taking advantage of reductions in development costs and increasing cost-effective home ownership schemes, which have the double benefit of the householder moving into owner occupation and a family getting a new tenancy as a result. At the same time, I have asked the Housing Corporation to increase the amount of its programme that goes towards rehabilitation of older properties, bringing new life to rundown areas and ensuring that we make the best use of the stock that is already available.
  Unspent capital receipts are not simply stored in bank vaults, as one recent Labour policy document had it, lying around in piles of crisp fivers for a Labour Chancellor to get his hands on. Regardless of whether set-aside receipts have already been used to pay off debt or have been invested, to be drawn on later for debt repayment, the fact remains that they have reduced the overall level of indebtedness of local authorities and reduced the public sector borrowing requirement. Spending the receipts would increase indebtedness and hense the PSBR. The Leader of the Opposition seemed to appreciate that once.
  A spokesman for the Leader of the Opposition was reported as saying before the last election:
  "We certainly have no plans to alter the PSBR in this way … You don't make new resources available by making new definitions. We have plans to change the way the accounts are presented, by making a distinction between investment and current spending, but that has nothing to do with taking receipts out of the PSBR."
  I woke up this morning to the voice of the shadow Chancellor telling me that the Labour party had no manifesto commitments to increased expenditure. I come to the House of Commons and the first thing I get is a Labour party commitment to increase expenditure.
  Mr. Clive Betts: Does the Minister accept that, while it might be true that, under Treasury rules since 1990, capital receipts have been used for the repayment of debt, before then there was no such rule and, therefore, receipts generated before 1990 were accumulated by local authorities? Those receipts are sitting in treasurers' accounts and could be used without affecting any realistic definition of the PSBR.
  Sir George Young: That is not the case at all.
  In the past 15 years, the Conservative Government have devised, introduced and implemented a range of radical solutions to meet the nation's housing needs. They include the right to buy; housing action trusts to tackle the worst estates; tenant incentive schemes; shared ownership, bringing home ownership within the reach of more people; the right of local authority tenants to manage their own homes; the tenants charter; large-scale voluntary transfers; rough sleeping initiatives; housing associations as managing agents; the flats over shops initiative; private funding for housing associations; using the planning system to provide affordable homes for local people; and much more.
  While all that creative work has gone on, Labour has sat back, grumbled, moaned, criticised and then agreed when it has realised that our policies work. Those who really care about housing need to ask themselves who is likely to promote and implement the radical policies that we need for housing in the 1990s. Who will promote the mixed economy in housing? Who will break down the barriers and bring in private finance? Who sees the private sector as a useful ally and not as an enemy? Who really believes in empowering the tenant against a recalcitrant Labour-controlled authority? Who has the policies to keep interest rates low and bring home ownership closer to reality for more people? Who is challenging the inefficient monopolies in local authority housing? The answer is that we are. I urge all my hon. Friends to vote for our amendment.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I remind the House that there have been a number of requests to speak and unless those who speak early in the debate exercise some restraint, there will be some disappointed Members at the end.
  5.6 pm
  Mr. Clive Soley: I hope that I shall be able to honour your request, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to focus my comments to some extent today, largely because in the past I have spent much time condemning the Government's lack of a housing policy and I cannot say much that is new about the failure of the Government's policy. However, I repeat one thing that I have said in the past. When there is a loss of 2 million homes from the rented sector, both public and private, and at the same time the Government slash benefits for young people, there are two consequences. One is a dramatic increase in homelessness; the other is homeless teenage children begging on our streets for the first time in 70 years.
  The Government say that they have reduced the number of people sleeping on the streets in London. That is a sad claim to make in arguing the success of their policy. The Government put those people there in the first place. When I was a probation officer in King's Cross in 1979, I could

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  always get someone under the age of 21 somewhere to sleep for the night. From the early 1980s onwards, that was no longer possible. It was the first time that that had happened in Britain for about 70 years.
  Some 2 million homes have been lost and not replaced in the rented sector. If those homes are cut out of the rented sector, of course there will be long queues. Some people have been in bed and breakfast for years. That never happened before. It needs to be said loudly that the problem is not one of single-parent families trying to get ahead of the queue.
  There is a desperate shortage of affordable rented accommodation. That creates a dog-eat-dog situation in the housing queue. People from all types of background who cannot afford any other form of accommodation will fight to get ahead in the queue. I understand people when they do that. But they are not the problem. They are a symptom of the problem. The problem is the loss of that rented sector. The Government could have done a number of things. If the Minister had wanted more initiatives, he could have mentioned them today.
  The Minister talked about the slight revival of prices in the housing market. If the Government want the revival of prices in the private sector market, why do they delay it by dumping hundreds of the 30,000 empty homes in the Government-owned sector on to the private market for sale? They could transfer those homes to housing associations or local authorities so that they can be rented out. Homes at a former air force camp at Biggin Hill, a Conservative region, are empty and awaiting sale. The Government's policy depresses house prices and keeps people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. It is lunacy.
  The Government could also extend the use of leaseback so that local authorities can get rid of their final bed-and-breakfast cases. I warn the Government that, if they go ahead with their proposal to move the homeless from accommodation to accommodation and do not give them a permanent home, children will suffer dramatically. If children are moved from property to property while they are being brought up, they will suffer acute personal distress, their social development and educational achievements will be inhibited, and their health prospects will worsen. Umpteen pieces of evidence to confirm my argument are available to the Department.
  The Government could also allow local authorities to buy in the private sector rather than use bed-and-breakfast accommodation, which, together with leaseback in certain circumstances, is by far the most expensive form of temporary accommodation. The Government should also consider the problem of residents in council blocks who bought their flats under the impression that they would not have to pay large lease costs. Almost inevitably, they face those costs—it is happening in a number of local authorities. I wrote to the Minister a couple of years ago on that matter. People are often trapped by enormous debts that run to thousands of pounds caused by a right-to-buy policy that was not thought out properly. They will continue to be trapped unless the Government help local authorities to buy them out.
  The Minister knows my views on the subject. I have no objection to the right-to-buy policy if it is backed by a duty to replace. That would be a brilliant housing policy. From 1978–79, it was the policy of the Tory party, but it was dumped by Lady Thatcher. Hugh Rossi, the Government spokesman at the time, said that the money should be used to replace homes, but the Government then abandoned that
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  promise. That was the cause of the problem. The right-to-buy policy without a duty to replace led to a housing disaster that was waiting to happen.
  The problem is so serious that it needs a fundamental review. We must have a stable financial regime for housing. The lack of such a regime is the fundamental reason why we are in a mess. The Government do not have a financial policy on housing. The Conservative party needs to stop worrying so much about house ownership —the Labour party made that break some time ago—and start worrying about three factors: affordability, quality of management and tenants' rights. If the Government meet those three objectives, ownership will matter far less, although it will not be immaterial.
  I made it clear some years ago that tenants with a bad landlord should always have the right to transfer from one home to another. A bad landlord who has been imprisoned for harassing and assaulting his tenants can still receive a Government subsidy through housing benefit, which might go directly to him in prison. That is a ludicrous feature of the Government's financial regime.
  One good Government policy, although they do not boast about it much, is the phasing out of mortgage income tax relief. The bad part of that policy is that they are not replacing that tax relief. As a result, people who cannot afford to pay their mortgages are getting less and less subsidy. When the Government finally get rid of tax relief in a few years' time—they have never denied that it is their intention to do so—those who lose their jobs and have to live on low incomes will be evicted that much sooner. That is the problem that the Government must tackle.
  The Government should by all means get rid of the mortgage income tax relief—an open-ended subsidy that has caused the decline of the private-rented sector. The rent laws had only a marginal effect on that decline. The key factor was the introduction of mortgage income tax relief at the turn of the century, when the decline started. The Government can get rid of that relief, but they must ensure that a subsidy is available to those on low incomes who are in danger of having their homes repossessed because they cannot pay their mortgages.
  I argued some time ago that we needed to provide stability in the housing finance regime for all areas of the rented sector. That was a Labour party policy at the last election. One of my suggestions involved the establishment of a housing bank, which exists in a number of countries and in some states in the United States. I cannot overestimate the importance of such a bank. When I made my suggestion, the Government would have had to guarantee about 1 per cent. of the funds in order to make the bank a gold key lender on the market so that it could be seen as a safe investment.
  I was told by bankers in the City of London and by two major building societies that such action would not be necessary as they would be happy to co-operate in the scheme. I suggested that capital receipts, which at that time totalled £7 billion, should be lodged in the bank and would generate an enormous amount of additional private sector money. One could allow local authorities to draw their receipts, which they would not lose, and invest them in housing over a period. I would have ring-fenced such funds for housing. It was an important proposal, because the private sector was keen to develop it.
  Everyone knows that the problem with obtaining private investment in housing associations is that the figures do not stack up, because there is no guaranteed

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  funding arrangement. Pension funds and insurance companies look for long-term safe investments such as housing. A number of other private organisations said that they would like to put money into such a bank. If we had done that, we could have started spending money in the council sector, on housing associations and, indeed, in the private sector.
  I made it clear that the private sector should receive such funds and sensible subsidies to help them invest, while the daft subsidy of housing benefit, which goes to a landlord, no matter how bad, should be dropped. In exchange for that help, private landlords would have to be registered so that, if they were bad landlords, they could be struck off.
  Nothing is more stupid than imprisoning for three months a bad landlord who has been chased into court by a tenant—with difficulty and often with great fear—but allowing him to become the tenant's landlord again when he is released from prison. That is bad news for the tenant. Bad landlords should not be allowed to let a property again and should be struck off, in the same way in which solicitors or doctors who engage in bad practice in breach of guidelines are struck off.
  A subject that has always troubled the Minister—and me, to some extent—is the definition of the public sector borrowing requirement. My view is slightly different from my party's historical view on the subject. We turn the PSBR into an artificial constraint on us. I was never convinced that the Maastricht treaty was a brilliant treaty —it contained far too much about economics and too little about politics. It requires all countries in Europe to harmonise their definitions. The countries in Europe are not daft enough to define the PSBR as we do. If we in this country were to define the PSBR properly, all mortgage tax relief would be included in the PSBR. Tax relief is an open-ended subsidy that does not draw any income from the people who receive it. I receive it, which is nice, but I do not need it and I would prefer it to go to someone who does need it.
  If the PSBR definition is right, the lump sum that I and probably every other hon. Member receives, should be included in the PSBR. Investment that generates income, however, should not be part of the PSBR. The other countries of Europe and those in North America exclude such self-financing loans from the PSBR as defined in this country. For that reason, the French were able to subsidise the channel tunnel express line across Europe. They and other countries in Europe can subsidise other projects in the same way because they make it clear that, if the capital investment attracts an economic return, it falls within the boundaries of the PSBR. It also represents good Keynesian economics. The Government, however, now seem unsure whether they are Thatcherite monetarists or Keynesians.
  The good part of that Keynesian argument is that public money is used sensibly to generate an income that creates wealth. If a house is built and rental income which covers its cost is received on it, it represents precisely the same type of long-term investment as a house owned in the private sector. If the Government simply say that they will subsidise rents or mortgages, they are committing themselves, indefinitely, to taking money from the taxpayer in order to give it to someone else. That is the uneconomic part of the equation.
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  It is right that such a subsidy should be offered in certain circumstances, but anyone who knows anything about finance knows that one must generate taxation and wealth to pay for it. The other type of investment, which generates an income, is different. We need to treat it as such.
  We must forget a lot of the garbage with which the Minister has tried to defend the indefensible. I know that he is trying to pick up the pieces after 15 years of housing disaster. The Tories have made a bigger mess of housing than they have of the health service, education or the British manufacturing base. Housing policy has a tragic history. The Duke of Edinburgh's report on housing, which was produced by the Rowntree Trust, says it all. It is a damning indictment of the Government's housing policy.
  Since the Government came to office, 14 Ministers have been in charge of housing policy—roughly one for each year. As I have said to the Minister before, his colleagues were all on a short let. He is the first one on a medium-term let. If the Government stagger from crisis to crisis, the providers of housing will not know from one year to the next how many houses they can provide. That means that the supply of housing will not increase. Housing associations have only just overtaken their position in the mid 1970s, so they are unable to increase the housing stock.
  The disastrous policy of the past must be put behind us. We should make sensible use of a housing bank and a sensible use of a redefined PSBR. We must adopt a sensible approach to ownership. We should not worry about whether someone is renting or owning. We should give an equal subsidy to each individual to create a level playing field in those sectors. Within the rented sector we should make it clear that we are not too troubled about ownership, but deeply troubled about affordability, tenants' rights and the quality of management.
  If we get those three right, we will have a happily housed society. We will then be spared the horror, and I mean the horror, of seeing what I never dreamt I would live to see—homeless teenage children, stretching out their hands with a notice reading, "homeless and hungry". That problem is not as severe as it once was in London, but it still exists in other parts of Britain. It is a damning indictment of the Government.
  5.22 pm
  Sir Paul Beresford: The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has tried to blame the Government for the housing difficulties with which the Government have struggled—they have done so successfully, as my hon. Friend the Minister has pointed out—but his comments will not wash.
  Those of us who worked in housing, especially in inner London, prior to and after 1979 have watched Labour local authorities struggle against the Government. We know that the blame should lie with those inner-London Labour authorities and other Labour authorities around Britain. In contrast, a Conservative-controlled authority—I choose Croydon for obvious reasons—which has followed good Conservative policies and has worked with the Conservative Government, has no housing crisis. Croydon, for example, has just 39 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They are now being assessed.

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  I accept that the difficulties encountered by Croydon do not compare with those encountered in inner London. It is worth considering some of them and the way in which Conservative policies can solve them.
  It would be appropriate to choose a favourite authority of the Labour party, Conservative Wandsworth. It is worth comparing it with some of its Labour neighbours. The difficulty with making such a comparison, however, is that the relevant figures often are not available. London Labour authorities used to provide those figures for the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, CIPFA, but once they realised that those figures could be turned against them, they failed to present them. That has made life very difficult. It is clear that those authorities have something to hide.
  Before 1979, Wandsworth was a leading Labour authority—the winning, red light Labour authority. It worked with the Labour-controlled Greater London council in blatant gerrymandering. Any Opposition Member who says that a Conservative authority has gerrymandered ignores the difficulties that were caused because of Labour party gerrymandering, particularly in London. That happened in the days before we had an Audit Commission to point out those problems.
  In those days, it was called not gerrymandering or ethnic cleansing, but municipalisation. That sweet word covered the wholesale purchase of private properties, private land, the utilisation of compulsory purchase orders and the designation of entire areas as slums—which assisted the use of CPOs. In areas where such tactics were not possible, Labour authorities made individual purchases. I saw that happen in street after street in pre-1979 Wandsworth. After such a purchase was made, the most difficult tenant family that the authority could find was housed in the property. That family was used to apply pressure on other householders. Axes were put in neighbours' doors and windows were broken until those neighbours finally moved out.
  In those days, Labour authorities made no attempt to use small grants to assist home owners, tenants or private landlords to do up properties. They were simply designated as slums.
  Mr. Booth: Does my hon. Friend accept that that practice is still going on in boroughs such as Barnet?
  Sir Paul Beresford: By Labour authorities?
  Mr. Booth: Yes.
  Sir Paul Beresford: Quite.
  Mr. Booth: I am sorry. I am so upset about that incredible practice that I did not make my point particularly well. In Barnet, Labour authorities, such as Camden and Hackney, are buying some of the best houses and housing some of their worst tenants in that Tory-held authority. That backs up my hon. Friend's argument.
  Sir Paul Beresford: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification.
  A recent article in New Statesman and Society described Wandsworth as a council that would "sell, sell, sell". In the pre-1979 days, the Labour authority practised the reverse policy of buy, buy, buy. It would buy at any cost and surveys of any property were rare.
  One of the more notorious Labour housing chairmen caught what might be called a "Tebbe habit, because he
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  was renowned for riding the streets of Wandsworth, with notebook in hand, looking for "For sale" signs. The next day, the man from the council would arrive on the doorstep, with cheque book in hand, to purchase that property. Following purchase, however, those properties were not used to house tenants but were boarded up. If they were used, they were used by illegal squatters. The aim was to pool together a sufficient number of properties in order to bulldoze them. Wandsworth now suffers because of the shabby concrete tower blocks that were erected in their place. It was a straight scandal.
  Additional scandals arose from that policy, although one of the Labour housing chairmen got caught by getting too close to T. Dan Smith—his accommodation was found for him. At one stage, Labour Wandsworth and Labour GLC proudly boasted that they were spending £1 million a month, mostly on house purchases. According to today's figures, that is equivalent to £15 million. Their policy was to buy, board up, leave to rot, bulldoze and rebuild.
  The wastage involved is obvious when one considers what happened on a Battersea estate. It was made up of 600 good residential properties, but it was designated as a slum area and bulldozed. Five years later, the direct labour organisation finally finished building the new estate of 605 properties. Battersea lost housing stock for five years and the area was desecrated just to gain five additional properties.
  According to the Labour party, a similar slum area was located next door to that estate. When the Conservatives took control, however, they used small grants to improve those properties. The owners, landlords and tenants were able to improve them, with the result that they are now classy, expensive properties, which house the same people who lived in them in the first place: hardly slums.
  Labour's posture was that it was helping the homeless; in fact, it was leaving desolate areas boarded up behind corrugated iron and assisting squatters, while the tenants who were supposed to be looking after the estates were left to rot.
  Mr. Peter L. Pike: In the 1960s, people like me—people on Tory-controlled councils such as Merton and Morden—were desperate for a change in local government to give us Labour councils that would do something about the current housing problems.
  Sir Paul Beresford: If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, he will learn that it is possible to turn the position around. When such estates are made acceptable to council tenants, those tenants will then support the council involved. That does not happen in deprived areas such as Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lambeth and Islington.
  That municipalisation—that gerrymandering—completely changed the nature of aspects of inner London. In 1957, Wandsworth had 10,000 council dwellings; by the time of the Herbert Morrison techniques, it had 44,000. In Roehampton, one of the wards in Putney where Labour was trying to build the Tories out, 95 per cent. of dwellings were owned by the council. In the Parkside ward, mentioned in a certain early-day motion, 70 per cent. of dwellings were council-owned after perfectly sound, lived-in properties had been bulldozed. Next door, in West Hill, 60 per cent. of dwellings were council-owned.
  Labour's difficulty lay, and still lies, in its inability to recognise that council tenants do not automatically vote Labour.
  Mr. Betts: That is because of gerrymandering.
  Sir Paul Beresford: The gerrymandering failed, and early-day motion 353 shows the fallacy of it. The two wards that it mentions returned Conservative councillors. In one of them—which I have just mentioned—70 per cent. of dwellings were council-owned; in 1974, it returned two Conservative councillors. In the other ward—West Hill—the figure was 60 per cent. The flaw in the EDM is this: that ward has never been Labour-controlled, despite the attempt to build the Tories out.
  As I said earlier, there used to be no Audit Commission, and no technique by which Labour could be brought up short. The council tenants did that themselves, however: they had had enough of Labour's mismanagement, and the lack of respect that allowed their properties to remain in such an appalling state. They threw Labour out. In 1978, we had a Conservative council, following the Conservative policies of central Government. The residents—including council tenants—had had enough. That was understandable. Wandsworth's last housing chairman, whom I met, had a reputation for throwing away tenants' letters of complaint about the state of disrepair in their properties without answering them. He left those council tenants to rot.
  In 1978, the incoming Conservative council inherited an appalling inner-city problem, which is still found today in many Labour areas in London. Many private dwellings were in a poor state because of the lack of improvement grants. Labour's idea was to designate them slum areas, allow them to decline and then purchase them. In many areas, building firms had been driven out because the direct labour organisation took all the work available; meanwhile, the council estates were left in an appalling state of disrepair.
  I visited an estate in Earlsfield, central Wandsworth. It had been built as a council estate before the war, and had subsequently been deserted by Labour. A good tenant living on the top floor would tell the lady living on the bottom floor to put the plug in her bath before flushing their toilet; otherwise, the contents would come up in the bath. The plumbing had been in that state for years—but Labour was spending its money on municipalisation and gerrymandering.
  Mr. Richard Tracey: My hon. Friend has mentioned the sorry state of properties in Wandsworth and Putney in the late 1950s and 1960s. May I take him back a little further? Those properties were put there by Lord Morrison of Lambeth, then leader of the London county council, when he was building in Wandsworth to a degree that was completely disproportionate to the area's needs. It had no requirements related to homelessness or medical problems. Lord Morrison should have been building in other parts of London—which some members of his party have mentioned today—but, instead, he was building in Wandsworth, and skewing the housing figures.
  Sir Paul Beresford: Of course, it was not called gerrymandering then; but, by God, that is what it was.
  When the Conservatives inherited Wandsworth, they found not only that the housing stock—expecially council housing stock—was in a disreputable state, but that the council was up to its eyes in debt. The area was full of rotting empty properties—and rotting full properties; a bit like Sheffield. Labour housing policy had failed. The rent
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  situation was awful: rents were not being collected. The vacancy level was horrendous, the squatting figures were up in the thousands and the caretaking was non-existent.
  Slowly, the Conservatives have changed that. They had to begin by selling two small estates and one tower block to the private sector; they used the capital receipts for pump priming. One of the estates was half-empty: its residents had been partly decanted out by the Labour party, which intended to carry out works using the direct labour organisation. Owing to the mismanagement of the DLO, the costs escalated and the council ran out of money; so it just left the estate. Two other estates—also built by Labour —were so riddled with asbestos that, after the asbestos was taken out, one of the tower blocks was a mere skeleton.
  The capital receipts were turned around and reinvested. Good Conservative management was brought in: voids were filled, squatters were pushed out and the caretaking was vastly improved. The estates no longer resembled what might have been expected in the Dickens era; they had been brought into the modern world. They were given new roofs, central heating, decent security systems and decent plumbing: that lady living on the top floor could flush her toilet now without the contents coming up through the bath on the bottom floor.
  Mr. Gordon Prentice: If Wandsworth is such a marvellous example of Conservative-controlled London boroughs, why does it contain more people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation than any other local authority in the country?
  Sir Paul Beresford: I think you had better check your figures. You will find that that is not correct.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I think the hon. Gentleman has forgotten that he should be addressing me.
  Sir Paul Beresford: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman should examine the figures a little more carefully.
  When the quality of those estates was improved, the right-to-buy measures introduced by the Conservative Government really took off. An added advantage was mixed tenure, which had an effect on many estates. As a direct result, certain estates across the borough were selected as "sales areas": properties that had become vacant through the normal transfer procedure were sold to people on the "housing to purchase" list. That was based on housing need. A homeless family in Wandsworth will be placed at the top of both lists: such families have bought as well as renting. That meant that the council was able to meet its housing demands on the basis of need through rent and sale. It was also able to obtain capital receipts for reinvestment. Latterly, the council decided to designate the poorer estates to speed up the positive effect of the mixed tenure.
  Wandsworth council started with a stock of 44,000 properties. It sold 19,000–5,000 through designated sales areas—to people in housing need whom it would have had to house in any case.
  The Conservative housing methods in Wandsworth are pretty widely accepted, not only by Conservative authorities up and down the country. Many of the methods have been accepted by Labour authorities. Lambeth council actually purchased the privatised caretaking

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  scheme and the software that goes with it. I am not too sure whether it will be able to implement it, because it involves joined-up writing.
  The techniques have also been accepted and utilised in Hong Kong, New York, Australia, New Zealand, Moscow and even Ireland.
  The results have been quite dramatic. The vacancies among lettable properties in Wandsworth represent less than 1 per cent. There are 1,381 vacancies in Lambeth and 117 in Wandsworth.
  Earlier in the debate we were given a figure about Hackney. On a like-for-like basis, there are 117 vacant properties in Wandsworth and 1,911 in Hackney. If we take into account the sale of properties—there has been a slowing down of sales on vacant property estates because of red lining—on a like-for-like basis about 400 were vacant in Wandsworth, compared with 3,900 in Hackney.
  The average re-let period for vacant properties in Wandsworth is one quarter of that of Hackney. The Conservative sales policy in Wandsworth has raised more than £400 million. That has provided a total capital programme of £286 million in the past six years. It has also provided an opportunity to pay back debt and invest many of those funds in revenue-earning benefits for the ratepayers, the poll tax payers or the council tax payers.
  The council has also worked with the private sector. Private sector management has been particularly successful. The savings on the privatised caretaking service which provided a 24-hour service that could be monitored and enforced were 18 per cent. of what Labour was paying.
  There have been partnership schemes, renewal of properties and sales to people on housing lists on the basis of housing need. Mention has been made of rent arrears. in Wandsworth they are 3.6 per cent. of the gross figure, in Hackney they are 31 per cent. of the gross figure and in Southwark they are 27 per cent. of the gross figure.
  Whenever anyone mentions Southwark, I am filled. with horror. How the Labour party, with its headquarters in Walworth road, can preach about housing when it is based in the middle of one of the worst housing authorities in the country is beyond belief.
  The gerrymandering in that borough has been such that, in 1978, 86 per cent. of the properties were owned by the council. Even today they are appalling, filthy and often squatted. The council even gerrymandered compulsory competitive tendering. I understand that the estate grounds maintenance went out in three geographical sections. The private sector won one and the other two were won by the in-house management. After three to six months there was regular reporting back, during which the direct labour organisation admitted that, although it was taking 100 per cent. of the fees, it was providing only 42 per cent. of the service. Yet the council kept it on.
  I shall now touch on the homeless figures. Wandsworth council started with 44,000 properties; it sold 19,000 and has reinvested many of the capital receipts. It has worked with housing associations and the private sector, rented accommodation and home ownership. It has pioneered partnership schemes where the private sector provided the money and did the work and the tenants bought high-class, low-cost homes. It is all good Conservative Government policy.
  As a consequence, since sales began, Wandsworth council has rehoused 9,000 homeless families. It has alsso reduced the waiting lists. Lambeth council next door has housed 6,000 families and sold 600 properties.
  Mr. David Winnick: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You called for relatively brief speeches. May I bring it to your attention that the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) has now spoken for 23 minutes without any sign of reaching a conclusion? Although there is no time limit, it seems to me to be an abuse and goes directly against what you have urged hon. Members on both sides of the House to do.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: I made my point in the form of a request as I have no powers to force anyone to make a speech of a certain length. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have noted it.
  Sir Paul Beresford: I have noted it indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker.
  When the Conservatives took over from Labour, the waiting list for rented accommodation in Wandsworth was between 12,000 and 13,000. Conservative techniques and housing policy halved that figure and it has consistently stayed at half that level.
  The council tenants support the Conservative council because it is low-cost, high-quality management and because it recognised that the residents wanted different means of solving their housing difficulties.
  In Wandsworth, 19,000 homes have been sold to families, many of whom would have continued to be council house tenants under Labour. In May 1990, the voters went against the trend and returned a council of 48 Conservative and 13 Labour members. The residents of Wandsworth, including the council tenants, voted Conservative. The council tenants in Wandsworth helped to put my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and my right hon. and learned Friend the member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) back in the House. The council tenants and residents of Wandsworth supported Conservative policies.
  5.47 pm
  Mr. David Bendel: The entire debate is based on one critical set of facts. Between 1982 and the present day, the total number of social buildings for rent in housing associations, new towns and the council sector is down from some 5.3 million to 4.6 million. At the same time, homelessness has doubled, and the use of temporary accommodation has gone up by a factor of seven. That is the problem, the difficulty, what has gone wrong; so what is the solution?
  Only yesterday, I received a letter from a Mrs. Irons, who lives in Streatley in my constituency, who put the problem and its potential solution at its best. She also said that I could pass on her letter to a member of the Government, and I hope that a Minister will take the opportunity to reply to her.
  She wrote:
  "Why are local authorities not permitted by the Government to spend the money they have locked up from the sale of council houses on building more houses? We have thousands of homeless people living in bed and breakfast accommodation, or worse. Employment of builders would also presumably provide some sort of a kick-start to the recession and a good follow-on effect to other industries. This question may seem ignorant and naive"—
  not in my view—
  "but no one I know locally—including many staunch Conservative supporters—seems to know the answer".
  I can confirm that many Conservatives in local government are furious about the way that the Government have insisted on not following the policy of allowing council

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  house receipts to be used. I am sure that they, as well as Mrs. Irons, would require some evidence of the Minister changing his mind.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry): I hope that the hon. Gentleman will explain to Mrs. Irons that, if local authorities are debt-free—as are many that have transferred their stock under large-scale voluntary transfer—they can use their capital receipts in whatever way they wish towards investing in social housing.
  Mr. Bendel: In Newbury, we are told that that is not entirely true. We can use some of our other receipts, but not necessarily the council house receipts, for that purpose. We can use only those that are not used to pay off the original debt. That is something that we have had to do, and we use a considerable amount on that.
  However, the point is that the money is available, and that the policy would in effect kill two birds with one stone. As Mrs. Irons quite correctly points out, we need to solve not only the homelessness problem, but the problem of the recession that we have suffered for so many years. As we are all aware, the construction industry is one of those that has been worst hit. It could form a lever by which we could wrench many other industries out of recession as well. If we put more money into housing and got the housing market moving again, many other businesses would gain greatly.
  I shall speak to the motion and then the amendment, because I have noticed that hon. Members do not always speak to the words of the motion. Having looked through the Labour motion, I would like to take exception with one small part of it. On the whole, I find it almost totally acceptable, but I am sorry that it includes a phrase about the
  "phased release of capital receipts".
  It seems that that is quite unnecessary. Anyone who has worked in local government knows that, if capital receipts were released now, it would not be possible for councils to use them all at once. They simply do not have the management staff there ready to do so. As they do not all need to use them, or are not capable of using all of them, there is no need to place a restriction on local government by phasing the release of capital receipts. I fear that that is merely a sop to Government propaganda concerning the potential inflationary effects, which I do not believe holds true.
  There are a number of things in the amendment with which I cannot agree. First, the Government seem to be proud of the fact, believe it or not, that they have succeeded in producing some 178,000 homes over three years—under 60,000 a year. That is nothing to be proud of, and it nowhere near meets the need. It is true that that is more than was in their manifesto, but surely that just shows that they should be ashamed of what was in it, and not that they should be proud of exceeding those amounts.
  Secondly, the amendment says that the
  "size of the nation's housing stock has grown faster than population growth over the last 15 years".
  So what? If they are saying that with their housing hat on, what they are saying with their planning hat on is that it is not the size of population growth that matters, but the size of growth in numbers of households.
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  In Berkshire, we were told that we would need 30,000 to 40,000 extra houses over the next 10 years simply to keep up with the growth in the number of households, even if our population did not grow. If the Government are trying to force those extra houses on us because of the number of households, surely they must realise that it is no argument in this amendment to talk about population growth. They must say the same thing with both hats on. They are certainly not doing that at present.
  Thridly, the Government amendment says:
  "the mortgage rate is now at its lowest since the 1960s as a result of the Government's economic policies".
  That is a shameless thing to say. What they should have said, had they had any integrity, is that the mortgage rate is down as a result of the failure of the Government's economic policies. We are in a major recession—a recession that the Government tell us they never wanted and which they never thought would last as long as it has. The recession has brought down interest rates. They have come down as a result of the failure of Government policies, not their success.
  Fourthly, the Government say that they wish to go ahead with a number of changes to housing legislation, and consult people on them. I do not believe that they can genuinely feel that, by housing the homeless is temporary accommodation, they can possibly solve the problem. They have recognised that there is a difference between supply and demand in housing. Instead of answering that by increasing the supply, they are simply trying to reduce the demand—not the actual demand, but that as shown in the figures—by putting some homeless people into temporary accommodation without the true security of tenure which they have had up until now.
  As we are all aware, the problem of homelessness is traumatic. We have all seen, and have heard from, people about their problems. When they lose their homes and, so often as a result, their jobs, they often suffer considerable psychological damage and family break-ups. The Government are supposedly a Government of family values. Any Government who cherish family values and wish to keep families together should surely concentrate on the problem of building more homes for those who need them, instead of simply redefining the homeless when they put them into temporary accommodation.
  There is a need to create stable communities and stable families. The Government are not even attempting to meet those two needs. The Minister is saying that there is nothing wrong with temporary housing. I hope that the tenants of Nos. 10 and 11 Downing street accept the fact that their housing may be somewhat temporary if the present Government's policies continue. There are a number of people who do not accept that there is nothing wrong with temporary housing.
  Try telling that to those women who live in battered women's hostels. Try telling them that there is no means for them in future to get permanent accommodation again. Try telling those who have lost their homes through fires that the Government are simply not willing to provide any sort of permanent accommodation for them. They will not agree with the Government's new policy.
  Mr. Charles Hendry: Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to confer on this discussion with his hon. Friend the Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes)? His hon. Friend said last week:

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  "It is an unacceptable position that a first time tenant, whether they are a conventional two children, married family, a single mum with three children or a single person with mental illness, goes … to what may, in many cases, be brand new housing stock, when over the other side of the road are people who have been overcrowded for 30 years, paid their rent on time and cannot be moved".
  Mr. Rendel: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend on that point. I was just about to come to it, but, unfortunately, Conservative Members have a tendency to break in just before one reaches the point that would answer the question.
  There is a need for change, not necessarily to current legislation, but certainly to the way in which it is implemented. Authorities up and down the country are avoiding the problem that the hon. Member for High. Peak (Mr. Hendry) just mentioned. It is perfectly possible to use a cascade system for the allocation of housing, so that the newest and best housing goes to those who are waiting to move from perhaps rather less good housing. The slightly less good housing could then be used for those who are immediately homeless and are coming off the homeless list.
  That is being done already in various local authorities, and there is no reason why it should not be done in all of them. If one uses such a system, one avoids the problems of envy that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Therefore, my hon. Friend is quite right to say that changes are needed to bring that system into effect wherever it is not being carried out now.
  Some further changes are also needed. As has been mentioned already, we need to change the system for emergency accommodation, particularly in cold weather and particularly outside London. Far too many people who lie on our streets in shop doorways, cold and sometimes near to death, are not being given even emergency accommodation outside our great city.
  There is also a need to look into the problem of 16 and 17-year-olds out on the streets, who are not thought of as vulnerable and therefore not a priority, and who, particularly if they are female, are liable to be dragged into prostitution. That is not a situation that the Government or any Government should allow to continue.
  If "back to basics" in housing means anything, it surely means back to the basics of four walls, a roof and security of tenure. It is that last point that the Government have forgotten.
  Interestingly" the Government got one thing right in their housing policy a year or two ago when they began to provide extra money for the purchase by housing associations of second-hand housing, a policy that worked well for a time. A number of houses were bought up, which to some extent stopped the slide in the housing market and meant that some accommodation was brought back into use much more rapidly than it otherwise would have been to house the homeless and those at that time on waiting lists.
  That was a policy that we in Newbury commended, although we were not a Conservative-controlled authority at that time. It is a policy to which the Government would have done well to stick. Unfortunately, it has now come to an end. It does not work in all parts of the country, but it works in some.
  It is odd that, in a sense, it is exactly the reverse of Westminster city council's policy. Westminster city council sells properties that were in the public sector to
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  private owners. Under the other policy, housing associations bought properties that had been owner-occupied for those on the waiting lists who desperately needed them. How the Government can think that both policies were right I am not sure. It is similar to what I described a moment ago—when, wearing their planning hat, they reversed the policy that they had adopted wearing their housing hat.
  The Government's amendment condemns the policies of Labour-controlled local authorities. I am interested to see that the Government have found nothing to condemn in Liberal Democrat-controlled authorities, such as my own, whose housing policy, I am glad to report, the Department of the Environment has frequently praised.
  However, the Government's amendment is hypocritical, because they are responsible for the worst housing management. Let us look at the facts. In 1993, there were 864,000 empty properties. If we divide that up into the various sectors, 1.9 per cent. of council houses were empty, 2.4 per cent. of housing association homes were empty, 5 per cent. of the private stock was empty, but, worst of all, 6.8 per cent. of the Government's stock was empty. The Government are three and a half times as bad as local authorities at managing their stock. That shows the sheer hypocrisy of the Government's amendment.
  This debate is about temporary accommodation and the homeless. Temporary accommodation is what we all like when we go on holiday. What the Government need to realise is that homelessness is no holiday.
  6.3 pm
  Mr. Peter Atkinson: A great plethora of figures has been bandied around tonight by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Naturally, the Opposition will not accept any figures with which they do not agree. I do not believe that the Department of the Environment produces one set of figures for Labour Front-Bench spokesmen and another for the Government, but if the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), who sadly is not here at the moment, was trying to suggest that Hackney performs better than Westminster in maintaining its houses, he must be joking, because no one on this earth will believe that.
  Rather than dealing with facts and figures, may I suggest something easier, particularly for those Opposition Members who do not know London very well because their constituencies are far away and they do not spend a lot of time in the centre of London? All they have to do is go out of the door, turn left, walk for a few minutes, cross Lambeth bridge and walk down to the imperial war museum. On a nice day, it is a pleasant stroll.
  Across the road, hidden behind a tall modern tower block called Lambeth towers, they will see an old Lambeth-owned council estate. It is one of those estates built by the great gerrymander Herbert Morrison. At the time, they were well built, and, as he put it, he built them to build the Tories out. He did not say Tories; he used another word which would be unparliamentary.
  Mr. David Winnick: When I go home, I walk to Charing Cross tube station. If I walked a little further up the Strand, I would find, sadly, despite what the Minister said, a number of people sleeping in doorways. They sleep in doorways in very cold weather, and they have no other accommodation. That is quite a common

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  sight in various parts of central London, but it was not the case before 1979. It might be useful if the hon. Gentleman took a look tonight.
  Mr. Atkinson: I too walk around that part of London. People have slept rough of their own volition in that area for many years. [Interruption.]Hon. Members should listen. For those who need them, beds are available.
  May I continue my walk south of the Thames into Lambeth, where that Herbert Morrison block is to be found, which, in its day, was well built? I suggest that hon. Members wander round that block. When it was built, it provided ideal homes for families. It was low-rise and looked out over little gardens. The trees that once adorned the gardens of the 19th-century houses that were whacked down to build it were retained to make a nice backdrop for the families.
  Look at that block today. Several of the flats are boarded up, no doubt awaiting maintenance. I went there today and spoke to a lady who said that the flat next door to hers had been empty for four years. Other flats were occupied but had boarded-up windows. Paving stones were broken and dangerous, and litter and cans disfigured the courtyards. From some flats, where I am told squatters still live, came the sound of deafening reggae music.
  That block is 10 minutes away from the House. Hon. Members can go there and see the effect of bad management by a local authority. That little estate could be turned into a paradise if Lambeth council so wished. If it had been properly managed and not been allowed to decline over the years, families would have volunteered to live there. If it had been sold to the private sector, those flats would be advertised in The Sunday Times as 10 minutes away from the West End and the City. That is why they are desirable apartments.
  In past decades, that estate has lacked proper and competent management. That property is owned by Lambeth council, which has spent its time and money on crackpot schemes, about which we all know. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), who speaks for the Opposition on transport matters and who was a Lambeth councillor, is not here tonight. She is responsible for shipping affairs, but God help the British Navy if she were in charge of it.
  Lambeth council has squandered money over the years on its crackpot schemes. An investigation costing £20 million is under way into money allegedly unlawfully spent on civil engineering projects. It is alleged that £800,000 has been overpaid to some Lambeth teachers. That would have done up some of the flats on that estate. We have heard of housing benefit fraud involving 750 members of staff, and there is nearly £30 million of uncollected rent.
  From a sedentary position, I heard the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) comment on London housing. I have had first-hand experience, because, like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford), I happened to be a member of Wandsworth council. I was pleased and surprised to be part of the team that had to sort out the mess left by Labour.
  To recap one or two of my hon. Friend's points, the Labour party had a policy of municipalisation under which the chairman went about on a bike, writing down which houses the council should buy. Once we had chucked out
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  Labour, I was given the job of chairing a committee to dispose of those houses. I could not go around on a bike, as there were too many houses involved—there were nearly 2,000 boarded-up houses in the borough of Wandsworth, many in the leafy streets of Putney, when we took over.
  It was amazing that the council did not know what it had bought—we did not know to whom the boarded-up houses belonged. As chairman of the disposal committee, I was given the task of advertising in the local paper, asking anyone who lived next door to a boarded-up house please to get in touch with the council, because we were not sure whether it might belong to us. We found several dozen properties in Battersea and Putney which the council had purchased but then forgotten. We strongly suspected that the owner of one property had been paid twice for it—he must have thought that he had struck it lucky.
  Labour spent millions on nutty schemes in Wandsworth and, as a consequence, was unable to do up its houses. It boarded them up and left them empty for many years, during which time they became eyesores. Labour had spent the money on buying the properties and did not have sufficient money to maintain its existing council properties. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central explained exactly what happened.
  The Labour council's gerrymandering scheme went wrong, because the tenants rose up and chucked out the Labour party. I was standing in a ward in which nearly 80 per cent. of the voters were council tenants and, as much to my surprise as to anyone else's, I was elected, because the tenants were fed up with inadequate and poor maintenance.
  It was not only Wandsworth's Labour council which had municipalised and sought to gerrymander—the Greater London council was also in the game, trying to help the Putney Labour party keep Putney Labour. Of course, the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) was involved in the Putney Labour party in those days.
  The Labour council built the Roehampton estate. Why? It is a tower block estate on the edge of Richmond park. It was not built to disfigure the skyline, which it ruined anyway; it was not built to provide convenient homes because the flats were high rise; and it was not built because of its convenient location. The council dumped thousands of people miles from any jobs, in an area with virtually no public transport. They were stuck in a wasteland because the council wanted to increase the number of Labour voters in that part of London.
  When the GLC finally transferred all its Wandsworth properties to Wandsworth council, councillors were puzzled because no rent was forthcoming from two of the blocks. Eventually, someone went to see the two blocks that the GLC had given us and discovered that the blocks did not exist—the GLC had had no idea of what was going on.
  It is easy to score points off loony left councillors in London—it is all good knockabout stuff—but Labour Members should take my advice and walk across the Thames. Despite the rhetoric and the jokes, I am angry that families have to live on the Lambeth estate in unacceptable conditions merely because of the idleness, ineptitude and corruption of a bunch of Labour councillors.
  6.13 pm
  Mr. Robert Litherland: I shall be brief and confine my remarks to my own city.
  Housing in Manchester, as in every other major city, is under extreme pressure for the simple reason that, since the Conservative party took office, we have witnessed a decline in capital resources. That decline has brought in its wake a deterioration in housing provision and conditions the length and breadth of the city.
  The central Government allocation for housing investment programmes has been severely cut and, as night follows day, the local authority cannot meet the needs of its citizens. In 1992–93, our housing improvement bid was £131 million and the allocation was £35·8 million. In 1993–94, the bid was 28 per cent. of the previous year's —we submitted a request for £40 million but received only £36 million. In 1994–95, the bid was treated in exactly the same way—a bid for £46·8 million was met with an allocation of £29 million. One does not need to be a mathematician to realise that the resources are not sufficient to provide decent living accommodation for the people of Manchester.
  I stress the fact that there is a tremendous need for housing and housing improvements. It will be possible to rectify the situation only with investment from central Government and the private sector, as has now been acknowledged by Manchester city council. The Government must act as a catalyst, but I regret to say that they are failing miserably in that role.
  The local authority in Manchester has stressed time and again that additional resources are essential if we are to get off the treadmill. If the resources are not forthcoming, things can only get worse. If we bear in mind that the council estimates that £300 million is needed for private sector improvements and £500 million for public sector improvements, we get some idea of the scale of the problem facing the providers of housing for those in need. Because of the widening gap between needs and resources, Manchester city council has had to take a long look at the problem and has come up with what is termed a corporate housing strategy.
  The strategy recognises the need for a fundamental review of the council's own role in the housing market. It has taken cognisance of the limited resources and of the necessity to stimulate private sector investment. Its aim is to deliver an effective housing service. The Manchester strategy has also taken into consideration the changing tenure patterns and the trends which have led to the rethink of housing policy. Gone are the days when the direct works department built 1,300 houses, employed 5,000 workers and 1,000 apprentices, provided jobs for the disabled and saved the ratepayers money—we now have a new ball game.
  The Government's financial controls have led to a severe reduction in local authority housing in recent years. Private investment has been directed towards houses for sale, not towards houses for rent. Housing associations, which once had a minor role to play in the provision of housing, were given a new status by the Government but, as their finances dry up, their properties in Manchester are boarded up, vandalised or used for the illegal dumping of waste or they become havens for undesirables. That is a sacrilege while people are waiting for a roof over their heads.
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  There have always been changes in housing. The mean terraced streets of houses at the turn of the century, which were all owned by private landlords, gave way to the great slum clearances which resulted in monolithic council estates. At one point in the 1970s, Manchester city council owned about 90,000 properties.
  However, there have been rapid changes in the past 10 years. We have witnessed a decrease in the number of houses to rent in the private and public sector. The right-to-buy policy has taken the more desirable houses from the pool of properties on offer to waiting list applicants. People do not buy the flats that we are knocking down—the system-built rubbish. They buy council houses that overlook golf clubs, and so on. Those are the desirable properties.
  Sir Paul Beresford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Litherland: No; I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman took 40 minutes of precious time.
  We have witnessed the demolition of system-built obscenities that have blighted the city. That has also reduced the relets.
  The city, in its strategy statement, welcomes the diversity of tenure and of choice, but I warn the city council that it must never lose sight of the fact that any change must be for the benefit of people.
  The choice of increasing ownership is useless if a family cannot pay the mortgage payments, suffers repossession and has to turn to a local authority for help. We have witnessed the increase in homelessness. What choice do homeless people have? How does the council tackle that acute problem without adequate resources? The number of households who are admitted to be in priority need has more than doubled. The demand for specialised homes for the elderly and disabled has trebled.
  The sharp increase in homelessness has led to a 22 per cent. increase in the number of households living in temporary accommodation. It is estimated that 618 persons become homeless every month in Greater Manchester and most of them gravitate towards the city. That is not one of the features that we are proud of. We do not show the International Olympic Committee the people sleeping rough in the streets of Manchester.
  Patterns have changed, but not for the better. Whatever imaginative policies the council pursues in response to the ever-changing scenario, the financial resources must be made available to meet the needs. Those needs are great. The council points scheme alone, shows that 20,000 households from the waiting list are classified as being in housing need.
  Different types of accommodation are needed to meet the demand from single parents and as a result of the break-up of families. Overcrowding is now estimated at 39 per cent., and that has coincided with the right to buy and the reduction in the availability of family housing. More than 13,000 good-quality houses have been bought by tenants, which has added to the problem of diminishing stock.
  Manchester's structure and population change continually. The decline in population to about 400,000 does not mean that the pressure on housing has decreased—quite the opposite. We have more low-income families and more vulnerable and immobile households and the demand for affordable houses to rent is increasing.

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  Poverty adds to the problem, as does unemployment, especially in the inner-city area. In the inner-city area of Manchester, unemployment is well above the national average. Male unemployment is 30 per cent. That should take the smirk off the face of the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford). There has been an increase in the number of households who receive free school meals and in the number of households who receive benefits.
  Those are the people who do not have a choice. They are denied access to home ownership. Those are the victims of the Government policy. Demand outstrips supply at every turn and the providers are not providing.
  When a city council's housing stock decreases by 3,000 in one year and the replacement is only 874, and those dwellings are built, not by the city council, but by a housing association, that proves that there is no support from the Government for a serious house-building programme.
  The city council's ideas and aims are well-intentioned and thought out and they are enshrined in six key objectives. I will quote from its report:

  "1. To provide a choice of desirable and affordable housing to improve the quality of life for current residents and to encourage people to come and live in Manchester.

  2. To make special provision for people who are homeless or inadequately housed and for people with special needs.

  3. To offer tenants a wide choice …

  4. To deliver a customer orientated, locally based, value-for-money housing service …

  5. To prevent homelessness …"

  Those objectives are commendable but, whatever the strategy undertaken to remedy the crisis in Manchester or any of the major cities, we shall always return to the dependency on the Government for adequate levels of funding resources. That is where the exercise is flawed. We have only to consider the Government's appalling housing record to realise that the objectives of the Manchester city council strategy for housing will remain just a well-intentioned programme of words and figures in a well-presented brochure and that none of the aims for decent housing will materialise for the people. If they have to rely on the Government to make them work, it will all remain a pipe dream.
  The Government have lost credibility. The Government cannot be trusted.
  6.25 pm
  Mrs. Teresa Gorman: We should consider why the market for housing, compared with other markets that meet people's needs, manifests such desperate mismanagement and terrible shortages. Surely that is so largely because the property market is bedevilled by legislation which has been passed by the House at different times in the past few years.
  Planning controls are one type of legislation; they have limited the amount of land available on which to build housing. Secondly, controlled rents have meant that, for many decades, low rents gave no incentive to people in the private sector to provide or recycle property. Thirdly, the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, which was passed by the Labour Government, increased enormously the number of people who flooded into inner cities, especially London, and put enormous strains on the housing market there.
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  It is to the credit of the current Housing Minister that he has tackled many of those problems and introduced some imaginative policies. For example, when I was a member of Westminster city council, we identified more than 50 acres of land in the Westminster part of the central London catchment area alone which were derelict and could not be built on because, for one reason or another, planning consents were bedevilled by past legislation. There was a vast amount of housing which had fallen into complete disrepair and where no one wished to live; it accounted for some of the startling figures which we are often given about the number of empty houses. It was not so much that they were empty as that they were uninhabitable, in the centres of cities.
  The world and his wife, coming to Britain, often ended up in Westminster, expecting to be housed by the city council, which already had to tackle an enormous demand from the British people and from people who were long-standing residents of Westminster or had family connections there. Children were growing up and wanted alternative accommodation to a room in their parents' house. That situation, coupled with the driving out of the private landlady, who has always in the past provided short-term accommodation for young people, many of whom are highly mobile and simply want accommodation on a short-term basis, has made the housing problem of places such as Westminster unique.
  The policies that the Government have recently adopted, including that of making it possible for private individuals to take in lodgers without being bedevilled by half a dozen inspectors and to earn a modest amount of money—about £3,000 a year—without having to fill in complicated tax returns, have helped to free up accommodation for many young people.
  It is a fact that 35 per cent. of all the people on waiting lists are under 25, and many of them are unmarried. Many of those people would have been willing to take a small flat or rooms in a private house if those had been available, but they resorted to the council because there was no alternative, especially in inner cities, as the cost of the housing available in the private sector was beyond their means. They turned to the council, not because they wanted council housing but because that was the only available housing that they were able to afford.
  All those factors distort many of the so-called statistics that the Labour party likes to hurl at the Government as a testimony to their supposed failure to provide adequate housing. It is the responsibility of everyone in the House to ensure that those policies are reformed. The Government are determined, and their latest consultation paper continues to meet those problems head on, so they are to be commended.
  The result of those restrictive policies has been that all sorts of palliatives, such as housing associations, have been adopted. Although housing associations provide low-cost housing, they do so at heavily subsidised rates. Those subsidies would not be necessary if we freed up some of the property suffering from planning blight, such as the enormous number of empty dwellings over shops. The dwellings cannot be let for residential use because, under planning regulations, the buildings are zoned for commercial purposes. They have stood there for years becoming derelict. I recall writing a paper on the subject back in the mid-1970s, long before I became a Westminster

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  councillor. The Government, sensibly and commendably, are tackling the problem head on, so that is another plus for them.
  We also introduced the right to buy—a sensible policy, but one that still deals only with those who wish to own a property. Many people are mobile and want not property to own but property to let.
  No mention has yet been made of the deplorable policies of councils such as Camden and Islington, which in the mid to late-1970s bought whole streets of houses, boarded them up and then let them to what became known as SLUGs, pronounced "slugs"—short life user groups. The SLUGs in turn let the houses to their chums, most of whom were socialists, to judge by the number of red banners that appear down the streets at election times.
  That was another distortion of the housing market, because those councils were buying up massive areas in the inner cities and deliberately converting them into housing for council tenants. Furthermore, much of the housing was sub-standard, and that made it difficult for people to find properties in the private sector.
  I am familiar with the situation in Westminster, because I was on the housing committee of Westminster council for two years, and in that time I was party to the implementation of many Government policies, such as designated housing. I say straight away that I have no vested interest in council housing, because I have never lived in, rented, bought or sold council accommodation, under the right-to-buy scheme or any other scheme. However, I have suffered from a slur put about by Labour members of Westminster council, who deliberately asked council officers to present them with confidential files on Conservative councillors and Conservative Members of Parliament-1 ask hon. Members to note the word "Conservative"—who have bought freeholds in Westminster.
  The council owns, or did own, a great deal of land in Westminster, for which it obtained peppercorn rents. In an attempt to raise money to build a large leisure centre, the Queen Mother centre, the council examined its assets and decided to get rid of the freeholds of many of those dwellings.
  One of the people who bought the freeholds was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), but he did not feature in much of the material printed in the newspapers early last week, because he is a Labour Member, and the councillors concerned, Andrew Dismore and Gavin Millar, deliberately asked the officers for files on transactions involving Conservatives. That is a scandalous use of privilege to bring about the disclosure of confidential file material to a national newspaper, and those people may yet have to answer for it.
  Incidentally, I must point out that the Transport and General Workers Union bought the freehold of its building, Transport house, as did many other commercial organisations—at the market rate.
  The Labour party may feel that the report about Westminster council gives it the opportunity to run another smear campaign. The report was leaked; none of us has yet seen it—
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: It is in my office.
  Mrs. Gorman: We should consider carefully the people who prepared the report. One of them, Mr. Tony Childs, who is now with the Audit Commission, is no
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  stranger to controversy, because he was the solicitor and adviser to the hard-left Greenwich council for several years. During that time, the council was ill advised enough not to set a rate and it was eventually overruled by the district auditor. In the end, Greenwich ratepayers had to pay much more than they needed to pay. Greenwich council was also advised to have the temerity to take the Department of the Environment to court, because it did not consider that it was getting enough in its grant settlement.
  That individual, whom I maintain is highly politically motivated, helped to produce the report, which we are given to understand is peppered with emotive language. That is what has given rise to the quotable quotes in the initial report supplied to the press. We have heard the case for the prosecution; I am waiting to hear the case for the defence.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Gorman: No, I shall not give way, because I am obeying the request from the Chair to be as brief as possible.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a precise point. The hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) is putting into the mouth of the person to whom she referred the comments of Mr. Magill, the district auditor. I know, because I was the objector, all the reports are in my office and I have read them.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is certainly not a point of order for the Chair.
  Mrs. Gorman: While we are on that subject, Mr. Magill was put into the job by Touche Ross, a firm that, by prolonging the inquiry over many years, has been claiming £250 an hour for every hour served by him. Westminster people have also had to fork out for that.
  I have dealt with the difficult problems of Westminster council, and I shall now deal with its extremely credible record both of housing homeless people and of dealing with the unique problems of the area. Only 20 per cent. of the people of Westminster own their own homes, compared with 60 per cent. nationally. That means that there was an enormous gap between the people who could afford to buy their homes and people who could find only rented accommodation—low-income people in either council housing or housing owned by associations such as the Peabody Trust and the Guinness Trust.
  It was to deal with that deficit of middle-class, middle-income people who could not afford to buy property in Westminster that the council decided to implement the designated sales policy, for which there was total Government approval. Through designated sales, many people who did not wish to buy council property in an area that was not congenial were allowed to choose to exercise their right to buy within a designated block, which did not have to be in the area in which they were living.
  There was also the cash incentive scheme, to which the Minister has already referred. That allowed residents who wanted to move out, especially people who were retiring, to use the equivalent of the rebate that they would have received had they bought their apartment or house—but only if they were purchasing property elsewhere. The money did not go into their pockets; there was no giveaway. It had to be used to find accommodation in areas where there were properties that they found more congenial. That again is part of Government policy.

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  As a result, council tenants, housing association tenants and people from the waiting list were able to find accommodation under designated sales. Of all the sales under that scheme, 96 per cent. were to people whose original residential area was in Westminster. It is not true that hundreds of people came from outside Westminster and bought flats from the council at cheap prices.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Gorman: I will not give way.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before the hon. Gentleman begins his point of order, let me say that I hope that it is about something on which the Chair should rule in relation to procedures before the House. I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on that.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: I shall certainly reflect on that matter, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it clear that in refusing to give way, the hon. Lady recognises that there is a counter-case that she does not want to be put?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is a senior Member of the House and has shared with me years on the Public Accounts Select Committee. He knows that that was not a genuine point of order. I hope that in future he will be a little more responsible.
  Mrs. Gorman: If the hon. Gentleman can contain himself and not keep interrupting me, he may get a speaking spot himself.
  Westminster council, with its unique problems of large numbers of people coming into the area and the difficulty, because of high property prices, of its own residents being able to buy property, took part in the London mobility scheme. It was a scheme operated between boroughs so that if people were waiting to be housed in one borough and another borough had empty properties, boroughs could do a swap and enable people to find accommodation.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—
  Mrs. Gorman: It was extremely unpopular—
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Twice, we have had examples of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) trying to make a point of order when he could not. There is a constant run of sedentary interruptions making it difficult to listen to the speech. I should be grateful if hon. Members would listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) because what she is saying should be heard on both sides of the House.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Member for that helpful suggestion.
  Mrs. Gorman: It seems that the hon. Member for Workington is slightly agitated about the fact that I am telling truths about which his party does not wish to know and does not wish to go on the record.
  Under that scheme, relatively few people were rehoused outside the borough. Most of the boroughs did not want to take other borough's residents. Unfortuntely, fewer than 2 per cent. were, in the emotive language used by the
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  Opposition, "shunted out". In fact, few people were housed outside the Westminster council area during the period covered by the report.
  Last, but not least, we must deal with those homeless people who live on our streets. It is true that the number of people who are sleeping rough has increased enormously since the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was introduced. That is partly because people were attracted to the city and thought that they would find accommodation, which, unfortunately, was not available.
  Of the people housed temporarily by Westminser, none of them stayed in temporary accommodation for more than a year and, at present, the waiting time is down to under six months. That is a creditable record, not matched by many of the boroughs around Westminster that deliberately put people in extremely grotty hotels and often basic accommodation in and around the central Westminster area.
  Camden currently has 295 people in almost substandard accommodation and does not seem to care that people are living in poor accommodation. Hackney pays for 430 temporary households in Westminster. The story of temporary housing in Westminster is largely one of other boroughs putting their residents into temporary accommodation there.
  Ms Glenda Jackson: Would the hon. Lady clarify a point in which she referred to my local authority of Camden? Is she saying that there are 295 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation or 295 individuals, because there are no families who come under Camden's remit who are in bed-and-breakfast or hostel accommodation and there have not been for more than a year.
  Mrs. Gorman: I accept the hon. Lady's intervention. I am dealing with official figures which have been provided by Westminster council—[Interruption.]—on privately leased units in the city of Westminster. I make no bones about that. Camden has 295 units which are currently leased in the City of Westminster. The situation in Westminster is not one of failure to meet its obligation under the housing responsibilities laid on it—far from it. It is dealing with an extremely difficult and almost unique set of circumstances and doing it responsibly and with admirable zeal.
  Another scheme that the council adopted, which was enormously successful in improving the quality of housing, was the housing improvement area scheme, in which Westminster co-operated with the private sector—individual or commercial landlords—and put up half the money under Government schemes to improve areas. Places such as Pimlico benefited from that scheme and improved out of all recognition, as did parts of Paddington in north London.
  By improving the general tone of the neighbourhoods, the council made the opportunity to buy more attractive in places where formerly tenants wanted only to get out. Again, the council was both stabilising and assisting the population with sensible policies. All those policies, Government-backed and legal, were undertaken by Westminster to deal with its unique circumstances.
  I shall briefly and finally deal with accusations of gerrymandering on the grounds that the council deliberately planted people in marginal wards or Labour wards with a view to influencing their political representation. At the 1990 election, which is discussed in

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  the district auditor's report, five Labour wards returned Conservative councillors. Not a single council flat was sold in two of them—West End ward and Maida Vale ward. There was not a single council house sale to a yuppie or a local or anybody. In the marginal ward of Victoria, which covers this area and where Labour has always thought it might win, not a single council flat is available for sale. So there is no question of gerrymandering.
  In another one of those five wards, Little Venice, only 26 units of accommodation were sold, but the Tory majority was much greater than that. The Labour party was wiped out. En Churchill ward, only 35 units of accommodation were sold. Again, that was nothing like the overall majority which the Conservative party had and it was certainly not influential. In Bayswater ward, 105 units were sold. In fact, sales in Westminster under the designated sales scheme and the cash incentives are still not as high as the council wishes. Only about 1,000 properties are affected under those schemes.
  Westminster council owns 20,000 units of accommodation, which gives one some idea of how influential or otherwise the sale of properties was likely to be on changing the voting results in any one of those wards.
  Mr. Rendel: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Gorman: No; I shall not give way because I am winding up my speech.
  The reason why the council did so remarkably well in the 1990 election was its splendid record on low community charge, which was introduced at the second lowest rate in the country. Naturally, that meant that the sensible people of Westminster turned out in their thousands to vote for the Conservative party, knowing that if there was a Labour council, they were likely to get rates of the proportions in Lambeth, Southwark or Peckham or any other high-spending, poor-level accommodation Labour housing authority.
  The last thing to which I wish to refer, because it is brought up time and again, is—
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Gorman: No. I will not give way.
  We keep hearing about houses that are boarded up. Westminster city council, just like other boroughs, occasionally boards up houses. If hon. Members want to see boarded-up houses, they need only take a walk around Lambeth. It seems that someone has cornered the market in corrugated iron in Lambeth, because so many of the houses are boarded up. Those properties are boarded up because of the threat of squatting. The only way in which squatters can be kept out is by boarding a property up until it is refurbished and tenants can return.
  At the moment, there are only six squatted buildings in Westminster. Lambeth council has several hundred such properties. That is a measure of the success of Westminster council's policies. The allegations about boarding up property and empty property are nonsense.
  I end with an anecdote. When I was a councillor for Millbank ward, we decided that properties on the very old-fashioned Rose street estate immediately to the west side of Horseferry road which had baths in the kitchens should be refurbished quickly. We devised a scheme whereby we offered the residents the opportunity to take another flat temporarily or to receive money for the cost of entering temporary hotel accommodation of their own
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  choice for the period. The tenants co-operated. We boarded the flats up and refurbished them in six weeks flat. The tenants returned to their original properties, which now contained brand new kitchens and bathrooms.
  If one had toured that estate and counted the boarded-up doors, one would have found whole blocks which were boarded up. However, they were boarded up for the very sensible reason that we wanted to carry out the refurbishment not around the tenants, as that might have taken 18 months, but quickly, cleanly and with the best interests of the tenants at heart.
  When we consider those points, and read the report in its entirety, I am sure that the accusations laid at Westminster's door will be refuted.
  6.51 pm
  Ms Estelle Morris: I am glad of the opportunity to make a contribution on a very important issue for which we have responsibility—housing. There can be no doubt that good housing is a fundamental in a decent society. However, we must remember that it involves more than shelter and a roof over one's head.
  Housing is crucial to good health, to good education and to good family and social relationships. Wherever we look, the evidence is clear. If one is badly housed, one is more likely to suffer ill health. If one is badly housed, one is less likely to continue in full-time education. If one is inadequately housed, one is bound to be subject to more pressures in one's family and social relationships.
  All Opposition Members—and, if they are honest, many Conservative Members—can tell stories of constituents whose lives have been blighted by the Government's failure to provide adequate housing for everyone. During the months that I have been here, colleagues have told me about the problem of housing in our inner cities. I do not argue with them that poverty is greatest and housing worst in our inner cities.
  However, I do not want to consider the housing problems of the inner cities. Instead, I want to address an issue which I feel very strongly receives far too little attention in Parliament. That issue, which is becoming more important in our nation and is a festering sore in many of our cities, involves our outer-ring areas.
  What is happening in the outer-ring areas of our cities? What is happening on the housing estates which once offered a new start for a previous generation of inner-city residents? The Government's policies have consistently led to housing problems in those outer-ring areas being ignored. That is causing great resentment among the residents in outer-ring areas.
  The Government's approach to housing finance is almost obscene. They allocate money not on the basis of housing need, but as prizes for competitions which they have invented. Prizes for the estate action competition take up 20 per cent. of the 1993–94 capital spending budget. Two thirds of the £40 million worth of prizes for the housing action trusts went to just two locations.
  In the city of Birmingham, the recent housing investment programme bid for £92 million saw £41 million top sliced for estate action, leaving a mere £22 million for all the council housing in the rest of the largest city in western Europe. With regard to the urban renewal scheme,

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  four areas of Birmingham each receive £3 million, while the private housing stock in the rest of the city shares £19 million.
  The situation is clear. The way in which the Government's housing policy operates means that the little money available for housing, both in the private sector and the rented sector, is concentrated in a few mainly inner-city areas. As Government policy intended, that money acts as a magnet for other resources from the council's own budget and from elsewhere.
  Over the years, there has been a proliferation of dedicated schemes and special projects and the continued allocation of funds on a competitive basis. The result of that is clear. There has been an increase in the division between housing winners and housing losers. That is not the fault of local authorities. The figures to which I have just referred are not the fault of Birmingham city council or the way in which it would like to allocate its housing resources.
  Mr. Baldry: Does the hon. Lady accept that no one obliges Birmingham to bid for estate action, for housing action trusts or for any of the other initiatives she mentioned? All those decisions, including what bids to make and how to make them, are decisions for Birmingham city council.
  Ms Morris: The Government's guidelines encourage city councils such as Birmingham to make HIP bids with regard to other resources which might take the form of city challenge or estate action funds. Does the Minister accept that it is his Department that asks city councils to focus attention on areas of greater housing need and to focus resources within those areas? The Minister should consider the directions in the HIP bid guidelines for local authorities.
  Mr. Richard Burden: Does my hon. Friend agree that Birmingham city council's HIP bid, which Ministers considered, set out very clearly—and the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction attended a presentation in Birmingham in this regard—the housing needs across the city in the public and private sector totalling £200 million? However, the council was allowed to bid for only just under £100 million and, of that, the council received an allocation of less than £50 million. Does not that show the ridiculous way in which the Government allocate housing finance and how that does not in any way match the housing needs in Birmingham and other cities?
  Ms Morris: My hon. Friend is right. We both have constituents who suffer as a result of the way in which the Government allocate housing money. I also attended the presentation when the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction heard Birmingham's HIP bid. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden) was as delighted as I was by the compliment that the Minister paid Birmingham city council for the way in which it runs its housing stock and the way it acts as a housing authority.
  If local authorities want money, they must play the Government's game. However, the way in which the rules
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  are written mean that many areas and many people never stand a chance of winning. According to the Government's guidelines:
  "Estate Action will increasingly focus on the re-generation of larger, more run down estates."
  Housing action trusts are offered for larger inner-city estates. City challenge draws together initiatives in urban and inner-city areas and urban renewal money is allocated on the basis of an area strategy. It is obvious that local authorities are constantly under pressure from the Government to focus resources in a few areas and usually in inner cities.
  While Ministers tour the country for photo opportunities in successful projects, whole chunks and swathes of our housing estates receive absolutely nothing, and they are often outer-ring areas.
  My constituency is one of the areas that the Government choose to ignore. Constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Northfield attract very few of the scant housing resources. But we too have housing need. We have pockets of deprivation; I know that they are not as large as those in other constituencies. We have unfit houses; I know that the situation is not as bad as it is in some neighbouring wards. We have homeless people; I know that the problem is worse elsewhere.
  Two in every 100 constituents in one of my wards have houses with outside bathrooms or toilets, or share such facilities. Despite the fact that the number of elderly people in my constituency is in the top seventh nationally, 44.2 per cent. of houses have no central heating. It is the 14th worst constituency in that respect.
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth: When dealing with her constituents, does my hon. Friend encounter the same problem that I find time and again when dealing with mine? They ask, "Why is the council's priority this rather than that? Why has it spent such a huge amount on that estate when it cannot even provide me with a date for something that is basic and fundamental?" Does my hon. Friend also find that, every time, she effectively explains that the rules about housing finance have been imposed upon the local authority by central Government 90-odd miles away? The quality of decision taken in Whitehall cannot be equal to the quality of decisions that could be taken nearer to the problems locally.
  Ms Morris: My hon. Friend is right. We have seen massive centralisation in respect of decisions affecting very local matters such as a house in a street or a street in an area. I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents also ask him, "How bad does my house have to become before it falls into the category that the Government think need assistance?"
  There is no doubt that constituencies such as mine have great housing need, but they are made to compete with areas that have even greater housing need. The 2 per cent. of my constituents without indoor facilities have to compete with the 4·6 per cent. in the neighbouring Sparkhill ward. The 44 per cent. of my constituents without central heating must compete with the 62·5 per cent. in the nearby Washwood Heath ward. The result if obvious—constituencies such as mine lose, and need is unmet.
  Just as the proposed new Government guidelines for homelessness attempt to pit the homeless against the inadequately housed, so the Government's obsession with competition pits people with poor housing against people with even poorer housing. The Government should be

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  under no illusion about the potentially devastating consequences of making the needy compete against the more needy.
  The statistics show that outer-ring areas, constituencies such as mine, are often the losers when it comes to housing allocation, are where unemployment is increasing the most and where crime has risen the most. People in outer-ring areas have a growing feeling of isolation and community breakdown, and they consider that the Government are ignoring their needs and leaving them out.
  I do not question the need of areas with city challenge and estate action status. I would be the first to welcome an attempt to regenerate those areas, but let us be clear about why special projects exist. The Government did not choose their strategy because it is the best way of meeting housing need; it is born out of the need to concentrate resources because there is not enough to go round. Their strategy is born of the political objective of eventually handing over publicly renovated houses to the private sector. That strategy is driven by the desire to take the role of social landlord from local authorities.
  The Government have singled out my local housing authority as being one of a high standard, yet its housing investment programme allocation has fallen from £67 million to £62 million, £53 million and £49 mil lion in recent years. The Government leave it with little discretion as to how to spend its money. The Government's policy has turned it, just as it has turned every other local authority, into a city of housing winners and housing losers. Conservative Members expect millions of citizens to live in conditions which none of them or their families would tolerate.
  The housing crisis now extends far beyond the inner areas of our great Victorian cities. It is at the root of many other problems which we have discussed in the Chamber. Saddest of all, it is a crisis that the Government have never, and certainly not today, shown any ability to solve.
  7.5 pm
  Mr. Charles Hendry: I am grateful to have caught your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle). I hope that he will listen carefully, because it might enable him to get some of his facts more accurate than he did when we had a discussion on Radio Leeds on Thursday morning.
  During the radio phone-in, the hon. Gentleman told listeners that not one penny of the money that had been raised from council house sales could be spent on housing. Perhaps on further reflection he will accept that that is not the case. Furthermore, the hon. Gentleman stated that the number of houses is getting "smaller and smaller" all the time. That is a quote from him. I hope that he will further reflect on the fact that that is not the case. As he knows, there are 2·5 million more houses in Britain today than there were in 1979.
  Mr. Battle: kept a note of what was said. I shall show the hon. Gentleman the transcript, because he seems to have a selective memory. I said that we were short of houses to rent. Under the Conservative Government, since 1979 the number of homes to rent in Britain has decreased by 2 million. Now tell me about the facts.
  Mr. Hendry: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He worked himself up into his usual hysteria slightly more quickly than he normally manages, but I will gladly look at the transcript with him.
  It appears that the misuse of facts is spreading to all opposition parties. On housing, we have a tremendously positive story, and it is not just the fact that there are 2.5 million more houses in Britian today than there were 14 years ago, but the encouraging construction figures, particularly in the private sector. Also, the year-on-year number of families who are accepted as homeless has been dropping for 18 months.
  Is it not slightly unfortunate that, if we have two months of bad news, the Opposition and the pressure groups who talk about housing say that that is a trend, but, when we have 18 months of good figures, they say that it is too early to tell and we cannot judge the figures yet?
  Elsewhere, the figures are looking better as well. Figures on the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation are immensely encouraging and must be welcomed. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said, today's figures on repossessions, showing a further substantial drop, are good news indeed.
  Also useful are figures recently produced by the Bank of England on the extent of negative equity. They show that, between the first and third quarters of last year, the number of households with negative equity dropped from 1·8 million to 1·2 million, and that the total negative equity involved dropped from £11·7 billion to £7·3 billion. All hon. Members want the amount of negative equity to go down further, but that is a much more dramatic, impressive drop than was expected.
  As joint chairman of the all-party group on homelessness, I find particularly encouraging the dramatic drops in the number of people sleeping rough. Independent figures collected by the London Homelessness Network suggest that the number of people sleeping rough in central London has dropped by two thirds over the past two years. All hon. Members would expect those encouraging figures to continue.
  On this optimistic note, it is worth pointing out that there is more good news to come. Indeed, it is already in the pipeline. The new right of repair, which will come into force in April, will enable thousands of tenants in all parts of the country who have had to wait endlessly for basic housing repairs to have the work done privately under a certain cost ceiling, and to pass the bill to the local authority.
  As has been said already, we have seen encouraging progress in terms of the reduction in the number of empty properties owned by the Government. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) gave a figure that he must realise is completely out of date, as it includes a huge number of individual units in nurses' hostels. If the suggestion is that each of those could be used to house a homeless family, that is a very worrying prospect. Such accommodation is clearly unsuitable for homeless families, and such an arrangement would be unsuitable for the nurses living on site.
  The figures have been revised, and we now find that the proportion of Government-owned houses currently empty is much lower than was previously estimated. More important, the Government are taking a direct lead. Here I should mention the pressure that was announced in the Budget—especially the pressure on the Ministry of Defence, which, I willingly accept, has been the worst

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  offender in this respect. If the Ministry of Defence is to maintain its defence budget, it will be expected to make better use of its housing stock. That is a move that I hope the whole House will welcome.
  I also welcome the changes to be made under phase 2 of the rough sleepers initiative. I accept that there is concern about this matter. Last week, at the request of John Bird, the editor of The Big Issue, I looked at McNaughten house, which, under these proposals, may well be closed. Within a few hours, I spoke to the Minister, and an assurance was given that the Government fully accept the need for off-the-street accommodation and are committed to keeping it. In the case of an establishment like McNaughten house, the main question is whether the owners are seeking an extension of the lease.
  I welcome the consultation paper on the review of homelessness legislation, which was published last week. It is vital that the Government take action to remove some of the distortions in the current housing structure. Like all other hon. Members, I receive many letters about housing. Most of these come not from people who are homeless. [Interruption.] I probably get rather more letters about general homelessness than does the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), as, being chairman of the all-party group, I am contacted by people in all parts of the country.
  In my constituency, I receive a few letters from people who are homeless, but a much larger number from people who want help to secure a council house as they are in inadequate accommodation. Those people wait their turn, but never seem to make progress up the waiting list. One does not wish to discriminate against anybody, but the situation must be put into more balance.
  Not everybody seeking a council house is in need of permanent council accommodation. Some people's needs would be met by short-term provision. Providing someone with a house for 20, 30 or 40 years—some council houses are passed on to other family members—is not necessarily the best, or even an appropriate, solution.
  I object to the hysteria that has greeted the publication of the consultation paper to which I have referred. My right hon. Friend the Minister has referred to the suggestion that we could see a return to the "Cathy Come Home" situation. The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) referred to this matter on BBC Radio Leeds last week.
  It really is unmitigated drivel. Since "Cathy Come Home", we have seen the introduction of income support to ensure a degree of social security for families—
  Mr. Battle: It replaced family income supplement.
  Mr. Hendry: And family income supplement was not in place in those days. More important, we now have housing benefit—introduced by a Conservative Government, of course. This benefit is available for use either in the private sector or in the public sector. Thus the extreme cases of homelessness depicted in "Cathy Come Home" simply could not exist today, and nothing proposed in the consultation document would result in the return of such a situation.
  I should like to express some concern about three aspects of the consultation document. First, I hope that my right hon. Friend will assure us that those who are forced
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  to leave home and are vulnerable will not find themselves on the street. This point was made forcefully by Centrepoint in a briefing that was sent to hon. Members.
  Centrepoint does tremendous work in this field, as do other charities. One of its particular anxieties is that an abused mother should go to a housing office on a Friday evening only to find that, because she cannot be assessed immediately, she is left on the street over the weekend. It is important that we should be assured that such vulnerable people will be treated as urgent cases.
  Sir George Young: I can give my hon. Friend a categorical assurance that circumstances such as he has outlined will never arise.
  Mr. Henry: I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for that assurance. Most of us believed that such would be the case, but my right hon. Friend's categorical assurance will be comforting to the charities in this field.
  The second key element of the consultation document concerns the fact that the role of the private sector must be enhanced. I am certainly encouraged by the fact that the proportion of houses in the private rented sector is beginning to grow. That could be accounted for partly by the current housing situation, in which people who cannot sell their properties seek to rent them out, and those who are not ready to commit themselves to purchase go for renting in the meantime. However, I am not convinced that the changes proposed in this document will, by themselves, bring about the necessary growth in this sector. We need to go further.
  I am encouraged by the extension of the tenants incentive scheme to become the cash incentive scheme. However, there is also a strong case for looking at the incentive scheme for tenants who move out of the public rented sector into the private sector. We need an assurance that provision will not be for a period of just six months, after which the people concerned will again be homeless, but will be for a significant period. There will be considerable scope for introducing such a scheme.
  I encourage my right hon. Friend to talk to his colleagues in the Treasury about the proposal to extend the tax-free element of rental income. It seems to me quite reasonable that, if a person can rent out a room of his home for £60 a week, a similar income derived from the letting of a private house should be tax-free. This matter was eloquently dealt with in a pamphlet that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) produced last year. The principle could be applied to newly available properties.
  We also need to move towards a strategy for vulnerable young people leaving home. Many such people going to university live in halls of residence. They are housed, fed, clothed and given social support.
  Mr. Battle: The hon. Gentleman is quoting me.
  Mr. Hendry: I have been saying this for a long time, and it is very similar to things that have been said by my right hon. Friend the Minister. I am grateful that, for once, the hon. Member for Leeds, West and I are in agreement.
  We must consider the needs of people leaving home at the age of 16 or 17. Youngsters coming from backgrounds other than those from which they might well go to university are more vulnerable and need more help in the

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  early stages. It is not enough to say that they can move into flats and fend for themselves—budget, cater and provide for all their own needs.
  There is very encouraging evidence of the success of the Foyer scheme. This is a national network that concerns itself with the accommodation, training and work of young people. I hope that the Government will continue to provide backing in this area, and will move towards a national strategy to cater for the needs of young people leaving home.
  I will touch briefly on only one other point before sitting down, as I recognise that a number of other hon. Members wish to speak. I believe that too much emphasis in the housing debate can be put on the need for new build accommodation. Figures such as 100,000 or 200,000 houses are bandied about, but too often those figures are unsubstantiated. In particular, I do not think that we should talk the whole time about new build when there are over 750,000 houses which currently lie empty in this country.
  The Government are setting an example in terms of their housing stock. They are trying to help in the private sector—by far the biggest sector, with nearly 700,000 empty private houses—through the encouragement of housing associations and of managing agents. They are also trying to help through the flats above shops initiative, but I want them to go further. If, for example, a house is kept empty by a private individual, that individual is relieved of half his council tax bill on that property.
  If it is a commmercial organisation which is wilfully leaving an empty flat above its premises, it should not be entitled to get the half rebate on the council tax. Therefore, where properties are owned by corporate organisations, those organisations should pay the council tax in full, so the costs of keeping those buildings empty are brought home to them.
  Local authorities remain big offenders in the matter of empty houses. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland). Last year, I took part in a BBC television programme from the Moston estate in central Manchester, where 18 per cent. of houses are empty. Since then, the estate has been given a vast amount of money under the estate action programme to help bring some of the empty houses back into use. However, there will continue to be a problem until local authorities can prove themselves better wardens of the public interest and until they start to look after council stock better.
  I am sympathetic to suggestions that, if councils do not make good use of properties, or do not bring them back into use quickly, those properties should be made available to individuals, who will bring them back into use as quickly as possible.
  My final point relates to empty offices. We have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) talk about the volume of derelict land in London. A huge amount of that derelict land has been designated for office development. There are already the equivalent of 25 empty Canary Wharf lowers which have been built in the central London area. The Government have said that they will encourage and support moves to change those buildings into living accommodation where it is appropriate and possible.
  Such properties may be suitable for short-term accommodation for students, and for young professional people who want to live in the city rather than be forced further out into the suburbs. That is an idea whose time has
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  come. I am not talking about every building, but there are a significant number where it is possible that that approach could be widely used.
  There has been a significant improvement across the board in the statistics relating to housing and to homelessness. That is something which all hon. Members should welcome. The Government's policies are producing results, and are very much on track. I encourage my colleagues to reject the motion tonight, and also to make sure that sensible views are expressed as the consultation document moves forward. My hon. Friends must make sure that the views of our constituents, who have overwhelmingly backed that consultation document, are heard widely.
  7.23 pm
  Mr. Dennis Turner: This debate on housing is overdue, and I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends for using this Opposition day debate to place on record our criticisms of the Government's policy on housing, which have persisted since 1979.
  If the Minister needs evidence of the Government's gross neglect, he need do no more than look at my town of Wolverhampton. In 1979, there were approximately 2,000 people on the waiting list; today, there is a waiting list of 13,000. Hon. Members should just consider the misery and the frustration which lie behind those statistics.
  In the few minutes which I have allotted to me, I will make a few comments on housing co-ops. As a Labour Co-operative Member, and proud to be so, I wish to point out that housing co-operatives are an ideal way of harnessing personal responsibility to meeting housing need. They are important in terms of maintaining choice and diversity, as well as accountability to users.
  Recently, the chief executive of the Halifax building society acknowledged that little choice exists in Britain between owner-occupation and local authority/housing association renting. What is needed is a recognition of the distinctiveness of co-operative housing, and the role it could play in a comprehensive housing strategy. More could be done to support innovations such as self-build for rent, and many different types of co-operative housing schemes.
  When one considers that homelessness has increased by more than half since 1979—from just over 56,000 to over 148,000—and that homes needed for rent outstrip supply by 100,000 homes, the case for housing co-ops is overwhelming.
  Unfortunately, the Housing Corporation's response to the substantial cuts—cuts of £320 million, as the Minister knows—to its approved development programme has been to reduce the share of that programme that is devoted to housing co-operatives from a promised 3·4 per cent. to 1·3 per cent. That commitment to housing co-ops of 3·4 per cent. was promised me by Sir Christopher Benson in 1992 when, as we know, he was chairman of the Housing Corporation. I was then, as I still am, the chairman of the all-party group on housing co-operatives. The Minister was a founder member of that group, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth).
  Given that the percentage of all public spending on housing has been reduced from 6·1 per cent. in 1979 to 2·5

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  per cent. in 1993, I am sure that all hon. Members will recognise that that is a severe reduction of housing co-operative support from the Housing Corporation.
  The Minister has supported tenant management co-operatives, and I understand and welcome the basic principles of the right to manage introduced in the Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. However, I fail to see how that makes up for the increase in housing provision, given that it is a right for existing tenants in existing homes. Indeed, local authority housing starts have fallen from 100,000 in 1979 to 2,000 in 1993.
  With the current levels of homelessness, with 60,000 people in temporary accommodation, with 1.5 million people on waiting lists, and with 500,000 people in mortgage arrears and in the trap of negative equity, will the Minister and the Government admit that what is needed is not the tinkering that the latest document represents? Changing definitions does not change the underlying reality of the problems which those figures manifest.
  Will the Minister admit that what is needed is a comprehensive strategy that recognises, and fully and equitably supports, a mix of tenures and ownership? That, as I have suggested, would harness the energy and the innovations which have been shown by all involved in co-operative housing.
  7.29 pm
  Mr. Gary Streeter: I am delighted to be called to take part in this important housing debate. I should start by declaring my interest as a parliamentary consultant to the Institute of Housing, although our views do not always coincide.
  My right hon. Friend the Minister will be delighted to know that I do not propose to talk about local housing companies, about which I have bent his ear on many occasions. I still say that it is an idea whose time has come. They increasingly could become the vehicle to deliver cost-effective, well-managed social housing.
  We heard from the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) about his regrets that there is no longer a consensus about social housing. It is difficult to have a consensus with people who, rather than come into the 1990s and embrace radical ideas for the delivery of social housing policies that work and of quality services to tenants, prefer to remain in the 1950s and stick with policies with which they feel comfortable and safe.
  There are occasions on which there is consensus between myself and Opposition Members and other people with whose views I do not always agree. For example, on 15 May 1992, Tribune magazine commented as follows about Labour's performance in the 1992 local government elections:
  "It would be wrong to blame the debacle of May 7th entirely on that of April 9th. In several of the councils where Labour did worst, it did not deserve to do any better, simply on the basis of its dire record in office…in many areas…Labour local government is lacklustre and incompetent. In a few it is simply corrupt. This is nothing new. Ineffectual or rotten Labour councils…have been a feature of political life for as long as anyone can remember".
  I agree with that.
  I also agree with the comments made by Councillor Simon Matthews, a Labour councillor in Hackney council. In May 1993, he said:
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  "That we have failed many of the people of Hackney is beyond doubt. The sole objective of housing management in Hackney seems to be 'muddling through'—buying off tenants and councillors with short term expedients and gimmicks. Complacency is rife; incompetence is widespread …. Our figures for rent arrears and empty properties are the worst in the country. There totals are massaged … to show bogus improvements. With nearly 5,000 empty properties we have 4,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation—most headed by women, most of them black, an appalling record.
  I agree with Labour Councillor Simon Matthews. There is consensus on some issues.
  I also agree with the former leader of Liverpool city council, Mr. Keva Coombes, who said:
  "we are the worst landlord in Liverpool, probably in the country. All the new building has taken place and been run by a central unit and all despite the housing department. It takes genius — voids gone up, rent arrears soared … the breaking of the law on racial equality … I think the fundamental cause is frankly we've put the interests of the providers of the service, the workforce, above the interests of the tenants".
  I agree with him on that.
  I also agree with the director of housing in Hackney, who produced a report recently which said:
  "By April 1990, there was a massive backlog"
  of cases of arrears
  "which was distributed as follows:
  Approximately 9,000 on the Estate Manager's Action List with arrears in excess of £13 million.
  5,000 under investigation by the Rent Recovery Teams in the 6 District Offices with arrears in excess of £3 million;
  Another 4,000 in the DoLs or in the County awaiting Hearings or eviction warrants with arrrears of about £3 million."
  The report stated that the whole process of recovering arrears was a series of built-in delays.
  So there can be a consensus in social housing. I agree with the remarks that I have just read out. It is a consensus that we should welcome. For is it not true that too many Labour-controlled housing authorities are incompetent, corrupt and stuck in the past? They abandon the people who elected them in the first place. Is it not, therefore, the height of hypocrisy and humbug for Labour Members to protest about the conduct of one Conservative housing authority when they have so many skeletons in their cupboard?
  Why do not Labour Members clean up their record and their back yard? I should like to ask the Labour housing spokesman, the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), the following questions. What has he done to force Labour councillors in Lambeth to collect their rent arrears—a staggering £22·7 million, or 30 per cent. of its rent roll as at March 1992? What has he done to persuade Labour councillors to get their act together in Lambeth? What has the hon. Member for Leeds, West done to persuade Labour councillors in Southwark to collect their rent arrears—a breathtaking £29 million as at March 1992? What action has he taken to clean up the incompetence and corruption of Hackney council?
  Mr. Gordon Prentice: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Streeter: I will give way to the Labour Front-Bench spokesman so that he can answer my questions.
  Mr. Battle: What has the Minister done about those Conservative authorities which have the highest rent arrears in Britain—Brent, which has been Conservative for some time, and the Minister's constituency borough of Ealing, which has the highest rent arrears in Britain? While

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  the hon. Gentleman is on about housing and Conservative councils, let him tell us why the list of top rent increases includes 17 Tory authorities.
  Mr. Streeter: The House will notice two things. First, the hon. Member for Leeds, West cannot tell the difference between a council which has been Labour-controlled for decades and two authorities which have recently changed to Conservative control, which must now deal with the mess that Labour councillors have left behind. Secondly, the House will notice that the hon. Gentleman singularly failed to answer my question.
  Mr. David Jamieson: While we are quoting councillors, may I quote a councillor in Plymouth? I am reading from a document put out a few years ago. It says:
  "The Tories clung to power in Plymouth by just one seat and their policies on education, the health service, the poll tax and many other things are hated. They have had their day."
  That was a comment by a Social Democratic party councillor who was the housing spokesman for the SDP, who was the hon. Gentleman who has the floor.
  Mr. Streeter: I anticipated that. The hon. Gentleman should realise that there is great rejoicing in heaven for every sinner who repents.
  The truth is that Labour Members do nothing to sort out the corruption and incompetence of Labour authorities throughout Britain. They speak like lions in the Chamber, but like lambs when they go back to their constituencies. They are incapable of cleaning up their own back yards.
  Mr. Rendel: If it is true that the local authorities to which the hon. Gentleman refers are so incompetent, why does he not mention that the Government's own housing policies are so bad that they as landlords have a worse record for housing vacancies than the local authorities?
  Mr. Streeter: If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, I will come to a part of my speech in which I shall urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to maintain the pressure on the Ministry of Defence to release empty houses in Plymouth. I urge the hon. Gentleman to be patient.
  I wish to deal briefly with the Government's proposed changes in access to local authority and housing association tenancies. Again, I want to find a consensus with people with whom I do not usually agree. I should like to read an extract from an article written by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). It has already been quoted, but it bears repeating. He said:
  "We need … a housing waiting list structure that positively rewards those who have tried their best to take responsibility and have some order in their lives … a stable relationship before having children. We need to encourage them rather than punish other people. They need to know it's worth waiting…People … are not fools. If you can't get a house by waiting on the list, you present the maximum number of reasons why you should receive priority. That is not encouraging people to accept responsibility in their own lives and society."
  That was from The Independent in July 1993.
  On 21 January 1994, The Guardian reported:
  "Sir George Young … believes the criteria should be changed so that the individual needs of all families on the two separate routes to a rented home—homelessness and housing waiting lists—are weighed against other. In principle he is right. The proportion of new lettings going to homeless families has swelled to 45 per cent. In some areas the only available way to be rehoused is to make yourself homeless. This is simply absurd."
  I agree.
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  The truth is that the Government's proposals are intended to produce a fairer system of access to local authority and housing association properties. They have nothing to do with bashing single parents; they have nothing to do with them.
  It is worth considering what might happen to two couples in my constituency. The first couple may wish to leave the parental home or the home of friends with whom they are currently staying. They want local authority housing to raise a family, when they can afford to do so. They want to be settled in that long-term home before they raise their family. All young people should be given that advice.
  Why should they have to wait longer for the home of their choice than another young couple who have no settled home or financial resources, but who have gone ahead and had a child or children anyway? Why should they get priority over that first couple? What kind of signal does that send to young people who want a council house? The only way to get such a property is to make oneself homeless. One way of being classified as such under current legislation is, of course, to have a child.
  I am not suggesting that women are deliberately getting pregnant to get council property. Opposition Members should read the article that I recently wrote for "Roof" to discover my view on the subject. We should encourage young people to plan their family once they have the resources to raise it properly. Our welfare system must encourage responsible behaviour, as the hon. Member for Brightside has suggested, and discourage irresponsible behaviour. If the Opposition fail to recognise that, they have no solution to offer.
  Mr. Rendel: Will the hon. Genlteman give way?
  Mr. Streeter: No. I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.
  We must maintain a safety net to prevent children from suffering. That is offered in my hon. Friend's proposals, because young people, whether single or in a couple, will be rehoused as homeless by local authorities if they have children. They will not, however, necessarily be offered long-term accommodation. If even The Guardian can accept that that is reasonable, surely Opposition Members can.
  The Government's proposals are worthy of support. They are fair and they will encourage responsible behaviour. It is true that many local authorities are already implementing such a sensible approach to housing the homeless, and I pay tribute to them. I also pay tribute to the many local authorities, Conservative and Labour, which have done an excellent job in the past few years in difficult circumstances. Many have got their act together by reducing costs and carrying out repairs efficiently. Many have entered partnership deals with housing associations for the benefit of their citizens. Many are seeking to improve the services that they deliver to their tenants—helped by the compulsory competitive tendering arrangements. Many Conservative and Labour-controlled authorities are getting their act together, helped by Government legislation.
  The Ministry of Defence is being far too slow in releasing houses in Plymouth for the use of local residents. I urge my hon. Friend to exert whatever pressure he can bring to bear on his colleagues at the MOD to ensure that

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  those properties are released at the earliest possible moment so that local people can enjoy the benefit of them. I hope that my hon. Friend will take up that matter.
  The one abiding truth is that too many Labour authorities, especially in London, are incompetent and corrupt. That is why those Labour Members who refuse to put their own house in order and who point the finger at one Conservative authority are not just an example of the pot calling the kettle black, but are guilty of the ultimate hypocrisy.
  7.44 pm
  Mr. David Winnick: Housing is the subject that most people come to our surgeries or write to us about. The shortage, indeed the acute shortage, of affordable rented accommodation causes immense hardship and misery. That was not recognised, however, in the rather complacent speeches that we heard today from Conservative Members.
  If the Government really were interested in the welfare of the family, as they always claim, they would ensure that adequate, affordable housing was provided for those people unable to buy. At times, I find it heartbreaking to listen to the genuine accounts of housing hardship that are recounted at my surgeries. Those people are often in desperate need. If they were able to buy, they would not come to my surgery, but it is precisely because they cannot afford to service a mortgage, or are unable to obtain one because of their low incomes, that they look for local authority accommodation.
  I do not pass judgment on their family circumstances, unlike some Conservative Members who believe that one should do just that. The one thing I know is that many people, often with children, need housing and should not have to put up with their current living conditions. Everything should be done to resolve their problems.
  I write to my local council about such cases. I know full well that, in most cases, the response will be that the constituent is on the list and that an offer will be made in due course. That is understandable in view of the acute housing shortage locally and the very long waiting list, but it does not show when that offer will be forthcoming.
  The reason for the housing shortage is obvious. In 1978, the last full year of the Labour Government, there were nearly 80,000 council house starts. Last year, there were fewer than 3,000 throughout the country. In my borough, Walsall, not a single council dwelling has gone up since 1979.
  I make no excuse for the existence of any vacant properties. Of course all local authorities, be they Labour or Conservative, have an obligation to get vacant properties back into letting as quickly as possible. That obligation is all the more pressing at a time of acute housing shortage.
  I know that my borough—for the moment, it is no longer Labour controlled, but that will soon change—has few vacant dwellings. Some dwellings are vacant because work needs to be done on them. Even if they were all returned to the housing stock for renting, the housing shortage would not be relieved, because since 1979 there has been a fall nationally of nearly 45 per cent. in investment in housing.
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  Bearing in mind the figures I have quoted, is it any surprise that council house building has virtually come to a stop? Is it any surprise that we have so many homeless people and such long waiting lists? Is it any surprise that we have families living in furnished rooms and many couples with two children, not just one, living in high-rise blocks of flats?
  Many of those couples ask me how much longer they will have to wait before they are transferred to a house. But some of the best council housing stock has been sold off. We predicted that that would happen when the right-to-buy policy was introduced. In the main, it is those high-rise blocks that have been left unsold.
  Today's edition of The Birmingham Post draws attention to a problem faced by people who bought flats, rather foolishly in my view, in such blocks. Those properties are virtually impossible to sell now, because no one will give a mortgage on them. Those people are prisoners in their own homes. They are willing to sell at a reduced price, but there are no buyers.
  From 1979, the Government were determined virtually to stop council house building—and, moreover, to reduce existing stock substantially. When I returned to the House in 1979, I was put on the first Select Committee on Environment, to which evidence was given by senior civil servants and the then Secretary of State for the Environment—the present Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. It was made clear then that Government policy would be to stop the continued building of council dwellings.
  No one should be surprised about what Westminster council has done. Of course, Tory Members who have served on that council, and others who wish to act as apologists, want to present a different picture. The fact is, however, that Westminster council tried as hard as it could to reduce its housing stock substantially and offered council tenants bribes to get them out of the borough. How could anyone take seriously the claim of some Conservative Members that those actions had no political implications?
  Although he has not made a statement in the House, the Secretary of State for National Heritage has admitted that discussion of the political implications took place at some meetings—understandably, he said. Westminster's political aims were clear: to ensure that the council remained Tory-controlled and to ensure that the more marginal parliamentary constituency was also retained by the Tories.
  Responding to questions last week, the Prime Minister spoke of "allegations" about Westminster council, but these are not allegations. They are the provisional findings of the district auditor, following an exhaustive inquiry. One hon. Member said that the inquiry had been very costly. Does she suggest that it should not have taken place? Surely the district auditor's findings have justified the cost. It is interesting to note that, even when all this was happening, one or two Conservative members of Westminster council were courageous enough to argue that it was wrong; I consider what occurred to be one of the most shameful episodes ever to take place in local government.
  A few years ago—much to the annoyance of Conservative Members—I said that Lady Porter's conduct over the cemeteries should have disqualified her from serving on any local council, or in the House of Commons. I hold that opinion even more strongly now: Lady Porter has no right to take part in public life. I hope that the time

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  will come when she must explain her actions in person, but she seems somewhat reluctant to return to the United Kingdom.
  In a long speech, the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) gave us a list of justifications for what had happened in Wandsworth. In my view, however, Wandsworth was trying to do exactly what Westminster did, and its behavour was equally shameful.
  In some respects, there is no difference between the parties—[Interruption.] I hope that Conservative Members will listen to what I am saying. The parties agree that most people want to buy homes of their own. That is entirely acceptable, and there has never been any dispute about it. Labour Members are owner-occupiers—[Interruption.] The Government Whip, the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay), seems to wish to intervene from a sedentary position. Let me repeat that there is no difference of opinion on this point—
  Mr. Peter Thurnham: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Winnick: No, I will not.
  In the late 1960s, a Labour Government introduced the option mortgage scheme, whose purpose was to encourge people on relatively low incomes to become owner-occupiers. Such conduct would be strange, coming from a party that supposedly opposed owner-occupation, as Conservative Members claim that Labour does.
  Mr. Thurnham: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is clearly suffering from severe amnesia.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is not for the Chair to assess hon. Members' state of health.
  Mr. Winnick: My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) has just suggested that I repeat what I said earlier, so I shall do so. It was a Labour Government who introduced the option mortgage scheme in the late 1960s, to encourage owner-occupation among those whose income would otherwise have posed difficulties. It is not my fault if Conservative Members do not wish to be reminded of that.
  A substantial minority—not 5 per cent., 10 per cent. or 15 per cent., but 25 per cent. or 30 per cent. of people—will never be in a position to buy their homes, because of their relatively low incomes. That is where the party difference occurs. My hon. Friends and I believe that most of those people should be able to obtain affordable rented accommodation, which should be supplied by local authorities or genuine housing associations.
  It should not be forgotten that local authority accommodation was provided in the first place precisely because of the state of private dwellings, which had become slums or near-slums. We would not think it from what Conservative Members say, but local authorities began to play a dominant role in housing provision because of what was happening in the private rented sector. I make no apology for my view that local authorities should continue to play a major part in the provision of rented accommodation.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) admitted, local authorities have made some mistakes, as a result of the pressure imposed by Governments of both parties to keep costs low. High-rise blocks are an example. None the less, there is much to be
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  proud of in local authority housing—certainly in my borough, and in many other parts of the country. There is also a role for genuine housing associations, as there always has been.
  Unlike Conservative Members, I do not believe that the private rented sector can supply adequate accommodation for those who are unable to buy; I do not believe that it can be brought back to any large degree, and I do not think that it can provide the secure accommodation that is needed now. The people who write to me and visit my surgeries do not want to be housed just for six or nine months, with no form of security; what good is that to them? Nor do they want to pay exorbitant rents. Conservative Members should realise that those people want decent homes. They cannot afford to buy; they want to live in secure accommodation, knowing that they can live there for a long time. What is wrong with that? Because of Government policies, however, it is not possible.
  Labour Members have always said that the two essentials are jobs and decent housing. The Government have done much to undermine the provision of both. They have brought back large-scale unemployment, which has affected many people who could be working in the building industry. They have implemented the same policies continuously since their return to office in 1979. Because they have not allowed local authorities to build as they used to, many people now live in misery and hardship.
  If we, as Members of Parliament, want decent housing for ourselves, why should that not be possible for our constituents who are unable to buy? Why should we punish them for their low incomes? We are right to engage in today's debate, and to continue it subsequently. At the next election, we shall explain to people why there is a housing shortage—a housing crisis—and why so many people have been punished in the way that I have described.
  We require a Government who are determined to ensure that those who cannot afford to buy are not punished, but can live in decent accommodation. That is the purpose of a Labour Government in housing matters, and that is the right policy.
  7.59 pm
  Mr. Hartley Booth: I came to the Chamber today unprepared to speak, but then I heard the extraordinary speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw).
  Having been involved in the fringes of housing policy in the Cabinet Office for many years, and having written a considerable amount about the subject, I felt that the extraordinary statements that he was making were divorced from facts, filled with cynicism, horrific in the use of dismissive words such as "disgraceful", and designed to whip up dissension in the Chamber. His speech was wholly unhelpful to an important area of national policy.
  For many years, we have tried hard to help people to reach some consensus about these crucial issues. I have been involved in inner-city policy, and there have been partnerships all over the country—in Leicester, Teesside and south Wales. When I inadvertently, in my youthful inexperience, called the hon. Member for Blackburn my hon. Friend, he said quickly, "I am not your friend," dismissing at a stroke the partnership history of housing in which I had been involved for all those years.
  It was horrific that his speech contained no praise for the housing action trusts and no reference to the marvellous

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  number of people to whom we have managed to give real rights in council housing. There was no reference to the charter that we gave council tenants in the early 1980s.
  I met council tenants in Hackney, where I worked. They were filled with praise for the policy. They had been council tenants for many years, and they were at last enfranchised and could treat their houses as their own homes. They were able to paint their own front doors thanks to our policies. Was there any reference to that by the hon. Member for Blackburn? Not at all.
  Dismissing for a moment those who have been hurt by negative equity, was there any reference to the hundreds of thousands of people who, since the rise in home ownership from 55 per cent. in 1979 to 67 per cent. now, enjoy the freehold ownership of their own homes? Was there a reference to that in the balanced and mature speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn? Not at all—there was only cynicism.
  Was there a reference in his speech to anything that we had done correctly? He made no reference to the new rental options that we have provided, or to how we have helped so many people to maintain and look after both council houses and their own homes by providing insulation and other assistance. None of those policies had the slightest mention in his speech.
  Instead, we heard one of the most gall-ridden speeches I have ever heard. How could a leading Labour spokesman have come to that Dispatch Box to tell us that we were responsible for so much gerrymandering because of Westminster, when the central tenet of Labour policy since the 1930s and since Herbert Morrison has been to build the Tories out of town after town? How could the hon. Gentleman come to the Dispatch Box and not once mention that fact?
  In Putney, that policy returned a Labour Member of Parliament for many years, and we have heard the Wandsworth story this evening. Even in Norwich, the Labour party used the same gerrymandering Morrison policy. Labour councillors in south Norwich were using the same device in Eton ward. They put the worst council houses and problem families there in order to destroy the best Tory ward. We have heard that story time and again.
  Even today, the Labour spokesman has the gall to say that the Conservatives are manipulating people. Even in my borough of Barnet, houses have been brought up by Camden council in a cynical attempt to destroy a Conservative area.
  When Labour councils buy houses in Barnet and other Conservative areas, they put their very worst problem families into those wards. If that is not an exploitation of ordinary, good people I do not know what is. It is quite preposterous for the Labour party to say that we are cynical about human nature.
  Last year and the year before, I was involved in a survey of what constituted the vacant, void property in Britain. When I was in the civil service, I constantly met the proposition that there were void properties but they were all in the wrong places. It was suggested to me that we had empty cottages in the highlands of Scotland that were no use for the homeless people in London. We looked into where those empty void properties were, and discovered that there were 83,000 void properties owned by councils, 18,000 in London.
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  If, as hon. Members have rightly suggested, we discount those that will soon be repaired and those that will be filled in a short time, and if we are pessimistic about all the discounting, there are 20,000 empty houses in council ownership that could be used for the homeless today. They are all or nearly all in Labour or Liberal-controlled areas. The honours are shared in London between Tower Hamlets and Hackney among others. Parts of the list have been read out today.
  It has been said that Conservative Members came armed with bits of paper from Central Office. I have not seen any bits of paper from Central Office. I have learnt from many years' experience. Housing policy in those places is cynical. It is part of the old empire-building process that Morrison began.
  Having found all those void properties, I made a proposal that was eventually published in a book called "Into the Voids", suggesting that ordinary homeless people could use those properties. I have had nothing but negative responses from many Labour council leaders around the country. However, I have had endless requests for interviews, and tremendous support from homeless people. I received a petition from hundreds of homeless people wanting to use my proposal.
  What was my proposal? It was that those empty properties could be accessed by homeless people. If they spotted that a house had been empty for three months, they could slap a notice on the door of the council saying, "We will be your tenant in 14 days if you cannot show that you use it." If the property is used within 14 days, everyone wins, because someone has a home. However, if it is not used, the homeless person can use the property.
  What reaction did I get from Labour councillors? What do they say about the proposal? They say that it will never work, because we cannot trust homeless people to do all the necessary renovation work.
  All over the world, people of ordinary abilities are building their own homes, not just renovating them. Today, the largest sector in housing in Britain is not Barratt, Taylor Woodrow—which was referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) from a sedentary position—Laing or any of the others. It is self-build. We have 6 per cent. self-build in this country. The figure is 20 per cent. in Germany, 6 per cent. in Scandinavia and about 10 per cent. in America.
  We should trust ordinary people to renovate houses themselves. If they can build, surely they can renovate. The Labour councillors around the country said, "But these people do not have any money." The Conservatives, through good, sensible policies, have given homeless people the money to use. We give them a dowry. The moment they become tenants, they can use housing benefit, if they are homeless and unemployed.
  My suggestion has had a marvellous response from the Department of the Environment, from Ministers who have been open-minded and encouraging, contrary to the proposals and the negative response from the Opposition. The sensible proposal is to commit that sum of money —the dowry for homeless people—to pay for the renovations that they cannot do themselves.
  Mr. Rendel: Given the encouragement that the hon. Gentleman has had from Ministers at the Department of the Environment, has he persuaded them to persuade the Ministry of Defence to start the policy with its empty properties?
  Mr. Booth: It is probably a matter of consensus in the House that the 10,000 or so homes owned by the Ministry of Defence should be used as soon as possible. I thought that I heard an intervention earlier from the Front Bench saying that they will be used as soon as possible. I hope so. It is no part of my contribution to the debate to defend the failure of the Ministry of Defence to dispose of those houses even sooner.
  The Government place tremendous store by a successful housing policy for all our people. We have the right policies and will go on having the right policies, because the Ministers have imagination and listen to new proposals. They have been listening throughout the debate. I encourage the House to support Ministers.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. I understand that the winding-up speeches will begin at 9.20 pm. Six hon. Members are hoping to catch my eye. With a bit of co-operation from all hon. Members, I may be able to call them all.
  8.12 pm
  Mr. David Jamieson: I shall try to keep my comments brief so that other hon. Members can get in.
  My interest in housing started as an elected representative back in 1970, when I was elected to the Solihull county borough council. Immediately, my talents were noted, because I became the Labour party spokesman on housing on that council, which is hardly surprising as I was the only Labour Member on the council at the lime. I remember the people who came to see me. They made the same points: inadequate housing; the houses were too small for their family needs; they needed to move on medical grounds; or they had no decent home in which to live.
  Coming to the House 22 years later, I hoped that I would hear something different after 19 out of the past 24 years in which. Tory Governments have been in power. What is different now is that the situation is somewhat worse than it was in 1970. Why has the housing situation not improved?
  We listened to the Secretary of State for Social Security at the Tory party conference—a normally mild-mannered man, or he likes to give that impression. But he suddenly found his bark at the conference last year. He blamed single teenage pregnant women for causing the problems of homelessness. He intimated that young teenage women were rushing out to get pregnant to qualify for a council property. It is probably not in the briefing from Tory central office, which has been circulating with some controversy on the Conservative Benches, but if he reads his Department's documentation, he will see that it says that only 2 per cent. of homeless households are headed by single people in the public sector.
  Some of that 2 per cent. have no children and have been housed for special reasons, usually because of their vulnerability. The fact is that only three out of 1,000 public sector households are headed by a single teenage mother. But that did not stop the right hon. Gentleman making his attack on that most vulnerable group—single mothers. Those women are coping on their own, often in very difficult circumstances. Yet, to get cheap applause at the
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  Tory party conference, the right hon. Gentleman managed, with others in the Cabinet, to blame them for the housing shortage.
  There are empty houses all around Plymouth, Devonport. Many are former council houses that have been repossessed. During the heady 1980s, people were encouraged to buy their houses. Now they are being plunged into the Tory recession. Many people have lost their jobs. There has been a massive loss of jobs in the dockyard. In the 1987 and 1992 elections, we were told that that would not happen. Those people have had very little help from the banks and building societies, contrary to what we were told about a year ago by the Prime Minister.
  What happens when those people's homes are repossessed? They find their way on the road to the city council and are then rehoused by the city council. The city council has now lost access to two properties: one that sold and is lying empty, often derelict and boarded up; and the other which is occupied. In and around my constituency, many private properties have been repossessed and are lying empty.
  Contrary to the many speeches that we have heard from hon. Members on the Government Back Benches, many of whom are not in their places, the situation in Plymouth is good, because Labour-controlled Plymouth city council is not only working hard to maintain high standards and keep rents low, but has one of the lowest records of voids in the country—0·7 per cent. That means seven in every 1,000 properties are void at any one moment. They are mainly short-term between transfer of tenancies or are in need of repair.
  Many other houses are empty. In my constituency, more than 200 properties are lying empty. Who owns those empty houses? Who has left those hundreds of homes lying empty? Often, whole estates are empty. Who owns those hundreds of vandalised houses? Who must pay to have security guards to guard those boarded up properties? Who is not collecting the rent? Who is ensuring that no council tax is collected from those houses? Which feckless uncaring landlord is destroying communities of people who have to live surrounded by boarded-up empty homes? Who has 675 empty properties in Devon and Cornwall?
  The answer is the Government themselves. The large faceless bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defence has row on row of empty properties in my constituency. I must take issue with the hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth), who said that there was a consensus on this matter, and that we all agreed. There may be a consensus among those sitting in the Chamber today, but it is certainly not shared by the Secretary of State for Defence.
  Over the years, hon. Members on both sides of the House have tabled questions about empty properties. In October 1988, the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) asked about empty properties in Plymouth and he was told that a total of 486 housing units were in the ownership of the Ministry of Defence. The reply continued:
  "Over the next 12 months it is expected that 164 will be offered for sale to service personnel under the discount scheme, 278 will be sold on the open market".—[Official Report, 24 October 1988; Vol. 139, c. 62.]
  After waiting a year to see what happened, in April 1989 my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), who spoke extremely well in the debate, asked how many

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  Ministry of Defence properties were empty. He was told at that time that 14·4 per cent. of Ministry of Defence properties were empty. Mr. Neubert went on to say:
  "Some of these vacant properties are in the process of disposal, others will be undergoing major maintenance or refurbishment, and yet others will be allocated and awaiting the arrival of families to the unit."—[Official Report, 20 April 1989; Vol. 151, c. 277.]
  What has happened in that time? What urgent action has been taken by the Ministry of Defence? In June 1989, in reply to a question about a report on empty Ministry of Defene houses, Mr. Sainsbury, the Minister said:
  "The report to which he refers recognises that measures are being taken to improve performance in the future."—[Official Report, 13 June 1989; Vol. 154, c. 693.]
  By February 1980 we were certain that things had changed. In reply to a question, again put by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, Mr. Hamilton said that some of the vacant properties were in the process of disposal. So it goes on. The same dreary answers.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. On three occasions the hon. Gentleman has mentioned Ministers by name. That is not done in the House. The hon. Gentleman must refer to them by their titles.
  Mr. Jamieson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I stand corrected.
  I received a letter from the Ministry of Defence dated 17 January and that is why I take issue with the hon. Member for Finchley when he says that there is consensus on the matter. When I asked how many dwellings were owned by the Ministry of Defence and how many were vacant I was told:
  "The majority of the vacant quarters were either undergoing or awaiting major maintenance work or modernisation, already allocated to service families who were due to move in shortly". —[Official Report, 17 January 1994; Vol. 235, c. 443.]
  For six years the Ministry of Defence has been telling us that families will be moving in shortly or that houses are under repair. The one thing that does not change is the number that are empty.
  When I asked my question last year, 9,291 properties were empty. The Minister will recall that six months ago I asked him to make representations to the Secretary of State for Defence on the matter. I am sure that he did so, but as a result of his actions, in December 1993, 10,112 properties were empty—14·4 per cent. of those properties are still vacant. Plymouth city council with 0·7 per cent. vacancies is 20 times better than the Ministry of Defence.
  What is the effect of those empty properties on the taxpayer? No rent is collected and no council tax is paid, maintenance costs are high and the Ministry of Defence has to pay security guards to protect them. At the same time, local councils throughout the country, including Plymouth, are paying for people who could easily occupy those properties to go into bed-and-breakfast accommodation. The taxpayer is paying for those empty properties and for the temporary accommodation.
  There is a further cruel irony in all this. Last year in Plymouth, 75 of the families that were deemed homeless were former service personnel; people who had come to the end of their time with the services and left or been made redundant. Those 75 families of service personnel were given six months and then received notice to quit their properties. They then became homeless and Plymouth city
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  council became responsible for housing them. The houses that they formerly occupied then stood empty and boarded up. The Minister must take up that matter with the Secretary of State for Defence so that urgent action is taken and we do the best by the homeless and by the taxpayer.
  There is a road to success. We have had success with a few homes in Plymouth that were owned by the Ministry of Defence. Eight months ago, in one small cul de sac, Mantle gardens, each of the 26 properties had their windows boarded up after being broken by vandals. One property had lost its roof after people had broken in. Now, with the excellent partnership between Plymouth city council and Devon and Cornwall housing association, I am pleased to tell the Minister that most of those houses are occupied by families who, exclusively, were living in temporary accommodation or in the most appalling cramped conditions. There is an answer to the problem, but we need urgent action from the Ministry of Defence so that those houses are released.
  When the boards were pulled off those houses it was not just the homeless and the taxpayer who benefited. A number of young men and women were given jobs repairing the houses, so jobs were created. Instead of being unemployed, 10 or 12 people are doing useful work in the community repairing and rebuilding properties.
  I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he will address this important problem which is particularly acute in my constituency in the south-west. Its solution will be a partial answer to the serious level of homelessness in my part of the country.
  8.26 pm
  Mr. Peter Thurnham: I am pleased to participate in the debate. I apologise for missing the first part of it but I had to attend a meeting of the Select Committee on Social Security at which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State commented on housing benefit and on the housing market. I am sorry to have missed the opening speech by my right hon. Friend the Minister, but I look forward to reading it. However, according to the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth), I do not seem to have missed any enlightenment from the Opposition, so I doubt whether the contributions of Opposition Members will be worth reading.
  I have enjoyed hearing the speeches by my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley made an excellent speech, particularly when he said that we should trust the people. I can see why it has taken so long for the Labour party to have a debate on housing. I cannot remember how many years it is since a debate on housing was initiated by the Opposition, but the Labour party's housing record is appalling.
  The latest ombudsman's report on local government says that much the single largest group of complaints related to housing, about which there were 5,037 complaints, of which 2,257 related to the management of council houses, 1,155 to council house repairs, 210 to the right-to-buy policy, 721 to housing benefit and 240 to housing grants; and that is just a selection. There are plenty more and I recommend hon. Members to read the pamphlet entitled "Choose Your Landlord", which I produced recently.
  Previous speakers have outlined Labour's appalling record in London. Lambeth, Hackney and Southwark

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  councils alone have cumulative rent arrears of some £70 million, and on the latest figures, vacant houses total 3,400. I was sorry that the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland), who was speaking when I came into the Chamber, but who is not in his place now, did not allow any interventions.
  There are many more points to be made about Manchester's housing record. I recently received a letter from a former councillor, Ann Carroll, which drew my attention to incidents that occurred during her service in Manchester between 1987 and 1991. She served on a number of committees, including the housing committee. She mentions the actions of the Labour-controlled council which she says
  "purposely kept council properties unoccupied for periods of up to one year and then moved in their own supporters, and…bought votes by allowing rent and rate arrears to become completely uncontrollable, as well as giving massive grants to minority groups and any left-wing organisations…After the hard left took control of the City, wards with Conservative Councillors were targeted. Council property was used as was the Council's nomination on housing association lettings…In 1990 rent and rate arrears were in the region of £30M with £2·6M written off from tenants who had moved. Hundreds of tenants owed up to 2 years' rent and whilst in arrears were allowed to move to larger premises."
  Mr. Straw: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Thurnham: May I please finish the point that I was making? I shall then be glad to hear an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.
  The letter continued:
  "Amongst those in arrears were council employees and an illegal immigrant who was in receipt of a weekly grant from the council. There were approximately 6,000 empty council properties, yet homeless families were accommodated in bed and breakfast accommodation…The wards with the highest rate arrears were with Labour Councillors."
  I shall now be glad to hear the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
  Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman has made a serious allegation about Manchester city council's policy. He has alleged that it maintained a designated sales policy. Was the issue referred to the district auditor? If so, what was the result?
  Mr. Thurnham: The hon. Gentleman will know that a number of matters were referred to the auditor. I have here quotations from the Municipal Journal of 30 July this year, from The Daily Telegraph of 5 January 1991, from the Manchester Evening News of 16 November 1990 and from the Local Government Chronicle of 21 September 1990, all of which deal with Manchester city council's work.
  The council had to order an independent inquiry into its housing accounts after a series of multi-million pound accounting mistakes was uncovered. A council report concealed the fact that there had been major subsidy miscalculations and accounting errors. In the past, Manchester city council had rented out one house for £25 a week while renting the neighbouring property for £296 a week. The tenant in the latter was entitled to full housing benefit.
  The Manchester Evening News, which revealed the case, repeatedly asked the local authority to justify its actions but the council failed to respond to suggestions that it had been ripping off the Department of Social Security and, therefore, the taxpayer. The newspaper story was
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  published less than two weeks after private landlords had been warned that they could be taken to court for overcharging poor tenants on benefit.
  In 1990, the ombudsman issued 15 further reports against Manchester city council over unreasonable delays in dealing with right-to-buy applications that affected thousands of tenants. Ombudsman Patricia Thomas said that the council's actions fell a long way short of providing a satisfactory response to her findings that an injustice was caused by maladministration.
  An apology on its own is not enough. Manchester decided not to follow Mrs. Thomas's suggestion that it should compensate tenants for the extra costs that they had incurred or scrap demands for payment of the discount. The council had caused delays of between 18 and 60 weeks on applications. That is not a record of which any Labour Member should be proud.
  Bolton council, my own authority, has dragged its feet over the years on the right to buy. A former Labour spokesman on housing, the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) who was my predecessor in Bolton, said that she would allow the right to buy only over her dead body, if I remember rightly. The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) was clearly suffering from a severe attack of amnesia if he thought that there was common ground between the parties on the question of ownership, because that was clearly not the case at that time.
  I was elected in 1983. Of a total of 100,000 houses in Bolton, 26,000 were council houses. After 10 years of the right-to-buy policy, which has been successfully applied in most parts of the country, the number of council houses in Bolton has been reduced to 23,000, a reduction of a mere 3,000. Bearing in mind the average number of council house sales elsewhere in the country, it is clear that Bolton should have sold at least a further 2,500, which would have benefited the council to the tune of £25 million. The council could have used the money to repay its debts or for investment elsewhere.
  I do not know whether the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) was the author of the Labour party's latest housing document, but it states that the private rented sector badly needs a boost. One sees that that is only too true when one compares the privately rented sector in this country with that in other countries.
  Of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, we have the lowest proportion of housing in the privately rented sector. In fact, our privately rented sector is less than half the average of the OECD countries. Let us consider the position of some of our competitors: West Germany's privately rented sector is four times the size of ours; and Switzerland, which has one of the highest standards of living, clearly has a much more successful housing policy than virtually any other country—its privately rented sector accounts for 56 per cent. of its housing; the private owner-occupied sector is 30 per cent., thus leaving a mere 14 per cent. as socially rented housing.
  In the United States, 30 per cent. of property is privately rented, only 5 per cent. is socially rented and 65 per cent. is owner-occupied. In Japan, the privately rented sector accounts for 23 per cent., the socially rented sector for 15 per cent. and the privately owned sector for 62 per cent. It is only in this country that the socially rented sector is more than twice the size of the privately rented sector. There is clearly a major imbalance.

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  The Housing Act 1988 was described by Mr. Philip Gibbs, the president of the North West Landlords Association, as a brilliant piece of legislation. I have no doubt that it has changed the climate in which we can develop the private rented sector. [Interruption.] I do not know what the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney) is laughing about. Surveys of tenants' attitudes reveal that tenants are more satisfied in a privately rented house than in social housing because in the latter they are faced with complaints such as those mentioned by the ombudsman. I recommend the report to the hon. Gentleman.
  The 1988 Act provided the foundation on which to build a larger privately rented sector. I should like existing legislation to be amended to enable council houses to be sold to private landlords. The Housing Act 1980 established secure tenancies which provided the model for the successful assured tenancies. Under the 1988 Act, a council house can be sold to a private landlord only if he is approved by the housing corporation. I see no need for such an approval.
  Mr. Pike: The hon. Gentleman is speaking about the growth of the privately rented sector but does he accept that, as a large proportion of housing in that sector will also depend on housing benefit, it will also in effect be socially rented housing? Should he not therefore be very careful about the context in which he uses the term "socially rented"?
  Mr. Thurnham: If the hon. Gentleman cares to wait, I shall deal with that issue. He makes a valid point and I hope to be able to answer him in due course.
  I should like the legislation to be amended so that a council house can be sold to a private landlord and so that the tenant can have full choice about who that landlord should be without the landlord having to be approved by the housing corporation. If the tenant has chosen the landlord, what can be wrong with allowing him or her to go ahead? I should like an extension of the right-to-buy policy—one could call it right-to-buy round two—to allow a much larger sale of council houses.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) talked about the Institute of Housing for which he acts as parliamentary consultant. He mentioned the institute's interest in housing companies. I do not know whether I could go along with that, because I do not like such corporatist intervention in the housing market. I should prefer private landlords to take initiatives and make investments of their own accord rather than wholesale transfers.
  The Institute of Housing has valued existing council housing stock at £40 billion or more. I think that that was a modest valuation but it shows the sort of sums that could be raised and which would go some way towards repaying the enormous debts of local authorities across the country. It could also provide a means for investment elsewhere.
  If the Government are serious about promoting the private rented sector, I hope that they will extend the remit of the existing agencies—the priority estates project, or PEP, and the tenants participation advisory service, the TEPAS project—because both agencies do little or nothing to promote private rented housing. It is somewhere in their scope but I do not see it mentioned in any of the leaflets
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  that they have produced. The Government should give those agenices a better remit than they have at the moment or introduce a new agency to carry out that function more effectively and to issue a code of good practice for landlords and tenants. A certain amount has already been done, but I would like it to be done more openly.
  My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Hendry), who spoke very well during the debate, talked about the rent-a-room concession of £60 a week and called for it to be extended. I support that. In a parliamentary question which was answered today, I asked how many people benefit from the rent-a-room tax relief. I received the answer that information about the number of people who benefit from the scheme, introduced in the Finance Act 1992, is not yet available. I do not know when we shall obtain that information, but I hope that we can extend that concession to include a tenant under another roof and not only under the roof of the landlord himself.
  A number of new tax benefits should be considered. We have seen the end of the business expansion scheme, but we could consider new extensions of it—son of BES. The firm of Johnson Fry, with Mr. Owen Inskip, has done an enormous amount to secure investment through the previous BES schemes. Many hundreds of millions of pounds have been invested—in fact, as much as £900 million has been invested through that route. The Government therefore need to consider new routes for continuing to attract investment into the market.
  That is the argument that I would like to make in reply to the intervention by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike). We need sufficient tax incentives to encourage new investment. That is what has happened in West Germany, where the private rented sector constitutes more than 40 per cent. of housing. The situation has been brought about by very strong tax incentives. Then it is possible for new housing to be built for rent without it having to be subsidised in other ways, through housing benefit, to the extent that it would have to be if it were done at full cost. That is the way in which I would like the market to develop —that is my answer to the hon. Gentleman—so that the whole load is not taken by housing benefit but by housing being built with every type of encouragement.
  Those incentives should be focused on individuals to encourage them to invest. I do not think that we should expect pension funds in the City to do that. Why cannot people see their pension fund sitting there as a house? They can own their own house and then, as they develop any wealth, they can use that wealth to invest in a house for their own pension.
  Mr. Roy Thomason: Does my hon. Friend agree that the thinking behind the Labour party's philosophy is that it wishes to retain municipal landlordism as an oasis of social deprivation and that in those ghettos they see political advantage, which is demonstrated in his arguments about Manchester?
  Mr. Thurnham: My hon. Friend is right, and it has not done the Labour party any good. Tribune said after the 1992 general election:
  "It would be wrong to blame the debacle of May 7"—
  the local government elections—
  "entirely on that of April 9"
  the general election.
  "In several of the councils where Labour did worst, it did not deserve to do any better, simply on the basis of its dire record in

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  office…in many areas…Labour local government is lacklustre and incompetent. In a few it is simply corrupt and nepotistic".
  So it has done the Labour party no good and my hon. Friend is right.
  I would like the private rented sector to develop through encouragement to private individuals to invest. I would like sales of rented property to be exempted to some degree from capital gains tax, perhaps one sale a year, because that is what is allowed for an owner-occupier. Capital allowances should be introduced in the way in which they are in other countries, at a rate of perhaps 3 per cent. a year, and then, through VAT and corporation tax and inheritance tax, reliefs could be given to reduce some of the distortions that now exist in the market.
  The hon. Member for Burnley, who intervened, mentioned housing benefit. Of course it has soared and is projected to increase to £9 billion and perhaps more. The way in which the benefit has grown is unsatisfactory. We need to consider it in a different way, not just as a personal entitlement but as an area entitlement and localised. That has happened with care in the community.
  It would give local authorities an opportunity, if they were competent, to bid to be the agency to administer housing benefit, hopefully in a better way than they administer it at the moment. It would be a local entitlement which could be viewed as a limited benefit instead of a totally unlimited benefit. One could then live in the real world instead of a world in which all those things are unlimited.
  Ms Glenda Jackson: Is it ideal that an area has a fixed amount of housing benefit and if that runs out the residents will be shifted to another local authority which perhaps has some housing benefit left over?
  Mr. Thurnham: I told the hon. Lady earlier that we have an area entitlement with care in the community. I do not think that she is proposing that elderly folk and other people who need care in the community should be moved round from one area to another.
  Ms Jackson: But they are.
  Mr. Thurnham: I do not think that it is any more relevant than that.
  The amount of housing benefit that is provided in any case could be judged much more than on the merits and needs. At the moment there is no incentive for a tenant to economise on a house. If a tenant could live in a smaller and more economical house than he or she is in at he moment, there is no incentive to do so because 100 per cent. of the rent is paid. Provided that the house meets the requirements of the assessment officer as far as the value of the rent goes and it is not so grossly large that the tenant can be asked to move on that account alone, there is no incentive for him or her to move. I do not accept what the hon. Lady said.
  Conservative policies are obviously the right policies. Right to buy is an exceedingly successsful policy. My hon. Friend the Housing Minister has been responsible for administering Conservative policy in an excellent and fair way. The new policies of compulsory competitive tendering and right to manage are excellent. Those will make great changes. Rents-into-mortgages is now taking effect. We have the strength of the 1988 Housing Act to build for the growth of the private rented sector. The new consultation document is just coming out. I am delighted at
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  the proposals there that the private rented sector can provide housing for the homeless. That has already been pioneered by Derby city and Wandsworth and I am sure that it can be applied successfully elsewhere.
  In conclusion, I hope that the Government will consider amending the 1980 and 1988 Acts to allow sales to private landlords and consider tax breaks to help the private rented sector to build new houses for rent.
  8.47 pm
  Mr. Greg Pope: Perhaps understandably, the debate has centred around public sector housing, but I want to mention some issues of concern regarding people who live in their own homes and who have been rather neglected, not just in the debate, but by the Government.
  I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Litherland) say that he considered a decent home to be a basic human right. I endorse that. It is disappointing, if not surprising, that neither the Housing Minister nor any of the members of the Wandsworth and Westminster fan club who have spoken from the Government Back Benches has endorsed it. They will not endorse it, because in my constituency thousands upon thousands of people are being denied the basic right to a decent home.
  The Minister spoke about the aspirations of people to own their own home. He said that about 80 per cent. of the population would like to own their own home. That proportion was achieved in my constituency many, many years ago. The culture of home ownership was entrenched in east Lancashire years before it became fashionable with the Conservative Government. Well over four out of five of the population in my constituency own their own home. Only one in eight lives in a council house, only one in 17 lives in the private rented sector, and only one in 33 lives in housing association properties. In short, we are the Government's dream of a home-owning democracy.
  However, of the 33,000 houses in my constituency, 8,500 are unfit for people to live in, another 8,500 require serious renovation work, and another 500 lack even basic amenities. What was the Government's reaction to the crisis in the private sector in my constituency? They cut the money that the council could spend on mandatory grants and clearance from £3·5 million in the current financial year to less than £3 million next year—a cut of 14 or 15 per cent. If it were not for the tragedy of the people who have to live in those appalling houses, the figures would be a joke.
  The estimated total cost of renovating the 17,000-plus sub-standard houses in my constituency is more than £210 million, yet the council will be allowed to spend less than £3 million next year. At the currrent rate of expenditure it would take more than 60 years to renovate and to deal with all the houses. Yet almost all the houses date from the 19th century, and many of them will not last another five years, let alone another 60 years.
  The Housing Minister was kind enough to meet me and representatives of my local authority last year in Accrington to discuss the problems. As the House might expect, he was sympathetic, spoke kind words and was his usual urbane self. Unfortunately, his sympathy and kind words did not extend to ensuring that we got the year-on-year increase in resources that would prevent people in my constituency from having to live in unfit houses.

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  I wrote a letter last summer on behalf of a constituent of mine who lives in Great Harwood. She and her husband and children are living in appalling conditions; among the many other problems that they have to endure, the two children share a bedroom with no external window. There is no question but that the family is entitled to a mandatory grant, yet the council has hundreds upon hundreds of similar applications.
  I wrote to the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Lord Strathclyde, asking for his comments on the situation, and his reply was interesting:
  "responsibility for the renovation grant system rests with local housing authorities…local authorities are under a statutory duty to provide mandatory grants…
  There is no provision which allows an authority to make the award of grant subject to the availability of resources, or to operate a waiting list for grant applications."
  The letter went on to say that if a council did so it would be open to legal challenge and could be referred to the local government ombudsman.
  When he replies, perhaps the Minister will advise me and Hyndburn council which law he thinks the council should break. It has mandatory grant applications far in excess of the resources that the Government are prepared to make available to meet them. Should it pay the grants anyway, in contravention of the Finance Act, because it is under a statutory obligation to do so under housing legislation? If councillors did that, doubtless they would face surcharge. Or should the council accept that the Government have not allocated sufficient resources to the problem and defer the payments, in effect operating a waiting list? That is what the authority does. Whichever course of action the authority chooses, it will end up either in court or before the local government ombudsman.
  That situation is not unique to Hyndburn; it is common across the whole of east Lancashire. In the boroughs of Blackburn, Pendle, Rossendale and Burnley local authorities are in exactly that situation. My local council is in some ways an excellent housing authority. It is innovative and works well with the private sector; it has declared housing renewal areas, in line with Government policy.
  Housing renewal areas are intended to be the flagship of urban renewal, and were much trumpeted by the Government in the late 1980s, but in my view they are a complete con and a sham. They build up the expectations of people living in sub-standard and unfit housing that extra resources will follow, yet there are no extra resources. Councils cannot even clear unfit houses to provide space for new developments by the private sector or by housing associations because they have not got the money to do so. In my constituency it is estimated that over the next five years more than 600 houses will fall into dereliction because the council does not have the money either to do them up or to clear them.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) will be aware of the plight of residents of Langho street in Blackburn, which was suffering from clearance blight when I was a member of the housing committee on Blackburn council. The local authority, desperate to clear the houses, does not have the resources to do so. Even if we could clear the houses and demolish them, where would we rehouse the people who live in them? There is a desperate shortage of decent low-cost housing in east Lancashire.
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  There is virtually no private rented sector there, and the council house waiting lists are as long as your arm. Of course, there has been no council new build in my constituency for years. The Minister cannot even say that the local authority is inefficient, because the voids are less than 1·5 per cent. of council stock.
  In Accrington, in the heart of my constituency, people are now sleeping rough on the streets. The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) is not in his place now, but earlier he suggested that people who sleep rough on the streets do so out of choice. I am sure that at 9 o'clock, when it is dark and getting cold outside, many young people, on the streets of Accrington are having a chat and deciding whether to stay at the Savoy or at the Ritz and finally, on balance, deciding to sleep in the bus station. Those are the people whom the Minister thinks should not have priority on the council waiting list, as he said in his nasty little speech to the Tory party conference—it is fair to say that he sank to the occasion.
  Only a few years ago, in the early 1980s, at the beginning of the Government's time in office, it was completely unheard of for people to sleep rough on the streets in towns such as Accrington, Blackburn and Burnley. If it had not been for organisations such as Nightsafe, a charity dealing with young single homeless people in east Lancashire, the situation would be a lot worse. Only yesterday a new initiative started in Hyndburn called the Stable project—another night shelter for young single homeless people. It was started by church leaders, who were sick of having to step over kids sleeping in doorways in towns such as Accrington. What a damning indictment of 15 years of Tory housing policy.
  Housing underpins everything else in society. If, as a society, we cannot even provide every person with a decent home and a roof over their heads, I do not know what we can provide. We are dealing with a Minister who, for the first time ever, has prevented local authorities from bidding for resources on the basis of housing need. From now on, local authorities are to bid, as does my local authority, on the basis of resources that are allocated in the current year. The current year's allocation forms the basis for the consequent year's allocation, rather than in previous years, when bids were made on the basis of what councils felt that they would need to spend.
  The Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction caved in to the Treasury in advance of the spending round this year. He knows full well about the acute difficulties that my constituents face and he chooses to turn his back on them. We have a Housing Minister who cares more about cutting the public sector borrowing requirement than he cares about the 17,000 families in my constituency living in housing need, and it is time that he went.
  8.58 pm
  Mrs. Angela Knight: I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) as I, too, represent a constituency in which a high proportion of people own their own homes. I have heard all my hon. Friends talk about the importance of good-quality housing and it is because of that importance that there are such things as grants to assist people who own their own home and to assist them in renovating their home.
  Having a similarly high proportion of home ownership in my constituency to that of the hon. Gentleman, contrary to him I find people come to my door and say that they

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  want to carry on owning their own homes. Others say that their desire is to buy their own homes. The hon. Gentleman will find that he hears the same if he asks similar questions in his part of the country.
  The issue of home ownership has not had as much airing in the debate as it should have had, because it is one of the great successes of the past 14 years and one of the many successes which my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) listed in his excellent speech. For many years, I was a member of a local authority and I was on its housing committee. When the right-to-buy legislation came in, every impediment possible was put in the way of people who wanted to buy their council properties. I was therefore astounded by the comments of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) when he spoke on that issue. In practice, Labour councils were thinking of every possible excuse to prevent people from legitimately purchasing their own home.
  Mr. Winnick: The reason why the policy was adopted at the time and why we expressed concerns and reservations was that we knew that the Conservative Government would not allow new council building to replace those houses sold off. If the Government of the day had decided to allow new building, there would have been no reason to object. The Labour-controlled local authority in my area was selling off council accommodation, rightly so in the circumstances, long before the Conservative party took office.
  Mrs. Knight: The houses that were sold off did not, somehow, go away from the housing stock; they did not disappear. They were sold to the people who were the tenants and would have stayed tenants anyway.
  If the hon. Gentleman looks at some of the housing estates, he will see the massive transformation that has taken place. In the part of the country where I was born and brought up, there were large monolithic council housing estates which were drab and uniform. The people who lived there could not even paint their own door the colour that they wanted, let alone get repairs done. As soon as those properties were sold, and those tenants were able to purchase their own homes, they did the renovation that they wanted and they painted their doors and windows.
  All of a sudden, one went back to those same estates and saw a transformation in streets and in squares. Great proportions of what was the old, municipal, dull, drab and gray housing stock in the north of England has become mixed housing. The improvements are fantastic, which I hope the hon. Gentleman welcomes.
  Council house sales were opposed all the time. I was sorry to see that opposition. The opposition to that policy was not just in delays or in slow sales, but in such rotten practices as trying to pass over to those who purchased their properties a whole series of other costs which those home owners were then told that they would have to continue to pay year after year. That is the truth of what has happened and the Labour party's policies on right to buy and home ownership.
  I recognise the importance of the public sector rented accommodation. During the years that I served on that council, and when I was a member of the housing committee in Sheffield, at any one time there were between 1,600 and 2,000 empty council properties. That was a disgraceful state of affairs. Whether it shows it in any list
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  that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has or not, I do not know, but those were the circumstances that arose in that city for many years.
  Mr Campbell-Savours: I wonder whether the hon. Lady would be courageous enough to do what the Minister failed to do and condemn the conduct of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for buying through an intermediary the council house next door at a £50,000 discount? Does the hon. Lady have the courage to stand up and condemn her colleague?
  Mrs. Knight: I will not condemn my colleague. He has made his own statement. However, does the hon. Gentleman have the courage to condemn a city council which retained between 1,600 and 2,000 empty properties? Those empty properties affected far more people than the circumstance that he described.
  The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) referred to estate action and housing action trusts in a somewhat derogatory manner. It is a sad fact that one reason why those initiatives exist is that local authorities failed to fulfil their duty to the housing stock that they control. Instead of condemning those initiatives, one should visit estates which have benefited from estate action. Where housing action trusts have started—and are increasingly being voted for by the people who live in those properties—it is clear that a great change is taking place which will benefit the residents.
  Housing association property has not received the airing in this debate that it deserves. Housing associations are contributing to the new build accommodation. However, it seems that Opposition Members consider housing association property to be second class. They seem to believe that councils should be the only providers of public sector accommodation. I do not accept that.
  I represent an area which is away from the major cities. It comprises small towns and, as a result of that, housing associations are a relatively recent arrival in the area. They are doing an excellent job. They provide special accommodation which meets the needs of specific sections of the population. Those needs were not met particularly well by so many local authorities.
  The future of local authorities and councils will involve them in being enablers and in determining their housing plans. There is an opportunity which I hope councils and all authorities will grasp at least in respect of the preparation of their district plans—that is taking place in every area of the country. Within those district plans, it is possible for a local authority to ensure that its housing plan involves a mixture of home ownership and public sector accommodation through housing associations. If that happens, we will get away from the estates in the part of the country where I have spent most of my life. We will return to a far better and more preferable mixture of housing which will also bring great social benefits.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) referred to capital receipts. As I listened to him, I wondered seriously whether he had discussed the subject with his colleague the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman). The hon. Member for Blackburn seemed to disagree totally with the points made yesterday by his hon. Friend.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn referred to £5 billion of frozen capital receipts as though those receipts were locked up in a box hidden beneath a Treasury desk only to be brought out and, if he had his way, spent. He forgets that

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  only a handful of local authorities are not in debt. The vast majority owe millions of pounds. As council house sales have occurred, a great proportion of that money has rightly been used to pay off such debts.
  If one has a mortgage, as most of us have, and one sells the property, does one pay back the building society or double the debt when one buys another property? Of course one does not do the latter. If individuals and local authorities do not repay their debts, they will have to be paid by subsequent generations. It is misleading to talk about capital receipts as the hon. Member for Blackburn did. It would have been far more honest of him to say that he really wants to increase public expenditure by another £5 billion.
  I should like more emphasis to be placed on private rented accommodation. My hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Mr. Hendry) and for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) made valuable points about the growth of housing stock, the fact that it has grown faster than the population has grown over the past 15 years, and the need to ensure that some empty private housing is let. Far too many properties are empty—about 700,000 homes in the private sector. If only a relatively small proportion were rented to people on housing waiting lists, we would quickly resolve many problems.
  There is a greater awareness of the need for housing in cities. In areas such as mine there is still housing need, and housing need and available properties do not coincide. Housing associations can now be involved in letting properties for private owners. I welcome that practice and I would like it to be extended. I would also like housing associations aggressively to sell their services. There is greater awareness of private sector rented accommodation in cities in which there are colleges and universities than there is in smaller areas such as mine, Erewash. In such areas, I would like housing associations more aggressively to approach private landlords to assist in renting accommodation.
  I now refer to my right hon. Friend's proposals and consultations on homelessness. People come to my surgeries to talk about their housing problems. There is great concern—indeed, in some instances there is anger —at the way in which council accommodation is rented. There is grave concern in my constituency at the way in which the allocation system sometimes works. It is seen to work unfairly and against the prudent. In many instances, it is seen to work against families who have been helping themselves to the best of their ability. Often, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making his proposals.
  When I was a councillor, a case was brought to me by the parents of a young man aged 16. That young man had left home. Without making any inquiries, the council housed him, while his parents were contacting the police and everybody they could think of to find out what had happened to their son. I felt then that that was disgraceful and that the authority should have checked first. That is the only specific incident that I wish to bring to my right hon. Friend's attention. From this case, however, spring a whole range of issues. It was the tip of the iceberg. The individual in question was given priority over many others on the list whose needs were in many ways much greater than his.
  I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his initiative, which will be welcomed by everyone who thinks clearly
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  about these matters. People who come to my constituency surgeries to express concern about the pressure on housing and who see themselves as never, be housed will regard this intiative as the best way forward.
  9.15 pm
  Mr. Gordon Prentice: I do not intend, in the couple of minutes available to me, to go over ground that was covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) in his splendid contribution. Many of the problems that afflict Hyndburn afflict my constituency too, as well as Burnley and Blackburn. I want to say a few words about Westminster.
  Eleven years ago, in 1983, the Conservatives, in their election manifesto, promised to make Britain the best-housed nation in Europe. I shall not mention the Conservative party's 1992 manifesto because it contains no promises—just aspirations. During yesterday's debate on the Finance Bill we learned about Conservative instincts. I should like to say a few words about what people in north-east Lancashire think about Conservative instincts. They were outraged when they learned that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) had arranged to purchase a council house next to his home in Westminster. The house was reported to be worth £300,000 and was occupied by a man of 78. The hon. Gentleman regarded the purchase as a long-term investment.
  The staggering thing is that, this evening, the Minister responsible for housing could not bring himself to condemn that action; nor could the hon. Member for Erewash (Mrs. Knight) condemn the manipulation of the system by a Conservative Member of Parliament. If that is not manipulation of the system, what is? The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) had the gall to say that people should act responsibly. Conservative Members have no right to tell people that they must act responsibly. People out there do not want to listen to such things from Conservative Members.
  The outrage to which I have referred turned to blind anger when people in my area heard the auditor's provisional findings in the case of the homes-for-sale scandal in Westminster. This policy is noxious. I go further than the auditor, who merely described the actions of Dame Shirley Porter and the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg) as disgraceful, wilful, unlawful, unauthorised and improper. The auditor said that what had been done was improper and disgraceful gerrymandering. I say that the Conservatives were just following their instincts. I had to listen to the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) smearing the auditor. She said that he was a partner in Touche Ross, and she alleged that the four-year investigation had been strung out for the purpose of increasing his fees. What a preposterous allegation.
  I should like to say something about contacts between Westminster council and councils in my area. Westminster council approached councils in north-east Lancashire. It offered councils in Burnley and Blackburn £400 a head to take homeless people from Westminster as part of the plan to make Westminster fit for Conservatives to live in. That is what it was all about. What the Conservatives have failed to do since 1983 is make Lancashire—in particular, north-east Lancashire—a decent place for people to live in. Our housing stock is crumbling. Even the Minister has said that we have a unique cocktail of problems. [Interruption.]

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  There is no point in the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford) sniggering. We have a unique set of problems, which the Government have not addressed.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn said, we have amazingly high levels of owner-occupation—86 per cent. However, the housing stock is decrepit, falling to bits and collapsing around people's ears. The Government are doing nothing to rejuvenate that stock and to support local authorities in their quest to improve housing conditions for the people who live in their areas.
  I hesitate, as I have had to junk 80 per cent. of my speech. Let me finish by saying that when it comes to the instincts of the Conservative party on housing, they stink. Conservative Members just could not bring it upon themselves to condemn the actions of Members of Parliament who use the system to featherbed their own positions. The idea that the Conservatives could preside over the best housing in Europe is nothing less than a sick joke.
  9.20 pm
  Mr. John Battle: What is clear to everyone except the Government and the Minister is the sheer scale of the housing crisis which has been rejected by the Government. Britain is far from being able to claim to be "a well-housed nation". Every Conservative manifesto at the past three general elections has made that claim—it is far from the truth.
  Why is it that everyone now, except the Government, accepts that this country faces an unprecedented and increasing housing crisis? The crisis affects people who face the extremities of homelessness on our streets, the people who are waiting for decent and appropriate housing conditions and the people who live in conditions of severe overcrowding. There is the pressure on families to split up, and on young parents who are imprisoned in high-rise blocks. There are pensioners without proper heating who are living in damp and cold homes, who now face VAT on fuel. That is the reality.
  The speeches in the debate have highlighted the fact that there is a distinct difference of approach to housing between Labour's positive strategy for tackling the housing crisis and the Conservative Government's complacency and neglect. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) spoke of the need to address not the symptoms but the causes. He pointed out that there has been a loss of 2 million homes from the rented sector under the Government, and that that was one of the primary causes of the problem.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) spoke of how demand has outstripped supply, and of how Manchester city council has been deliberately starved of resources by the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) spelled out how the Government's policy of competition at a local level has turned people into winners and losers, and has pitted the badly housed against those who are housed in even worse conditions.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) suggested that we ought to support co-operatives more positively. However, the Minister has undermined support for co-ops and has cut housing budgets for them. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) spoke of the actue shortages that people in desperate need are facing.
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  My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) has carried on a sterling campaign to try to persuade the Government to do something about empty Ministry of Defence homes in his constituency. Yet the Government have done practically nothing about that.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) spelled out what was right at the heart of the Government's policy. Here is a Government who claim to support the private sector, but what did they do in the Budget last November when they were faced with the problem of bad conditions? They undermined the renovation grants which enable local authorities to tackle the problem.
  As for Government Members, the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) called for a real free market in housing. She wanted the abolition of planning constraints and of the homeless persons legislation. "Let's get rid of all the distortions in the housing market," she said.
  The hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Hendry)—the chairman of the all-party homelessness group—told us that there could not be a problem with homelessness because not many homeless people are writing to him. We then heard what was perhaps the most revealing remark of all from the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), who said that he was previously the chairman of Wandsworth's —perhaps appropriately named—disposals committee. He said that the homeless people he meets on his way home are there of their own volition. May he stand condemned from his own mouth. That is the real Tory view shining through again: it is not the Government who are the problem; it is always the people who are to blame.
  It is crystal clear that the Conservative party's policies still pull towards the notion of owner-occupation for everyone and leaving housing to the free market. In stark contrast, we argue for tackling the causes of the housing and homeless crisis. We campaigned for national policies and strategies that increase the number of desperately needed decent and affordable homes to rent. We demand that the Government call off their petty vendetta against local councils and allow them to play a positive role in housing provision.
  Under each of the four Conservative Governments in recent years, housing investment has taken the brunt of Budget cuts. The amount spent on housing is down from 4·7 per cent. of gross domestic product in 1979 under Labour to a mere 1·5 per cent. In the Chancellor's November Budget last year the housing budget again was hammered. Little wonder that the amount of empty accommodation has increased by seven times under the Conservative Government. Little wonder that the number of homeless families has trebled since 1979. Yet the Government's Treasury press release on Budget day positively crowed that housing was a key area of "significant savings". That is what the Treasury had to say.
  The Housing Corporation budget was cut by £313 million. As a result, it will approve between 10,000 and 13,000 fewer homes in the coming year. The Government and the Minister are pulling the plug on housing associations as the providers of affordable housing for rent. At a Budget stroke, local authorities have had £193 million, or 11 per cent., cut from their plans for capital investment next year. The reimposed restrictions on capital receipts will mean a loss of £500 million of housing investment resources next year. Yet yesterday the Government's own figures from the Department of the Environment pointed out that construction orders in

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  housing for local authorities and housing associations showed a 13 per cent. drop—a further loss of another £500 million of housing investment.
  Mr. Thomason: Has the hon. Gentleman noticed that the cost of construction has fallen, and that the cost of land acquisition has fallen, so that an equal amount of resources will now provide far more properties and a smaller amount of resources will provide the number that was originally anticipated? Does he accept that the position would be much better if Labour authorities collected rents?
  Mr. Battle: If that is the case, why are local authorities not building more homes? Let the hon. Gentleman ask them why.
  Who pays the price for the cuts in housing investment under the Conservative Government? The net result will be fewer homes built for rent, housing associations cut back, councils still not allowed to build and a further loss of construction jobs.
  I remind the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason) that in October last year, before the Budget, the Institute of Housing and the National Federation of Housing Associations warned the Government:
  "Cutting the Housing Budget would be economic madness. Building homes is labour intensive, putting construction workers back to work, increasing tax receipts and reducing social security expenditure. Since 1990 480,000 construction workers have lost their jobs. Reducing the Housing Corporation's capital programme by £300 Million could mean that another 6,000 construction workers are made redundant and as many again in related industries. This would add an extra £100 Million on the PSBR in unemployment benefits".
  Now let the hon. Member for Bromsgrove and the Minister tell us about economic common sense. They are the ones who are economically inefficient. They fly in the face of common sense. The cuts go on regardless.
  Tory housing policy all fits in with an age-old Tory obsession with tenure which came out during the debate today. The Tories believe solidly that our society should be divided according to whether one buys or rents. The Government are even skewing this year's housing programme to even more initiatives to promote home ownership. With 69 per cent. of the housing stock in owner-occupation, the imbalance in tenure in our society is proving unsustainable.
  Why? Because there are insufficient homes to rent. There is an absolute and acute shortage of homes to rent. Even the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), in his pamphlet entitled, perhaps appropriately, "An End to Illusions", complained that in the 1980s easy credit enabled
  "too many house buyers and owners to treat their house not as a shelter or a form of saving but as a speculative investment or store of wealth which they could raid at will."
  Mr. Hendry: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) to produce a photocopy of a copyrighted pamphlet? Is he not in breach of copyright law? [Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) was not out of order. If he had been, the Chair would have so ruled.
  Mr. Battle: When I hear comments by Conservative Members, I sometimes think that the important message in this place should be, "Don't adjust your brain, there is a fault in reality."
  I shall quote further from the pamphlet of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton. He said:
  "But with more than two thirds of the housing market now under owner-occupied, the economic consequences of home ownership are becoming increasingly ambiguous"
  We agree with him on that and so will at least 70,000 council leaseholders, primarily in London, who are unable to sell their bought council houses and face huge repair leases. They have been effectively abandoned by the Government, despite the efforts of my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith, for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Walsall, North. Despite their representations, the Government are still doing nothing.
  In the Harry Simpson memorial lecture in May last year, the Prime Minister suggested that we should push home ownership up to 75 per cent. What are needed, however, are more homes for rent to combat the record level of repossessions—higher under this Government than ever before. The latest figures are higher than when the Prime Minister came to office.
  The Government's response is to atempt to sustain the image of competence with a daily Department press release. They introduce piecemeal initiatives, acronymic schemes and competitions; they pit one estate against another for ever diminishing resources. The Government tinker, but they still weight the housing tenure structure further towards owner-occupation and buying. The Government give residents incentives, as long as they move out., That is hardly a long-term policy or a national housing strategy. It is a short-term substitution for a policy. The Government short-change residents and bring in short-term measures such as a housing market package one year and a capital receipts holiday for a year. They promise that their proposal will deliver nearly £2 billion, but when we consider the figures we find that it produces less than £1 billion.
  The Minister was moved to decide what to do with the homeless figures. I get the impression that he is trying to do to the homeless what the Government have done already to the unemployed—turn them into disappeared persons by changing definitions, fiddling the figures, blaming the victims for their plight and pitting the desperately homeless against the poorly housed.
  The proposals in the Minister's consultative document mark a fundamental move from the basic and fundamental right to a home. That right is not mentioned in the tenants charter. The Government are going to replace the duty on local authorities to ensure a permanent home with a limited duty to provide temporary accommodation. They will restrict even temporary emergency assistance to some homeless people. They are effectively shredding the so-called safety net. People will not be eligible for homeless assistance in Britain if there is a single notice for private let in a newsagent's window.
  At the "Roof" debate, the Minister condemned families to a recurring cycle of temporary accommodation in shorthold assured tenancies. The message from the Government to parents with children is, "Live with grandma". People face a life of built-up disruption in schooling and health care as they are shunted from short-term temporary let to short-term temporary let. The

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  Minister still gives succour to the policies of Westminster and Wandsworth councils. He gives the green light to local authorities to offload their homeless on other boroughs, turning them into internal exiles, wandering around their own country.
  What about the document that referred to housing the homeless "anywhere in the region"? So much for the back to the value of basic communities in Britain. How can people feel secure if they can never settle in their own community? Rather than attack the cause of homelessness by building and repair, the Minister now plans to attack those on the homeless list.
  We should not forget the hidden agenda. It was the Minister who came out with the most critical, moralising attack on single parents at the Conservative party conference on 7 October. He it was who referred to the unmarried teenager
  "expecting her first probably unplanned child."
  It is tempting to ask the Minister how he knows that. Perhaps he and his hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter), instead of holding constituency surgeries, as we all do, hold family planning advice sessions. Perhaps they give planned pregnancy advice such as that now on offer from the Government. The rest of us, councillors and Members of Parliament, know that queues of people at our surgeries are asking why there is a shortage of decent and affordable housing. They want to know why the council cannot help to provide them with accommodation because they have been repossessed. They want to know how long they must endure cold and damp conditions. Those conditions have been caused by the cuts in local authority investment income.
  When the Minister was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment—the last time that he was in charge of housing—he declared:
  "too many people are living in bad conditions"—[Official Report, 13 March 1986; Vol. 93, c. 1128.]
  I must tell the Minister that those people are still there, because 137,000 local authority properties are still unfit for occupation and a further 213,000 require renovation and repair. What have his Government done about it? They have cut the budget year on year.
  This is the Minister who has failed time and again to stand up to the Treasury. This is the Minister who has let the Chancellor cut spending on local authorities and housing. His Government have presided over a remarkable fall in the number of rented homes available.
  The Tory party, which we all now know is the party of high taxes, is also the party of high rents. It has been the Government's policy for years to force up rents deliberately across all tenures to market levels. That has priced people out of their homes. Working people are unable to accept a new job because rents are too high. If they receive housing benefit, they will lose it if they take a low-paid job.
  Local authority rents have been forced up this year by a national average of £36·63 a week. I must remind the Minister that housing association tenants are facing a 75 per cent. rent increase by 1996. That will be imposed because the amount collected must match the 27 per cent. drop in housing association grant to fit the Government's objective of a 55 per cent. grant by the year 1995–96. The average private sector rent registered in the second quarter of 1993 is £46·50 a week in London.
  This is the Government who are still chasing the chimera of the free market. They should make that clear to
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  the thousands of people who belong to the London Campaign for Fairer Rents, because every time they go before a rent assessment committee their rent is then pushed up even further. They are suffering because of the Government's pro-market rent policy. The Minister should try telling the thousands of people who are having to pay those high rents that the Government are operating a policy of fair rents. In practice, the housing benefit bill is going through the roof.
  The Government cannot grasp the fact that a high rent policy cannot go with a high unemployment and low incomes policy. Private sector rents are now subsidised to the tune of £2,500 a year per housing benefit claimant. In the meantime, the Minister goes through his subtle sleight of hand. In his review of housing and homeless persons, the Minister claims five times that council housing is subsidised. He should check his own figures, because it is not. Council tenants are now contributing £66 million to the Treasury and the Exchequer.
  Subtle sleights of hand are not new to the Minister. When I asked a parliamentary question on the figures for the new local authority bills, for some strange reason the answer I got now includes the housing association starts for Wales. We then asked the Minister about the Government's task force on empty homes. We are now told that it is called "the Government task force on empty houses". At a stroke—with a single word change—the Government have removed thousands of properties from the list.
  Conservative Members have a nerve. They attack local authorities for having a mere 1.9 per cent. of their properties empty; how on earth can they justify the £1·75 million that it has cost the taxpayer to keep 145 Ministry of Defence houses in Braintree boarded up and empty since 1989? Meanwhile, there are 3,500 families on Braintree council's waiting list.
  This is the Government whose review spells out the fact that they are at the fag end of burnt-out market policies. The review's comments about "lubricating the market" are dated now: this is the Government who cannot tell the difference between subsidy and investment. They are locked into short-term survival tactics, and cannot see beyond them.
  There is now an acute shortage of homes for rent. Instead of irresponsibly blocking capital receipts, the Government should release the money that local authorities have received from council house sales. That would enable authorities to take building workers off the dole and introduce our policies for radical, flexible tenure so that people could remain in their homes. We ought to be finding new instruments for long-term investment in homes for rent.
  Our policies are far-sighted, far-reaching and far removed from temporary market short-termism; but I suspect that long-term investment in our homes and futures will prove far too much to ask of this short-term Government. Under this Government, there is scant chance of bringing a decent home within the reach of every family. We could literally build ourselves out of the recession—and a Labour Government will do that.
  9.41 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry): The debate has clearly backfired on the Labour party. It has exposed a vacuum

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  —the absence of any Labour housing policy ideas. If any hon. Member doubted that, he needed only to listen to the speech by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle). The hon. Gentleman spoke for 20 minutes, but, as Hansard will reveal tomorrow, his speech contained not a single new idea, thought or policy. It was a simple, straightforward rant from beginning to end, totally devoid of policy content.
  It is always worth while examining Opposition motions. This motion goes from the blinkered to the confused. It is blinkered in that the reference to investment in the first line means only public-sector investment: that shows that, in Labour's view, only the state can provide. It is confused about the question of capital receipts. Before the last general election, Labour party officials said:
  "You do not make new resources available by making new definitions."
  Today, that approach was dismissed by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) as "absurd Treasury dogma" —on the very same day that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), the shadow Chancellor, said on the radio:
  "There is no commitment to spend money on anything."
  That shows total confusion.
  This afternoon, Labour Member after Labour Member cried, "Spend more money; spend more money." It is clear that they were not up early enough this morning to hear what was said by the shadow Chancellor. We now have a "Jekyll and Hyde" Labour party, which advocates fiscal restraint in the morning and spending sprees for all in the evening.
  Mr. Straw: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Baldry: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. Let me point out, however, that he spoke for 45 minutes, during which time he gave way only twice.
  Mr. Straw: The Minister is wrong again. If he consults the Board, he will see that I spoke for less time than the Minister for Housing, Inner Cities and Construction. I spoke for 39 minutes, and I gave way about five times.
  The Minister said that I called the Government's refusal to allow local authorities to spend their capital receipts "absurd dogma". I did indeed. What I want to know from the Minister is why, if it was right last year, under the Chancellorship of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Thames (Mr. Lamont), to unfreeze capital receipts, it is wrong this year? What is the answer to the question that the Minister of Housing dodged throughout his speech?
  Mr. Baldry: Those are good diversionary tactics by the hon. Gentleman. Clearly, he should have but did not address the clear discrepancy between what he and other members of the shadow Cabinet said today.
  Labour Members obviously were not up early enough to listen to the shadow Chancellor. Perhaps I ought to tell the House what he had to say. He said,
  "These commitments, or so-called commitments, simply do not exist".
  That provoked the interviewer to question,
  "But all were either made in Parliament or at a party conference".
  "Well," said the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown)
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  "They just were not. There is no commitment about equalisation of the pension age at a certain age. There is no commitment to spend money on anything".
  "Well," said the interviewer,
  "That was carried at the party conference by 59 per cent."
  The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East replied:
  "We will spend only what we can afford to spend. We will spend only when growth allows us to do and we will spend as resources allow".
  What weasel words and totally incapable of being reconciled with every Labour Member who has spoken today and demanded more public spending.
  It is little surprise that the first newspaper that had the opportunity to comment on the words of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East since the programme was recorded wrote:
  "This has to stop. Once again Gordon Brown has come up with the mantra beloved of Labour at the last election 'as resources allow'. In an interview on the 'Today' programme this morning, Mr. Brown expressed extreme crossness at being reminded of Labour's conference commitments to instance universal freee nursery education and pensions at 60 for men and women. 'It was preposterous', Mr. Brown said to his interviewer, 'to make out that these conference resolutions amounted to anything so vulgar as a spending commitment.' What Labour really meant was that, if the economy grew enough to generate sufficient money, a Labour Government would introduce all the desirable social measures that had been passed at the party conference."
  I know that Labour Members do not want to hear this, but they had better take it on board.
  It is a difficulty that the Labour party has plenty of time to sort out before the next election and it had better start now. It is precisely where it came a cropper last time—the discrepancy between the party's spending ambitions and the amount of money likely to be available. Bridging the gap with "as resources allow" does not deceive anyone.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Baldry: In the motion, the Opposition maintain that their plans for spending could be met by a gradual relaxation of the restrictions on spending capital receipts. That stance was blown apart by a row between the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) before the last general election.
  Speaking in a public debate in which my hon. Friend the housing Minister took part, the hon. Member for Hammersmith claimed that senior colleagues had agreed to alter the definition of the public sector borrowing requirement to accommodate the relaxation in the rules on spending capital receipts without that spending counting as public sector borrowing.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith had quickly to retract his comments, claiming that there had been a misunderstanding. The House can understand and contrast that confusion with the clarity and consistency of policies put forward by my hon. Friends in this debate.
  We have heard some excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford), for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), for High Peak (Mr. Hendry), for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter), for Finchley (Mr. Booth), for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) and for Erewash (Mrs. Knight). All my hon. Friends together comprehensively mauled the Labour party and the past and present record of Labour-controlled local councils.

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  We set out clear Conservative principles: greater choice, diversity of tenure, better management of social housing and harnessing the energy and resources of the private sector. We are determined to bring a decent home within the reach of every family, through promoting home ownership, securing better value for money in the public sector, encouraging the private sector and targeting public spending towards those people and those areas that need it most.
  The power to choose and the right to own are two of the most fundamental rights that an individual has in a free society. That is why Conservatives have been, are and will continue to be, committed to the growth of a property-owning democracy. Some 1·9 million households have bought their council houses since 1979.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Why will not the Minister give way?
  Mr. Baldry: Because I have been left with 20 minutes. The hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), who spoke from the Front Bench at the beginning of debate, spoke for nearly 40 minutes —more than 40 minutes—and gave way twice.
  Some 1·9 million households have bought their council houses since 1979. That is good news for them and good news for local authorities, because right to buy raises receipts for local authorities. The capital receipts holiday last year is expected to yield to local authorities £1·3 million for spending on local authority housing—[Interruption.] It is no good the Opposition trying to shout me down. It reminds me of why I came into politics. which was because of the Trots at Sussex university. I am sure that the Labour party does not wish to give that impression.
  If it had been left to the Opposition parties, there would have been no right to buy and no capital receipts. We have other initiatives such as do-it-yourself shared ownership and cash and tenant incentive schemes, which also help to release existing accommodation for reletting to those in housing need. Home ownership is not just a good thing for the home buyer. It can also free up existing social housing for the benefit of others who might be in greater need. For every house built for rent, three can be made available to families through cash incentives. Home ownership generally is being encouraged by continuing recovery in the housing market.
  Mr. Camplbell-Savours: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Baldry: Total housing starts in the three months to November were up by 34 per cent. on the same period a year ago. The House-Builders Federation reports a nearly 20 per cent. year-on-year increase in site visits, and 23 per cent. year-on-year increases in reservations for buying new homes. The majority of house builders expect continued sales growth this year, which is not surprising, because mortgage rates are at their lowest since 1960.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister give way on that subject?
  Mr. Baldry: Low inflation and low interest rates mean that the affordability of homes for purchase is at its lowest for 15 years. That is good news for those who want to buy their own homes—
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Madam Speaker: Order. The Minister appears not to be giving way. Hon. Members must understand that and not persist.
  Mr. Baldry: The Conservatives recognise that a considerable number of people either do not wish, or are not able, to own their own home. We want them to have the same standard and quality of housing as home owners. We want tenants to have more control over how their homes are managed. That is why we have introduced a tenants charter, an updated right to repair, a new right to improve, and launched initiatives such as estate action and housing action trusts, which give tenants a real say in the regeneration of their estates. We have spent more than £1 billion on housing estates since 1985 in more than 1,000 estate action schemes. It is public money and has levered in millions and millions of pounds of further investment from the private sector to the benefit of local tenants.
  We have invested to improve the physical conditions of homes, improve security, reduce crime and involve tenants in the management of their housing. We have set up housing action trusts in Hull, Liverpool, Birmingham and London. Within all those initiatives, our objectives have been to ensure that a decent home can be within the reach of every family.
  Who, a few years ago, would have believed that in Liverpool tenants in 67 tower blocks would have voted to transfer from local authority control to a housing action trust?
  All the evidence suggests that our policies are working. The number of households accepted as homeless in 1992 was 2 per cent. less than in the previous year, the first fall recorded since the homelessness legislation was introduced in 1977, and the latest figures show that that downward trend is continuing.
  There has been a reduction in the number of households accepted as homeless in the previous 12 months for the past six years and the number of households in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has increased dramatically by more than 40 per cent. in the last year.
  Lettings, the currency that really matters to those in housing need, were more than 500,000 in social housing in 1992–93, a clear increase on our estimate of 473,000 in 1980. That is a substantial increase, notwithstanding right-to-buy sales. Sometimes Opposition Members like to argue that right-to-buy sales have decreased the housing stock. What is important is the number of lettings and that has increased substantially.
  Our objective is to ensure that a decent home is within the reach of every family. Clearly, a considerable part of this debate has been devoted to access to social housing and to the recent consultation paper published by my right hon. Friend. That consultation paper seeks to ensure fair access to subsidised rented housing and measures to prevent homelesness and to increase the supply of affordable housing.
  Mr. Battle: Once again the Minister has let slip a reference to subsidised council housing. Will he confirm that it is not subsidised? Tenants in Britain are paying £66 million to the Treasury. Why does he not tell the truth?
  Mr. Baldry: That question simply demonstrates why the Opposition are totally unfit to govern. Not only do they not listen to the shadow Chancellor, they are totally incapable of working out that there is a £4 billion housing

  387
  revenue account subsidy from the Treasury. If the hon. Gentleman cannot grasp that fact—£4 billion—the Opposition are unfit to govern, ever.
  Local authorities will continue to have a duty to ensure that accommodation is available for those households in priority need who are homeless through no fault of their own. The present legislation ensures that those who are accepted as statutorily homeless receive priority treatment, creating a perverse incentive to come within the terms of the legislation and penalising those who show initiative and make housing arrangements for themselves while on the waiting list.
  The law at present of course provides an essential safety net, but there should be a difference between a safety net and a short cut. The simple fact is that, whether a pregnant teenager, married or not, should have a priority for social housing over a couple who have been patiently waiting on the waiting list who also have children, the safety net will remain. But we are proposing a fairer and more effective system for meeting the housing needs of those who rely on rented housing to allow local authorities to make better use of their housing stock.
  We want to see the best use of all our housing stock. We want to see and encourage a continued revival in the private rented sector to encourage responsible landlords to rent out their property. People still do want to rent. Landlords still do want to let property. Tenants want confidence that landlords will respect their side of the contract and landlords want to be confident that they will receive a fair return on their investment and their property returned at the end of the letting. That is why we have introduced shorthold tenancies and assured tenancies and those reforms, in encouraging a private sector revival, are working.
  Residential letting agents recorded a 60 per cent. rise in new tenancies in 1991 alone; expansion directly attributable to our reforms. The rough sleepers initiative has led to a marked decline in the number of people sleeping rough in London—285 at the last count. It has provided nearly 3,500 beds in temporary and permanent accommodation for people sleeping rough in London. It is being extended for another three years and a further £86 million is being made available.
  We are determined to continue to increase home ownership, to make better use of our existing housing stock and to concentrate help on areas and people in the greatest need. In our manifesto we set out a commitment to provide 153,000 new homes through housing associations in the first three years of this Parliament, and we shall beat that target. We are also determined to give families a greater say in the running of their estates and the management of their homes. Conservatives will—
  Mr. Derek Foster rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Quesiton be now put.
  Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
  Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question: —
  The House divided: Ayes 279, Noes 319.

  Division No. 92]

  [10 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Enright, Derek

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Etherington, Bill

  Ainger, Nick

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret

  Allen, Graham

  Fatchett, Derek

  Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Flynn, Paul

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Ashton, Joe

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Austin-Walker, John

  Foulkes, George

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Fraser, John

  Barnes, Harry

  Fyfe, Maria

  Barron, Kevin

  Galloway, George

  Battle, John

  Gapes, Mike

  Bayley, Hugh

  Garrett, John

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  George, Bruce

  Bell, Stuart

  Gerrard, Neil

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Bennett, Andrew F.

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Benton, Joe

  Godsiff, Roger

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Berry, Dr. Roger

  Gordon, Mildred

  Betts, Clive

  Gould, Bryan

  Blair, Tony

  Graham, Thomas

  Blunkett, David

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Boateng, Paul

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Bradley, Keith

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Grocott, Bruce

  Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Gunnell, John

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

  Hain, Peter

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Hall, Mike

  Burden, Richard

  Hanson, David

  Byers, Stephen

  Hardy, Peter

  Caborn, Richard

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Callaghan, Jim

  Harvey, Nick

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Henderson, Doug

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Heppell, John

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Canavan, Dennis

  Hinchliffe, David

  Cann, Jamie

  Hoey, Kate

  Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

  Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  Home Robertson, John

  Clapham, Michael

  Hood, Jimmy

  Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

  Hoon, Geoffrey

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Coffey, Ann

  Hoyle, Doug

  Cohen, Harry

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Connarty, Michael

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Corbett, Robin

  Hume, John

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hutton, John

  Cousins, Jim

  Ingram, Adam

  Cryer, Bob

  Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

  Cummings, John

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Jamieson, David

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Janner, Greville

  Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr John

  Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

  Dafis, Cynog

  Jones, leuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

  Darling, Alistair

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Davidson, Ian

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Jowell, Tessa

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

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Denham, John

  Keen, Alan

  Dewar, Donald

  Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

  Dixon, Don

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Dobson, Frank

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

  Dowd, Jim

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Leighton, Ron

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Lewis, Terry

  Eastham, Ken

  Litherland, Robert

  389

  Livingstone, Ken

  Randall, Stuart

  Lloyd, Tony (Stratford)

  Raynsford, Nick

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Redmond, Martin

  Loyden, Eddie

  Reid, Dr John

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  Rendel, David

  McAllion, John

  Richardson, Jo

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  McCartney, Ian

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

  McCrea, Rev William

  Roche, Mrs. Barbara

  Macdonald, Calum

  Rogers, Allan

  McFall, John

  Rooker, Jeff

  McKelvey, William

  Rooney, Terry

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  McLeish, Henry

  Rowlands, Ted

  Maclennan, Robert

  Ruddock, Joan

  McMaster, Gordon

  Sedgemore, Brian

  McNamara, Kevin

  Sheerman, Barry

  McWilliam, John

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Madden, Max

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Maddock, Mrs Diana

  Short, Clare

  Mahon, Alice

  Simpson, Alan

  Mandelson, Peter

  Skinner, Dennis

  Marek, Dr John

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

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

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

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

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Martlew, Eric

  Snape, Peter

  Maxton, John

  Soley, Clive

  Meacher, Michael

  Spearing, Nigel

  Meale, Alan

  Spellar, John

  Michael, Alun

  Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Milburn, Alan

  Stevenson, George

  Miller, Andrew

  Stott, Roger

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Straw, Jack

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Morley, Elliot

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (Wy'nshawe)

  Tipping, Paddy

  Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

  Turner, Dennis

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Tyler, Paul

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Vaz, Keith

  Mudie, George

  Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

  Mullin, Chris

  Wallace, James

  Murphy, Paul

  Walley, Joan

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

  Wareing, Robert N

  O'Brien, William (Normanton)

  Watson, Mike

  Olner, William

  Welsh, Andrew

  O'Neill, Martin

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Parry, Robert

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Sw'n W)

  Patchett, Terry

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Pendry, Tom

  Wilson, Brian

  Pickthall, Colin

  Winnick, David

  Pike, Peter L.

  Wise, Audrey

  Pope, Greg

  Worthington, Tony

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Wray, Jimmy

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

  Wright, Dr Tony

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Prescott, John

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Purchase, Ken

  Mr. Jack Thompson and Mr. Eric Illsley.

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Radice, Giles

  NOES

  Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Alexander, Richard

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Baldry, Tony

  Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Amess, David

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Ancram, Michael

  Bates, Michael

  Arbuthnot, James

  Batiste, Spencer

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Bellingham, Henry

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Ashby, David

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Atkins, Robert

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  390

  Body, Sir Richard

  Fry, Sir Peter

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Gale, Roger

  Booth, Hartley

  Gallie, Phil

  Boswell, Tim

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

  Garnier, Edward

  Bowden, Andrew

  Gill, Christopher

  Bowis, John

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

  Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Brazier, Julian

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Bright, Graham

  Gorst, John

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Burns, Simon

  Grylls, Sir Michael

  Burt, Alistair

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Butcher, John

  Hague, William

  Butler, Peter

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Butterfill, John

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Carlisle, John (Luton North)

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hannam, Sir John

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hargreaves, Andrew

  Cash, William

  Harris, David

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Churchill, Mr

  Hawkins, Nick

  Clappison, James

  Hawksley, Warren

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Hayes, Jerry

  Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

  Heald, Oliver

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Coe, Sebastian

  Hendry, Charles

  Colvin, Michael

  Hicks, Robert

  Congdon, David

  Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence L.

  Conway, Derek

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Horam, John

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Cormack, Patrick

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Couchman, James

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

  Cran, James

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

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

  Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

  Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Day, Stephen

  Hunter, Andrew

  Deva, Nirj Joseph

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Devlin, Tim

  Jack, Michael

  Dicks, Terry

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Jessel, Toby

  Dover, Den

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Duncan, Alan

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Duncan-Smith, Iain

  Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

  Dunn, Bob

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Dykes, Hugh

  Key, Robert

  Eggar, Tim

  Kilfedder, Sir James

  Elletson, Harold

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Knapman, Roger

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

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

  Evennett, David

  Knox, Sir David

  Faber, David

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Fabricant, Michael

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Legg, Barry

  Forman, Nigel

  Leigh, Edward

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Lennox-Boyd, Mark

  Forth, Eric

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Lidington, David

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Peter (Fareham)

  Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

  Luff, Peter

  French, Douglas

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  391

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Shersby, Michael

  MacKay, Andrew

  Sims, Roger

  Maclean, David

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Soames, Nicholas

  Madel, Sir David

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  Malone, Gerald

  Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

  Mans, Keith

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Marlow, Tony

  Spink, Dr Robert

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Spring, Richard

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Sproat, Iain

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  Mates, Michael

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Mawhinney, Rt Hon Dr Brian

  Steen, Anthony

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Stephen, Michael

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Stern, Michael

  Merchant, Piers

  Stewart, Allan

  Milligan, Stephen

  Streeter, Gary

  Mills, Iain

  Sumberg, David

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Sweeney, Walter

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

  Sykes, John

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Taylor, John M. (Solihull)

  Moss, Malcolm

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Needham, Richard

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Nelson, Anthony

  Thomason, Roy

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Thurnham, Peter

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Norris, Steve

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

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Tracey, Richard

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Tredinnick, David

  Ottaway, Richard

  Trend, Michael

  Page, Richard

  Trotter, Neville

  Paice, James

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Patnick, Irvine

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Viggers, Peter

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Pawsey, James

  Walden, George

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Pickles, Eric

  Waller, Gary

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Ward, John

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Waterson, Nigel

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Watts, John

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Wells, Bowen

  Ronton, Rt Hon Tim

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Richards, Rod

  Whitney, Ray

  Riddick, Graham

  Whittingdale, John

  Rifkind, Rt Hon. Malcolm

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Robathan, Andrew

  Wiggin, Sir Jerry

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Wilkinson, John

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

  Willetts, David

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Wilshire, David

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'f'ld)

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

  Wolfson, Mark

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Wood, Timothy

  Sackville, Tom

  Yeo, Tim

  Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Sydney Chapman.

  Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments):—
  The House divided: Ayes 316, Noes 275.

  Division No. 93]

  [10.17 pm

  AYES

  Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

  Dover, Den

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Duncan, Alan

  Alexander, Richard

  Duncan-Smith, Iain

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Dunn, Bob

  Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Amess, David

  Eggar, Tim

  Ancram, Michael

  Elletson, Harold

  Arbuthnot, James

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Ashby, David

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

  Atkins, Robert

  Evennett, David

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Faber, David

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Fabricant, Michael

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Baldry, Tony

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Bates, Michael

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Batiste, Spencer

  Forman, Nigel

  Bellingham, Henry

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Forth, Eric

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  Body, Sir Richard

  Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  French, Douglas

  Booth, Hartley

  Fry, Sir Peter

  Boswell, Tim

  Gale, Roger

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Gallie, Phil

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Bowden, Andrew

  Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

  Bowis, John

  Garnier, Edward

  Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

  Gill, Christopher

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Brazier, Julian

  Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

  Bright, Graham

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Gorst, John

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Burns, Simon

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Burt, Alistair

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Butcher, John

  Grylls, Sir Michael

  Butler, Peter

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Butterfill, John

  Hague, William

  Carlisle, John (Luton North)

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Cash, William

  Hannam, Sir John

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hargreaves, Andrew

  Churchill, Mr

  Harris, David

  Clappison, James

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Hawkins, Nick

  Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

  Hawksley, Warren

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Hayes, Jerry

  Coe, Sebastian

  Heald, Oliver

  Colvin, Michael

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Congdon, David

  Hendry, Charles

  Conway, Derek

  Hicks, Robert

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence L.

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

  Cormack, Patrick

  Horam, John

  Couchman, James

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Cran, James

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

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

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

  Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Day, Stephen

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Deva, Nirj Joseph

  Hunter, Andrew

  Devlin, Tim

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Dicks, Terry

  Jack, Michael

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Jenkin, Bernard

  393

  Jessel, Toby

  Richards, Rod

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Riddick, Graham

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Rifkind, Rt Hon. Malcolm

  Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

  Robathan, Andrew

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

  Key, Robert

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Kilfedder, Sir James

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

  Knapman, Roger

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Sackville, Tom

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim

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

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Knox, Sir David

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Shersby, Michael

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Sims, Roger

  Legg, Barry

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Leigh, Edward

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Lennox-Boyd, Mark

  Soames, Nicholas

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Lidington, David

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  Lightbown, David

  Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Peter (Fareham)

  Spink, Dr Robert

  Luff, Peter

  Spring, Richard

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Sproat, Iain

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  MacKay, Andrew

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Maclean, David

  Steen, Anthony

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Stephen, Michael

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Stern, Michael

  Madel, Sir David

  Stewart, Allan

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Streeter, Gary

  Malone, Gerald

  Sumberg, David

  Mans, Keith

  Sweeney, Walter

  Marlow, Tony

  Sykes, John

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Taylor, John M. (Solihull)

  Mates, Michael

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Mawhinney, Rt Hon Dr Brian

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Thomason, Roy

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

  Merchant, Piers

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Milligan, Stephen

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Mills, Iain

  Thurnham, Peter

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

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

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Tracey, Richard

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Tredinnick, David

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Trend, Michael

  Moss, Malcolm

  Trotter, Neville

  Needham, Richard

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Nelson, Anthony

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Viggers, Peter

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Walden, George

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Waller, Gary

  Norris, Steve

  Ward, John

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Waterson, Nigel

  Ottaway, Richard

  Watts, John

  Page, Richard

  Wells, Bowen

  Paice, James

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Whitney, Ray

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Whittingdale, John

  Pawsey, James

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Wiggin, Sir Jerry

  Pickles, Eric

  Wilkinson, John

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Willetts, David

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Wilshire, David

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'f'ld)

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Wolfson, Mark

  Ronton, Rt Hon Tim

  Wood, Timothy

  394

  Yeo, Tim

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Mr. Sydney Chapman and Mr. Irvine Patnick.

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Eastham, Ken

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Enright, Derek

  Ainger, Nick

  Etherington, Bill

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Allen, Graham

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret

  Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

  Fatchett, Derek

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Flynn, Paul

  Ashton, Joe

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Austin-Walker, John

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Foulkes, George

  Barnes, Harry

  Fraser, John

  Barron, Kevin

  Fyfe, Maria

  Battle, John

  Galloway, George

  Bayley, Hugh

  Gapes, Mike

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  Garrett, John

  Bell, Stuart

  George, Bruce

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Gerrard, Neil

  Bennett, Andrew F.

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Benton, Joe

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Godsiff, Roger

  Berry, Dr. Roger

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Betts, Clive

  Gordon, Mildred

  Blair, Tony

  Graham, Thomas

  Blunkett, David

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Boateng, Paul

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Bradley, Keith

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Grocott, Bruce

  Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Gunnell, John

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

  Hain, Peter

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Hall, Mike

  Burden, Richard

  Hanson, David

  Byers, Stephen

  Hardy, Peter

  Caborn, Richard

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Callaghan, Jim

  Harvey, Nick

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Henderson, Doug

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Heppell, John

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Canavan, Dennis

  Hinchliffe, David

  Cann, Jamie

  Hoey, Kate

  Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

  Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  Home Robertson, John

  Clapham, Michael

  Hood, Jimmy

  Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

  Hoon, Geoffrey

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Coffey, Ann

  Hoyle, Doug

  Cohen, Harry

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Connarty, Michael

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Corbett, Robin

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hume, John

  Cousins, Jim

  Hutton, John

  Cryer, Bob

  Ingram, Adam

  Cummings, John

  Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Jamieson, David

  Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr John

  Janner, Greville

  Dafis, Cynog

  Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

  Davidson, Ian

  Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

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

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Denham, John

  Jowell, Tessa

  Dewar, Donald

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Dixon, Don

  Keen, Alan

  Dobson, Frank

  Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Dowd, Jim

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Leighton, Ron

  395

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Lewis, Terry

  Mudie, George

  Litherland, Robert

  Mullin, Chris

  Livingstone, Ken

  Murphy, Paul

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Loyden, Eddie

  O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  O'Brien, William (Normanton)

  McAllion, John

  Olner, William

  McAvoy, Thomas

  O'Neill, Martin

  McCartney, Ian

  Parry, Robert

  McCrea, Rev William

  Patchett, Terry

  Macdonald, Calum

  Pendry, Tom

  McFall, John

  Pickthall, Colin

  McKelvey, William

  Pike, Peter L.

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Pope, Greg

  McLeish, Henry

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Maclennan, Robert

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

  McMaster, Gordon

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  McNamara, Kevin

  Prescott, John

  McWilliam, John

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Madden, Max

  Purchase, Ken

  Maddock, Mrs Diana

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Mahon, Alice

  Radice, Giles

  Mandelson, Peter

  Randall, Stuart

  Marek, Dr John

  Raynsford, Nick

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Redmond, Martin

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

  Reid, Dr John

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn

  Rendel, David

  Martlew, Eric

  Richardson, Jo

  Maxton, John

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  Meacher, Michael

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

  Meale, Alan

  Roche, Mrs. Barbara

  Michael, Alun

  Rogers, Allan

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Rooker, Jeff

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

  Rooney, Terry

  Milburn, Alan

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Miller, Andrew

  Rowlands, Ted

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Ruddock, Joan

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Sheerman, Barry

  Morley, Elliot

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (Wy'nshawe)

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

  Short, Clare

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Simpson, Alan

  396

  Skinner, Dennis

  Vaz, Keith

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

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

  Wallace, James

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

  Walley, Joan

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Warden, Gareth (Gower)

  Snape, Peter

  Wareing, Robert N

  Soley, Clive

  Watson, Mike

  Spearing, Nigel

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Spellar, John

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Sw'n W)

  Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  Wilson, Brian

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Winnick, David

  Stevenson, George

  Wise, Audrey

  Stott, Roger

  Worthington, Tony

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Wray, Jimmy

  Straw, Jack

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Tipping, Paddy

  Mr. Jack Thompson and Mr. Eric Illsley.

  Turner, Dennis

  Tyler, Paul

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That this House welcomes the fact that the Government is set to surpass its manifesto commitment to produce 153,000 homes in the first three years of this Parliament by 25,000; notes with approval the reduction in the number of families accepted as statutory homeless and temporarily housed in bed and breakfast accommodation; notes that the size of the nation's housing stock has grown faster than population growth over the last 15 years and its quality has improved and that the mortgage rate is now at its lowest since the 1960s as a result of the Government's economic policies; commends the Government's policies to secure decent housing for those in need, to provide a safety net for vulnerable people faced with losing their home and to provide more opportunities for home ownership; and calls on Her Majesty's Opposition to condemn the actions of those Labour-controlled councils who wasted taxpayers' money through mismanagement of their housing stock, failure to collect rents and the imposition of high council taxes.

  District General Hospital (Norwich)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Andrew Mitchell.]
  10.32 pm
  Mr. John Garrett: My subject is the proposal for a new district general hospital in Norwich, and the inordinate delay in providing it.
  The proposal for a new district general hospital was first considered in the late 1960s. We have since had nearly 30 years of delay and confusion in the project. In April 1973, Norwich was promised a second hospital. In October 1986, plans for an 800-bed, £48 million multi-purpose hospital at Hellesdon in Norwich were sent to Whitheall for approval. In July 1987, the then Secretary of State told Norwich health authority to consider a new site at Colney, just outside the city of Norwich. In December 1987, the regional health authority voted for Colney and performed what was, at that time, a U-turn in its policy. It is difficult to understand the status of the authority, which was able to overrule local opinion over the location of the hospital.
  In February 1990, the Government approved plans for a 920-bed £104 million hospital at Colney. In April 1991, the Norwich health authority announced a complete rethink of the design and bed numbers for the new hospital, and it then became apparent that we were down to about 700 beds. In February 1992, plans were unveiled to shut the Norfolk and Norwich hospital—the main hospital at present—when the new one at Colney was opened. At that time, construction of the new hospital was due to start in 1994, with completion in 1999. In May 1993, the Government appointed a so-called regional task force to investigate whether the new hospital—now with an estimated cost of £150 million—was the best option for future acute service health care in the district.
  It is estimated that, so far, £2·5 million has been poured into the scheme, which consists of a notice and a sugar beet field. The site cost is £1·5 million; the infrastructure, drainage and landscaping cost is £600,000; and thousands of hours of administrative and management time have been spent on the scheme.
  The latest news is that, last summer, the business case for the development of acute services in Norwich was submitted for consideration by an ad hoc task force of regional health authority and National Health Service Management Executive officers. On 21 July 1993, we learned that the task force was unable to recommend that the business case should be considered further by the Management Executive, the Secretary of State or the Treasury.
  The reasons for the task force's decision were principally that it believed that the proposed bed numbers for the future acute hospital services were to high—for two reasons: first, because the planned performance levels in some specialties were considered too low; and, secondly, because the volume of work that it was planned to divert to the primary health care sector was also considered to be too low—and that Norwich health authority, as the principal purchaser, would not be able to afford the preferred option for a single-site, new district general hospital at Colney lane, and it needed to be considered further.
  After discussion, the authority reaffirmed its view that a single-site hospital at Colney lane, with in-patient services for mentally ill people as an integral part of the district
  398
  general hospital service, was by far the most far-sighted and sensible solution for acute services in Norwich and that this objective remained its clear policy.
  The health authority then decided that the matter should be pursued, with the possible assistance of an external consultancy. Since then, there has been silence, which I hope will be broken tonight, and our health services continue to deteriorate. In September 1993, the Norwich hospitals were fined £9,000 for failing to meet the patients charter standards—with patients waiting more than two years for urology treatment, for example. Last November, a friend of mine was given his first appointment with a consultant for an awkward condition. The appointment date was March 1995. The people of Norfolk, including my constituents, deserve better. Fertility treatment, psychotherapy and cosmetic surgery have been stopped altogether.
  Our local hospital services have suffered for years from chronic underfunding, with increases in allowed spending way below the growth in population, which has been among the highest in the country. They have also suffered from split-site working, with acute services based on the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, the West Norwich hospital, St. Michael's hospital and Aylsham and Cromer. Local medical consultants have written that it is unacceptable for major operations and acute medical care to be undertaken three to 25 miles from coronary and intensive care units and from the blood bank.
  Norwich is the largest district in its large region and the only one not to have major new hospital building during the 1980s. Norwich consultants have developed excellent arrangements with general practice. The medical and support staff are outstandingly committed to patient care in very difficult circumstances. But it cannot go on like this. For one thing, the present arrangements on a split site lead to high-cost services and to unfair disdvantages for our acute units in today's market system.
  If the new hospital has only 600 beds, it may find itself similarly disadvantaged by having far too big an overhead for the volume of treatment it carries out. The Norfolk and Norwich hospital—the main hospital—is clearly obsolete. The tower block construction is wholly unsuitable, with patients being sent up and down in unreliable lifts. There is parking for 400 cars, and every day 3,000 cars arrive. Now, there is a real problem with emergency access.
  The backlog of building maintenance is £20 million, and sewage rises through the floor of the operating theatres in storm conditions, as happened not long ago. Another £20 million-worth of building work is needed for the other local hospitals. The recovery and pre-med rooms are overcrowded, and the cramming of beds makes care difficult. In the main theatre block, the conditions appear to be in breach of the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974.
  Pharmacy, medical records, sterile supplies and the main kitchen have no natural light and poor ventilation. All areas of the electrical system are overloaded, and the standby generator gives only 20 per cent. coverage in case of a power failure. Windows have fallen out of the main tower block—luckily, not causing casualties which might have had to be admitted to the hospital.
  The need for a new hospital has been supported publicly by three Cabinet Ministers, and I assume that their welcome support has been conveyed to the Department of Health. A vigorous campaign covered by Louise Zucchi of the Evening News called Operation Transplant has failed to get any sense whatever out of the Department. When the

  399
  Secretary of State for Health visited Norwich in December 1993, she said that I was a prophet of gloom and doom when I suggested that the Department had little intention of ever building the new hospital.
  She also said that what was needed was practical, diligent work to bring forward practical proposals—a sentence I find almost entirely devoid of meaning. She said that she wanted a state-of-the-art hospital for day surgery, and she admitted that the present split site was a problem which made it difficult to reduce the hours worked by junior doctors. At present, 20 per cent. of junior doctors are working over 83 hours a week.
  I hope that the views of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who is the right hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mrs. Shephard), were given to the Secretary of State for Health. The Eastern Daily Press has reported that the right hon. Lady has claimed that Norfolk's health services are suffering because of the delay in giving the county a much-needed new hospital. The paper reported that she demanded an urgent answer on the issue from the Secretary of State for Health. The Minister for Agriculture, who is herself a former local health authority chairman, also said that local people needed to know where they stood. I do not know if she ever got an answer, but I have never heard of it if she did.
  The Secretary of State for Health, in her flying visit to Norwich, refused an interview with the local media on the subject of the hospital. That was in a week in which the right hon. Lady found time to present a business award to a sex products firm. That also caused a certain amount of media comment. An editorial column in the Eastern Daily Press was headed "Rock Bottomley."
  The paper claimed that the Secretary of State was consistent in her self-publicity, and attacked her for clearing her diary for a glitzy media presentation, but not to talk to the Norfolk public about the state of their hospital service. As an example of ministerial concern, the paper's verdict was "Rock Bottomley". We would all agree with that.
  The questions I have to ask the Minister are very simple. Will the hospital ever be started? If it is intended to go ahead, when will the building start? What size will the hospital be? What on earth is the task force up to?
  I have genuinely no wish to make any political capital out of the disaster for Norwich of the NHS reforms, and the two-tier system which they have introduced. I have no desire to make political capital out of the stress caused to patients and to staff by the squalid conditions which exist and by the uncertainty of the future acute services in the district. I know that the district has had changes of management, and changes in its area of coverage.
  I know that the change of site was a complication. In my view, it was unnecessary. Yet the ball has been in the Government's court for more than five years. I hear that in other regions, the Government plan to close large hospitals wherever possible. But the critical need in Norwich for a major investment in acute services is agreed by all the parties in the matter—the staff, the ancillary workers, the GPs, the consultants and the local Members of Parliament.
  Feeling on the subject is running high in the city of Norwich, and the stalling simply has to stop. I want plain answers to my simple questions.
  10.45 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville): I am glad to have the opportunity to answer the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) on this important topic. The subject of a new hospital for Norwich has been raised on many occasions. It has been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) in an Adjournment debate and on other occasions. I note with interest the presence in the Chamber of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Ryder), who has taken a strong interest in the matter on behalf of his constituents.
  I also see that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Carttiss) is here. He is noted for his championing of the cause of the James Paget hospital in his constituency. I have also heard from other colleagues, including the Member of the European Parliament, Mr. Howell, who has taken an active role in the matter. I have heard often from him on the subject. So I am fully aware of the strength of feeling on the matter and how important it is to people living all around Norfolk.
  The description given by the hon. Member for Norwich, South of the hospital and the local health service did not give due credit to it. He quoted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State as calling him a prophet of doom, and today he gave us a gloomy picture. He gave no credit for all the successes of the hospital or to the thousands of people who work for the health service in the area. That was remiss of him, but I am afraid that it is typical of him and his colleagues and of their approach to the health service.
  Mr. Garrett: That simply is not true. I went out of my way to congratulate the medical consultants, the local GPs and the people who work in the hospitals in Norwich, under the most difficult conditions, most of which are due to the Government's policy.
  Mr. Sackville: If I may return to his words on the subject of the planning of the hospital, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that plans were put forward for the hospital which have proved to be unsuitable and inappropriate. The plan known as Norwich 2 was a very large scheme for a hospital of more than 1,000 beds at the high cost of almost £150 million. It is not surprising that the task force from my Department and others who examined the plan found that some rather optimistic projections had been made.
  In the light of the changes that are taking place in the health service—especially the rapid growth in day surgery and the transfer of many services to the community and to primary care—we are not likely to see hospitals of that size in the future. That is not to say that there should not be redevelopment in Norwich. I am sure that a good case can be made for that.
  The hon. Member mentioned the visit of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to Norwich. His description of it was somewhat selective. The quotes that I have include one from an editorial in the Eastern Daily Press entitled "Golden Virginia". It praised my right hon. Friend for giving a strong suggestion that it should be possible to consider sympathetically any practical and realistic scheme for a hospital development. She said:
  "We are sympathetic to the provision of a new hospital so long as it is well planned and well founded."

  401
  My right hon. Friend is quite right, because, given some of the changes that I have enumerated, a new hospital in Norwich might prove too large for the job that it must undertake. In a few years, if there is too much capacity in the hospital, the health authority will be left with an extremely expensive building and facilities. It will have to cope with all the revenue consequences of that, which will impact on the services that it is able to offer patients. It is important that we get it right.
  As the hon. Gentleman said, the Norwich 2 plan was withdrawn. I am informed that, should my right hon. Friend decide that the acute unit should become a trust, the health authority, in tandem with that trust, will put together a business case for a hospital development appropriate to the needs of the local population. It is important that they assess that case correctly and that whatever is built is economic and efficient and can optimise the resources available to the local health authority.
  It would be unwise to be too pessimistic about that. Many people try to claim that the health service is
  402
  underfunded and short of resources, but I must remind the hon. Gentleman that, for next year alone, the Treasury has allocated £1·5 billion for capital developments in the health service.
  Mr. Garrett: Will we get any of that?
  Mr. Sackville: If the business case is, as my right hon. Friend said,
  "well planned and well founded",
  there is no reason why a development should not take place in Norwich. There are problems with the current acute services, but the hon. Gentleman's description of them was extremely ungenerous. Money is available for developments appropriate to local patient needs.
  I have no reason to suppose that any business case that is submitted will not be sympathetically considered. I hope that it will reinforce and continue the tradition of excellent health care that already exists in Norfolk.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Stockton-on-Tees County Court
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what future use his Department intends for Stockton-on-Tees county court.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Lord Chancellor consented on 5 March 1993 to public consultation on the proposal by the circuit administrator for the north-eastern circuit to close Stockton-on-Tees county court. The responses to that consultation are being considered and a decision by the Lord Chancellor will be made shortly. If the court were closed, the present court building would be sold.

  Barristers
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what efforts are being made to ensure that newly qualified barristers are fully utilised.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The legal profession is independent and self regulating and the Government do not control the utilisation of newly qualified, or any other, members of the profession. These are matters which are properly the province of the professional bodies to consider.

  Ethnic Minority Seminars
  Lady Olga Maitland
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what is the purpose of the seminars on ethnic minorities to be undertaken by all judges; how many seminars are taking place; where they are held; on what dates; at what cost in each case; what are the exact topics to be discussed; and if he will name those directing the discussions.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  This programme of seminars is arranged by the Judicial Studies Board. Its purpose is to enhance the awareness of judges, recorders and assistant recorders of ethnic minority issues which may assist them. The seminars will be held at locations throughout England and Wales over the next two years; a detailed programme is being prepared. The Lord Chancellor supports this programme and has allocated a sum of over £900,000.

ENVIRONMENT

  Minewater Pollution
  Mr. Etherington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list for each year since 1988 all organisations or projects investigating minewater pollution which have received, or are receiving, financial or grant aid support from his Department.

  Mr. Atkins
  Comprehensive information in the form required is not readily available. However, the National 242
  Rivers Authority is currently funding a pilot project at the Wheal Jane tin mine in Cornwall devoted to identifying low cost treatment options. The NRA is jointly funding, with the British Oxygen Company Foundation for Environmental and Community Research, projects to examine low cost treatment technologies for discharges from disused mines involving the River Pelena in south Wales and the Little Don in Yorkshire. The NRA is also collaborating in a study with the Welsh Development Agency into the efficiency of engineered wetlands for the removal of metals and acidity from discharges from abandoned mines.

  Mr. Etherington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he or his Department last held meetings with(a) the National Rivers Authority and (b) British coal to discuss minewater pollution in the Durham coalfield.

  Mr. Atkins
  My Department maintains regular contact with the National Rivers Authority about this and other issues. Liaison with British Coal is a matter for the NRA, and there are well-established arrangements.

  Mr. Etherington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will place in the Library a copy of the Wardell-Armstrong report on minewater pollution.

  Mr. Atkins
  Additional copies of Wardell Armstrong's final report on the potential impact of ceasing mine dewatering in the south-western part of the Durham coalfield are being produced. They will be placed in the House Library as soon as they are available.

  Environmental Information Regulations 1992
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the operation of the Environmental Information Regulations 1992 since they came into force.

  Mr. Atkins
  The Government introduced the Environmental Information Regulations just over a year ago, and they seem to be meeting their purpose.

  Radiation Monitoring Scheme
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to implement the Government's proposals for a radiation monitoring system and public warning network; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  The RIMNET national radiation monitoring and nuclear emergency response system, set up as part of the national response plan for dealing with overseas nuclear accidents, has been operating since 1988. Details of the system are given in the HMSO booklet, "The National Response Plan and Radioactive Incident Monitoring Network (RIMNET). Phase 1", copies of which are available in the Library of the House. A contract to extend, automate and provide additional operational facilities for the system is currently approaching completion.

  Biodiversity Convention
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, pursuant to his answer of 18 January,Official Report, column 566, if he will list the 38 countries

  243
  that had ratified the biodiversity convention by 29 December 1993; and if he will list the countries that have ratified the convention since then.

  Mr. Atkins
  Revised information from the United Nations legal office in New York shows that 41 countries had ratified the biodiversity convention by 29 December 1993, rather than the 38 we believed had done so when I answered the hon. Member's earlier question on 18 January. A further two countries have since ratified, and the following is a full list in order of ratification.

  List of countries to ratify the Biodiversity Convention

  Country

  Date of ratification

  1. Mauritius

  4 September 1992

  2. Seychelles

  22 September 1992

  3. Marshall Islands

  8 October 1992

  4. Maldives

  9 November 1992

  5. Monaco

  20 November 1992

  6. Canada

  4 December 1992

  7. China

  5 January 1993

  8. Saint Kitts and Nevis

  7 January 1993

  9. Ecuador

  23 February 1993

  10. Fiji

  25 February 1993

  11. Antigua and Barbuda

  9 March 1993

  12. Mexico

  11 March 1993

  13. Papua New Guinea

  16 March 1993

  14. Vanuatu

  25 March 1993

  15. Cook Islands

  20 April 1993

  16. Guinea

  7 May 1993

  17. Armenia

  14 May 1993

  18. Japan

  28 May 1993

  19. Zambia

  28 May 1993

  20. Peru

  7 June 1993

  21. Australia

  18 June 1993

  22. Norway

  9 July 1993

  23. Tunisia

  15 July 1993

  24. Saint Lucia

  28 July 1993

  25. Burkina Faso

  2 September 1993

  26. Bahamas

  2 September 1993

  27. Belarus

  8 September 1993

  28. Uganda

  8 September 1993

  29. New Zealand

  16 September 1993

  30. Mongolia

  30 September 1993

  31. Philippines

  8 October 1993

  32. Uruguay

  5 November 1993

  33. Nauru

  11 November 1993

  34. Jordan

  12 November 1993

  35. Nepal

  23 November 1993

  36. Barbados

  10 December 1993

  37. Sweden

  16 December 1993

  38. Denmark

  21 December 1993

  39. Germany

  21 December 1993

  40. Portugal

  21 December 1993

  41. Spain

  21 December 1993

  42. Belize

  30 December 1993

  43. Albania

  5 January 1994

  European Community

  21 December 1993

  Olympic Games
  Mr. Litherland
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has examined the accounts for the Manchester Olympic Bid Committee; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Baldry
  The Manchester Olympic Bid Committee was established under the Companies Acts as a company limited by guarantee. It has no legal link with my Department.

  However, since the company received £2·2 million in grant on a pound for pound basis to cover the cost of
  244
  preparing the bid, my department carried out an internal audit to access the adequacy of the arrangements established by the company to safeguard public funds. The report found that the accounting arrangements were generally satisfactory and the terms of the grant letter were being met.

  My right hon. Friend expects to receive a copy of the final audited accounts in due course.

  Mr. Litherland
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what was the cost of the commitment given by the Sports Council, the Department of National Heritage and the Prime Minister, including all travel costs, of the Manchester olympic bid campaign.

  Mr. Baldry
  The Government committed some £75 million to support the Manchester olympic bid. This comprised £35·5 million for the arena; up to £30 million for the acquisition and clearance of the Eastlands site, which is ongoing; £6·4 million for the velodrome, plus £2 million from the Sports Council; £2·2 million to support the activities of the Manchester Olympic Bid Committee.

  The Prime Minister and Ministers from a number of Government Departments met International Olympic Committee members on a number of occasions at home and overseas to discuss the olympic bid. Most of the meetings took place in the course of normal departmental business and, therefore, the costs fell within existing departmental running cost budgets. Information about these costs is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Bed-and-Breakfast Accommodation
  Mrs. Golding
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what is the accident rate for children living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for the last year that figures are available;

  (2) how many families with children are currently living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation in (a) England and (b) Wales.

  Sir George Young
  The information for England is not available centrally and my Department has no estimates.

  For information about Wales, I refer the hon. Member to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.

  South-East Planning Guidance
  Mr. Peter Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to publish regional planning guidance for the south-east.

  Mr. Baldry
  The. regional planning guidance for the south-east will be published as soon as possible.

  Council House Sales
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list for each local authority in London the total discounted value of houses and flats sold by them in each year since 1980–81.

  Sir George Young
  The total reported discounted values of dwellings sold by local authorities in London in the years 1980–81 to 1992–93 are given in the table. Actual cash receipts in any year will depend on the extent to which sales were financed by loans from the authorities.
  245

  Discounted Value of Sales in London

  £ thousand

  Local authority

  1980–81

  1981–82

  1982–83

  1983–84

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  1989–90

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  Barking and Dagenham

  0

  7,802

  29,152

  11,262

  10,705

  14,222

  n/a

  20,000

  45,116

  26,984

  13,724

  10,680

  n/a

  Barnet

  3,664

  5,371

  8,041

  13,595

  13,499

  12,367

  13,065

  19,787

  21,203

  0

  9,431

  6,714

  3,818

  Bexley

  4,761

  6,297

  4,041

  5,033

  3,925

  4,179

  4,844

  7,156

  11,580

  n/a

  n/a

  3,315

  4,022

  Brent

  22

  3,194

  6,794

  5,669

  n/a

  n/a

  7,032

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  21,590

  7,932

  n/a

  Bromley

  5,626

  8,608

  9,470

  10,563

  14,929

  11,848

  13,251

  23,286

  28,124

  14,713

  n/a

  9,013

  116,888

  Camden

  10

  346

  5,221

  1,950

  25

  1,799

  4,611

  20

  18,663

  41,037

  32,158

  14,103

  n/a

  City of London

  0

  3,496

  10,997

  5,585

  3,408

  9,230

  16,088

  15,497

  16,795

  8,117

  3,399

  3,755

  3,993

  Croydon

  3,927

  10,088

  10,717

  10,599

  9,485

  13,522

  n/a

  20,353

  26,744

  18,850

  8,749

  10,912

  5,671

  Ealing

  9,327

  11,643

  10,620

  n/a

  7,307

  10,475

  12,190

  11,794

  0

  n/a

  17,663

  n/a

  n/a

  Enfield

  3,891

  5,513

  8,245

  13,704

  13,610

  9,733

  11,915

  15,608

  31,955

  27,236

  13,518

  8,819

  4,978

  Greater London Council

  95,279

  43,700

  19,768

  11,209

  6,276

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Greenwich

  0

  3,029

  15,062

  6,301

  5,980

  7,932

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  9,891

  8,462

  Hackney

  n/a

  390

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  n/a

  14,570

  n/a

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  2,329

  5,853

  6,421

  5,291

  7,047

  7,979

  7,083

  6,600

  15,525

  11,429

  13,587

  7,706

  4,211

  Haringey

  0

  5,883

  8,268

  4,713

  6,413

  7,076

  n/a

  n/a

  19,847

  27,359

  17,492

  10,701

  n/a

  Harrow

  1,739

  3,514

  6,093

  4,315

  3,647

  5,118

  5,724

  8,343

  12,338

  7,776

  4,552

  4,377

  3,596

  Havering

  427

  4,777

  6,175

  7,632

  6,889

  6,632

  n/a

  11,960

  19,150

  16,672

  7,495

  4,274

  4,388

  Hillingdon

  n/a

  13,069

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  Hounslow

  49

  4,082

  12,867

  8,830

  4,888

  6,443

  6,655

  12,329

  n/a

  20,741

  20,357

  11,507

  7,885

  Islington

  30

  1,791

  6,082

  4,767

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  9,785

  23,298

  33,745

  29,304

  13,525

  11,266

  Kensington and Chelsea

  1,088

  4,394

  4,521

  2,232

  1,700

  2,379

  5,291

  3,971

  6,701

  n/a

  7,499

  n/a

  n/a

  Kingston upon Thames

  2,381

  2,553

  5,727

  4,190

  2,488

  3,073

  3,009

  2,535

  6,504

  7,518

  3,701

  3,344

  2,397

  Lambeth

  0

  507

  4,453

  n/a

  128

  318

  n/a

  n/a

  13,632

  15,444

  30,221

  21,409

  11,611

  Lewisnam

  0

  2,665

  12,387

  n/a

  4,981

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  14,191

  11,397

  Merton

  6,536

  12,173

  4,799

  6,168

  10,424

  4,607

  9,755

  n/a

  0

  n/a

  8,772

  5,492

  4,146

  Newham

  1,400

  2,925

  15,744

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  0

  0

  0

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  Redbridge

  3,080

  4,657

  5,802

  6,063

  5,390

  n/a

  4,369

  5,570

  9,583

  n/a

  9,680

  5,487

  4,190

  Richmond upon Thames

  1,500

  1,336

  4,497

  4,458

  5,296

  5,902

  3,520

  8,196

  14,151

  10,099

  6,108

  5,884

  4,196

  Southwark

  60

  2,512

  7,354

  4,257

  3,757

  5,449

  3,883

  n/a

  n/a

  38,448

  34,232

  n/a

  n/a

  Sutton

  2,201

  3,318

  4,542

  6,386

  7,561

  5,940

  6,178

  7,726

  12,901

  9,518

  6,025

  3,927

  2,801

  Tower Hamlets

  0

  227

  2,986

  1,957

  1,552

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  53,754

  n/a

  Waltham Forest

  0

  7,339

  9,324

  6,695

  6,582

  n/a

  n/a

  n/a

  14,307

  18,139

  7,706

  4,848

  n/a

  Wandsworth

  10,903

  24,023

  19,073

  21,647

  30,703

  37,411

  32,494

  49,354

  67,616

  72,806

  37,031

  25,842

  19,959

  Westminster

  3,506

  1,602

  5,399

  n/a

  n/a

  8,661

  10,092

  12,515

  43,007

  61,357

  27,935

  14,767

  10,454

  n/a=Not available.

  Rent-a-room Scheme
  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will estimate the number of lettings of spare rooms which have been made available in consequence of the rent-a-room scheme under which owners receive tax relief on certain income from lodgers.

  Sir George Young
  Information about the number of rooms let under the rent-a-room scheme can be obtained only from housing surveys. No data are available as yet.

  Housing, Wandsworth
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions he has had with the London borough of Wandsworth as to the service charges that are imposed by the authority on people living in properties that they have purchased from the borough; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir George Young
  Service charges imposed by a local authority as a freeholder on individual leaseholders are a matter for that authority. The London borough of Wandsworth is participating in a survey of charging practice, commissioned by the Department. The findings should inform good practice guidance we propose to issue in the summer.

  Home Insulation
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to institute a national programme to insulate homes; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Atkins
  My Department already operates a national programme to insulate homes. The home energy 246
  efficiency scheme—HEES—was introduced on 1 January 1991 and provides grants in England, Scotland and Wales to householders on low incomes for the installation of loft, tank and pipe insulation, draughtproofing and energy advice. There is a similar scheme in Northern Ireland. In April 1994 the provision for HEES is to be almost doubled and the scheme extended to pensioners and the disabled.

  Letting Agents
  Mr. Bendall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will consider bringing letting agents within the scope of the Estate Agents Act 1979 so as to protect the public against loss of deposits and other malpractices and to ensure that letting agents are properly regulated.

  Sir George Young
  The Accommodation Agencies Act 1953 already regulates the activities of letting agencies. This makes it an offence to take money for registering the name or requirements of someone seeking a tenancy of a dwelling, to charge for supplying addresses of dwellings to be let and to advertise a dwelling, without the owner's authority, as being available to let. We consulted on the value of the Act towards the end of last year and decided, in the light of responses received, to maintain it in its present form.

  In addition, a number of trade associations, such as the Association of Residential Letting Agents already promote good practice throughout the industry by means of codes of practice and bonding schemes. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors is preparing a code of practice on the management of residential property.
  247

  Local Authority Asset Sales
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish a table showing(a) the value of sales by each local authority of (i) parks and open space and (ii) other outside sports and playing fields in (1) 1991–92 and (2) 1992–93 approximated to the nearest £1,000 and (b) the total value of assets sold in each of those service categories by all local authorities in each of those years.

  Mr. Baldry
  The total value of fixed assets sold in the service categories specified is summarised in the table.

  £'000

  1991–92

  1992–931

  Parks and open spaces

  16,901

  23,924

  Golf courses

  205

  768

  Other outside sports/playing fields

  1,824

  644

  1Provisional figures.

  Source: Local Authority Capital Outtum Returns.

  I am arranging for information on the sale of fixed assets in these service categories, for each local authority, to be placed in the Library of the House.

  Wildlife Injuries, Lancashire
  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many sea birds and other wild life have been found dead or injured off the Lancashire coast in the last month; what information he has to the causes; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Norris
  I have been asked to reply.

  The pollution incident off the coast of Lancashire was reported to the Department of Transport's marine pollution control unit on 1 January. More than 700 sea birds have been affected, but there are no reports of other wildlife being harmed. Samples of the substance recovered from the coastline and samples from a cargo of lubricating oil additives discharged at Eastham near Liverpool on 30 December by the tanker Stolt Kestrel have been analysed by the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. They have concluded that the two samples originated from the same source.

  These particular additives are category D substances—the least harmful category—under the relevant provisions of the International Maritime Organisation—"MARPOL 73/78". The owner of the Stolt Kestrel, the Stolt Nielsen Group, has said that after unloading its cargo the Stolt Kestrel washed its tanks more than 12 nautical miles offshore in the Irish sea in accordance with the International Maritime Organisation regulations for category D substances, which permit discharges of mixtures of not more than one part of substance to 10 parts of water. The permitted discharge of washings from tankers carrying noxious liquid substances in bulk is presently under discussion in the IMO with a view to making discharge provisions more stringent.

  The marine pollution control unit is discussing the Laboratory of the Government Chemist report with the Stolt Nielsen Group which is considering its position. The group has already announced that it will no longer wash at sea tanks which have carried these additives.
  248

ATTORNEY GENERAL

  Crown Prosecution Service
  Mr. Brazier
  To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to his answer of 14 December,Official Report, column 1049, when he expects to inform the House of the results of the survey of cases discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service during November 1993.

  The Attorney-General
  I have today placed a copy of the findings in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.

  Incitement to Racial Hatred
  Mr. Peter Shore
  To ask the Attorney-General, pursuant to his answer of 17 December,Official Report, column 1051, how many cases of alleged incitement to racial hatred under the Public Order Act 1986 were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service in each year since 1987.

  The Attorney-General
  The Crown Prosecution Service does not maintain records of files submitted to it by the police, or correspondence from members of the public, categorised by the type of offence alleged to have been committed. The information sought is therefore not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Brian Charrington
  Mr. John Morris
  To ask the Attorney-General if he will list the persons present in addition to the Solicitor-General at the meeting he chaired of defence and prosecution counsel dealing with the case of Mr. Brian Charrington.

  The Attorney-General
  Those present at the meeting were, in addition to the Solicitor-General and myself, leading counsel for the prosecution, leading counsel for Mr. Brian Charrington, two lawyers from HM Customs and Excise and two lawyers from my own Department.

  "Back to Basics"
  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Attorney-General what working definition of "back to basics" is used by his Department; and what his Department has done in the past three months to implement the policy.

  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Attorney-General what are the implications of the Government's "back to basics" policy for his Department during the current year.

  The Solicitor-General
  [holding answer 20 January 1994]: I refer the hon. Members to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 21 January 1994, Official Report, column 849.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Domestic Electricity
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will agree to the proposal by the Comité Européen des Normes to standardise on the continental two-pin unfused star ring system for domestic electricity.
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  Mr. Eggar
  CENELEC, the body responsible for European electrical standards, is working on draft standards for a future European plug and socket system. While the standards under discussion would not incorporate a fuse in the plug, an equivalent level of protection would be achieved either by a suitable fuse or circuit breaker at the consumer unit or by the incorporation of a fuse in the socket. Moreover, the CENELEC work includes provision for sleeved pins on plugs, shuttered sockets and a three-pin plug for those appliances which need earth protection.

  If these discussions result in a European standard, the United Kingdom will need to consider whether to adopt it or seek a derogation. In this assessment, safety will be paramount.

  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what costs will accrue from standardisation to the continental two-pin unfused star ring system for domestic users.

  Mr. Eggar
  My Department has commissioned an independent analysis of the likely costs and benefits for the United Kingdom of adopting a future European plug and socket standard. The final report from the consultants is expected within a few weeks and will be published in the spring to form the basis for wider consultation on this issue. In assessing whether the change to the United Kingdom's present standards might be desirable, full account will be taken of the cost implications for consumers and industry.

  "Back to Basics"
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what are the implications of the Government's "Back to Basics" policy for his Department during 1994.

  Mr. Hesetline
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply given to him by my right hon. Friend the prime minister on 21 January,Official Report, column 849.

  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of the Board of Trade what working definition of "back to basics" policies is used by this Department; and what his department has done in the past three months to implement the policy.

  Mr. Hesetline
  [holding answers 20 January 1994]: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) on 21 January, Official Report, column 849.

  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Eggar
  My Department does not classify consultancy contracts in terms of their activity and the information requested cannot be provided other than at disproportionate cost.
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  Pit Closures
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will take measures to ensure that collieries closed by British Coal are put on a care and maintenance basis until he has explored whether or not EC funds are available to help meet the cost of mothballing mines.

  Mr. Eggar
  British Coal applies for EC loans and grants as and when these are available on appropriate terms. For instance, loans to British Coal from the European Coal and Steel Community for financing capital expenditure at deep mines currently amount to £99 million in total. It is for British Coal to decide how to finance any particular project or activity which it might decide to undertake.

  Electricity Generation
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the companies granted licences to build combined cycle gas turbines and the generating capacity of the proposed plant since the EC revoked the restriction on the use of gas for electricity generation.

  Mr. Eggar
  Details of construction consents granted for new CCGT's are contained in tables 10.2 and 10.3 of the White Paper "The Prospects for Coal", Cmnd. 2235. Since the publication of that White Paper, my right hon. Friend has granted further consents under section 36 of the Electricity Act as follows:

  Company

  Location

  Capacity (MW)

  National Power

  Deeside

  Extension to 500

  Staythorpe C

  1,500

  Didcot B

  1,500

  PowerGen

  Connah's Quay

  1,360

  Grovehurst Energy

  Kemsley

  90

  SCA Aylesford

  Aylesford

  100

  Seabank Power

  Seabank

  1,200

  Eastern Generation

  King's Lynn

  380

  Central Power

  Fort Dunlop

  120

  Keadby Developments

  Keadby

  700

  Other stations with a capacity below that for which section 36 consent is necessary—above 50 MW—have received planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Acts.

  Contracting Out
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will halt any further proposals to contract out information-gathering areas of his Department following the findings of the report into business attitudes to the contracting out of statistical inquiry work.

  Mr. Eggar
  There are no plans to contract out statistical inquiry work undertaken by my Department.

  "Prospects for Coal"
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what was the total cost including the expenses of all consultants he has commissioned to help produce the White Paper, "Prospects for Coal".

  Mr. Eggar
  The total cost was £1·4 million.
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  School Fees
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how much his Department spent on private education and boarding school allowances for the children of personnel employed by his Department in each of the last five years; and how many children had their fees paid in each of those years.

  Mr. Eggar
  This expenditure is not identified separately and to provide the information would entail disproportionate cost.

  Power Stations
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what measures his Department is taking to improve the efficiency of British power stations; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Eggar
  The choice of fuel and type of plant for power stations are commercial matters for generators. The major plants constructed recently or for which consent has been given use combined cycle gas turbines which operate at a higher level of energy efficiency than the old plant which they replace.

  The Government support the wider use of combined heat and power plant, which can operate at very high levels of efficiency, wherever this is economic, and have a role in addressing any unnecessary barriers to such developments. On 16 December, the Government announced changes to the regulations governing on-site generation of electricity. These changes should encourage the further development of combined heat and power schemes.

  Tours Direct and New Vista Travel
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether customers of Tours Direct and New Vista Travel were covered by the legislation covering package travel; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  [holding answer 24 January 1994]: In so far as Tours Direct and New Vista Travel were offering packages, customers will have been covered by the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours Regulations 1992.

  General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what improvements in trade opportunities for British companies he expects to result from the GATT, with particular reference to trade with the United States.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 25 January 1994]: Improved trade opportunities for British exporters will come from higher world growth, reductions in industrial tariffs, the inclusion of services and intellectual property in the multilateral trading system for the first time, improved trade rules and a more stable international trading environment. The average cut in bound tariff rates on exports of industrial products from the European Community to the United States is 49 per cent. Tariffs will be eliminated completely on agricultural equipment, beer, construction equipment, furniture, medical equipment, paper, pharmaceuticals, certain spirits, steel and toys. The new agreement on Government procurement will open up purchases worth over £200 billion worldwide per year to United Kingdom suppliers of goods and services.
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  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what assessment he has made of the effect of the GATT on the competitiveness of British industry.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 25 January 1994]: British industry will benefit from higher world growth and from the reduction of tariffs on imports of components and raw materials into the United Kingdom. British exporters will benefit greatly from the lifting of overseas trade barriers, improved trade rules and a more stable international trading environment.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what commitment has been given by the United States Government as part of the GATT negotiations to reduce(a) direct and (b) indirect subsidies to industries; and what was the overall percentage reduction in subsidies undertaken.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 25 January 1994]: In common with the other GATT signatories, the United States Government will be bound by the terms of the new subsidies agreement which will impose clearer disciplines on subsidies than the present GATT subsidies code. It is too early to say how this will affect the value of any subsidies paid out by the United States Government.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what will be the total reduction in the sum spent by European Governments in the reduction of subsidies to European industries following the GATT agreement.

  Mr. Needham
  [holding answer 25 January 1994]: Except in the field of agriculture, where specific reductions in domestic support and subsidised exports have been agreed, it is too early to say how the GATT agreement will affect the value of any subsidies paid out by European Governments.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Value Added Tax, Southampton
  Mr. Denham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what is his estimate of the amount of uncollected VAT arrears in the area covered by the Southampton Customs and Excise office;

  (2) what was the total number of Customs and Excise officers engaged in VAT inspections in the area covered by the Southampton Customs and Excise office in each year since 1983;

  (3) what was the total number of VAT inspections carried out in the area covered by the Southampton Customs and Excise office in each year since 1983.

  Sir John Cope
  In December 1993, the outstanding VAT debt of registered businesses within the Southampton local VAT office area was just over £10 million.

  Because of the restructuring of local VAT office boundaries and other operational changes, VAT visiting employment figures are not available for the whole period requested. For the years to March 1993 and March 1994, Southampton LVO assigned 43 and 45 officers respectively to such duties.

  Using those staff, 3,962 visits were carried out in the period to March 1993 and it is planned to complete some 3,450 visits by March 1994. The number of visits is not, of

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  itself, an indicator of the efficacy of the visiting programme as businesses are selected in accordance with their risk profile which may vary from year to year.

  Contracting Out
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what areas of statistical work have been contracted out by the Treasury over the past three years.

  Mr. Nelson
  No statistical work has been contracted out by the Treasury over the past three years.

  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will halt any further proposals to contract out information-gathering areas of his Department following the report into "Business Attitudes to the Contracting Out of Statistical Inquiry Work".

  Mr. Nelson
  Any proposals for contracting out statistical work in my Departments will take the report fully into account in assessing value for money. Business concerns about confidentiality and our quality requirements for statistics would obviously be key considerations.

  House Prices
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what rise he expects in the price of a typical house in 1994, 1995 and 1996; and if he will provide figures for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions.

  Mr. Nelson
  Such forecasts are not available.

  Rent-a-room Tax Relief
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many people will benefit from his rent-a-room tax reliefs.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Information about the number of people benefiting from the rent-a-room scheme introduced in the Finance (No. 2) Act 1992 is not yet available.

  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the revenue forgone in consequence of the introduction of the rent-a-room scheme under which owners of property can receive tax relief on certain income for lodgers.

  Mr. Dorrell
  I regret that the information requested is not yet available.

  Value Added Tax (Charities)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much charities are currently paying in VAT; how much benefit they receive from direct tax concessions for giving; and what plans he has to remedy any imbalance.

  Sir John Cope
  Direct tax reliefs on charitable giving are worth about £260 million a year to charities. Other direct tax reliefs benefiting charities are worth a further £480 million, business rates relief £390 million and VAT reliefs £150 million—a total of £1·3 billion a year. Charities estimate that they pay £350 million a year in irrecoverable VAT.

  Value Added Tax (Medical Services)
  Mr. Beith
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) if he will make a statement on the implications for the application of VAT to the provision of medical legal 254
  services of EEC Council directive of 17 May 1977 on the harmonisation of the laws of the member states relating to turnover taxes-common system of VAT: uniform system of assessment—"the sixth directive"; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) if he will make a statement about the application of VAT to the provision of medical services which involve no patient care, including the provision of expert evidence in medical legal cases.

  Sir John Cope
  The professional services of a registered medical practitioner are exempt from VAT in the United Kingdom. This ensures the simple and straightforward application of the exemption and is in accordance with the requirements of the EC sixth VAT directive.

  Insurance Premium Tax
  Mr. Darling
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the number of people who will pay insurance premium tax.

  Sir John Cope
  [holding answer 24 January 1994]: Evidence from the 1991 family expenditure survey suggests that around 16·5 million households—85 per cent. —will pay insurance premium tax.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Traffic Lights, Meriden
  Mr. Mills
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what representations he has received about the installation of traffic lights at the junction of Oak lane and the A45 near Meriden; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  I have received no representations about the installation of traffic lights at the junction of Oak lane and the A45 near Meriden.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Prisoners (Press Interviews)
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) by whom and in what circumstances a journalist was given access to interview Darius Guppy in prison, for and on behalf of Hello! magazine; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) when the Prison Service learned that Darius Guppy was to be interviewed in prison by a journalist;

  (3) on what date Darius Guppy was interviewed in prison for or on behalf of Hello! magazine;

  (4) when and what action was taken by him or the Prison Service on discovering that payments had been made by Hello! magazine for rights to an interview with Darius Guppy in prison.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
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  Letter from Derek Lewis to Mr. Andrew Mackinlay, dated 26 January 1994:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Questions about the article appearing in Hello! magazine on Darius Guppy.
  We do not know when or by what means Hello! conducted the interview with Mr. Guppy, although it could not have been from a prison cell as suggested in the article. He was not given permission to be interviewed in prison, and was not visited in prison by anyone identified as a journalist. The Prison Service was not aware Mr. Guppy had been interviewed until the article was published in Hello!
  I understand that the Press Complaints Commission found Hello! to be in breach of its Code of Practice in making payment for the interview. I similarly deplore such practice. However, I understand payment for the interview was not made to Mr. Guppy but to third parties. Consequently, it would not be a matter over which the prison has any jurisdiction.

  Travel Documents
  Mr. Betts
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department(a) what is the average time currently being taken to process a travel document, (b) how this compares with the target figure in the citizens charter, (c) how many cases have exceeded this target in the last 12 months and (d) what percentage of applications this represents.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  At present, applications for Home Office travel documents made by people accepted as refugees under the terms of the 1951 United Nations convention are taking up to eight weeks to be considered, and other applications about six months. These periods may be exceeded in cases which necessitate further inquiries or which raise other immigration issues. There is no target for this work in the citizens charter. Action is now in hand to process new applications more quickly and tackle the backlog.

  Mr. Betts
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applicants are currently awaiting the processing of travel documents; and what was the application date of the earliest dated application.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  At the end of December 1993, there were 5,099 cases outstanding in the travel document section of the immigration and nationality department. The oldest unactioned travel document application from a person accepted as a refugee was made on 18 November 1993, and from a non-refugee on 14 July 1993.

  Public Bodies
  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department who are the members currently appointed to the Security Service Tribunal.

  Mr. Michael Howard
  The current members of the Security Service Tribunal are the right hon. Lord Justice Simon Brown, president, Sheriff John McInnes QC, vice-president, and Sir Richard Gaskell.

  Mr. Kilfoyle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department who are the members currently appointed to the Interception of Communications Tribunal.

  Mr. Michael Howard
  The current members of the Interception of Communications Tribunal are the hon. Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, TD, president, Sir Cecil Clothier KCB QC, vice-president, Sir David Calcutt QC, Mr. Ivor Guild CBE and Mr. Peter Scott QC.
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  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  Information on external consultancy contracts let by the Home Office since 1979 is not recorded centrally and could be obtained only at a disproportionate cost.

  Safer Cities
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which areas of the Northumbria police force have been included in the safer cities project for 1994–95.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  The safer cities project to be set up in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne will encompass the metropolitan district of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is served by four basic command units within the Northumbria police force, namely—Newcastle central, Newcastle east, Newcastle west and Newcastle north.

  Sunday Trading
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has received from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers in relation to the Sunday Trading Bill; and what response he has given.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  None; but we understand that USDAW wrote to all Members of Parliament in November last year, in support of partial deregulation.

  Visas
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the European Commission's proposed list of countries whose nationals must be in possession of a visa when crossing the external frontiers of member states will come into force.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  When it has been agreed by the Council of Ministers.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will make a statement with regard to the effect on Commonwealth countries of the European Commission's proposals to determine the list of countries whose nationals must be in possession of a visa when crossing the external frontiers of member states;

  (2) if he will make it his policy, in discussions with the European Commission and in the Council of Ministers about the rights of those Commonwealth countries whose nationals are able to visit the United Kingdom without a visa, to ensure that they may continue to do so;

  (3) if he will give undertakings to the Governments of those Commonwealth countries whose nationals are currently able to visit the United Kingdom without a visa that they may continue to do so.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  An explanatory memorandum setting out the Government's response to the Commission's proposals will be submitted shortly.

  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions he has had with the
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  European Commission on maintaining the rights of those Commonwealth countries whose nationals are able to visit the United Kingdom without a visa, when drawing up the list of countries whose nationals must be in possession of a visa when crossing the external frontiers of member states.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  None formally. Formal discussions of the Commission's proposal have only just started.

  Juvenile Offenders
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he has taken to seek a change in the law to make it possible to identify publicly a juvenile who, having been charged with a criminal offence, is unlawfully at large.

  Mr. Maclean
  I refer the hon. Member to clause 37 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill which is now before Parliament.

  Life Sentence Prisoners
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many life sentence prisoners there are in the northern region; how many have been convicted of murder; and how many have been convicted of serious rape cases.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The latest information is for 30 June 1992 when there were 156 persons, of whom 149 were convicted of murder and seven were convicted of rape, serving life sentences in Prison Service establishments in the northern region of England and Wales.

  Accidents (Cyclists)
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many motorists involved in an accident with a cyclist were prosecuted for dangerous driving in(a) 1991, (b) 1992 and (c)

  Mr. Maclean
  Information on whether persons prosecuted for dangerous driving had been involved in accidents with cyclists is not available centrally.

  Domestic Workers
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the Government will now monitor the screening procedures introduced in May 1991 to facilitate the working of the 1980 concession in respect of domestic workers.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  The arrangements for this scheme are kept under close review.

  Charity Commission
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 17 December,Official Report, columns 947–48, what factors led the Charity Commission to believe that some of the payments made by Foundation for Business Responsibilities to Marketforce Communications Ltd. were not justified; what consideration was given to investigating how these payments had been used by Marketforce Communications Ltd.; and if he will make a statement.
  258
  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  As I explained in my answer of 17 December, it was the trustees of the foundation themselves who, during the course of the commissioners' investigation, formed the view that some of the payments made to Marketforce Communications Ltd. may not have been justified. Subsequently, these and all other payments to the company by the foundation were recovered in full. New procedures were adopted by the foundation to prevent similar concerns arising in the future.

  It is for the charity commissioners to decide on the extent and nature of inquiries that are appropriate in a particular case. In this case, the commissioners were satisfied that sufficient action had been taken to protect charitable funds, and that it was not necessary to continue with their inquiries.

  Prisons (Drugs and Alcohol)
  Lady Olga Maitland
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the services on drug and alcohol abuse available in each prison.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Derek Lewis to Lady Olga Maitland, dated 26 January 1994:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about the services for drug and alcohol abuse available in each prison. Detailed information about the services provided in individual prisons relating to drug and alcohol abuse is not collected centrally, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
  There are, however, a number of services available. Detailed information about caring for drug users is set out in Circular Instruction 12/1991 and the resource manual "Caring for Drug Users", copies of which are in the House of Commons Library.
  Provision is made for detoxification of drug users on reception, any necessary medical treatment, and treatment programmes. The latter vary between establishments, but include individual and group counselling work, often run by or in conjunction with voluntary agencies. Arrangements are also made for care after release through probation services and voluntary agencies. Our HIV and AIDS education and training for prisoners include particular mention of the dangers of transmission of the HIV virus for injecting drug users.
  Drug and alcohol abuse is a very high priority for the Prison Service and we are continuing to develop our programmes for dealing with drug and alcohol abusers.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Anguilla
  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the refurbishment of the Governor's mansion in Anguilla is proceeding on time and within cost limits; what is the expected completion date and total cost; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Goodlad
  The first stage of refurbishment of the governor's residence in Anguilla began in April 1993 and was completed in October 1993. The second stage began in December 1993 and is programmed for completion in July 1994. The project suffered some delay at an early stage, but is now proceeding on schedule and within the total works cost estimate of £310,000.
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  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what complaints procedures exist for complaints of political bias or inaccuracy by the media in Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  All complaints are referred by the Director of Information and Broadcasting to the Chief Minister of Anguilla.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what subsidy is paid to Radio Anguilla by Her Majesty's Government.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  No subsidy is paid to Radio Anguilla by Her Majesty's Government.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who is responsible for the appointment and employment of staff at Radio Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  The establishments division of the Government of Anguilla, acting on the recommendation of the Public Service Commission, is responsible for the appointment and employment of staff at Radio Anguilla.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what outstanding applications exist for licences to broadcast from radio stations in Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  There are no outstanding applications for licences to broadcast from radio stations in Anguilla.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the role and responsibility of the Governor of Anguilla regarding complaints against Radio Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Complaints against Radio Anguilla fall within the portfolio of the Chief Minister, not the governor.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will issue guidelines to Radio Anguilla to ensure the political impartiality of that radio station in the forthcoming general elections and beyond.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Additional guidelines for Radio Anguilla staff are not required in the period leading up to the general election. The governor is confident that Radio Anguilla will continue to operate free from all political interference.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the appropriateness of the Radio Authority's guidelines regarding political coverage for radio stations in the Caribbean dependent territory of Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  I consider the guidelines to be appropriate, as they are based on the practice adopted by the BBC. These are kept under review by the Department of Information and Broadcasting and updated where necessary.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the independence of Radio Anguilla from the Government of Anguilla; and if he will make a statement.
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  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Radio Anguilla is part of the Department of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of Anguilla and, as such, is free from any form of censorship.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who is responsible for the issuing of licences for radio broadcasts on Anguilla.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Under Anguilla's Telecommunications Ordinance, the licensing authority is the telecommunications officer of the Government of Anguilla.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is prepared to set up a training programme for employees of Radio Anguilla at the BBC World Service.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  A training programme with the BBC for employees of Radio Anguilla already exists.

  Mr. Bernie Grant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the prospects of a free and fair process in the forthcoming general elections in Anguilla; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  I am confident that, as in the past, the forthcoming elections in Anguilla will be conducted in a fair and democratic manner.

  Women Conference
  Mr. Watson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who represented Her Majesty's Government at the inter-sessional working group for the fourth world conference on women held in New York, 10 to 14 January; if he will place in the Library a copy of the draft platform for action; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  At the intersessional meeting in New York the United Kingdom was represented by the following officials: Ms J. Whitaker, sex equality branch, Department of Employment, Ms J. Graham, social development division, ODA, Ms A. Grant, counsellor, United Kingdom mission in New York, and Mr. P. Tissot, second secretary, United Kingdom mission in New York. The draft platform for action will not be completed until all national reports. have been submitted and all preparatory conferences have been held. This will not be before 1995. A copy of the draft platform will then be placed in the Library of the House.

  Kathmandu Air Crash
  Mr. Waterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations Her Majesty's Government have made to the Government of Nepal concerning publication of the official report into the air disaster at Kathmandu in September 1992; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We have not made any representations to the Nepalese Government since the final report of the investigation into the crash of PIA flight PK 268 on 28 September 1992 was circulated in August 1993 by the Nepalese Government to the interested parties including
  261
  the air accidents investigation branch, which led the investigation. The air accidents investigation branch subsequently distributed copies of this report to relatives of the British victims.

  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Goodlad
  The information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Yugoslavia
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the latest position regarding peace initiatives to bring about a ceasefire in the former Yugoslavia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The latest round of talks between the parties in Geneva took place on 18 and 19 January. The talks are due to resume on 10 February. All sides violated an agreed ceasefire over the Christmas period. The United Kingdom and our European Union partners remain fully behind the efforts of Lord Owen and Mr. Stoltenberg to bring the parties to a negotiated settlement.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what deadline has been set for a withdrawal of British troops from the former Yugoslavia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  There is no deadline for the withdrawal of British troops. No decision has been taken on whether the current British contingent in UNPROFOR will be replaced, and none is imminent. Any such decision would be taken after consultation with our fellow troop contributors and other allies.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what requests Her Majesty's Government have received for additional British troops in the former Yugoslavia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Britain is one of the leading contributors to UNPROFOR, with more than 2,300 troops in the former Yugoslavia. We have not been approached by the United Nations to increase this contribution.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the cost to date to the Exchequer of British peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia; and to what extent this cost will be reimbursed for the cost from the United Nations.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The United Kingdom share of United Nations assessed contributions to UNPROFOR is likely to total around £36·5 million for this financial year. The United Kingdom pays 6·373 per cent. of peacekeeping costs on the United Nations scale of assessment. The costs fall to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

  Additional Ministry of Defence costs for United Kingdom participation in UNPROFOR also fall to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. For the financial year
  262
  1993–94, this will amount to about £66·79 million, made up of Operation Grapple—Bosnia—£61·87 million; Operation Cheshire—airlift—£4·54 million; Operation Hanwood—the field ambulance which withdrew in September—£381,975. All amounts are net of standard rate of VAT.

  The United Nations has paid standard rate reimbursement for troop contributions to UNPROFOR for the period to the end of October 1993, and for nations to the end of September 1993. Refunds for the financial year 1993–94 to date amount to £15·7 million. Troop costs for the month of November 1993 are due to be paid at the end of January 1994. Other claims for reimbursable items of expenditure —for example, vehicles and equipment—have been submitted to the United Nations, and reimbursement will depend on the United Nation's ability to pay.

  Private Education Allowances
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much his Department spent on private education and boarding school allowances for the children of personnel employed by his Department, in each of the last five years; and how many children had their fees paid in each of those years.

  Mr. Goodlad
  In each of the last five years expenditure on boarding school allowances, and the number of children who attended boarding schools in the United Kingdom, was as follows:

  Financial year

  £ million

  Number of children

  1992–93

  7·88

  744

  1991–92

  7·73

  880

  1990–91

  7·58

  910

  1989–90

  7·21

  988

  1988–89

  7·17

  998

  Expenditure on fee-paying schools for children educated locally at post was as follows:

  Financial year

  £ million

  1992–93

  2·00

  1991–92

  1·80

  1990–91

  1·68

  1989–90

  1·58

  1988–89

  1·54

  Details of the total number of children for whom such allowances were paid are not available.

  Diplomatic Bags
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of 20 January,Official Report, column 723, when the present policy of destroying records of material carried by diplomatic bag within one year was introduced.

  Mr. Goodlad
  The practice of destroying bag schedules after a period of not less than six months has been part of standing instructions for over 30 years. Records of the precise date on which the policy was introduced are no longer available.

  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of
  263
  20 January, Official Report, column 723, what are the reasons for the Government's present policy of destroying records of material carried by diplomatic bag within one year.

  Mr. Goodlad
  Foreign and Commonwealth Office bag schedules record the delivery of material between originator and addressee, and are considered to have served their purpose once the contents of bags have been recorded as safely received. The bag schedules are treated in the same manner as other documents considered ephemeral, which are destroyed after a minimum period of six months.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Hill Farmers
  Mr. Hicks
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will provide details of the basis of the sample that her Department use for determining the national average incomes of hill farmers who are in receipt of hill livestock compensatory payments; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  Details of the sample, which is part of that used in the farm business survey, together with notes on the

  Full lime farm businesses at June 1991 census and in the complete 1990–91 to 1991–92 identical sample by country, farm type, size group and tenure

  England

  Wales

  Scotland

  Northern Ireland

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  Dairy

  Small

  5,504

  49

  0·9

  1,854

  28

  1·5

  142

  6

  4·2

  3,558

  106

  3·0

  Medium

  11,274

  225

  2·0

  2,364

  88

  3·7

  1,187

  40

  3·4

  2,015

  92

  4·6

  Large

  5,189

  190

  3·7

  627

  52

  8·3

  1,074

  47

  4·4

  257

  —

  —

  All sizes

  21,967

  464

  2·1

  4,845

  168

  3·5

  2,403

  93

  3·9

  5,830

  198

  3·4

  of which:

  owned

  9,796

  168

  1·7

  2,833

  102

  3·6

  1,753

  64

  3·7

  5,830

  198

  3·4

  tenanted

  5,251

  100

  1·9

  790

  20

  2·5

  650

  12

  1·8

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  6,920

  196

  2·8

  1,222

  46

  3·8

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Hill and upland LFA livestock

  Small

  4,354

  101

  2·3

  5,139

  75

  1·5

  4,897

  86

  1·8

  4,045

  103

  2·5

  Medium

  3,145

  124

  3·9

  3,332

  119

  3·6

  3,296

  128

  3·9

  340

  19

  5·6

  Large

  1,033

  25

  2·4

  683

  37

  5·4

  953

  49

  5·1

  34

  —

  —

  All sizes

  8,532

  250

  2·9

  9,154

  231

  2·5

  9,146

  263

  2·9

  4,419

  122

  2·8

  of which:

  owned

  4,068

  93

  2·3

  5,718

  130

  2·3

  5,646

  133

  2·4

  4,419

  122

  2·8

  tenanted

  1,994

  73

  3·7

  1,220

  24

  2·0

  3,500

  95

  2·7

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  2,470

  84

  3·4

  2,216

  77

  3·5

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Lowland livestock

  Small

  10,439

  76

  0·7

  1,224

  16

  1·3

  362

  14

  3·9

  1,240

  20

  1·6

  Medium

  3,645

  78

  2·1

  338

  10

  3·0

  489

  25

  5·1

  176

  6

  3·4

  Large

  1,121

  36

  3·2

  76

  2

  2·6

  237

  12

  5·1

  24

  —

  —

  All sizes

  15,205

  190

  1·2

  1,638

  28

  1·7

  1,088

  51

  4·7

  1,440

  26

  1·8

  of which:

  owned

  8,920

  84

  0·9

  959

  18

  1·9

  743

  24

  3·2

  1,440

  26

  1·8

  tenanted

  2,616

  44

  1·7

  300

  5

  1·7

  345

  19

  5·5

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  3,669

  62

  1·7

  379

  5

  1·3

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Cropping

  Small

  9,295

  46

  0·5

  —

  —

  —

  774

  8

  1·0

  443

  —

  —

  Medium

  10,917

  203

  1·9

  —

  —

  —

  1,547

  31

  2·0

  185

  —

  —

  Large

  13,949

  530

  3·8

  —

  —

  —

  1,438

  43

  3·0

  54

  —

  —

  All sizes

  34,161

  779

  2·3

  —

  —

  —

  3,759

  82

  2·2

  682

  17

  2·5

  of which:

  owned

  14,233

  268

  1·9

  —

  —

  —

  2,336

  50

  2·1

  682

  17

  2·5

  tenanted

  7,981

  163

  2·0

  —

  —

  —

  1,423

  22

  1·5

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  11,947

  348

  2·9

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Pigs and poultry

  Small

  1,812

  28

  1·5

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Medium

  1,595

  38

  2·4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Large

  1,506

  43

  2·9

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  All sizes

  4,913

  109

  2·2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  of which:

  owned

  3,515

  65

  1·8

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  tenanted

  506

  11

  2·2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  892

  33

  3·7

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  264
  method and definitions used are set out each year in "Farm Incomes in the United Kingdom", copies of which are in the Library of the House. The latest published data relate to the 1991–92 survey; details of the 1992–93 survey will be published in March.

  The survey is carried out by experienced field officers who are employed by universities and agricultural colleges. They visit a sample of 2,300 farmers throughout England and record a wide range of detailed physical and financial information about the farm business. The sample of farms covers all the different types and sizes of farm businesses in the country which are considered to be full-time. Such businesses account for 98 per cent. of agricultural activity in the country as a whole and 97 per cent. on farms wholly or mainly in the less-favoured areas. Great care is taken in the analysis of the results to ensure that the averages produced fully reflect the distribution of full-time farms in the country. Similar surveys are carried out in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I am confident that the surveys are carried out to the highest professional standards and that they provide a fair reflection of trends in the income position of full-time farm businesses.
  265

  England

  Wales

  Scotland

  Northern Ireland

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  June 1991 Census

  1991–92 Sample

  Sampling %

  Horticulture

  Small

  3,481

  68

  2·0

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Medium

  1,212

  56

  4·6

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Large

  748

  49

  6·6

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  All sizes

  5,441

  173

  3·2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  of which:

  owned

  3,667

  123

  3·4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  tenanted

  673

  12

  1·8

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  1,101

  38

  3·5

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  Total holdings

  Small

  34,963

  368

  1·1

  8,217

  119

  1·4

  6,175

  114

  1·8

  9,458

  246

  2·6

  Medium

  31,829

  724

  2·3

  6,034

  217

  3·6

  6,519

  224

  3·4

  2,765

  126

  4·6

  Large

  23,573

  873

  3·7

  1,386

  91

  6·6

  3,702

  151

  4·1

  373

  —

  —

  All sizes

  90,365

  1,965

  2·2

  15,637

  427

  2·7

  16,396

  489

  3·0

  212,596

  3372

  3·0

  of which:

  owned

  44,328

  801

  1·8

  9,510

  250

  2·6

  10,478

  271

  2·6

  212,596

  3372

  3·0

  tenanted

  19,028

  403

  2·1

  2,310

  49

  2·1

  5,918

  148

  2·5

  —

  —

  —

  mixed tenure

  27,009

  761

  2·8

  3,817

  128

  3·4

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1 The data in this table relate to farm types and sizes sampled for the Farm Business Survey. The totals quoted are therefore slightly lower than the grand totals of full-time farm businesses.

  2 Includes 225 mixed livestock farms not included in the breakdown.

  3 Includes 9 mixed livestock farms not included in the breakdown.

PRIME MINISTER

  Iraq
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Prime Minister (1) if he will place in the Library the information note prepared by his private secretary on 3 December 1990 on options for responding to allegations published in The Sunday Times on United Kingdom assistance to the Iraqi machine tool industry;

  (2) if he will place in the Library a copy of the chronology of United Kingdom trade with Iraq, including the export guideline milestones, prepared for his office by the Cabinet Office in November 1992;

  (3) if he will place in the Library the briefing note prepared for him in support of his answer to the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) of 12 November 1992, Official Report, column 990.

  The Prime Minister
  No. All the relevant documents have been made available to the Scott inquiry.

  Christmas Cards
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Prime Minister, pursuant to his answer of 18 January,Official Report, column 456, how many official Christmas cards he sent out in 1993; and how much this cost.

  The Prime Minister
  Nine hundred; the direct total cost of purchase and dispatch to the Prime Minister's office was approximately £205. The cost of the other cards I send does not fall on official funds.

  Trinidad Terms
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Prime Minister what discussions he has had in the last six months regarding the Trinidad terms; and if he will make a statement.

  The Prime Minister
  Under the existing Trinidad terms, which resulted from my personal initiative, 18 countries have benefited. Over $4 billion of debt has been restructured and nearly $2 billion will be reduced over the 266
  lifetime of the individual agreements. We expect more countries to benefit over the coming months. These terms have the effect of halving the payments due to creditors and give a commitment to consider restructuring the whole stock of a country's eligible debt after a good track record of economic reform has been established. This would lead to significant additional relief for indebted countries in the medium term.

  At the G7 Tokyo summit last July, I secured agreement that improved debt reduction terms should be considered for the poorest and most indebted countries, including, for the first time, earlier action case by case on reducing the whole stock of debt—a key Trinidad terms objective.

  The United Kingdom is active in the Paris club and elsewhere in seeking co-ordinated action by creditors on the comprehensive debt reduction which these countries need, the Government miss no opportunity for urging other creditors to make progress.

  Second World War Commemorations
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Prime Minister (1) if he will ensure that recognition is given in the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings to the contribution made by the construction of Mulberry harbours at the town of Tilbury;

  (2) if he will consult on ways to commemorate the sacrifices made, and the contribution to victory given, by dock workers and dockland communities throughout the United Kingdom during the second world war.

  The Prime Minister
  The Government's programme for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings was announced on 6 January: I have arranged for details to be placed in the House Library. Included in the programme is a dinner at the Portsmouth guild hall and representatives of those who designed and built specialised equipment such as the Mulberry harbour will be invited.

  Plans are also being made for an official commemorative event in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of world war II. This will be a national event involving not only the armed forces, but those civilian organisations

  267
  which served this country during the war. It pays tribute to all those who sacrificed so much during the second world war.

  Correspondence
  Mr. Madden
  To ask the Prime Minister, pursuant to his answer on 17 January,Official Report, column 367, if he will place in the Library a copy of the unsigned letter on Mr. Adams's headed notepaper, dated 7 January, which he recently received.

  The Prime Minister
  I have done so.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Invalidity Benefit
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will withdraw his appeal to the Court of Appeal against the decision of the Social Security Commissioner that the United Kingdom social security law discriminates against women being paid invalidity benefit.

  Mr. Scott
  We have no plans to do so.

  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when he expects to hear the result of his appeal to the Court of Appeal against the Social Security Commissioner's decision that the United Kingdom social security law discriminates against women being paid invalidity benefit.

  Mr. Scott
  A hearing before the Court of Appeal took place on 18 January, when the court decided to refer the case to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on questions of European law.

  State Pensions
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what is his Department's estimate of the additional cost to the Exchequer in each year from 1980 of linking the state pension to average earnings; and if he will extend this estimate to each year up until 2000–01;

  (2) what would the state old age pension for 1994–95 be, in cash terms, if the link with earnings had been maintained since 1980.

  Mr. Hague
  It is estimated that the weekly rate of category A retirement pension would be £75·10 from April 1994 if it had been increased in line with average earnings since 1980.

  The estimated additional cash cost for the years 1980–81 to 1994–95 is shown in the table. An equivalent estimate for the years 1995–96 to 2000–01 is not available in the form requested, and depends on the assumed rate of increase of prices and earnings. However, a comparison between the cost of earnings uprating of benefits and that of prices uprating of benefits from 1990–91 to 2050–51 can be made by referring tables 13 and 14 of the "National Insurance Fund Long Term Financial Estimates—Report of the Government Actuary on the Second Quinquennial Review under Section 137 of the Social Security Act 1975" published in July 1990 as HoC 582.
  268

  Additional cost of uprating state Retirement Pension in line with average earnings1

  Financial year

  Cash cost £ million

  1980–81

  66

  1981–82

  294

  1982–83

  396

  1983–84

  465

  1984–85

  920

  1985–86

  1,084

  1986–87

  1,762

  1987–88

  2,711

  1988–89

  3,506

  1989–90

  4,510

  1990–91

  5,437

  1991–92

  5,712

  1992–93

  6,985

  1993–94

  7,751

  1994–95

  7,916

  1Source Government Actuary's Department.

  Administration Costs
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is(a) the administrative cost and (b) the administrative cost as a percentage of the payments made by his Department of (i) income support, social fund, (ii) grants, (iii) social fund loans and (iv) family credit.

  Mr. Burt
  The latest available information is for 1991–92. The administrative cost as a percentage of benefit expenditure is in the table, which is an extract from the 1993 departmental report.

  Estimated administration costs 1991–92

  Administration cost (£ million)

  Administration cost as a percentage of benefit

  Income support

  1,373

  11·8

  Social fund1

  163

  245·2

  Family credit

  33

  5·3

  1 Separate costs for social fund grants-loans are not available.

  2 Costs reflect the discretionary nature of most social fund decisions and recovery and recycling of money from loans.

  The next departmental report is due to be published by March 1994.

  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is the average cost, as a proportion of each claim, of administration of(a) child benefit, (b) income support, (c) invalidity benefit, (d) family credit and (e) the social fund.

  Mr. Burt
  The latest available information for the year 1991–92 is in the table.

  Estimated administration costs 1991–92

  Administration cost (£ million)

  Administration cost as percentage of benefit

  Child benefit and one parent benefit1

  118

  2·2

  Income support

  1,373

  11·8

  Sickness and invalidity benefit1

  275

  5·7

  Family credit

  233

  5·3

  Social fund

  163

  345·2

  Source: 1993 departmental report.

  1 Cost not available in respect of benefits.
  269
  2 Includes increased capital investment for information technology and publicity costs.

  3Costs reflect the discretionary nature of most social fund decisions and recovery and recycling of money from loans.

  The next departmental report is due to be published by March 1994.

  VAT (Fuel)
  Mr. Nigel Jones
  To ask the Secretary of Slate for Social Security (1) what specific help with increased heating and fuel bills will be available to those using continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis as treatment for kidney disease, including help for those just above the income support threshold, after the imposition of value added tax on fuel;

  (2) what specific help with increased heating and fuel bills will be available to people with already high bills as a result of necessary medical treatment, after the imposition of value added tax on fuel; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Burt
  We have announced a package of measures worth around £2·5 billion over three years. Pensioners and 80 per cent. of disabled people will receive extra help, as will all those receiving income-related benefits. Those disabled people who do not qualify for extra help are likely to be younger, less severely disabled, in work or better off. In addition, from April, disabled people receiving disability living allowance will become entitled to help with insulation costs through the home energy efficiency scheme.

  Income Support (Young People)
  Sir David Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many young people aged(a) 16 to 17 years and (b) 18 to 24 years were receiving supplementary benefit of income support in each year since 1978–79 and the latest month for which figures are available.

  Mr. Burt
  Such information as is available is in the table.

  Thousands

  Year

  Aged 16 to 17

  Aged 18 to 24

  1978

  80

  252

  1979

  79

  256

  1980

  141

  345

  1981

  166

  533

  1982

  183

  719

  1983

  175

  813

  1984

  185

  847

  1986

  168

  903

  1987

  141

  823

  1988

  101

  687

  1989

  18

  683

  1990

  21

  688

  1991

  22

  809

  1992

  30

  925

  1993

  36

  1,073

  Notes:

  Sources: Supplementary Benefit Annual Enquiries, 1978–1987; Income Support Annual Enquiries, 1988–1992 (1 in 100 samples each May); February 1993 is the latest information and is based on a Quarterly Enquiry (1 in 20 sample).

  2. The figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.

  3. The information is not available for 1985.

  4. Eligibility for 16 and 17-year-olds changed from 12 September 1988.
  270

  Severe Weather Payments
  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what has been the total level of severe weather payments so far triggered over the winter months 1993–94; what were the figures for each of the past two years for the same period; and if he will give this as a breakdown according to recognised weather stations.

  Mr. Scott
  All the available information is in the Library.

  Unemployment Benefit
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what was the cost of administering unemployment benefit in 1993; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Burt
  The information is not yet available. Costs for the financial year 1992–93 will be contained in the next departmental report due to be published in March. The latest available figure is £322 million for 1991–92.

  Retirement Pensioners
  Mr. Hicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people are in receipt of the state retirement pension; and what percentages of these(a) pay tax and (b) receive income support.

  Mr. Hague
  At 31 March 1993, the latest date for which figures are available, approximately 10 million people (total number of contributory and non-contributory pensions including those payable to people residing abroad) were in receipt of state retirement pension, of whom approximately 14 per cent. were also in receipt of income support.

  On the basis of the 1990–91 family expenditure survey, it is estimated that approximately 68 per cent. of individuals in receipt of state retirement pension were taxpayers.

  Child Maintenance
  Sir Ivan Lawrence
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security in how many cases the maintenance assessment by the Child Support Agency has been lower than a previous maintenance agreement.

  Mr. Burt
  The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for Ros Hepplewhite, the chief executive. She will write to my hon. and learned Friend.

  Letter from Ros Hepplewhite to Sir Ivan Lawrence, dated 25 January 1994:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security asking for the number of cases in which the maintenance assessment of the Child Support Agency has been lower than a previous maintenance agreement.
  The Agency does not routinely have information on the amounts of maintenance awarded, and therefore cannot make the comparsion asked for. Average court payments however, prior to 5 April 1993, when the Agency took over from the courts most of its work on assessment and collection and child maintanence, were £25 to £30 a week. Under the Agency's formula, we estimate that payments will average £45 to £50 a week.
  I hope that you find this reply useful.
  271

  War Pensions
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) how many jobs in each grade are to be transferred to Blackpool from the DSS archives at Brunswick street, nelson; and on what date this is scheduled to occur;

  (2) what consultations have taken place with the relevant civil service unions concerning proposals to transfer from the Government Records Office at Brunswick street, Nelson, to Blackpool.

  (3) how many and at what grade jobs are at to be transferred to Blackpool from the Records Office at Brunswick atreet, Nelson; and when this is scheduled to occur.

  Mr. Burt
  The administtration of war pensions is a matter for Mr.Micheal Bichard, the chief executive benefits Agency. He will write to the hon.member.

  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Gordon Prentice, dated 25 January 1994:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the transfer of staff from DSS Archives in Nelson to Blackpool.
  I understand that your question refers to staff employed within the War Pensions Unit and are working in the same premises as the DSS Archives in Nelson.
  With a reducing number of claims and a new computer system in 1995 the War Pensions Unit is looking at its service delivery to see how work can be better processed.
  One option is to centralise the work currently carried out at Nelson within the War Pensions main operations centre at Norcross, Blackpool. There are currently 126 staff engaged on War Pensions duties at Nelson, but as no final conclusion has been reached as to the relocation I am not in a position to comment on the precise numbers or grades of staff which may be involved in such a move, or when such a move may take place.
  Full consultation has taken place with all the relevant Civil Service Unions concerning the proposals.
  I hope you find my reply helpful.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  Azerbaijan Refugees
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assistance has been given by Her Majesty's Government to Iran to help refugees from Azerbaijan; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We have this month provided £100,000 to the appeal of the International Federation of Red Cross/Crescent Societies for relief assistance to Azerbaijan. This contribution is specifically tied to support of the Iranian Red Crescent Society's programme for the displaced people in the south of the country.

  Oman
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what aid has been given to Oman in the last five years; and how it was spent.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Gross bilateral aid to Oman over the last five years was as follows:
  272

  £

  1988–89

  773,000

  1989–90

  815,000

  1990–91

  825,000

  1991–92

  1,044,000

  1992–93

  750,000

  The bulk of this finance was spent by ODA on technical co-operation projects and training mainly in education and agriculture. Short consultancies on investment promotion, engineering safety, industrial diversification, and public administration were also provided. The figures also include a total of £211,000 over the five-year period provided under schemes administered by the diplomatic wing of the FCO, mainly in the form of scholarships.

  Aid and Trade
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what was the total aid and trade provision for each of the last five years; and how it was spent.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Total expenditure under the ATP for each of the last five years was as follows:

  £ million

  1988–89

  58

  1989–90

  62

  1990–91

  94

  1991–92

  101

  1992–93

  93

  This was used to provide grants to support successful tied aid development projects through mixed credits, soft loans and technical co-operation. A full list of projects supported under the ATP is in the Libraries of both Houses.

  Malaysia
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs if he will publish in the Official Report a correction to his answer of 3 November, Official Report, column 239, in the light of the statement by the Overseas Development Administration permanent secretary before the Committee of Public Accounts on 17 January.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  No. I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) on 25 January.

  Kenya
  Mrs. Dunwoody
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what new British aid projects in the areas of(a) agriculture and wildlife, (b) education, (c) health and family planning, (d) police and (e) transport are now under consideration in discussions with the Kenyan Government.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Projects currently under discussion include support for the national agricultural research programme; Kenya wildlife service; the Kenyan trypanosomiasis research programme; management training for head teachers; the planning function in the Ministry of
  273
  Education; projects to increase the availability of family planning services; an AIDS prevention project; a project to strengthen health service management; training for the police; and possible further assistance for Kenya railways.

  Projects (Ministerial Decisions)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on which occasions and what projects during his term of office he has overridden professional advice from the Overseas Development Administration that projects are not good value in aid terms and used Overseas Development Administration funds for that purpose.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has given a ministerial direction to ODA' s accounting officer on one occasion, in respect of the Pergau hydro-electric project in Malaysia.

  Agency

  Country

  Project Name

  1992–93

  Africa Now

  Gambia

  Tanji Community Family Planning

  26,187

  CARE

  Sudan

  Maternal Health

  9,515

  Christian Aid

  Thailand

  Burma Ethnic Minority Refugee Programme

  28,003

  Health Aid Moyo

  Malawi

  Expanded Nurse/Midwife Training

  84,180

  Marie Stopes International

  Bangladesh

  Employment Based FP Programme for Workers

  66,191

  Marie Stopes International

  Ethiopia

  Condom Soc Marketing FP/Aids Prog Urban Couples

  64,589

  Marie Stopes International

  Ethiopia

  Maternal and Reproductive Health Clinic

  45,738

  Marie Stopes International

  India

  Contraceptive Social Marketing

  77,335

  Marie Stopes International

  India

  Family Life Education (Brass Tacks) Extension for Delhi and Lucknow

  119,032

  Marie Stopes International

  India

  Workplace FP and Prev HC—Employees and Dependants

  73,382

  Marie Stopes International

  Lesotho

  Creating a Corps of Village-based FP Ed/Motivators

  5,402

  Marie Stopes International

  Malawi

  Community Mch and FP-Blantyre, Lilongwe and Zomba

  146,461

  Marie Stopes International

  Malawi

  Man to Man—Male Orientated Child Spacing/Education

  92,303

  Marie Stopes International

  Mexico

  Factory Based Health Care and FP Programme

  71,777

  Marie Stopes International

  Nicaragua

  Workplace Preventative Maternal Health and FP

  71,278

  Marie Stopes International

  Pakistan

  Lahore Based Reproductive Health Ext Services

  2,036

  Marie Stopes International

  Sierra Leone

  Work Based Maternal and Child Health and FP

  7,636

  Population Concern

  Bangladesh

  FP Services for the Rakhaine Tribes

  19,428

  Population Concern

  Ethiopia

  FP Training for Rural Women Development Agents

  17,364

  Population Concern

  Ethiopia

  Jimma-Contraceptive Distribution by Comm Health Agents and TBAs

  28,348

  Population Concern

  Ethiopia

  Training of Health Assistants

  19,955

  Population Concern

  Ethiopia

  Yirgalem—FP Education and Outreach Services

  25,773

  Population Concern

  Gambia

  Youth to Youth Iec on Adolescent Reproductive Health Management

  24,034

  Population Concern

  India

  Mobile Education and Service Unit

  48,235

  Population Concern

  India

  Women's Development (Kulasekaram and Dindigul)

  39,567

  Population Concern

  Pakistan

  Community Leadership Training

  16,132

  Population Concern

  Pakistan

  Family Planning Through Community Institutions

  28,864

  United Kingdom Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific

  Vanuatu

  Family Health Planning Project

  33,771

  Urban Aid

  Ghana

  Family Planning Project

  36,277

  TOTAL

  1,328,793

  Mr. Watson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans the Government have to encourage other member states in the European Union to start funding family planning and related projects within their development and co-operation budgets.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We are playing a leading role in pressing for concrete action to follow up the 1992 EC resolution on population. Officials participate in regular expert meetings in Brussels to strengthen co-operation among member states and the Commission. We are also helping the Commission to organise a seminar for EC member states and Commission officials on 28 February.
  274

  Family Planning
  Mr. Watson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many and which non-governmental organisations received support for family planning and related projects through the joint funding scheme in 1993; what these projects were and in which countries they took place.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  In the financial year 1992–93, the latest year for which figures are available, a total of eight non-governmental organisations received support through the joint funding scheme for projects which were primarily for family planning and related activities. The details are set out in the table.

  Natural Resources Institute
  Mr. Waterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has for the future status of the Natural Resources Institute; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  The Government have decided that a study of options for the future ownership of the Natural Resources Institute—NRI—should be carried out. Consultants will provide advice to Ministers on a range of possibilities for transferring the NRI to the private sector. These will be considered against the option of retaining the NRI within the public sector.

  This work will be undertaken against the background of Government policy explained in the 1993 "Next Steps Review", Cm 2430. The results of the study will be taken

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  into account in the wider scrutiny of public sector research establishments which is being undertaken by the Office of Public Service and Science.

WALES

  "Back to Basics"
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what are the implications of the Government's "back to basics" policy for his Department during 1994.

  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what working definition of "back to basics" is used by his Department; and what his Department has done in the past three months to implement the policy.

  Mr. Redwood
  I refer the hon. Members to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 21 January,Official Report, column 849.

  Live Animals (Export)
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his policy concerning the export of live animals; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  The Government accept that animals can be transported provided proper welfare standards are met. The EC directive on transport sets welfare conditions for the transport of all types of animals in the Community. Agreement on a package of additional measures was blocked by the United Kingdom in December last year because they did not offer real improvements in standards of protection. In any further discussions we shall press the Community to adopt measures reflecting our own high standards.

  Sheep Premium Scheme
  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what proportion of claims for payment under the sheep annual premium scheme had been(a) processed and (b) paid by his Department by 17 January.

  Mr. Redwood
  The proportions are(a) 85 per cent.; (b) 82 per cent.

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  Hospital and community nursing and midwifery staff1:

  Learners2

  3,118

  3,075

  2,934

  1,970

  1,033

  Other staff3

  24,913

  25,008

  24,956

  25,377

  25,129

  Nurses employed by general medical practitioners4

  268

  459

  524

  519

  544

  1 Staff in post as at 30 September. Excludes staff employed by the Welsh Health Common Services Authority. Figures for 1989 and 1990 include staff working in the Blood Transfusion Service but figures for subsequent years do not as these staff then transferred to the Welsh Health Common Services Authority.

  2 Since the autumn of 1991 student nurses have been classified as students and are no longer included in the NHS staff figures. Staff included here are students finishing courses begun before this date.

  3 The use of locally devised payscales from 1991 onwards may affect the comparability of figures as these staff cannot be allocated centrally to a specific staff group and are not, therefore, included above.

  4 Staff in post as at 1 October. Excludes some staff employed by GP Fundholders.

  276
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when he will announce the arrangements for leasing quotas under the sheep annual premium payments scheme; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  The arrangements for the second transfer and lease notification period for sheep quota for the 1993–1994 scheme years will be announced once all the national reserve quota has been allocated. For the 1995 scheme year, it was announced, on 15 November 1993, that notifications of transfers and leases should be submitted between 15 November 1993 and 15 September 1994.

  Integrated Administration and Control System
  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what arrangements he has made for farmers to have access to Ordnance Survey maps of the appropriate scale for completion of the IACS forms for hill livestock producers.

  Mr. Redwood
  Those hill livestock producers to whom IACS applies for the first time in 1994 can obtain copies of maps of the scale 1:2,500 from OS agents or other recognised outlets. Maps of this scale generally contain the four-figure national grid reference number of each field and the area in hectares which is required for IACS purposes. Where this information is not printed on the map, or in other areas where maps of 1:2,500 scale are not available, farmers may wish to seek professional help. The detailed requirements relating to mapping and field data, are included in a guidance note which is being sent to producers this week.

  Nurses
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many nurses were employed in NHS hospitals in each of the last five years for which figures are available; and what are the figures for nurses employed in the community alongside family doctors.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Detailed breakdowns of nursing staff employed by health authorities and NHS trusts into hospital and community staff are not considered reliable. However information on the whole-time equivalent numbers of all hospital and community nursing and midwifery staff is shown in the table as well as numbers of nurses employed by general medical practitioners.
  277

  NHS Hospitals (Admissions)
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many admissions to NHS hospitals there were in each of the last three years for which figures are available; and how many of these admissions were re-admissions within a month of hospital discharge.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  The available information, based on aggregate hospital returns of discharge and deaths from NHS hospitals, is given in the table:

  Numbers

  1990–91

  584,285

  1991–92

  638,873

  1992–93

  667,367

  Information on how many of these cases were patients re-admitted within a month of hospital discharge is not available centrally.

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make it his policy to monitor the levels of private practice in national health service trusts in Wales.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  It is the responsibility of each national health service trust in Wales to monitor any provision for private patients and ensure that this does not interfere with its obligations to national health service patients. Income generated from private practice will be monitored through audited accounts.

  North Avon Training
  Mr. Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales (1) if his Department has awarded any training contracts to North Avon Training;

  (2) What training companies have replaced North Avon Training for training contracts in Wales.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  The Department has not awarded any training contracts to North Avon Training.

  Welsh Language
  Mr. Hanson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make it his policy to allow A-level students to sit examinations in Welsh if they so request.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  It remains our general policy that pupils taught through the medium of Welsh should be assessed through the medium of Welsh. Pupils entry to individual subject examinations is a matter of decision by the school governing body. The range of examinations offered by an individual examining body is a matter for the board itself.

  Tai Cymru Budget
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for 'Wales how much of the 1993 Tai Cymru budget was allocated to each Welsh constituency; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  Housing for Wales does not allocate resources on a constituency basis.
  278

  Job Clubs
  Mr. Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list those training companies which currently have job club contracts at Newport, Haverfordwest and Merthyr Tydfil.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  Training contracts let by job clubs are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment.

  Cereals
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what were the average cereal yields per hectare for each of the two cereals regionalisation proposed regions in Wales for each year since 1987; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  [holding answer 16 December 1993]: The information for 1989 to 1992 is shown in the table. Data for 1993 are not yet available. For the years 1987 and 1988, there is insufficient information available to produce reliable estimates.

  Cereal yields in proposed cereals regionalisation regions in Wales1

  Average cereal yield (tonnes per hectare)

  Year

  Region 1

  Region 2

  1989

  4·50

  3·63

  1990

  5·08

  4·39

  1991

  5·58

  4·55

  1992

  5·85

  4·68

  Source Cereals Production Survey (MAFF and Welsh Office)2.

  1As announced in the letter of 5 November 1993 from the Welsh Office to all cereal producers in Wales which proposed two regions as follows:

  Region 1—All parishes containing land classified as suitable for growing winter cereals and having an average of at least 50 hectares of wheat and winter barley during the period 1989 to 1991.

  Region 2—All parishes not included in Region 1.

  2A sample survey: the results shown are accurate to within plus or minus 10 per cent.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  Tourism
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will make a statement on the funding of the English tourist board to each of the regional boards for 1994–95 and 1995–96.

  Mr. Sproat
  The allocation of this funding is for the English tourist board to decide, based on discussions with the regional tourist boards as to whether industry needs are better met by action at the centre or action at regional level. Funding levels for 1994–95 are due to be determined in the near future.

  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what projections have been made of the potential expansion of overseas visitors to the United Kingdom over the next three years; and what steps he is taking to guarantee adequate investment to ensure this is achieved.

  Mr. Sproat
  The British Tourist Authority, which receives grant aid from my Department, has forecast 5 per cent. average annual growth in visits by overseas tourists, and 6·5 per cent. growth in expenditure by overseas tourists, during the period 1992–97.
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  The Government will continue to support the work of the British Tourist Authority in promoting Britain overseas; indeed, an increase in planned support was announced in the recent budget. The authority's corporate plan, agreed by Ministers, also sets challenging targets for attracting non-Government funding for its promotional activities.

  Paintings and Photographs
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will list those Departments that have acquired photographs or pictures for their rooms from sources for which he is responsible; and if he will list the paintings and photographs concerned.

  Mr. Brooke
  The principal source of pictures on loan to Departments is the Government art collection, established nearly 100 years ago under the aegis of the office of works, and now a division of my own Department. Every major Government Department borrows works from the collection. Records are maintained of all the paintings and photographs in the Government art collection and their whereabouts throughout the world, but a written record would run to several hundred pages and could not be provided except at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will list the photographs and paintings on the walls of his rooms, together with the cost of each.

  Mr. Sproat
  My right hon. Friend has the following paintings and photographs in his office on loan from the Government art collection:

  Albatross, by Anthony Gross, cost: £37

  Two Coster Girls, by W. R. Sickert, cost: £4,500

  Ladder Painting No. 1, by Stephenie Bergman, cost: £1,035

  In The Cellar Mirror, by Norman Blarney, cost: £2,925

  The Red Cow, by John Armstrong, cost: £16,000

  Citadel, Triptych, Bermondsey Street, by Harriet Mena Hill, cost: £3,500

  In addition, I have two sculptures and two prints on loan from the Government art collection:

  Study for "Standard Unique", by Elisabeth Frink, cost: £81

  Study for "Hamstead Figure" 1/5, by Frederick E. McWilliam, cost: £135

  Brenda 1984 180/200, and Saturday Morning Shopping 1984 180/200, by Glen Baxter, cost: £117 each.

  The costs given are those at the date of purchase.

  Finally, there is a work from my own collection and a picture presented to my office.

  Sports and Arts
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will give details of the consultations he has had with(a) regional sports councils and (b) regional arts boards, including dates and the nature of those consultations.

  Mr. Brooke
  I have so far had no meetings with the regional councils for sport and recreation. However, as part of the review of the Sports Council, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for National Heritage is currently meeting with the chairman of all 10 regional councils and is also visiting all 10 regions.

  I have occasional meetings with the chairman of individual regional arts boards. I also met the chairman of the English Regional Arts Boards, Sir Ernest Hall, on 20 January, when a range of matters was discussed.
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  Departmental Expenditure
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what proportion of expenditure by his Department, and previous responsible Departments, has been for the Arts Council, the Sports Council, tourist boards and the British library in each year since 1981–82; and what is his forecast for 1993–94,1994–95 and 1995–96.

  Mr. Sproat
  The information requested is as follows:

  Percentage

  Arts Council

  Sports Council

  Tourist Boards

  British Library

  1981–82

  26·8

  7·0

  8·3

  13·2

  1982·83

  30·3

  9·3

  9·5

  15·7

  1983–84

  31·5

  9·0

  8·5

  16·7

  1984–85

  33·3

  9·5

  8·8

  17·7

  1985–86

  26·3

  7·5

  6·5

  13·8

  1986–87

  33·9

  9·3

  7·9

  15·2

  1987–88

  22·1

  5·9

  5·3

  11·5

  1988–89

  22·2

  5·6

  5·3

  11·0

  1989–90

  21·8

  5·9

  5·3

  13·3

  1990–91

  22·4

  5·7

  5·4

  13·9

  1991–92

  23·1

  5·3

  5·0

  13·8

  1992–93

  21·9

  4·8

  4·7

  12·6

  1993–94

  22·8

  5·1

  4·6

  11·0

  1994–95

  19·1

  5·1

  4·6

  13·6

  1995–96

  18·8

  5·0

  4·4

  13·1

  1996–97

  19·3

  5·1

  4·6

  11·3

  Notes:

  1. The percentage of funding shown for the bodies in question, is based on the central government expenditure for all those activities which now fall within the DNH responsibility. It is not possible to show these figures as proportions of the expenditure of those departments who had responsibility for these functions previously.

  2 From 1 April 1994 responsibility for the Scottish and Welsh Arts Councils will be transferred from the Secretary of State for National Heritage to the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales respectively. Whilst the above figures take account of all three Arts Councils for the years prior to 1994–95, from that year they represent the Arts Council of England only.

  3. The figures are also distorted due to changes in the spending coverage of the Department now and in prior years, for example the inclusion of provision for funding the Welsh 4th Channel with effect from 1992–93.

  4. The British Library figures include payments in relation to the building of the new British Library, St. Pancras.

  Christmas Cards
  Mr. Hugh Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage, how many official christmas cards were sent out in 1993. by(a) Ministers, (b) civil servants and (c) staff of Government agencies working in or to his Department; and how much these cards cost (i) to buy, (ii) to post and (iii) in staff time to sign, address and place in envelopes.

  Mr. Sproat
  [pursuant to his reply, 19 January 1994, c. 656]: The chief executives of the Historic Royal Palaces and the Royal Parks agencies have now written to the hon. Member.

  Letter from David Welch to Mr. Hugh Bayley, dated 21 January 1994:
  As you know, I have been asked by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Mr. Lain Sproat, to reply to your Parliamentary Question about the number of Christmas cards sent by the Royal Parks Agency, and the cost of sending them.
  The only christmas cards distributed by the Agency were from Richmond Park. The printing costs were sponsored locally.

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  Envelopes cost £10 and they were sent at normal second class postal rate. It is not possible to quantify the cost of staff time involved in distributing them.

  Letter from David Beeton to Mr. Hugh Bayley, dated 20 January 1994:
  I have been asked by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for National Heritage, Mr. Sproat, to reply to your Parliamentary Question regarding Historic Royal Palaces Agency christmas cards.
  The Agency purchased 1,000 Christmas cards at a cost of £251·51. These, together with stocks (of about 650) remaining from the previous year, were supplied to me and my Palace and Specialist Directors and their staff, all of whom are civil servants.
  All cards were despatched at normal second class postal rate, or were sent via the Government Inter Departmental Service. It is not possible to quantify the cost in staff time to sign, address and envelope the cards.

  D-Day Commemorations
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if he will make a statement on the assistance his Department is giving to the Southern tourist board for its D-Day commemorations in 1994 and what additional help he plans.

  Mr. Sproat
  The English tourist board has given the Southern tourist board a grant totalling around £11,000 for 1993–94. The British Tourist Authority has provided both financial and administrative support for the Southern board's marketing activities on the D-day commemoration in the United States. In addition, they have provided free office space and equipment and under a joint scheme have subsidised the hoard's costs by 25 per cent. To date, this amounts to around £25,000.

  Plans are still being drawm up for the additional funds announced by the Prime Minister on 6 January for the promotion and co-ordination of events associated with the commemoration of D-day.

  Sport Facilities
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what representations he has received about the effects of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 on the use of schools' and colleges' sports facilities by local sports clubs.

  Mr. Brooke
  [holding answer 25 January 1994]: None. However, I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education have a well-established joint policy of encouraging the community use of education premises when these are not required for the purposes of the school or college concerned.

  Ministerial Visits
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage on how many occasions the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage has been replaced by the right hon. Lady Baroness Trumpington on official engagements that he had agreed to attend.

  Mr. Sproat
  [holding answer 24 January 1994]: Since her appointment, Lady Trumpington has carried out four official engagements, which circumstances prevented me from attending as originally scheduled.
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HOUSE OF COMMONS

  No. 7 Millbank
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn
  To ask the Chairman of the Accommodation and Works Committee what was the cost of converting No. 7 Millbank into offices for hon. Members; and who was responsible for its design and arrangements.

  Mr. Ray Powell
  Accommodation in No. 7 Millbank was first acquired by the Secretary of State for the Environment for use by the House to replace St. Stephen's house which is to be demolished as part of the works associated with the Jubilee line extension. Further space was then acquired to help meet the shortfall in accommodation for Members and their staff. The estimated net cost of the conversion work is £6·3 million.

  The design and arrangements were developed by the contractors together with the Parliamentary Works Directorate, and were approved by the Accommodation and Works Committee.

  Lobbying Organisations
  Mr. Cryer
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will table a resolution to require commercial lobbying organisations to be registered.

  Mr. Newton
  I have nothing at present to add to what I said when this issue was debated in the House on 28 June 1993,Official Report, columns 784–86. I understand that the Select Committee on Members' Interests has subsequently resumed consideration of the topic.

  Prime Minister's Question Time
  Mr. Lewis
  To ask the Lord President of the Council on how many occasions in each parliamentary Session since June 1983 the Leader of the House has deputised for the Prime Minister at Question Time.

  Mr. Newton
  This is a matter of public record.

  Cars
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Lord President of the Council, if he will quantify the cost of the factors which led to an increase in the cost of cars for Ministers in his Department since 1990–91.

  Mr. Tony Newton
  The cars in question are provided by the Government car service (GCS). The increase in charges to my department largely reflects:

  (i) increases averaging 12 per cent. over the period in pay and the cost of vehicles and fuel;

  (ii) an increase in Value Added Tax on GCS bills on 1 April 1991 from 15 per cent. to 17·5 per cent.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Stevens Report
  Mr. Caborn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for what reasons the Stevens report was commissioned; and which elected representatives have access to all or part of it.

  Sir John Wheeler
  Mr. Stevens was appointed by the Chief Constable of the RUC to conduct an inquiry into
  283
  allegations of collusion between members of the security forces in Northern Ireland and loyalist paramilitaries, and to make recommendations. A copy of Mr. Stevens's report was made available to my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and a summary of the report was placed in the Library of the House on 17 May 1990.

  Schools (Capital Expenditure)
  Mr. Beggs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he proposes to lift the current moratorium on capital expenditure on schools in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ancram
  My decision to slow down the building programme for schools and colleges was taken with great regret, and only because I judged it more important to protect standards in the classroom.

  Planning of projects is still proceeding, but, at this stage, I cannot give a commitment as to when the moratorium will be lifted.

  Nursery Schools
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many children attend nursery schools; what percentage this is of the total age group available for nursery education; what is the present expenditure per annum on nursery education; and if he will make a statement on the provision of additional nursery schools.

  Mr. Ancram
  A total of 7,822 pupils attended nursery schools and nursery units in the 1992–93 academic year, which was 30 per cent. of the relevant age group.

  Expenditure in 1992–93 on nursery education was some £7·6 million.

  The expenditure priority continues to be given to the compulsory schools sector. Additional nursery places are provided as resources allow, with priority directed at areas of greatest social need. An additional 225 places have been made available in the past three years.

  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many(a) full-time and (b) part-time nursery school places are available in the Belvoir estate; how many of each category will be available for the year commencing September; and if he will make a statement about the provision of nursery school education in the Belvoir estate.

  Mr. Ancram
  The two unit nursery attached to Belvoir Park primary currently provides places for 25 full-time pupils and 50 part-time pupils. From September 1994, the school will move to a dual-day system catering for a total of 100 pupils.

  There are no plans to expand nursery provision in the Belvoir estate.

  Milk Marketing
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he received proposals from the Milk Marketing Board for the reform of the milk marketing schemes; what is the proposed timetable for this reform; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Ancram
  My right hon. and learned Friend received a scheme of reorganisation from the Milk 284
  Marketing Board for Northern Ireland for the reform of milk marketing arrangements on 31 December 1993. The scheme proposes a date of 1 April 1994 for the ending of the milk marketing scheme in Northern Ireland.

  The Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland issued a consultation document on the principles of the reorganisation scheme on 17 January. A period of five weeks until 18 February has been given for replies from interested organisations. Responses to the consultation exercise will be considered by the Department in deciding whether the scheme is a qualifying scheme under the terms of the Agriculture (Northern Ireland) Order 1993 and one which ought to be approved.

  Loans
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list for each scheme operated by his Department under which loans are available, the objectives of the scheme, the number of unrecovered loans, the total value of unrecovered loans, the average number of unrecovered loans for each year since 1990, the average value of unrecovered loans for each year since 1990 and the annual cost of recovering loans.

  Sir John Wheeler
  [holding answer 24 January 1994]: Schemes operated by the Northern Ireland Office and Northern Ireland Departments under which loans are available and their objectives are as follows:

  Urban Development Grant (UDG)
  UDG is a discretionary grant designed to foster the physical and economic regeneration of inner city areas of Belfast and Londonderry by stimulation of private enterprise and investment. Assistance can be in the form of loans.

  Community Economic Regeneration Schemes (CERS)
  CERS are jointly funded by the Department of the Environment and the International Fund for Ireland. The objective is to foster property led community development in areas suffering from urban decay where the public sector is unwilling to invest. Assistance with capital costs is usually in the form of 80 per cent. grant and 20 per cent. loan.

  Community Regeneration and Improvement Special Programme (CRISP)
  The objective of CRISP is to provide finance for community groups to develop property related economic projects in their localities. Elements of assistance may comprise loans.

  Belfast Action Teams (BATs)
  Loans are paid by BATs to bring about an improvement in the quality of life and an enhancement of the opportunities and prospects of people living in the Action Team areas, and improve the effectiveness with which Government expenditure is used to benefit those living in those areas.

  Industrial development board—Selective Financial Assistance (SFA) Scheme
  The SFA scheme is administered by the Industrial Development Board to provide loan capital to industry. Funding in various forms including loan capital may, at the discretion of the Department, be offered to approved projects to encourage the introduction and development of internationally competitive companies in the manufacturing and tradeable services sectors in Northern Ireland so as to create the conditions of growth in durable employment.

  Local Enterprise Development Unit (LEDU)
  LEDU offers loans to small firms throughout Northern Ireland as part of its overall package of assistance to assist the development and growth of the small business sector.

  Tourism Development Scheme (TDS)
  TDS's aim is to assist the improvement of the tourist accommodation and amenities which Northern Ireland can offer

  285
  and thereby strengthen the competitive position of the tourism industry and improve its contribution to the economy of Northern Ireland. The range of assistance available includes loans.

  Government Loans Scheme
  The Government loans scheme in Northern Ireland has as its objective the funding of approved capital projects undertaken by local authorities and other prescribed bodies, including schools and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

  General Medical Practitioner (GMP) Loans Scheme
  This scheme was introduced to assist GMPs in improving practice premises, especially in deprived areas.

  Social Fund Scheme
  The Social Security Agency operates a Social Fund scheme under which people can apply for interest free loans to meet large intermittent or unexpected expenses. The scheme is intended to help people on a low income who cannot meet exceptional expenses from their regular income.
  There are two types of loans available from the Social Fund, budgeting loans and crisis loans. Budgeting loans are available to people who have been receiving Income Support for at least 26 weeks to help with important expenses which are difficult to budget for out of weekly benefit. Crisis loans are available to people who need financial help to meet expenses in an emergency or disaster, whether or not they are receiving benefit. However a crisis loan can only be awarded if it is the only way to prevent serious risk, or serious damage, to their health or safety.

  Information regarding unrecovered loans in the schemes for which Department of Economic Development is responsible—SFA scheme, LEDU and TDS—could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  A breakdown detailing unrecovered loans in respect of the other aforementioned schemes is as follows:

  At 31 March

  1991

  1992

  1993

  Urban Development grant

  Number of unrecovered loans

  1

  1

  1

  Value of unrecovered loans —£ million

  0·300

  0·300

  0·300

  Belfast Action Teams

  Number of unrecoverd loans

  19

  20

  21

  Value of unrecovered loans —£ million

  0·050

  0·069

  0·080

  Government Loans scheme

  Number of unrecovered loans

  12,274

  12,386

  12,500

  Value of unrecovered loans —£ million

  1,298·400

  1,500·800

  1,711·000

  GMP Loans Scheme

  Number of unrecovered loans

  62

  60

  56

  Value of unrecovered loans —£ million

  4·304

  4·238

  4·004

  Social Fund Scheme

  Number of unrecovered loans

  80,860

  99,297

  107,662

  Value of unrecovered loans —£ million

  10·675

  13·215

  14·396

  There are no uncovered loans under CERS or CRISP.

  The cost of recovering loans is not recorded in all Departments and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  Paramilitaries
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list all members of(a) proscribed loyalist and (b) proscribed republican organisations who are convicted prisoners in custody in Northern Ireland giving,
  286
  in each case, the date of their original conviction, their offence or offences, the length of sentence given and their paramilitary affiliation.

  Sir John Wheeler
  [holding answer 18 January 1994]: It would not be appropriate to name or divulge details of individual prisoners.

  Prison Assaults
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many assaults have been made on prison officers in each Northern Ireland prison in each of the last 24 months; how many prison officers required hospital treatment in each month; and how many assaults in each month were made by(a) loyalist prisoners, (b) republican prisoners and (c) other prisoners.

  Sir John Wheeler
  [pursuant to the reply, 16 December 1993, columns 871–72]: The affiliations of the prisoners who carried out assaults on 278 prison officers between December 1991 and November 1993 are as follows:

  Number

  Attributable to loyalists

  79

  Attributable to republicans

  34

  Attributable to other prisoners

  29

  Unattributable

  1136

  1A large number of assaults on staff occurred during attempts to break up factional fighting and therefore it is not possible to say for certain which individual prisoner caused the assaults.

  Information on the number of injured officers requiring hospital treatment could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

  "Back to Basics"
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what are the implications of the Government's "Back to Basics" policy for his Department during 1994.

  Sir John Wheeler
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 21 January,Official Report, column 849.

  Mr. David Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what working definition of back to basics is used by his Department; and what his Department has done in the past three months to implement the policy.

  Sir John Wheeler
  [holding answer 20 January 1994]: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 21 January, Official Report, column 849..

EMPLOYMENT

  Christmas Cards
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many official Christmas cards were sent out in 1993 by(a) Ministers, (b) civil servants and (c) staff of Government agencies working in or to his Department; and how much these cards cost (i) to buy, (ii) to post and (iii) in staff time to sign, address and place in envelopes.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The information as requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
  287

  Labour Statistics
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will produce a table showing the working population of each EC country as a percentage of the total population for the latest figures available.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The available information is as follows:

  Total employment as a percentage of the population aged 15 to 64, 19911

  Per cent.

  Denmark

  76

  Portugal

  71

  United Kingdom

  69

  Germany

  65

  Nrtherlands

  63

  Luxembourg

  61

  France

  60

  Belgium

  57

  Italy

  56

  Greece

  55

  Ireland

  52

  Spain

  49

  Source: OECD, except United Kingdom (Employment Department).

  1 1991 is the latest year for which comparable data are available.

  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many people in the United Kingdom are unemployed and are not receiving benefit; and if he will make a statement.

  Miss Widdecombe
  The latest estimates from the labour force survey for summer—June to August—1993 are that there were 1,099,000 people in the United Kingdom classified as unemployed on the internationally standard ILO measure of unemployment, but not claiming unemployment related benefits; these estimates include spring 1993 data for Northern Ireland. Conversely, there were 1,038,000 claimants that were not ILO unemployed, so that the level of unemployment on the internationally standard definition—2,981,000—was only 61,000 higher, not seasonally adjusted, than the level shown by the claimant count for the equivalent period—2,919,000.

  Multiple Unemployment
  Mr. Wicks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what information he has on the number of families who experience multiple unemployment.

  Miss Widdecombe
  The labour force survey shows that, in summer 1993, the estimated number of families in Great Britain in which two or more people were unemployed, on the International Labour Organisation definition, was 227,000. This represented 1·5 per cent. of all families in which there were at least two people aged 16 or over.

  Temporary Employees
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what consideration he is giving to considering changing the rules governing the protection of temporary employees; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  No. The employment protection rights already extend to temporary employees on the same basis as for permanent employees.
  288
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many employees are classified as temporary in the United Kingdom; what percentage of the working population this represents; and if he will make a statement.

  Miss Widdecombe
  The latest estimates from the labour force survey for summer—June to August—1993 are that 1,473,000—7 per cent.—employees in the United Kingdom are employed on a temporary basis; these estimates include spring 1993 data for Northern Ireland. Except for a seasonal increase in the summer of each year, temporary employment in the United Kingdom has remained constant over the past decade at between 5 to 6 per cent.

  Access to Work
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment which statute empowers him to introduce the access to work scheme.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is empowered to introduce Access to Work by the Employment and Training Act 1973, as amended by the Employment Act 1988.

  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Information in the form requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Job Clubs
  Mr. Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment (1) what happened to the job club contracts at Bristol, Easton, Gloucestershire, Haverfordwest, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport, Gwent, after the financial collapse of Northavon Training;

  (2) what training companies held job club contracts at Bristol, Easton, Gloucestershire, Haverfordwest, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport, Gwent;

  (3) whether Happy Extra Ltd., North Avon Enterprise Ltd., Northavon Training, Personal Training or Development Group Ltd. have ever held job club contracts at Bristol, Easton, Gloucestershire, Haverfordwest, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport, Gwent;

  (4) if he will list those companies to which job club contracts at Bristol, Easton, Gloucestershire, Haverfordwest, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport, Gwent, were transferred to other training companies, after the collapse of Northavon Training;

  (5) what financial assessments his Department has made of Northavon Training.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Responsibility for the subject of the questions 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. Paul Murphy, dated 26 January 1994:

  289
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your questions about the effect of the financial collapse of Northavon Training on Jobclub contracts in Bristol, Easton, Gloucestershire, Haverfordwest, Merthyr Tydfil and Newport in Gwent.

  You asked what happened to Jobclub contracts which were previously held by Northavon Training in the above locations and which companies took over these contracts after the collapse of this organisation. Before the company went into receivership it operated eleven Jobclub contracts in the places you mention. Information about these Jobclubs together with details of the organisations who have taken the contracts over are in Annex 1.
  It is unusual for a Jobclub contract to be interrupted or terminated because of financial problems on the part of the contractor. Where this does occur, the Employment Service (ES) takes steps to ensure there is as little disruption as possible to the Jobclub members. This can mean making temporary, short-term arrangements which will later be followed by our normal, fully competitive, tendering procedures. Such a process has occurred in several of the locations involved in your question.
  I have listed at Annex 2 all organisations which held Jobclub contracts in December 1993 at the locations you mention.
  You also asked whether Happy Extra Ltd., Northavon Enterprise Ltd., Northavon Training, Personal Training and

  Annex 1

  Northavon Training—Jobclub contracts

  Locations

  Number of contracts

  Action

  Bristol

  2

  Contracts transferred to Northavon Training, as operating division of newly formed Personal Training and Development Group.

  Easton

  Nil

  Not applicable.

  Gloucestershire

  Forest of Dean

  3

  Contracts transferred to Northavon Training, as operating division of newly formed Personal Training and Development Group.

  Cheltenham

  1

  Transferred to caretaker provider—GLOSCAT, pending full competitive tendering exercise to be completed by April 1994.

  Gloucester

  2

  Transferred to caretaker provider—JHP TRAINING, pending full competitive tendering exercise to be completed by April 1994.

  Haverfordwest

  1

  Temporary arrangements to provide Jobclub service internally, pending full competitive tendering exercise to be completed by April 1994.

  Merthyr Tydfil

  1

  Temporary arrangements to provide Jobclub service internally, pending full competitive tendering exercise to be completed by April 1994.

  Newport, Gwent

  1

  Jobclubs within the area were able to accommodate all members. Competitive tendering exercise will be completed by April 1994.

  Annex 2

  Organisations holding jobclub contracts December 1993

  Location

  Name of organisation

  Type1

  Number of contracts

  Bristol

  Fifton College

  CFE

  4

  Scout Enterprises [Western Ltd.]

  PR

  4

  Northavon Training

  PR

  2

  Grant Met Trust Ltd.

  PR

  2

  Bowerman Associates

  PR

  1

  North Avon Chamber of Commerce

  PR

  1

  290
  Development Group Ltd. have ever held Jobclub contracts in these same locations. I asked my people to check our records and I can say that Happy Extra Ltd. have never held a Jobclub contract. Northavon Training was a subsidiary company of Northavon Enterprises Ltd. which ceased trading in December 1993. Following a management buy out, Northavon Training is now operating as part of the newly formed Personal Training and Development Group. All Jobclub contracts in Annex 1 where with Northavon Training except for the Jobclub in Newport which was awarded to Northavon Enterprise Ltd.
  In the past we have not required a financial assessment of prospective programme contractors. This is mainly due to the low risk nature of Jobclub contracts where payments are made monthly in arrears after the service has been delivered. These arrangements mean there is no loss to public funds where a contractor ceases trading because of financial problems. However, some checks were made in the case of Northavon Training and these gave no cause for concern. The issue of more systematic financial scrutiny of potential contractors for Jobclub and other programmes is currently being considered by people concerned with policy development in my Head Office.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Location

  Name of organisation

  Type1

  Number of contracts

  POC associates Ltd.

  PR

  1

  Personnel and Training Services

  PR

  1

  South Bristol College

  CFE

  1

  South West Management Ltd.

  PR

  1

  Appex Trust

  CH

  1

  Barton Hill Settlement

  CH

  1

  Newfoundland Employment

  CH

  1

  291

  Location

  Name of organisation

  Type1

  Number of contracts

  Scout Enterprises

  Easton

  (Western Ltd.)

  PR

  1

  Gloucestershire

  Northavon Training

  PR

  3

  JHP Training Ltd.

  PR

  3

  GLOSCAT

  CFE

  2

  Bennington Training Services Ltd.

  PR

  1

  Personnel and Training Services

  PR

  1

  Stroud College

  CFE

  1

  Haverfordwest

  Northavon Training

  PR

  1

  Merthyr Tydfil

  Northavon Training

  PR

  1

  Newport, Gwent

  Basil Hewell

  PR

  2

  Accents Ltd.

  PR

  1

  Northavon Enterprise Ltd.

  PR

  1

  1 Key.

  PR—Private Provider.

  CFE—College of Further Education.

  CH—Charity.

EDUCATION

  Nursery Education
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list the local education authorities where fewer than half of three and four-year-olds attend a full time nursery school or class.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  In England in January 1993, there were no LEAs where more than half of the children aged three and four were being taught on a full-time basis in maintained nursery schools and nursery classes in maintained primary schools.

  Schools
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many schools are(a) controlled by local education authorities, (b) voluntary aided and (c) grant-maintained in England.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Figures taken from the "Index of Educational Establishments" indicate that the number of schools maintained by local education authorities in England, including maintained nursery, special and hospital schools, is 23,643, of which 4,075 are voluntary aided. In addition, there are 814 grant-maintained schools.

  School Inspections
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many independent or private schools have been inspected by Her Majesty's inspectorate or the Office of Standards in Education in the last three years; and if he will list them.
  292
  Mr. Forth
  The new Government Department, the Office for Standards in Education, was created on 1 September 1992. All inspections carried out by HMI or reports published since that date are a matter for OFSTED. I have asked Professor Sutherland to write to the hon. Member.

  Prior to September 1992, when HMI were members of this Department, they undertook a variety of types of inspection visit to schools. Not all of these inspections were planned to lead to published reports. A list of the independent schools which received an inspection visit between 1 January 1991 and 31 August 1992 has been placed in the Library.

  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many grant-maintained schools have been inspected by Her Majesty's inspectorate or OFSTED in the last three years; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The new Government Department, the Office for Standards in Education, was created on 1 September 1992. All inspections carried out by HMI or reports published since that date are a matter for OFSTED. I have asked Professor Sutherland to write to the hon. Member.

  Prior to September 1992, school inspections were carried out by HMI who were members of this Department. Up to July 1992, none of the visits to grant-maintained schools was a formal inspection intended to lead to a published report. Under the new independent inspection arrangements introduced from September 1993, schools maintained wholly or mainly from public funds, including grant-maintained schools, will be inspected every four years by registered inspectors with published reports and action plans. I will write to the hon. Member in regards to the information requested about HMI inspections before September 1992.

  Private and Independent Schools
  Mr. Jamieson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what is his Department's estimate of the number of private and independent schools currently operating.

  Mr. Forth
  There are currently 2,294 independent schools, including 15 city technology colleges, in operation in England.

  Parents Charter
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education which organisations have been asked to tender for contracts to distribute the revised parents charter; and how many copies are to be distributed.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Organisations have not yet been invited to tender for the contract to distribute the parents charter later in 1994. Approximately 20 million copies will be distributed.

  Moral Education
  Dr. Spink
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what provisions currently exist to ensure that children receive proper moral education, with particular reference to safe sex, at the primary and secondary school levels.

  Mr. Forth
  The new arrangements for sex education introduced by the Education Act 1993, which will come
  293
  into force in September 1994, require maintained secondary schools to provide sex education and give maintained primary schools discretion whether to do so. Section 46 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 provides for sex education to have due regard to moral considerations and the value of family life. Section 1 of the Education Reform Act 1988 provides more generally for the maintained school curriculum to promote the moral development of pupils. We are currently consulting on a draft circular of guidance to schools on the implementation of the sex education provisions: the final version will be issued in the spring.

  Student Unions
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if it is his intention, under his proposed principles to be observed in relation to student union services supported out of public funds, to prohibit student unions from funding or giving strategic support to community action schemes.

  Mr. Boswell
  The Government are determined to reform student unions and to secure that the principles of choice, democracy and accountability are universallly observed in their activities. It is not our intention to jeopardise student services, for which funding will remain available in institutions' budgets.

  University College Fees
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of Slate for Education if he will publish the current level of college fees agreed with his Department in respect of undergraduates in all the colleges of universities who have recognised collegiate structures; and when the levels for the next academic year will be agreed.

  Mr. Boswell
  The current maximum levels of college fees reimbursed through a student's mandatory award in 1993–94 are shown in the table. The levels for 1994–95 will be agreed during the course of this academic year.

  Fee £

  Cambridge colleges

  Christ's

  2,526

  Churchill

  2,511

  Clare

  2,535

  Clare Hall

  2,460

  Corpus Christi

  2,619

  Darwin

  2,580

  Downing

  2,700

  Emmanuel

  2,565

  Fitzwilliam

  2,706

  Girton

  2,601

  Gonville and Caius

  2,562

  Hughes Hall

  2,460

  Jesus

  2,589

  King's

  2,526

  Lucy Cavendish

  2,616

  Magdelene

  2,694

  New Hall

  2,691

  Newnham

  2,691

  Pembroke

  2,688

  Peterhouse

  2,514

  Queens'

  2,640

  Robinson

  2,655

  St. Catharine's

  2,601

  St. Edmund's

  2,463

  St. John's

  2,478

  Selwyn

  2,691

  294

  Fee £

  Sidney Sussex

  2,694

  Trinity

  2,460

  Trinity Hall

  2,628

  Wesley

  2,622

  Wolfson

  2,499

  Durham Colleges

  University

  182

  Hatfield

  182

  Grey

  182

  Van Mildert

  182

  Collingwood

  182

  St. Hild and St. Bede

  182

  St. Cuthbert's

  182

  St. Mary's

  182

  St. Aidan's

  182

  Trevelyan

  182

  St. Chad's

  945

  St. John's

  945

  Ushaw

  945

  Kent Colleges

  Darwin

  160

  Eliot

  160

  Rutherford

  160

  Keynes

  160

  Lancaster Colleges

  Bowland

  138

  Cartmel

  138

  The County

  138

  Furness

  138

  Fylde

  138

  Grizedale

  138

  Lonsdale

  138

  Pendle

  138

  Oxford Colleges

  Balliol

  2,936

  Blackfriars

  2,819

  Brasenose

  2,955

  Campion Hall

  3,129

  Christ Church

  2,953

  Corpus Christi

  2,946

  Exeter

  2,986

  Greyfriars

  3,008

  Hertford

  3,115

  Jesus

  2,959

  Keble

  3,183

  Lady Margaret Hall

  3,108

  Lincoln

  2,903

  Magdalen

  2,985

  Manchester

  3,012

  Mansfield

  3,297

  Merton

  2,870

  New College

  2,977

  Oriel

  3,108

  Pembroke

  2,962

  Queen's

  2,921

  Regent's Park

  3,116

  Ripon (Cuddesdon)

  2,775

  St. Anne's

  3,094

  St. Benet's Hall

  3,076

  St. Catherine's

  3,010

  St. Edmund Hall

  3,069

  St. Hilda's

  3,062

  St. Hugh's

  3,096

  St. John's

  2,918

  St. Peter's

  3,162

  St. Stephen's House

  3,011

  Somerville

  3,067

  Trinity

  2,939

  University

  2,972

  Wadham

  3,030

  Worcester

  3,021

  Wycliffe Hall

  3,011

  York Colleges

  295

  Fee £

  Alcuin

  154

  Derwent

  154

  Goodricke

  154

  Langwith

  154

  Vanburgh

  154

  Wentworth

  154

  Student Support
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education when the report on discretionary student support currently being prepared by the Gulbenkian Foundation and the Sir John Cass Foundation with the Further Education Funding Council and his Department will(a) be completed and (b) be published.

  Mr. Boswell
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning) on 7 December 1993,Official Report, column 161.

  Discretionary Awards
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what steps he is taking to enable local authorities to increase the number of discretionary awards available to students on access courses in further education colleges.

  Mr. Boswell
  Discretionary awards are made by local authorities, which meet the cost from their own resources. The Secretary of State has no power to intervene in the discretionary award policies of local authorities.

  Access Courses
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education whether the Government intends to increase the number of places on access courses in further education colleges.

  Mr. Boswell
  The Government's expenditure plans for further education allow for the forecast increase of 25 per cent. in student numbers up to 1995–96 to be met in full, with an additional increase of 3 per cent. between 1995–96 and 1996–97. These plans include provision for students on access courses as defined by schedule 2 to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. Decisions about the number of places in individual subjects or types of courses are for individual colleges, in the light of demand from students and employers and the funding available to them.

  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Boswell
  I have placed in the Library a list of the projects on which consultants were engaged in each year since 1987. The total cost of these was £7·4 million. Information for the years prior to 1987 is not available in the form requested.
  296

  Christmas Cards
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to his answer of 17 January,Official Report, column 414, how many official Christmas cards he and his junior Ministers sent out in 1993, and how much this cost.

  Mr. Boswell
  Ministers from the Department sent out some 820 cards in 1993, at a total approximate cost of £710.

TRANSPORT

  M62 Relief Road
  Mr. Lewis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what has been the total number of valid objections to the M62 relief road proposals received to date at(a) the north-west regional office, Department of Transport and (b) the Department of Transport, Marsham street.

  Mr. Robert Key
  So far, 5,180 representations have been received—4,850 at the north-west regional office and 330 at Marsham street. These figures include an element of duplication.

  Transport Police
  Mr. Trotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his answer of 15 December,Official Report, columns 697–98, what amendments will be required to the British Transport Police Scheme 1963 (Amendment) Order 1992 to take effect from April; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  The British Transport Police Force Scheme 1963 will need to be amended to take effect from April to enable the BTP to continue to operate in the restructured railway.

  The amendments are needed to allow the British Railways Board, as employer, to enter into the agreements referred to in section 132(3) of the Railways Act 1993. These agreements will enable the BR Board to provide services to other users of the police on a repayment basis.

  Some minor consequential amendments will also be needed to ensure compatibility of the scheme with the Railways Act 1993.

  Following consultation with the BR Board, London Underground Ltd. and the Docklands Light Railway, the amendments will be laid before Parliament in the spring.

  Mr. Trotter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to his answer of 15 December,Official Report, columns 697–98, what the budgetary, funding and charging arrangements will be for the British Transport police from April; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  In the restructuring railway, the employer of the British Transport police, initially the BR Board, will be responsible for the BTP budget. The budget will be drawn up as now on a regional basis, for consideration by the police committee, in consultation with the BTP and users of their services.

  Costs attributable to other users will be recovered in full by the employer through charging. It will be for the employer to ensure that all the appropriate charges are collected.
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  A licence condition will require operators to use and pay for the services of the BTP. Operators will pay the employer of the police—British Rail—direct. Policing costs will be split between Railtrack, train operating companies, independent station operators and open access operators. Operators will also pay for any specific additional policing requirements.

  Isle of Wight
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) if he will consider appointing a special adviser for the Isle of Wight's coastal road problems and to assist the highway authority to prepare alternative routes in the event of further slippage;

  (2) if he will ensure his officials visit the Isle of Wight to assess the landslip and stability problems and safety of the island's roads for holiday traffic.

  Mr. Robert Key
  If the Isle of Wight council needs technical advice from the Department of Transport on its road network, it should contact our south-eastern regional office and state its requirements. We shall be glad to provide any assistance we can. Should it prove necessary, officials will visit the island.

  A19
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will detail his plans for improving the A19 between Peterlee and the roundabout known as Testo's; when works is expected to(a) begin and (b) end; and what plans there are to improve Testo's roundabout.

  Mr. Key
  The section of the A19 between Easington and Hawthorn services will be improved to modern standards by widening the carriageway by 2 m at the same time as essential maintenance work is undertaken during 1994–95.

  There are no plans in the current programme for improvement to Testo's roundabout.

  Consultants
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales on which occasions since 1979 his Department has employed the services of external consultants; and if he will give details of the purposes for which they were employed and the cost of employing them.

  Mr. Norris
  I regret that an answer to this question can be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Rail Freight
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when his Department expects to receive a report on the study being conducted by the piggy back consortium into conveyance of freight by rail; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  I understand that this consortium expects its study to be completed by April. I look forward to examining its findings.

  Rail Infrastructure (Spending)
  Mr. Boyes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish a table showing spending on rail infrastructure for each country in the EC per capita for the latest year available.
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  Mr. Freeman
  No. It is difficult to make realistic spending comparisons between railway systems because of differences in areas such as accounting methods, definitions of infrastructure and terrain. However, last January, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Community, published "Transport Annual Statistics 1970–1990" which gives, at page 14 of the publication, infrastructure spending for seven of the 12 EC countries up to 1989. A copy of this publication has been placed in the House of Commons Library.

  A2
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on when the public consultation period will begin on the proposals to dual the A2 road between Lydden and Dover; and by which date he will publish those proposals.

  Mr. Key
  Investigation of options for the A2 Lydden —B2060—to Dover improvement is continuing and the present programme is for public consultation later this year. The scheme is included in the current review of the road programme and I will make a further announcement about the outcome of the review as soon as possible.

HEALTH

  Arboviruses
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what work has been done on arboviruses in national health service hospitals by scientists from the Ministry of Defence's Porton Down chemical and biological warfare establishment since 1964; when this work was carried out; what was the conclusion of the work; if the results of the work were exchanged with the United States of America, Canada and Australia; and in which publications the results were published.

  Mr. Sackville
  The Department has no record of any collaborative work between national health service hospitals and the chemical and biological defence establishment at Porton Down.

  Hospital Beds
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what data have been collected by her Department regarding the average length of time between the installation of national health. service hospital beds and other ward furniture and their replacement.

  Mr. Sackville
  None.

  Asbestos-related Diseases
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is her estimate of the number of people suffering from asbestos-related diseases and the numbers of them who do not have bilateral pleural diffuse thickening.

  Mr. Sackville
  Information on which to base such an estimate is not available.

  Complementary Therapies
  Sir Donald Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how much the NHS spent on complementary therapies in each of the last three years for which figures are available;
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  (2) what definition the NHS uses of the therapies regarded as complementary; and if she will list the therapies;

  (3) how many NHS hospitals provide treatment considered to be complementary medicine.

  Mr. Sackville
  There is no common definition in use within the national health service of complementary therapies, therefore figures on how much the NHS spent and the number of NHS hospitals where treatments are given cannot be provided.

  Mental Health
  Ms Jowell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many districts have a policy and practice plans to deal with those who fall out of care/contact with services.

  Mr. Bowis
  Information is not collected on districts which have a policy and plans to follow up those who fall out of contact with mental health services. We are planning to issue guidance on discharge arrangements for mentally disordered people which will emphasise the need for follow-up procedures under the care programme approach.

  Ms Jowell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the number of beds in each district for(a) special hospitals, (b) medium secure beds, (c) acute hospital in-patient beds, (d) hospital hostel beds and (e) community beds in (i) half-way hostels, (ii) crisis care, (iii) respite care, (iv) women only, (v) 24 hours staffed community beds and (vi) day-time staffed beds.

  Mr. Bowis
  The numbers of long stay beds, short stay beds and medium secure beds by district are published annually in "Bed Availability in England". The latest publication relating to 1992–93 is available in the Library. The remaining information is not available centrally.

  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of the total expenditure of(a) West Berkshire health authority and (b) each of the other health authorities in the United Kingdom is spent on activities relating to mental health; and how much this represents per capita of the population served by each health authority.

  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 17 January 1994]: This information will be placed in the Library.

  Unleaded Petrol
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment has been made by the Chief Medical Officer about the possible danger of vapour fumes from unleaded petrol; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Sackville
  The Committees on CarcinogenicityCOC—and Medical Effects of Air Pollutants—COMEAP —set up by the Chief Medical Officer to advise him, have considered hazards to health from inhalation of benzene which is a component of vapour fumes from leaded and unleaded petrol. Benzene is an important component of leaded and unleaded petrol. It is limited by European Community directive to a maximum content of 5 per cent. by volume.

  Benzene is toxic at high doses and is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a human carcinogen. Long-term occupational exposure to benzene at concentrations a thousand times greater than those
  300
  typically found in urban air in the United Kingdom has been shown to increase the risk of certain types of leukaemia in adults: its use in industry is therefore strictly controlled. Although it is not possible to define an absolutely safe level of exposure to benzene, levels in outdoor air encountered in the United Kingdom are considered by COMEAP and the COC, to present a very low risk to health.

  Treatment Facilities
  Ms Jowell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many districts have residential and general treatment facilities for those who have had challenging behavioural or forensic histories.

  Mr. Bowis
  Information on the number of beds by sector is published annually in the KHO3 summary booklet, "Bed Availability in England", a copy of which is available in the Library. The number of districts with residential and general treatment facilities of this kind is not recorded centrally, but guidance was issued to health and local authorities in October 1992, LAC(92)15 and HSG(92)42, which emphasised the need to provide a diverse range of services to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities.

  Cervical Smear Tests
  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will arrange for general practitioner contracts to be amended so that cervical smear tests are carried out every three years.

  Mr. Sackville
  Our first priority is to increase take up under the existing screening programme, as research shows that the majority of women who develop cervical cancer have not been screened.

  GP Fundholders
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health of she will list the management allowances payments made to GP fundholding practices and practices preparing to be fundholders(a) by wave and (b) in total for each (i) family health services authority and (ii) region.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The information requested will be placed in the Library. General practitioner fundholding has delivered many improvements in quality of care for patients. The costs of the management allowance—at about 2 per cent. of budgets set, represents excellent value for money.

  Special Advisers
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health which special advisers in her Department are seconded from other organisations; and what are the organisations and the lengths and terms of the secondments.

  Mr. Sackville
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's one special adviser is employed directly by the Department of Health.
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  Children (Slow Development)
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children aged under 16 years suffer from developmental delay and learning difficulties where it has not been possible to establish the reason.

  Mr. Bowis
  Three to four per 1,000 children are known to have severe learning disabilities. In at least a quarter of these cases the cause is unknown.

  Independent Sector Homes
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the average number of beds of an independent sector home in each year since 1979.

  Mr. Bowis
  The information is shown in the table. Figures for 1981 and 1982 have not been provided for residential care homes as the information held for these years is not considered reliable. No figures are available for nursing homes before 1982.

  Mean number of beds available per home in the independent sector at 31 March 1979 to 1992

  Year

  Residential homes

  Nursing homes

  1979

  21

  n/a

  1980

  21

  n/a

  1981

  n/a

  n/a

  1982

  n/a

  26

  1983

  19

  27

  1984

  19

  26

  1985

  18

  26

  1986

  17

  26

  1987

  17

  1—

  1988

  17

  26

  1989

  17

  28

  1990

  17

  29

  1991

  18

  30

  1992

  18

  31

  1993

  2—

  32

  1 The year of collection for data on nursing homes changed from calendar to financial between 31 December 1986 and 1 April 1988, consequently the figures for 1987 are included in the 1988 entry.

  2 Figures are not yet available.

  Sources: Nursing homes SBH212 (1982–1986), KO36 Returns (1987/88–1992/93).

  Residential homes RA2-RA4 (1979–1986) RAC; Return (1987–1992).

  Christmas Cards
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to her answer of 17 January,Official Report, column 389, how many official Christmas cards she and her junior Ministers sent out in 1993; and how much this cost.

  Mr. Sackville
  Some 1,800 charity Christmas cards were sent out, at an estimated cost of £1,080.

  Appointments
  Dr. Wright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the size and nature of the list maintained by her Department of candidates for health authority and trust appointments.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Nominations for appointment to national health service authorities and trusts, which are 302
  received from hon. Members and others, including self-nominations, are forwarded to regional health authorities who are responsible for making some appointments and whose chairmen are required to propose candidates for board appointments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

  Cold-related Illnesses
  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what records are maintained annually as to the effect of cold weather spells on hospital admissions according to GP recommendations.

  Mr. Bowis
  Anonymised data from hospital patient administration systems are submitted to the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in respect of each patient admitted to hospital for treatment. Extracts of the dataset are then analysed by the Department of Health. The patient record will show the condition for which admission was made and will include the date of that admission. There is no central record. of the admission practice of individual general practitioners.

  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent research has been undertaken by her Department into the effects of cold weather, hypothermia and chill-related illnesses on the overall health budget.

  Mr. Bowis
  None. The main agency through which the Government support biomedical and clinical research is 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.

  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the most recent estimated cost to her Department of cold-related illnesses.

  Mr. Bowis
  Information is not available on which to base such an estimate, since no precise definition of "cold-related illness" can be made.

  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what expenditure has been incurred by her Department to ensure public awareness of the dangers of cold weather to health and the measures required to combat them; and if she will give a breakdown by regional health authority and regional health boards.

  Mr. Bowis
  We spent approximately £445,000 on our "Keep Warm Keep Well" public information campaign for the winter of 1992–93. Contributions to the total cost, which approached £500,000, were also made by the Department of Social Security and the Welsh Office. A similar campaign for Scotland, "Keep Warm this Winter" is funded by the Scottish Office at a cost in 1992–93 of £103,000. These campaigns do not involve regional health authorities or regional health boards.

  Yorkshire Regional Health Authority
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will set out for each of the last five financial years, and for 1993–94, the amount of money spent on refurbishing and improving the Yorkshire regional health headquarters in Harrogate.

  Mr. Sackville
  This is a matter for the Yorkshire regional health authority. The hon. Member may wish to contact the chairman, Sir Brian Askew, for details.
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  NHS Beds (Private Use)
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to her answer of 18 January,Official Report, column 534, what are the safeguards that constrain the opportunities for health authorities and trusts in making available authorised pay-beds.

  Mr Sackville
  National health service trust hospitals may make beds available for private patients providing there is no significant interference with the performance by the trust of its obligations under NHS contracts. Similar provisions apply to directly managed units. These statutory requirements ensure that NHS patients are not disadvantaged by private practice within the health service.

  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what specific auditing or monitoring is undertaken to ensure that national health service private patient charges are calculated correctly and that all costs to the national health service are included.

  Mr. Sackville
  Auditors examine the adequacy of systems of financial control and compliance with them as part of their annual audit programme.

  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what is her Department's policy on(a) collecting centrally and (b) for publishing information on the number of authorised pay-beds within the national health service since 1 April 1991;

  (2) when she expects information on the number of authorised pay-beds in the national health service for the years 1991–92 and 1992–93 to become available; and what are the reasons for the delay in making public information on authorised pay-beds in the national health service for 1991–92.

  Mr. Sackville
  Since 1 April 1991, health authorities, on behalf of directly managed units, and trusts have, subject to certain safeguards, been able to determine their own private patient activity. Trusts record private patient income in their accounts but do not "authorise" pay-beds and therefore do not collect authorised bed numbers.

  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence her Department has received indicating abuses or omissions in the compilation of charges to private bed users within the national health service.

  Mr. Sackville
  None.

DEFENCE

  Porton Down
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) what tests and studies have been carried by the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down into binary reactant DF; when these tests and studies were carried out; and what was the assessment of these studies and tests;

  (2) if all the tests for the human volunteer programme run by the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down since 1964 have been carried out on service personnel alone; and if all these tests have been conducted within the grounds of the establishments at either Porton Down or Nancekuke;
  304
  (3) what work has been conducted since 1964 inside NHS hospitals by scientists from the Porton Down chemical and biological warfare establishment; when this work was carried out; if this work involved NHS patients; what was the conclusion of the work; if the results of the work were exchanged with the United States of America, Canada and Australia; and in which publications the results were published;

  (4) what was the nature of the collaborative work studied by the members of the chemical and biological defence establishment who were stationed for an extended period at the counterpart US military establishments in Edgewood and Fort Detrick and Maryland in recent years; and how much of this collaborative work has been published in open scientific literature;

  (5) what is the procedure for monitoring and checking on the health of service personnel who have been tested with chemical and biological warfare agents at Porton Down in the years following the tests; for how many years after the tests check-ups are made; how often the check-ups are made; if this information is automatically made available to the doctors of the service personnel, whether requested or not; and what changes have been made to this procedure since 1964;

  (6)what was the conclusion of Porton Down's work on coxiella burnettii referred to in his answer to the hon. Member of 16 July 1993, Official Report, column 712–19, in which years information from this research was exchanged with the United States of America; and with which United States of America military establishment this information was exchanged;

  (7) following his answer, from which source the QL referred to in his reply of 16 July 1993, Official Report, column 712–19, was obtained, what was the conclusion of the study; and if VX was produced as a result of the study into the transesterification process involving QL;

  (8) what studies and tests have been done by the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down to assess a nerve agent which penetrates skin and clothes quicker than the G agents and VX; when these experiments were done; and what was the conclusion of the assessment;

  (9) if he will make a statement on the considerations leading to the setting up by the chemical and biological defence board of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council of the new biomedical sciences committee and microbiology and biotechnology committee; and if he will name the academic members of these committees;

  (10) what experiments his Department has carried out on Rocky Mountain spotted fever; when this work was carried out; what was the purpose of the work; and when and under which defence agreements the results of this work were passed to the United States of America, Canada or Australia.

  Mr. Hanley
  These are matters for the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Porton Down—CBDE. I have asked the chief executive of CBDE to write to the hon. Member.

  Letters from Graham S. Pearson to Mr. Ken Livingstone, dated 26 January 1994:

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what tests and studies have been carried by the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down into binary reactant DF; when these tests and studies were carried out; and what was the assessment of these studies and tests (Question 9,

  305
  Order Paper, 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. As part of this work the potential hazard of possible chemical and biological warfare agents is assessed and the evaluation of British protective measures evaluated.

  3. Some work was carried out in the late 1940s and early 1950s into methyl phosphonyl difluoride at the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Sutton Oak in a programme of work on unitary nerve agent precursors. The difluoride was subsequently used in mixtures with the dichloride in work at Nancekuke to prepare unitary nerve agents. No work has been carried out on DF as a binary reactant. More recently a limited study was carried out in 1993 to evaluate possible analytical techniques for DF as part of a programme examining the availability of the analytical techniques required to underpin the Chemical Weapons Convention.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking if all the tests for the human volunteer programme run by the chemical warfare establishments at Porton Down since 1964 have been carried out on service personnel alone; and if all these tests have been conducted within the grounds of the establishments at either Porton Down or Nancekuke (Question 10, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. In order to carry out this work, it is necessary to use service volunteers to:

  a. assess the ability of service personnel to function with new equipment and procedures,

  b. develop medical countermeasures to protect Service personnel and

  c. evaluate the effects of very low and medically safe concentrations of CW agents on the ability of unprotected personnel to operate normally.

  No studies involving volunteers are carried out unless there is a clear military need and a detailed protocol has been reviewed and approved by an independent Ethics Committee in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Royal College of Physicians.

  3. All studies for the human volunteer programme ran by the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment since 1964 are carried out using Service volunteers only and the majority of the studies are conducted within the grounds of the Establishment; a few are carried out at other military establishments. No Service volunteer studies have taken place at Nancekuke.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what work has been conducted since 1964 inside NHS hospitals by scientists from the Porton Down chemical and biological warfare establishment; when this work was carried out; if this work involved NHS patients; what was the conclusion of the work; if the results of the work were exchanged with the United States of America, Canada and Australia; and in which publications the results were published (Question 13, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. As part of this work the potential hazard of possible chemical and biological warfare agents is assessed and the evaluation of British protective measures evaluated.

  3. In carrying out its programme, CBDE does work in conjunction with academic institutions and hospital departments generally involving an extramural research contract from CBDE. Occasionally, members of CBDE staff participate in the work at these academic institutions or hospitals. No records are maintained of such participation. The involvement of NHS patients would be a matter for the academic institution or hospital concerned.
  306
  4. The results of work carried out in conjunction with academic institution and hospital departments forms part of the technology base drawn upon in collaboration with the United States of America, Canada and Australia. Our records do not indicate any publications involving work carried out inside NHS hospitals by scientists from CBDE.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what was the nature of the collaborative work studied by the members of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment who were stationed for an extended period at the counterpart US military establishments in Edgewood and Fort Detrick in Maryland in recent years; and how much of this collaborative work has been published in open scientific literature (Question 16, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. I regret that our records do not provide this information in a readily accessible form. However I have consulted my staff and a small number of them have been stationed in recent years at either Edgewood or Fort Detrick. The nature of the collaborative work studied by members of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment was as follows:

  (a) Detection of airborne microorganisms.

  (b) Rapid identification of microorganisms by means of immunofluorescence.

  (c) Theoretical studies into the penetration of protective suits by aerosol particles.

  (d) Studies into the detection of chemical warfare agents focusing on the application of ion mobility spectrometry.

  (e) Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling.

  3. The published open literature that appeared as a result of this collaborative work was:

  (a) PHILLIPS A. P., MORRIS B. C., HALL D., GLENISTER M. and WILLIAMS J. E. Identification of encapsulated and non-encapsulated Yersinia restis by immunofluorescence tests using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. Epidemiol Infect 101: 59–73,1988.

  (b) PHILLIPS A. P. and EZZELL J. W. Identification of Bacillus anthracis by polyclonal antibodies against extracted vegetative cell antigens. J Appl Bacteriol 66:419–432, 1989.

  (c) EICEMAN G. A., SNYDER A. P. and BLYTH I). A. Monitoring of airborne organic vapors using ion mobility spectrometry. Intemat J Environ Anal Chem, 1990. Vol 38 part 3 pp 415–425.

  (d) EICEMAN G. A., SNYDER A. P. and BLYTH D. A. Continuous atmospheric monitoring of organic vapors by ion mobility spectrometry. Instrumen Trace Org Monit, 1992.

  (e) EICEMAN G. A., BLYTH D. A., SHOFF D. B. and SNYDER A. P. Screening of solid commercial pharmaceuticals using ion mobility spectrometry. Analytical Chemistry, 1990. Vol 62 part 14 pp 1374–1379.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what is the procedure for monitoring and checking on the health of service personnel who have been tested with chemical and biological warfare agents at Porton Down in the years following the tests; for how many years after the tests check-ups are made; how often the check-ups are made; if this information is automatically made available to the doctors of the service personnel, whether requested or not; and what changes have been made to this procedure since 1964 (Question 18, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the United Kingdom Armed Forces have effective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. In order to carry out this work, it is necessary to use service volunteers to:

  (a) assess the ability of service personnel to function with new equipment and procedures,

  (b) develop medical countermeasures to protect Service personnel and

  307

  (c) evaluate the effects of very low and medically safe concentrations of CW agents on the ability of unprotected personnel to operate normally.

  No studies involving volunteers are carried out unless there is a clear military need and a detailed protocol has been reviewed and approved by an independent Ethics Committee in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Royal College of Physicians.

  3. The procedure in respect of Service volunteers is that on arrival at CBDE each volunteer is given a medical examination to see if they are fit for the proposed study. The nature of the study is explained to them and they are told that they may withdraw from the study without any explanation at any stage. At the end of the study they are given a second medical examination and the fact that they have participated at CBDE in a volunteer study is recorded on their medical records.

  4. From time to time, Service volunteers have been recalled so that checks on their medical health can be made. There is no particular frequency or pattern to such recalls. In addition some volunteers return voluntarily to CBDE to take part in subsequent unrelated studies. There is no evidence that Service volunteers have had any deterioration in their health as a result of their participation as a volunteer in a human study.

  5. Recently, the practice has been instituted in which all volunteers upon arrival at the Establishment have been read a lay statement by a military officer which states that "It is CBDE policy to call back some volunteer subjects for re-testing from time to time to ensure that the techniques used give consistent and reproducible results and that no changes in the way we apply the tests have occurred with time". The recall of any volunteers to CBDE is recorded on their medical records.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what was the conclusion of Porton Down's work on Coxiella Burnettii referred to in his Answer to the honourable Member of 16th July 1993, Official Report, column 714, in which years information from this research was exchanged with the United States of America; and with which United States of America military establishment this information was exchanged (Question 19, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. As part of this work the potential hazard of possible chemical and biological warfare agents is assessed and the evaluation of British protective measures evaluated.

  3. The work on Coxiella Burnettii has shown that a number of antibody reagents and gene probes could be produced which could be incorporated into test procedures for the indentification of the agent. This information was exchanged with the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the US Army Edgewood Research, Development and Engineering Center (ERDEC) since the last 1980s.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking from which source the QL referred to in his reply of 16th July 1993, Official Report, column 712, was obtained, what was the conclusion of the study; and if VX was produced as a result of the study into the transesterification process involving QL (Question 20, Order Paper 18 Janaury 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The QL was obtained from the United States of America and the conclusion of the study into the transesterification process confirmed that it was possible to produce VX from QL.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what studies and tests have been done by the chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down to assess a nerve agent which penetrates skin and clothes quicker than the G agents and VX; when these experiments were done; and what was the conclusion of the assessment (Question 22, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to ensure that the UK Armed Forces have effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or
  308
  biological weapons may be used against them. As part of this work the potential hazard of possible chemical and biological warfare agents is assessed and the evaluation of British protective measures evaluated.

  3. Our records do not indicate that any tests or studies have been carried out by the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down to assess a nerve agent which penetrates the skin and clothing quicker than the G agents and VX.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking if he will make a statement on the considerations leading to the setting up by the Chemical and Biological Defence Board of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council of the new Biomedical Sciences Committee and Microbiology and Biotechnology Committee; and if he will name the academic members of those committees (Question 23, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. The Chemical and Biological Defence Board of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council has had three committees since the early 1980s: Physical Sciencies Committee, Life Sciences Committee and Medical Committee. In the late 1980s, an additional committee called the Biotechnology Committee was established under the Chemical and Biological Defence Board and was tasked to produce a report on the implications of biotechnology for defence. The Biotechnology Committee completed its work in early 1992. At the same time some of the activities of the Medical Committee were transferred to the CBDE Ethics Committee and the three committees of the Chemical and Biological Defence Board were reorganised into the Physical Science Committee, the Biomedical Sciences Committee and the Microbiology and Biotechnology Committee.

  3. The individual independent members of these committees serve in a personal capacity and it would be inappropriate for the Ministry of Defence to name them.

  1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking what experiments his Department has carried out on Rocky Mountain spotted fever; when this work was carried out; what was the purpose of the work; and when and under which defence agreements the results of this work were passed to the United States of America, Canada or Australia (Question 25, Order Paper 18 January 1994) has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment.

  2. We have no record that any work has been carried out at the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment or its precursor establishments into Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

  Chemical Weapons
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when was the last time the Ministry of Defence held discussions at a ministerial level with the United States of America concerning the production of chemical weapons; where these meetings were held; and who attended the meetings.

  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what were the dates, and locations of all the meetings between his Department and the United States Government since 1979 to discuss the renewed production of chemical weapons by(a) the United Kingdom and (b) the United States of America.

  Mr. Hanley
  The United Kingdom abandoned its offensive chemical capability in the 1950s. Our policy emphasises the need for an effective defence against the use of chemical weapons and the implementation of international agreements on their control, destruction and eventual abolition. We have had a long-standing and continuing dialogue with the United States on a broad range of issues in the chemical warfare field, including in the 1980s United States plans to update their offensive
  309
  chemical capability, which were subsequently cancelled by President Bush in May 1991. Details of all meetings where United States plans were discussed could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Mutual Weapons Development Programme.
  Mr. Livingstone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when Britain and the United States of America set up the mutual weapons development programme: what was the range of the programme; why it was set up; which United Kingdom Ministry of Defence establishments were involved; and what is the current status of the programme.

  Mr. Aitken
  My Department is not aware of the mutual weapons development programme referred to by the hon. Member.

  Scott Inquiry
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether Mr. Nicolas Bevan, a former civil servant in his Department, has requested any special access to departmental documents in preparation for his appearance before the Scott inquiry.

  Mr. Aitken
  All current and former Ministry of Defence officials and Ministers called to give evidence to Lord Justice Scott's inquiry have been offered access to relevant departmental documents.

  International Military Services Ltd.
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether all defence export sales by International Military Services Ltd. or any of its subsidiaries are subject to licensing; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Aitken
  All exports of defence equipment by International Military Services Ltd. and its subsidiaries are subject to the normal export licensing requirements.

  Exports
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence which Government defence export sales are currently subject to export licensing and which are not; and what changes were made in this during the period after 1980.

  Mr. Aitken
  All Government defence exports have Crown status and are therefore not subject to export licensing requirements. They are, however, subject to the normal foreign and defence policy considerations.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether defence exports carried out as part of the successive Government-to-Government agreements with Jordan and Saudi Arabia were subject to export licensing.

  Mr. Aitken
  Sales of defence equipment to Jordan under the memoranda of understanding signed in 1985 and 1987 were subject to the normal export licensing requirements. Exports of defence equipment to Saudi Arabia under the Al Yamamah arrangement have Crown status and are therefore riot subject to export licensing requirements, although they are subject to the normal foreign and defence policy considerations. All other sales of defence equipment to Saudi Arabia are subject to the normal export licensing requirements.

  Mozambique (Assistance)
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assistance the Government have given and will give to Mozambique to assist in clearing land mines.

  Mr. Hanley
  The Ministry of Defence has not to date assisted the Government of Mozambique with the clearance of land mines, and there are no current plans to provide this type of assistance. The United Nations operation in Mozambique has embarked on an extensive mine clearance project.

  South Africa
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assistance his Department is giving to South Africa, following requests, for help and advice in creating a multiracial peacekeeping force.

  Mr. Hanley
  The Ministry of Defence, in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is actively considering with the parties involved how the United Kingdom might best help the process of creating integrated defence forces in South Africa. Any assistance must be at the request of the sub-council for Defence of the Transitional Executive Council in South Africa. The sub-council has approved the formation of a national peacekeeping force and has approached the Commonwealth Secretary-General for assistance to the force. The Government are giving urgent consideration to the request from the Secretary-General for British personnel to form part of a commonwealth advisory team.

  Tank Imports
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what model is the tank imported from the Russian Federation in 1992, as listed in the United Nations register of conventional arms.

  Mr. Hanley
  The model is T-80U.

  Search and Rescue
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) what comparative study he has carried out into the search and rescue Sea Kings operating and support costs at RAF Chivenor and RAF Brawdy for each of the next five years, from 1 July 1994; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) if he will give his best estimate of the breakdown of operating and support costs for search and rescue Sea Kings from RAF Chivenor in the year commencing 1 August together with that of operating from RAF Brawdy in the same period.

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

  Bases (Refurbishment)
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list those bases which are being refurbished in the next three years; and how much is being spent on each base.

  Mr. Hanley
  All defence establishments maintain a regular programme of maintenance work and, where necessary, new construction, both to maintain the operational effectiveness of the defence estate and to
  311
  update facilities as defence needs change. Such planned refurbishment expenditure is the responsibility of individual budget holders; information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

SCOTLAND

  Government Expenditure
  Mr. Canavan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the effect of Government spending plans on the services provided by his Department.

  Mr. Lang
  Within the total available for public expenditure in Scotland, I shall be imposing strict limits on what is spent directly on staff and the other costs of running the Scottish Office. All areas will be required to demonstrate greater efficiency in delivering services.

  Forestry
  Mrs. Ewing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects the working group established in 1993 to report on the options for the ownership and management of Forestry Commission woodlands; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir Hector Monro
  Ministers expect to receive the advice of the forestry review group early this year.

  New Towns
  Mr. Ingram
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last met the chairman of the new town development corporation boards to discuss the wind-up of the new towns; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Stewart
  Winding up of new towns was among the issues discussed when I met the chairmen of each new 312
  town development corporation in December 1993. My right hon. Friend last met all chairmen in October 1992 and those of Livingston and Irvine last October.

  Local Government Reorganisation
  Mrs. Adams
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to discuss local government reorganisation.

  Mr. Lang
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave earlier today to the hon. Members for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) and for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm).

  Mr. Hood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what recent representations he has received from those local authorities which organised referendums on local government reform; and if he will give the results of these referendums.

  Mr. Stewart
  A number of local authorities have conducted referendums including Clydesdale district council in the hon. Member's constituency. However, comprehensive information on the results of these is not available centrally.

  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what recent representations he has received from local authorities concerning local government reform and the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill; and of these councils how many indicated that they had conducted referendums on both subjects.

  Mr. Stewart
  A wide range of representations has been received from local authorities and other organisations about our proposals for local government reform. Some have taken the form of referendum while others have taken the form of opinion polls, petitions and postcard campaigns.
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  A90 (Dualling)
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much money has been spent since 1979 in upgrading the newly renamed A90 from Aberdeen to dual carriageway.

  Mr. James Douglas-Hamilton
  Since 1979, we have spent some £139 million on a major upgrading of the A90 route between Perth and Aberdeen. The opening of the Brechin bypass this spring will complete the dualling of the route and fulfil our manifesto commitment.

  Tourist Boards
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet the chairman of the Scottish tourist board to discuss the reduction in the number of area tourist boards in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  My right hon. Friend has no plans to meet the chairman of the Scottish tourist board to discuss the reduction in the number of area tourist boards in Scotland.

  Housing
  Mr. Dunnachie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he plans to meet representatives of tenants' groups to discuss housing needs and investment in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  My right hon. Friend does not currently have any plans to meet representatives of tenants' groups to discuss housing needs and investment in Scotland. It is for local housing authorities to consider the housing needs of their areas, and to identify their investment needs in their annual capital programmes.

  School Buildings (Grampian)
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what account he has taken of the changes in the numbers on school rolls within each constituency in the Grampian regional council area when deciding the capital allocation for school buildings.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  Capital allocations for school buildings are distributed according to our assessment of education authorities' relative needs and priorities. Several factors are taken into account, including pupil numbers. Each authority is considered as a whole, not on the basis of individual constituencies.

  Roads (Strathclyde)
  Mr. McKelvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last met Strathclyde regional council to discuss road network development.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  I met Councillor Malcolm Waugh, chairman of Strathclyde regional council's roads and transportation committee, on Friday 3 December 1993 to discuss progress on the A77 Ayr road route.

  Quarries
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is his policy on allowing planning applications for very large quarries.
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  Mr. Stewart
  Current policy on very large quarries is set out in the "National Planning Guidelines: Aggregate Working", 1977. A copy is available in the House Library. New guidance is to be issued soon.

  Forestry Commission
  Sir Thomas Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is his timetable for the review of the work of the Forestry Commission.

  Sir Hector Monro
  I expect the forestry review group to present its advice to Ministers early this year.

  Drug Addiction
  Mr. Wray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what measures he has taken in order to reduce the crime rate, the increase in drug addiction and the number of drug-related deaths.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The Government have in place a range of measures aimed at reducing both the supply of, and the demand for, drugs. These measures seek to tackle the problem on a number of fronts, including enforcement of the laws against trafficking and misuse of drugs; prevention and education; and treatment and rehabilitation. The drugs task force led by my noble and learned Friend the Minister of State is currently reviewing what is being done and considering what further steps might be taken.

  More broadly, the Government continue to seek to develop initiatives to prevent and deal with crime. Our new crime prevention strategy launched in November 1992 provides a framework within which action to prevent crime can be taken forward. It is encouraging that recorded crime in Scotland fell slightly in 1992 and recent reports from Scottish police forces have indicated that the trend towards lower crime figures continued in 1993.

  Bypasses (Fife)
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the provision of bypasses for communities in north-east Fife.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The Government have no current plans for the construction of bypasses in north-east Fife.

  Strikes
  Mr. Fabricant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what analysis he has made of the number of hours lost through strike action in Scotland in 1991 and 1992; and what comparison he has made with the comparable figures for 1978 and 1979.

  Mr. Stewart
  In Scotland, the number of working days lost through stoppages of work caused by industrial disputes was 28 per 1,000 employees in 1992 and 62 per thousand employees in 1991. The comparable figures for 1978 and 1979, per 1,000 employees, were 429 and 1,569 respectively.

  Agriculture
  Mr. Walsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last met the Scottish National Farmers Union to discuss current problems in Scottish agriculture with particular reference to the arable sector.
  315
  Sir Hector Monro
  My right hon. Friend met Mr. John Ross, president of the Farmers' Union of Scotland, on Wednesday 24 November 1993 to discuss a range of issues affecting the Scottish arable sector.

  European Development Fund
  Mr. Robert Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what recent discussions he has had with regional councils about European development fund grants.

  Mr. Lang
  Scottish Office Ministers have had a number of meetings recently with local authorities and local enterprise companies to consider cases for designation under the European structural funds. The hon. Member will be aware of the Government's success in securing designation, and therefore eligibility for European funding, for areas covering close to 85 per cent. of the Scottish population under objectives 1, 2 and 5b. Close and regular contact will continue to be maintained at official level as regional development plans for the designated areas are drawn up.

  Quangos
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will review his criteria for appointing people to quangos.

  Mr. Lang
  No. All public appointments must be made on the basis of aptitude and merit. I see no reason to change these criteria.

  Hospital Waiting Lists
  Mr. Graham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the number of NHS trust hospitals in Scotland in breach of the patients charter waiting time limits.

  Mr. Stewart
  There were eight NHS trust hospitals which had patients on waiting lists at 30 September 1993 who had waited longer than the appropriate treatment guarantees.

  Mines (Abandonment)
  Mr. Eric Clarke
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he has taken to retain the Scottish mining abandonment plans in Scotland.

  Mr. Stewart
  This is a matter for British Coal as custodian of the record.

  Council House Sales
  Sir David Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many council houses have been sold to sitting tenants in Scotland since May 1979.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information requested is published in the Scottish Office statistical bulletin, housing series, No. HSG/1993/8, "Housing Trends in Scotland". This publication is available in the Library.

  Health Care
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet the chairpersons of health boards to discuss the provision of health care in Scotland.
  316
  Mr. Stewart
  My noble and learned Friend the Minister of State is due to meet health board chairmen on 25 February 1994.

  Greater Glasgow Health Board (Management)
  Mr. Watson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what plans he has to undertake a review of internal management practices at Greater Glasgow health board.

  Mr. Stewart
  Greater Glasgow health board faces a large agenda of change in implementing its mental health strategy and community care plan, in formulating and implementing strategies for acute and primary care services and in developing its role as purchaser.

  The new chairman understands the need for effective management of the board's affairs and is responsible for ensuring that the board is as well placed as possible to undertake these important tasks. My right hon. Friend is ready to offer any necessary support.

  Local Enterprise Companies
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about commercial confidentiality in relation to local enterprise companies.

  Mr. Stewart
  The local enterprise companies are required by their operating contracts with Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise to have in place arrangements to protect confidential and commercial in confidence information, including that of their own directors and others. Precise arrangements are for Scottish Enterprise Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the local enterprise companies to determine.

  Tourist Boards
  Sir David Steel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the future of tourist boards in Scotland.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The Scottish tourist board has submitted a recommendation on a new area tourist board structure to my right hon. Friend. This is being considered carefully and an announcement will be made in due course.

  Hospitals (Emergency Theatres)
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if each national health service hospital which carries out operations has a theatre dedicated to emergencies.

  Mr. Stewart
  In larger hospitals, surgical teams take turns to be responsible for emergencies, typically for 24 hours each, during which they normally have sole use of a theatre for emergency operations. Smaller hospitals cannot operate the same system but will always give precedence to emergency operations over waiting list admissions.

  Speech Therapy
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the waiting time for a first appointment with a speech therapist in each health board area.

  Mr. Stewart
  This information is not held centrally.
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  Sheriffs
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what proportion of a sheriff's time is taken on(a) civil and (b) criminal and other work.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  It is estimated that, on average, 30 per cent. of a sheriff's time is spent on civil work and 70 per cent. on criminal and other work.

  Hospital Admissions
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many admissions to national health service hospitals for each of the last three years for which figures are available were elective admissions; and how many were emergency admissions.

  Mr. Stewart
  Information on elective and emergency admissions for the period 1990–92 is set out in the table.

  Admissions to Scottish hospitals 1990–92

  1990

  1991

  1992

  Elective Admissions

  437,538

  447,635

  484,142

  Transfers1

  83,286

  89,344

  96,818

  Emergency Admissions

  369,961

  382,141

  400,253

  All Admissions

  890,785

  919,120

  981,213

  1Transfer Admissions are transferred from other units, specialities or consultants.

  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many admissions to national health service hospitals there were in each of the last three years for which figures are available; and how many of these admissions were re-admissions within a month of hospital discharge.

  Mr. Stewart
  The total number of admissions to hospital in Scotland and the total number of re-admissions within 28 days is set out in the table.

  Total admissions and re-admissions in Scotland 1990–92

  Period

  Admissions

  Re-admissions within 28 days

  1990

  803,930

  101,209

  1991

  829,260

  107,484

  11992

  655,535

  87,237

  1 First 9 months.

  Electricity Privatisation (Severance Schemes)
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish details of the severance schemes available to employees which were in operation immediately prior to the privatisation of the South of Scotland electricity board, including details of facilities to make early payment of pensions to staff under such schemes.

  Mr. Stewart
  Details of the severance and pensions schemes operated by the South of Scotland electricity board until privatisation, and by Scottish Power plc since, were and are matters for the managements of these organisations.
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  Nurses' Cars
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many cars have been allocated to national health service nurses in(a) the hospital service and (b) the community service in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

  Mr. Stewart
  This information is not held centrally.

  NHS Trusts
  Sir Russell Johnston
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will define the purpose of consultation as employed during the process to establish trust status units within the NHS.

  Mr. Stewart
  The purpose of public consultation on NHS trust applications is to allow consideration to be given to the views of interested parties before deciding whether or not to approve an application.

  Greenock Prison
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the size and composition of the visitors' committee of Her Majesty's prison, Greenock; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  In a reply I gave to the hon. Member on 23 March 1993,Official Report, column 474, I said that it was the intention of my right hon. Friend to appoint a visiting committee to Her Majesty's prison Greenock, when the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings Act 1993 became law. However, since then the Prisons and Young Offenders Institutions (Scotland) Rules have been drafted and widely circulated for consultation. These rules seek, among other things, to amend the constitution of existing visiting committees and to establish new visiting committees for Her Majesty's prisons Greenock, Friarton and Longriggend. As the revised rules will be laid before the House in the spring, it seems sensible that the new visiting committees should be constituted on a basis which is consistent with them. The visiting committee appointed for Her Majesty's prison, Barlinnie will therefore continue to cover Her Majesty's prison Greenock until the new rules are approved.

  Road Improvements
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how much money has been spent by each local enterprise company on road improvement programmes; how much has been spent on improvements to roundabouts; and how many roundabouts have been involved.

  Mr. Stewart
  Many of the local enterprise companies are likely to have been involved in road improvements where this has been an integral part of preparing and developing sites for industry; and some have been involved in the improvement of roundabouts either in this context, as part of their wider environmental and economic development responsibilities, or both.

  Under the arrangements whereby responsibility for expenditure up to certain levels has been delegated to Scottish Enterprise and the local enterprise companies, the Scottish Office does not hold comprehensive details of

  319
  activity and expenditure by local enterprise companies on the many specific projects in which they are involved. I have however asked the chairman of Scottish Enterprise to write to the hon. Member with relevant details held by the core body. If, however, the hon. Member is seeking information on a particular project, he may wish to write to the chairman of the local enterprise company concerned.

  Scottish Enterprise
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what reports have been commissioned from outside consultants by Scottish Enterprise since its creation; what areas were covered by these reports; what action has been taken by Scottish Enterprise on these reports; and how much has been spent by Scottish Enterprise on each of these reports.

  Mr. Stewart
  Scottish Office approval for consultancy studies is required only for those studies which cannot be undertaken within Scottish Enterprise's delegated authorities; and no comprehensive record is therefore held by the Scottish Office of consultancies commissioned, the subjects concerned, or action taken consequent to the report findings. These are essentially operational matters; and I have therefore asked the chairman of Scottish Enterprise to respond direct to the hon. Member.

  Regional Selective Assistance
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list those Scottish companies operating in the electronics sector that are or have been in receipt of regional selective assistance.

  Mr. Stewart
  Information on individual offers of regional selective assistance, including company name, travel-to-work area and standard industrial classification, is published quarterly in the "Department of Employment Gazette" following the first payment of grant. The gazette is available in the Library.

  Tourism
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received in the course of the consultation carried out on the review of tourism support in Scotland; and if he will place copies of the representations received in the Library.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  [holding answer 17 January 1994]: Responses were received from the following.
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  Number

  Statutory agencies

  8

  Tourist industry representative organisations

  25

  Tourism businesses

  195

  Area Tourist Boards and representative organisations

  34

  Local authorities (plus COSLA)

  54

  Local Enterprise Companies

  17

  Other organisations and individuals

  88

  I have arranged for a list of the non-confidential responses to be placed in the Library.

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Donohoe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland which agencies are employed by Ayrshire and Arran health board to deal with their public relations; how much this service costs; how this has changed since the establishment of Ayrshire's three NHS Trusts; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 24 January 1994]: The Ayrshire and Arran health board employs Alan Clark Associates to provide a public relations service. Prior to the setting up of NHS trusts in the board's area, the service cost £25,000. Subsequently, the cost has been £15,000.The board considers that this specialist service ensures that communications with other organisations and the public, which are an essential feature of the board's role as a purchaser of health services for its residents, are carried out effectively and to a high standard.

  Competitive Tendering
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what advice he has been given to Scottish councils concerning tendering under EC directive 92/50.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 20 January 1994]: My Department has sent three letters to Scottish councils regarding EC Directive 92/50. A letter dated 13 July 1993 reminded councils that the directive came into force on 1 July 1993; on 17 December 1993, councils were sent the letter was issued on 13 January 1994 which advised councils that the directive had been transposed into United Kingdom law by the Public Service Contract Regulations 1993, SI 3228.

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

Duty on Liquor
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are aware that higher rates of duty on liquor, including beer, in the United Kingdom compared with those operating on the European Continent now place British producers at an increased disadvantage since the importation of European liquor for personal use has become duty-free regardless of quantity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, Customs and Excise has been examining trade reports and conducting its own survey into the scale of cross-border shopping for personal use. Current official estimates place the revenue loss well within the 1992 forecast figure and not at a level which suggests significant disadvantage to United Kingdom producers. The Government will continue to keep the matter under close review.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. However, is there not a double loss? First, there is a loss to the Revenue and, secondly, there is a considerable loss to British firms and a reduction therefore in their taxable profits. In view of the fact that the Government are pressing hard to increase taxation because of the need for revenue, is it not a pity to let this matter slide?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not believe that we are letting it slide. We are taking considerable steps to stop illegal importation of excessive quantities of liquor. We accept that there is a degree of loss. We reckon that it is of the order—these figures are speculative—of £175 million, of which about £75 million probably relates to liquor, the other £100 million relating to cigarettes. At the same time we have seen a rise in excise duties which suggests that the loss is not as serious as all that. We shall continue to pursue those who import more than is necessary for personal consumption and take appropriate measures.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, can the Minister say whether in his view the industry would be better or worse off if excise rates were harmonised?
Lord Henley: My Lords, we do not see a need to harmonise excise duties. I take it that the noble Lord means harmonisation with our European partners. We believe it is right that the rates should continue to be set
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by individual countries and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will continue to set them according to economic, health and social factors.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the phrase,
"not as serious as all that",
is not a view shared by the people in the retail business in the South of England? Their Christmas trade showed clearly that the position made a serious inroad into their ability to continue with a profitable business.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I accept that some retailers may be affected. I do not believe that it necessarily affects the producers. I was trying to say that the losses are within the range we expected, and probably lower. At the same time, we have seen an increase in total take from excise duties which suggests that the problem is not as serious as all that.
One should perhaps direct my noble friend to the Irish experience. They have been suffering a degree of cross-border shopping since the early 1980s. They tried reducing the duty on spirits to match United Kingdom duties and froze other rates. There was then an increase in consumption in Ireland but it was insufficient to make up for the fall in revenue. I understand that they are producing their Budget this afternoon and may address the issue.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, the Minister is taking a laid-back attitude. But is he not aware that a massive bootlegging operation is being carried on? There are organised gangs going to the Continent, buying large quantities of beer and cigarettes and then illegally reselling them in this country. What steps are the Government taking to stop that?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I was trying to make clear that we are certainly not complacent. In the first 11 months of 1993 there were over 1,000 detections of illicit importation involving over £1.5 million in revenue. Many goods have been seized; there have been a number of prosecutions and confiscations. It is difficult to estimate the extent of the illegal activity. However, the overall increase in excise duties seems to suggest that the problem is not as serious as all that.
Lord Rees: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that overall legitimate duty free trade contributes substantially to the economy of this country?
Lord Henley: My Lords., my noble friend is correct. It also contributes substantially to the Exchequer. That is one of the reasons why we levy excise duties on liquor.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I believe the Minister said earlier that the Government were not in favour of harmonisation. Does that mean that they are not in favour of the single market either?
Lord Henley: No, my Lords. There is no contradiction between what I said and what my noble friend Lady Chalker said yesterday. I did not say that we did not favour harmonisation; I said that harmonisation would be difficult. We felt it was appropriate in the duty set on liquor and tobacco that that should continue to be

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a matter for my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he will continue to set the rates according to economic, social and health factors.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, with regard to the last line of the Question on the Order Paper, does my noble friend agree that the importation of European liquor for personal use has become duty-free regardless of quantity? Is that so?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I can correct the last line of the Question. It is not duty-free regardless of quantity. It is duty-paid in the country where it was purchased. People pay the duty in the appropriate country. The duty-free regulations as applied in the old days still apply to the importation of goods from outside the EC. One can still import a certain amount duty-free from within the EC. Over and above that one pays duty at the local rate.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, before the entire House dissolves into tears over the plight of the brewers, will the Minister comfort his noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter by pointing out that they will get a very substantial bonus if the deregulation and contracting out Bill goes through in its present form? In future everyone buying beer or cider will have to pay full price for the froth or head on the top.
Lord Henley: My Lords, that is another matter. There has been some decline in the consumption of beer over the years. Whether that is to do with duties charged or the price I would not care to speculate. It might just be due to changing taste that some people have shifted from beer to other drinks or spirits.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, in view of the Minister's criticism of the last line of the Question, is he aware of the fact that the goods brought in by individuals are imported free of import duty?
Lord Henley: My Lords, what I was trying to make clear is that they pay duty at the rate appropriate in the country in which the goods were bought. In other words, people will pay the appropriate French taxes. Therefore, they are not strictly speaking duty-free.

Training and Enterprise Councils
2.45 p.m.
Lord Rochester Lord Rochester asked Her Majesty's Government:
How they view the conclusion of the London School of Economics study published on 10th January that a package to rescue the training and enterprise councils is urgently needed.
Lord Henley: My Lords, training and enterprise councils play a major role in improving the competitiveness of local economies and we welcome the report's endorsement of the concept behind them. We are considering the report's detailed conclusions; but many of these have been overtaken by recent events. There are also some factual inaccuracies. We see no need for a rescue package.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, will the noble Lord first accept that in asking this Question I am not seeking simply to knock the TECs, which I very much hope will succeed? But how does he respond to the specific criticism that the TECs have become a quango led by employers, but still staffed largely by seconded civil servants, and prevented by tight central control from adapting adequately to local conditions, that they have been diverted from their primary economic purpose to the social task of providing for the unemployed and the disabled and that they are thus failing to help bridge the skills gap which has been so widely identified as a major hindrance to this country's competitiveness?
Lord Henley: My Lords, training is vital to the future of this country's competitiveness. The Government spend a great deal of money on training. Similarly, employers spend something of the order of £20 billion a year on training. The fact that employers have always quite rightly been the major investors in training is why we believe that the TECs, which are the major deliverers of our training packages, should be very much employer-led. I do not accept the noble Lord's allegation that the TECs have become quangos. They are private companies, normally limited by guarantee. They are not quangos, non-departmental public bodies or executive agencies, and their directors are not chosen or appointed by the Government. As regards the number of civil servants working for them, at the beginning, when the TECs were first set up, a number of civil servants were transferred to TECs. But that number has been and is rapidly declining.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, is the Minister aware that a survey in The Times on the report said:
"Business empowerment [in the TECs] has become largely a sham"?
The survey identified a waste of £250 million per annum. Is he further aware that on the same day the Daily Telegraph said:
"A scheme to pay firms up to £2,340 for every job created for the long-term unemployed has been a flop"?
In those circumstances, and reviewing the report which is in the Library, does the Minister feel that his department will tackle this matter urgently?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not accept the noble Lord's allegations. We believe that the TECs have been an enormous success in delivering our various training packages. The LSE report was generally supportive of the concept behind TECs. Further, I can refer the noble Lord to the report from the CBI. I was stressing earlier that we believe that training should very much be employer-led. The CBI itself was very supportive and recognised exactly what the TECs had done and what they had achieved.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, is right, and if the Government are right that we are now starting on a substantial and sustained improvement in the economy, is it not also correct that now is the time for the provision of training and adequate skills to people in sufficient numbers if the economy does really have a sustained uplift?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the economy is on the path of sustained growth. That is why we shall continue to spend a great deal of money on training as we are doing now. That is why we shall continue to provide a great many training places through the TECs; and that is why thereafter the economy will continue to grow. We believe that the TECs have been vital in delivering this particular package. I do not accept the allegation of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, to which the noble Lord, Lord Dean, referred. I am saying that the LSE accepted that the TECs had been a very useful concept. A great many other people have said so as well.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, if the Government will not look at the independent report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, will they examine the very recent CBI report on training, which includes 50 recommendations for government action including a number directed towards TECs; first, on the role of TECs, which comes as a great surprise two years after they have been set up; secondly, on financing the TECs; and, thirdly, on local accountability, which is surely of very great importance and which has been emphasised by the Government on many occasions; and also as regards bureaucracy? Are not these major items which the Government should be looking at?
Lord Henley: My Lords, of course we are always looking at these matters. We shall study in great detail the very long LSE report. What we are trying to make clear is that much of the report has been overtaken by events. It was based on field work between 1990 and 1992 when many TECs were in their first year. The report was completed before the announcement of our integrated regional offices and the wider TEC role in economic generation, and so forth. We shall study what it has to say. I am trying to make clear that events have overtaken that particular report. Further, the CBI report was generally supportive of the Government's position and supportive of the role of TECs. It said that TECs had some very considerable achievements. Obviously, we shall study what the CBI has to say, and we shall respond in due course.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is not a very old report which we are speaking about, but one which went up to the middle of 1993? Is the Minister further aware that one of the criticisms made is that the TECs are likely to drift into a second-tier role as business leaders lose interest? Was there not always a problem with the Government's philosophy of employer-led training that in recession some employers were bound to see their first obligation as keeping their businesses afloat, and that therefore there was bound to be a loss of interest during the recession? Can the Minister say what is being done to remedy that?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I accept that it is a new report. What I was trying to make clear to the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, was that the report was based on field work between 1990 and 1992. Things have moved on a very great deal since then. As I have said, many TECs were then in their first year. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Baroness from the report that
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many of the businessmen on the TECs are losing interest. Many of the businessmen are staying with the TECs far longer than originally intended and are in fact devoting much more time to them than they originally intended.

Georgi Markov Murder: Inquiries
2.53 p.m.
Lord Bethell Lord Bethell asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have made representations to the Russian Government for help in Metropolitan Police inquiries into the murder of Georgi Markov in London in 1978 and, if so, what answer has been received from the Russian Government.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, the Russian Government are aware of our concern over the Markov case. We have recently approached the Russian authorities seeking their help with the Metropolitan Police's inquiries. The Russians have said that they have in principle no objection to a visit by the Metropolitan Police.
Lord Bethell: My Lords, I welcome my noble friend's reply. Is she aware that there certainly are witnesses and documents in Moscow which could be of help to the Metropolitan Police in the investigation into this terrible murder? Will she communicate, as diplomatically as possible, to the Russian Government the suggestion that if Russia wishes genuinely to have good relations with Britain and our allies and to co-operate in the building up of their economy, they must help in investigating matters such as this?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said. We have been in touch with a senior presidential adviser in the Kremlin over help for this visit to Moscow by the Metropolitan Police. We have made clear that the police are seeking to solve a particularly well-publicised and most serious crime which amounted to an act of political terrorism undertaken by the former communist regime. We believe that the Russians understand that and that they will allow interviews to be conducted in the presence of an official from the procurator's office and in accordance with Russian law. I believe I would be wrong to hold out too much hope that all documents will be revealed to the Metropolitan Police. Although thing are improving in Russia, I do not believe that we have yet reached that stage in our relationship.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House why Mr. Oleg Kalugin, a former member of the KGB who had earlier admitted to organising the assassination of Mr. Markov, was arrested by Scotland Yard officers and apparently interrogated for some 24 hours and later released without charge? Was there any pressure from the Russian Government to secure his release?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, to the best of my knowledge Mr. Oleg Kalugin said in a

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newspaper article in April 1993 that he had been involved in the planning. Certainly the Metropolitan Police had an interview with General Oleg Kalugin. I was not aware that at any time he was arrested as such. I certainly do not believe that there has been any interference by the Russians in the investigations being carried out by the Metropolitan Police.

Car Boot Sales
2.56 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they propose to introduce any changes in the regulation of car boot sales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Arran): My Lords, we have no plans to introduce any changes in the regulation of car boot sales. Such activities are enjoyed by millions of shoppers each weekend and provide a valuable source of fund raising to many charities and voluntary organisations.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply. While these boot sales have been useful and enjoyable family outings, and any regulation should not be oppressive, is there evidence of a serious increase in dangerous electrical goods and stolen goods being offered? Have the Government heard of cases of professional traders taking part, disguising themselves with children, dogs and picnic baskets, in order to avoid licences and tax?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, if people do have evidence that shoddy or dangerous goods are being sold at car boot sales, they should inform the local authority trading standards officer who has the authority to deal with these particular cases. Certainly, sellers at car boot sales can be held to be personally liable if the goods they sell cause injury.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, there may well be a case for car boot sales to be abolished. Is the Minister aware that they do threaten the legal and well-controlled markets; that officials of the trading standards office have warned about the sale of unsafe electrical goods; that car boot sales are outlets for petty thieves and that on many large estates in the provinces people are aware that, by request, youngsters are stealing car radios, videos and cassettes which are going to the car boot sales? Is the Minister aware that car boot sales create disturbance wherever they are established? Does he agree, therefore, that it must not be ruled out that they can be carried on as freely as the Minister suggests?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I have to say to the noble Lord that there is scant evidence of that happening. The most important factor about this is that the local authorities have a very wide range of powers under planning on environmental protection legislation or through transport and local government, with which
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to deal with all the matters that the noble Lord believes are happening. However, there is very little evidence that they are.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that a person innocently buying stolen goods at a car boot sale does not get the protection of the market overt rule and that the maxim caveat emptor therefore applies? Does my noble friend agree that it should be made widely known to people operating car boot sales that there is that risk?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I believe that my noble friend has made a good point. But if there is to be any more control over car boot sales it would best come from self-regulation and a code of practice within the industry itself.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that a few months ago my garden shed was broken into and some gardening equipment was stolen? I sent for the police and the detective who came suggested that, contrary to what the Minister said, I should go round the car boot sales on Sunday morning when I would probably be able to buy it back.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, that is a serious accusation. I am sorry that that happened to the noble Lord. He should pass his complaint to the local authority.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, should not the noble Lord, Lord Dean, have been advised that, as my noble friend Lord Renton pointed out, there is no good title and it would therefore be unnecessary for him to buy back that equipment—he could just take it back?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, we should listen carefully to my noble and learned friend.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware—
Lord Whaddon: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, who is saying order?
Noble Lords: Order, order!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, there seems to be some point of order that I do not know about. Is the noble Earl aware that nobody wants to be heavy handed in regulating this sort of voluntary-based activity, but has he any evidence that much of the liquor and cigarettes that come into this country at low cost are smuggled in illegally and find their outlets in these car boot sales? If he has evidence, what is he going to do about it?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I have to repeat that we certainly do not have evidence of that. Furthermore, neither the police nor the Home Office have called for any tighter controls.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, has the noble Earl noticed the great clutter of illegal advertisements which flood across the highways in connection with car boot sales? Is he aware that the local authorities are plainly not doing their job of regulating that illegal advertising? What are the Government going to do about it?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, we are at all times exhorting the local authorities to carry out their responsibilities in that direction.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that car boot sales give a great deal of pleasure to people and that ever so many of us who go to them hope to pick up a masterpiece for a pound?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I think that my noble friend speaks for the majority of your Lordships.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, that may be so, but is the noble Earl aware that he is wrong on two counts? First, when he says that there is no evidence that there is illegal trading at car boot sales, would he care to read Mr. Playle's words in the Trading Standards Review, the official journal of trading standards officers, where he will find a mountain of evidence that illegal goods are being traded at car boot sales? Is he further aware that his assertion that local authorities have the powers to deal with car boot sales is also wrong because local authorities can seek injunctions against car boot sales only on a day when a franchise market is already being held within a radius of six and two-thirds of a mile from that sale? Therefore, if one keeps outside that boundary, one is all right. Even then, however, that local authority power is to be removed under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the extent to which market franchise rights can be used to control car boot sales has been greatly exaggerated since most car boot sales are held on a Sunday when franchise rights are least effective. As the noble Lord pointed out, the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill contains a clause that proposes the abolition of those somewhat archaic rights. As regards evidence of the theft or stealing to which the noble Lord referred, we do not have any concrete evidence that that is happening since most of those who participate in car boot sales are law-abiding citizens who are there to help good causes and their fellow citizens in the local area.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, perhaps I may quote from the Trading Standards Review, the official journal of the Institute of Trading Standards Administration, which is reported as stating that Havering's storerooms are,
"close to bursting point due to the quantity of goods that have been seized",
because they are fraudulent or dangerous. Is that not evidence?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, although the noble Lord points that out, we do not have considerable evidence of it. I say again that a very important fact is that neither the police nor the Home Office have called for any tighter controls.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, despite the report in the journal from which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, has just quoted, is my noble friend aware that people generally would be delighted if we could remove a few of the existing regulations instead of adding to them for this or any other reason, flimsy as it is?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the answer is that we have to keep a very careful eye all the time on the regulations that give power to local authorities. That must be seen to be happening, because we do not want car boot sales to have a bad name.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is not the Minister giving the House the impression that he and his department are not aware of many of the nefarious activities that take place at car boot sales? Will he give the House an assurance now that there will be official inquiries and that he will be prepared to make a report?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, we are conducting inquiries all the time among local authorities to ensure that the regulations are being carried out in a seemly and proper manner.

British Waterways Bill [H.L.]
3.5 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
This Private Bill was introduced into your Lordships' House in the Session 1990–91 and was passed by this House in the following session. It was proceeding through its Commons stages last Session but did not complete its stages before the Session ended. A Motion to carry the Bill over to the new Session was objected to in the Commons. Accordingly, the Bill expired. The Commons has now sent us a Message that it wishes proceedings on the Bill in that House to resume. The purpose of the Motion that I am now moving is to agree to the Commons request to revive the Bill and to enable it to be reintroduced and taken pro forma to the stage reached at the end of the last Session. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Commons Message of 20th January be now considered; and that, notwithstanding anything in Private Business Standing Orders or practice of the House, the promoters of the Bill, which originated in this House in Session 1990–91, and which has passed all its stages in this House but not in the Commons, may proceed with the Bill in the present Session;
That the petition for the Bill be deemed to have been deposited;
That all Standing Orders applicable be deemed to have been complied with;
That the Bill be deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than 3 p.m. on Tuesday 1st February next with a declaration annexed, signed by the agent, stating that it is the same in every respect as the Bill passed by this House;
That the proceedings on the Bill in the present Session be pro forma and that no new fees be charged.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Earl Jellicoe: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Chairman of Committees for his explanation. Until he gave it, I must confess that I was rather puzzled. Many moons ago, I had the mixed pleasure of introducing this Bill into your Lordships' House. We spent quite a lot of time on it. Since then, it has disappeared into the mists of another place. By sheer chance, I happened to see the Motion standing in the name of the Chairman of Committees when I came into your Lordships' House this afternoon. I must confess that I was rather puzzled by its arcane and opaque phraseology. I think that I now understand it and I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said. It is of considerable interest to those noble Lords who gave a lot of time to this Bill when it came before your Lordships' House previously and, indeed, to myself.
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for those remarks. Neither he nor I have the benefit of experience of another place, and this place is at a certain disadvantage in understanding some of its procedures.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons requesting their agreement thereto.

Business of the House: Debate this Day
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Motion in the name of Lord Donoughue set down for this day shall be limited to five hours.—(Lord Wakeham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Arts Funding
3.9 p.m.
Lord Donoughue Lord Donoughue rose to call attention to the policy of Her Majesty's Government on the funding of the arts; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to move this debate with so many distinguished noble Lords participating. We look forward to the maiden speeches today of the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, and, for me in particular, of my noble friend Lord Menuhin, whose music has given such joy to so many millions of people over so many years.
We are not today discussing any decline in the quality of the arts in Britain but a flourishing culture which is under threat. There has never been such a range of high quality arts activities available to so many people as there is in Britain today. Surveys show that 79 per cent, attend some form of arts events; 53 per cent. participate in some form of cultural activity; and a quarter of those watching drama and opera are from the C2-D groups. So it is not just an elite activity.
The arts industry employs over half a million people; absorbs £19 billion of consumer expenditure; and £6 billion from artistic exports. That means it puts culture in our top four British overseas earners. It contributes far more to tax revenues than is spent in government
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support; but of course the case for public support of the arts is not concerned primarily with the bottom line of the economic balance sheet. To accept that priority would be to capitulate to the accountants' dogma of the past decade.
Greater government support for the arts is justified on the artistic case itself. The arts are the living expression of our linguistic, visual and musical heritage. It is not possible to quantify the importance of our performing arts to our society, nor the value of the national collective memory embodied in our museums and galleries. Through the arts we achieve some kind of national collective identity, and that is especially important when our politics seem today not to be achieving such consensus.
A Right-wing think-tank report recently questioned the need for any public support for the arts. It displayed little knowledge of arts development in this country this century. To take the theatre, where Britain leads the world, the fact is that our commercial and subsidised theatres have been totally interdependent for many years. Public money—central and local—has revitalised our regional theatre since the 1950s. Many theatres now thriving in private hands were rescued from collapse by public grants, and 18 of the current plays and musicals in London's commercial West End started in subsidised theatres. Actors, directors, designers, managers and technicians often learn their craft in the network of subsidised theatre across Britain.
Cameron Mackintosh, a great success, has written of how 75 of the first 100 shows with which he was connected needed public help; how "Cats", "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon" —to take just three—depend upon resources borrowed from the public sector, which, incidentally, is nearly the only place today where classic plays can be properly cast and produced on an appropriate scale.
Government funding has been crucial to all our arts, yet by international standards it is not generous. The last survey showed per capita support here at only £9.80, whereas Germany, France and Holland spent double that and Sweden treble. That is why they have better facilities, cheaper tickets and wider public access. Britain leads in artists, but not in supporting them.
The main problem which confronts us today, and which should concern this debate, is that our artistic progress of the past half century is imperilled by a succession of recent government decisions. We know that the recession has not helped. It has hit the arts, reducing both box office receipts and sponsorship. It is to be hoped that they will recover with the economy. But the other two sources of damage—cuts in central and local government funding—are self-inflicted and require positive changes of policy.
Centrally, the Arts Council cuts—£7 million in real cash terms this coming year, with 10 per cent. real cuts planned over the next four years—are the first ever and led the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, whom I am delighted to see here, to call it,
"a black day for the arts and a national disgrace".
The true disgrace of that is when it is set against a categorical promise in the 1992 Conservative election manifesto:

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"We will maintain support for the arts".
What a misleading prospectus that turned out to be. The bulk of the consequential Arts Council cuts falls on the small arts organisations which can least afford them. They suffer disproportionately, partly because of the wasteful mismanagement in Whitehall of the new British Library—the hungry cuckoo in the arts nest.
But the freeze on our national flagship companies—and freeze actually means cuts in real terms—is also serious. Let us take the English National Opera. In my view, it provides good opera at reasonable prices and has cut its costs to the bone. It faces a real cash cut of £250,000 this year, damaging its capacity to innovate and adding to its deficit.
Before leaving the Arts Council, I should state that there are also widespread worries about much more than its reduced funding. Its whole style of operations in recent years has led some to doubt its suitability to handle the lottery proceeds, and some even to question its very existence. Its policy initiatives, such as contemplating closing a dozen great regional theatres or cutting adrift two of London's fine symphony orchestras, revealed a mixture of farce and panic which the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in earlier manifestations displayed to better effect at the Whitehall Theatre.
The council's main product over the past five years has been an unstoppable flow of bureaucratic verbiage and redundant reports. It is what one normally polite observer described as:
"A peculiar melange of managerial waffle and political correctness".
It inflicts on its clients and the regional arts boards—of one of which I am a member—endless criteria and perpetual business plans. A recent infliction that I saw was:
"An activity analysis done against an agreed list of outputs".
Staff had to remember every minute spent on 41 different activities in the past year, including such items as advocacy, accountability, photocopying and faxing. So one of their main activities became filling up forms about activity analysis. I am all for accountability, but that is bureaucracy gone mad.
The costs of administering Britain's arts have risen disproportionately: the Department of National Heritage, from £23 million to £30 million in the past year; the Arts Council employs nearly 200 people to hand out barely £200 million; the switch from the regional associations to regional arts boards itself cost nearly £6 million, and the latter boards spend over 20 per cent. of the money given to them on administering themselves. Those three bureaucratic layers siphon off tens of millions of pounds of the already small sums which the taxpayer innocently believes are going to the arts.
Yet, despite all that irritating nonsense, it would in my view be wrong to contemplate abolishing the Arts Council, with its invaluable arm's length principle. It needs reform: good leadership, restoration of its authority, of its faith and of its independence. The council should recover the power that it has lost to its own bureaucracy—so full of the claptrap of political correctness. It should reinstate simple and plain procedures for distributing money. It should again take up the torch for the arts—uncomfortable frontier arts as
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well as the mainstream. That strategic task, I believe, needs only a couple of dozen top class people, committed to defending the arts and not just to protecting their own jobs.
I turn with a little more sympathy to local government. It needs stressing that local authorities are now the major support for arts activity in Britain. Their total arts spend this year is around £320 million—half as much again as the Arts Council. Local authorities provide more than 400 theatres, concert halls and arts centres. Without their support, whole areas of the country would be deprived of theatre, music and dance. Many Labour metropolitan authorities have particularly proud records—including Birmingham, Sheffield, Glasgow and Manchester—and among the cities, Northampton, Cambridge and Hull. Collectively, London, sadly without any status, actually tops the generosity list.
But that crucial local support structure is now seriously threatened by this Government's assault on local government's powers and resources. Capping and financial restrictions mean that the arts—arts support —where most funding is discretionary, are the easiest immediate victims. The damage is already apparent.
Local government arts expenditure fell 9.2 per cent. in the past year. Next year local authorities will suffer the £860 million environment cut announced in the recent Budget. At ground level we have already seen cuts in the arts budget at Milton Keynes of 51 per cent., at Camden of 32 per cent. and at Enfield of 25 per cent. Dozens of other cuts are in line. The London boroughs have seen cuts of a third—over £30 million taken from the arts since 1991. Theatres have been closed or are closing in Liverpool, Brent, Basildon, Stoke-on-Trent, Glamorgan, Rochdale, Hounslow and Wythenshawe. They are queueing up. Half the local authority museums in the South East face budget cuts, consequential redundancies and shorter opening hours. That is the damage on the ground which has been caused directly through cuts in local government support.
Support for the arts through the education system is also under threat. I need not remind your Lordships that within the new national curriculum no arts subject is compulsory after the age of 14. Dance is subsumed within physical education and so at secondary level need not be taken seriously at all. Under the switch to local management schools, the local education authorities are severely restricted in their power to supply arts services to grant-maintained schools. Furthermore, the opted-out schools are cutting arts services because alone they cannot afford them. Evidence accumulates of cuts in arts provision for schools.
Schools nourish the roots of tomorrow's arts and therefore we are damaging tomorrow by the decisions that we make today. In drama and dance, specialist teaching posts are disappearing rapidly, and 60 per cent. of students cannot afford to take up the places offered to them because the number of full grants has halved in the past four years.
As regards music, peripatetic music services are being dismembered; for example, in Brent, Coventry,

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Glamorgan, Newcastle and Manchester. In Barnet, 43 teachers from its award-winning music team have been sacked. The threat to our local arts fabric is appalling.
I do not have time to mention a number of other important aspects; for instance, the damage caused to the film industry as a result of government neglect and the closure of Elstree, nor the vital but vulnerable support role of the BBC, which spends £230 million per annum—more than the Arts Council—on arts patronage. As for sponsorship, though valuable, it can never be a substitute for public funding. In no major arts country is that the case. The lottery seems destined to replace and not add to public arts support—just a fig leaf to disguise savage cuts elsewhere. It will provide for new buildings at a time when funds to maintain them are being slashed.
The post-war renaissance of British arts was founded on public funding in co-operation with the private sector. It would be a tragedy if it were terminated by reductions in those funds or if lottery and Millennium funds were wasted because there was no clarity or vision on how to spend them.
There is an alternative approach which this side has put forward based on more coherent funding. We need more generous public support—through a reformed Arts Council, through education and especially through local government, where funding could be made a statutory obligation, qualifying for central revenue grant support. We need more consistency of policy than could be provided by eight changes of Arts Minister in the past 14 years. Above all, we need a change of philosophy from the top—to view our culture as a coherent whole and to support it. For too long we have been lectured on the need for value for money from the arts. It is time now to hear about more money for the arts to support our great cultural values.
My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.26 p.m.
Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for raising this important topic, not least because it has provided the opportunity for the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, and my noble friend the Duke of Saint Albans to deliver their maiden speeches. We greatly look forward to hearing them. It also gives me the opportunity to welcome the appointment of my noble friend Lord Gowrie as Chairman of the new Arts Council of England. No one is better qualified for the post and no one is more likely to tackle with realism and determination the manifest problems which he will inherit from the predecessor body.
It implies no criticism of my noble friend if I repeat the view which I have previously expressed in this Chamber; that it is a damaging and unfortunate anachronism that the chairmen of the three arts councils are unpaid. I ask my noble friend the Minister to confirm a report that I have heard that that absurd situation is to be remedied.
The Government have been strongly criticised for cutting the grant to the English Arts Council—and in particularly trenchant terms by the noble Lord, Lord
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Palumbo. The Art newspaper offered a more balanced and fair view when it pointed out that the Secretary of State had protected the arts from the much more substantial cuts which had fallen on other departments. However, I feel bound to say that I share many of the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue. While there is nothing inherently wrong about a one-off and exceptional cut in Arts Council grants, there are serious grounds for worry about the present situation.
In voicing those anxieties, I am being completely consistent with what I said and did when I was a Member of the Government. In 1987 I sent a minute to the Prime Minister. I stated that this is an area of public spending where the scrimping of a few million pounds may cause immense damage but where a modest additional expenditure could provide totally disproportionate benefits. I argued that there is a need for greater recognition within government that the arts are important in themselves, that they are major job providers and that much political credit is to be gained and lost dependent on whether we pursue consistent and realistic policies. All that remains true today.
I emphasise the need for consistent policies. Companies which have to plan programmes and must book performers and venues three or four years ahead cannot easily adjust to sudden cuts.
The significant increase in arts funding obtained by Richard Luce and David Mellor encouraged me to believe that the Government were beginning to put in place the kind of arts policy for which I had long argued and which in Wales I had pursued. There I gave vigorous support to arts bodies and found the funds to build the magnificent new galleries of the National Museum of Wales because I thought that was what a civilized state should do and because I believed that the provision of arts facilities was an essential contributor to the process of social and economic rejuvenation. David Hunt has pursued similar policies and the present Secretary of State is carrying on the tradition with an increase in Welsh arts funding which compares favourably with what has been provided for England and Scotland.
My hopes have been dashed not just because of the problems of the economy but because of one factor referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue; namely, that successive Arts Ministers have been landed with the responsibility for the British Library. In my 1987 minute to the Prime Minister, I begged her to separate completely the responsibility for and financing of the arts and the library. She acknowledged that the library caused particular difficulties and pressures on the arts programme and disproportionate effects on the rest of our support for the arts. Disproportionate effects; my Lords, I should say so. This year an additional 46 per cent.—£16.5 million—has been spent on the library. It is absurd that that has been allowed to happen. The library is not an arts project.
I welcome the Welsh increase, but the arts are a seamless web. For example, the WNO is not just a Welsh company but the principal provider of touring opera in England. It receives three-fifths of its funding from the Arts Council of England. Like the other opera

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companies, it faces serious problems: a combination of a reduced Arts Council grant, fewer ticket sales and a reduction in sponsorship. It has spoken already of plans to cut touring weeks and other painful measures. The opera companies are faced with a vicious circle. They are forced to cut new productions which are substituted by revivals. Audiences decline for productions which have been seen too often. The ENO summed up a case which applies equally to other arts companies:
"ENO's future depends upon its ability to stage new productions; opera which excites, interests and attracts audiences. The company must also remain at the creative forefront of operatic life to attract the most talented singers, conductors and producers, which means further investment in exciting new work."
For the major companies, the position has been rendered much worse by a change in sponsorship practice triggered by the recession. Feeling that they can afford less, sponsors have switched to smaller and, in particular, local community projects. In many ways that new interest by companies is welcome, but there remains the need for business to sponsor productions which cannot otherwise be mounted without contributions of £100,000 or more. I hope that the Government will look urgently at new ways of encouraging a higher degree of sponsorship. The Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme needs to be examined afresh.
At community level, the arts have depended on the backing of enlightened local government. Local government arts funding is now under severe pressure and is being cut back. The work of artists in schools is suffering because of the change to local management. It is not that that is not good, but art companies and artists find it difficult to market their services to individual schools. Many local authorities have been making peripatetic music teachers redundant. Local authority reorganisation provides another potential threat to those major arts facilities which have been funded at county level. In Wales, Theatre Clwyd is a good example.
Many of those problems are capable of solution but they will need sensitive handling and positive leadership by the Government and regional arts boards.
For the future, much hope is invested in the national lottery and the Millennium Fund to provide capital resources. It is intended to direct the lottery money solely into capital funding, but I hope that we shall not be too rigid in that approach. If you build a new theatre, you need not just bricks and mortar; you must also cover the cost of managing the project and the start-up costs before income begins to flow. It is also not much good building new homes for the arts if the companies which are to occupy them die from lack of revenue or from an inability to create new productions.
We are immensely rich in artistic talent as a nation and in the strength and diversity of our national collections, not least because of the tremendous developments of the past 20 years, for which the Government are entitled to take at least some of the credit. Now, in the face of serious threats, we must protect that rich inheritance and direct our resources to the maintenance of quality and the encouragement of creativity.
3.35 p.m.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, from these Benches we support strongly the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, as regards the cuts in the funding of the arts, and in particular as regards the £3.3 million cut to the Arts Council. I believe that, in cash terms, that is the first cut ever in the history of the Arts Council. Those cuts apply only within England, but, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, the arts within the United Kingdom are a seamless web, and there are similar anxieties in Scotland and Wales.
I should declare an interest as a recently retired member of the board of English National Opera. I mention the case of English National Opera as typical of the plight of national companies funded by the Arts Council. Its grant is frozen which, even with the present blessedly low rate of inflation, means for English National Opera a cut in real cash terms of about £350,000.
The ENO is the very reverse of elitist. Over the years it has introduced millions of people to opera. I am one of them. The ENO does valuable educational work to give young people a love of opera. It is a national seedbed for developing the talents of singers, conductors, designers and composers. It has been rigorous in keeping down its domestic costs and is better than average at attracting sponsorship. But its reward is a substantial cut in real terms in an already inadequate grant.
The inevitable consequences of that are fewer new productions, longer runs of familiar revivals, at higher ticket prices, with smaller audiences. As the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, said, in purely economic terms, the Government's approach to this matter seems to be myopic. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, talked about the folly of the scrimping of a few million pounds. Many studies show that the saving in public expenditure is small and the arts are variously estimated to repay two or three times over the financial support given to them by the Government.
I had an evening of sheer pleasure recently at the National Theatre watching "The Madness of George III". As I listened to the babble of different tongues in the concourse and at the bars, I could hear the foreign exchange rattling in the cash registers. Overseas sales and expenditure by foreign visitors to the UK are estimated to be about £6 billion per year. Those are the realities behind the rather mean savings which are proposed.
In their approach to the last general election, the Liberal Democrats made a major recommendation for a single ministry of arts and communications. We should be happy about the birth of the Department of National Heritage but I must express a certain sense of disappointment in some aspects of its work; in particular, its approach to its relationship with the Arts Council. There is also one other aspect that I wish to mention before I conclude my speech.
The history of the Arts Council under the new department has been a sorry tale. I am sure that we all wish the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, well as the new chairman. He is particularly well qualified. I hope that

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he will be able to reverse that cut in funds by the next financial year and prevent the overall £10 million cut which is forecast at present.
I recall the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, when he was Minister for the Arts in your Lordships' House in 1985 saying:
"I have constantly made it clear to my colleagues how important I think is the maintenance of the central subsidised core of arts funding".
That is the key to the matter, and we wish him well in his efforts to achieve a rather different approach.
We cannot be very happy either about the approach of the DNH to its stewardship of that other source of funds for the arts—that is, broadcasting—since it took over from the Home Office. The BBC and independent television are perhaps the major influence on the cultural life of the country. But as regards ITV, the Department of National Heritage has apparently handed over the leadership to the DTI and the President of the Board of Trade. The latter seems to feel that an orgy of mergers will provide miraculous access to some global market-place for programmes. I am all in favour of selling as many programmes as possible abroad, but I think that the President of the Board of Trade is over-simplistic in his approach. In any case, the commercial half of British broadcasting should be something more than a market-place. The Department of National Heritage is supposed to be the guarantor of quality in broadcasting. It really should not allow the DTI to get into the driving seat.
In the past, great ITV managing directors like Paul Fox and David Plowright used to sit round the table and talk programmes. Now their successors sit looking over their shoulders at each other as potential predators and are compelled to concentrate on ratings, share prices and advertising percentages. Of course, commercial TV companies ought to make profits as well as programmes, but the Broadcasting Act has got the balance badly wrong. It is the responsibility of the Department of National Heritage to try as far as it can to correct the situation.
Much now depends on Channel 4 and the BBC and there, fortunately, hope remains, as those of us know who will manage to get home tonight in time to see the next episode of "Middlemarch". In 1993 the BBC's total investment in the arts will be over £370 million. As the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, said, that is considerably more than the total Arts Council budget. The Select Committee on the National Heritage in another place was absolutely right when it said:
"The BBC fulfils an indispensable function by its role as a patron of the arts. These are tremendous achievements which must not be thrown away".
I hope that the Government, who have done so much to damage the kind of contribution that ITV can make to the arts, will heed those words and will do better for the BBC.
3.41 p.m.
Lord Menuhin: My Lords, the cheeky taxi driver who refused to take me from Portland Place to my home in Highgate Village, saying that it was too far and that it was lunch time, added insult to injury when he
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shouted after me as I walked away, "Has anyone ever told you how much shorter you look off stage?" That cheeky fellow would have been more than vindicated to observe me here today, perceptibly further diminished even on-stage—as I must appear to the serried ranks above me —and, as befits the humility of this "maiden" of 77 years, an itinerant musician who has fiddled his way though life.
What could so alien a character offer in return for this honour? Perhaps, that long and concentrated discipline demanded by music which harnesses a player to a basic rhythm that at once supports and governs him—giving him a wider view—a wider sense of the myriad fluctuating pulses of all speeds which propel mankind along its tortuous course. Perhaps also a sense of the span of man's works. Might it be the intuitive counterpart of the learned historian's grasp of human destiny?
Within this Chamber is a remarkable human organism which has bridged some five centuries precisely because its concerns are not chained to the immediate or the transient, but are rather guided by the longer spans of succeeding lifetimes. I am sometimes saddened that wider sections of our population are not inclined to hold the House of Lords in the esteem that it so richly deserves; nor to consider it in its very contemporary and essential role in today's ever more confrontational and most dangerous world.
This House has the talents, the abilities and the opportunities to explore in depth basic causes. It does not have to be distracted by symptoms, by immediate crises, by the dissatisfactions, the discontents and the accusations with which the other place must daily battle. But the topics I would suggest, although apparently abstract, are none the less of supreme urgency.
In attempting to formulate whole truths, it may be possible to reduce the area in which two separate half-truths do battle. For example, let us take "Culture versus Economy". I believe that I am not infringing the maiden's non-controversial strictures when I suggest that hardly one noble Lord here present would tolerate digging up our beautiful parks, or our cemeteries, where nature and man perpetuate the cycle of life and death, merely to spur real estate values and housing markets to new yields. By the same token, perhaps I may plead that good music, too, feeds those very same intangible tangibles which enable us to breath and to dream. For man acts and behaves according to his visions, be they ideals or simply ambitions. It is those dreams which shape our lives—too often twisted into nightmares by hideous uncertainties and fears.
Now, let us consider a great orchestra, the very embodiment of humanity's need to express and communicate its emotions and its thoughts. In it some 100 men and women are dedicated to a most exacting common purpose—the making of beautiful music. They bring out from within that image of perfection in sound, rhythm, melody and harmony which translate the mysteries, secrets and the promise of burgeoning seeds into a language that we can all understand. Whenever I work with a great orchestra, be it the Royal Philharmonic, the Hallé or any of the other first-rate groups of musicians here and all over the world, I am

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deeply moved by the contemplation of so unique a human company. How could anyone consider reducing, on false premises, such essential and inspiring examples of human achievement?
That leads me to a plea for both the social recognition and the financial reward of the teaching profession. It is teachers, musical or other, who are called upon to fulfil the greatest and most important task of society—to instil in our young not only learning but character and, may I add, compassion, courtesy and creativity in a society wherein the lack of those basic qualities can only encourage crime. I should like to suggest that the forming of character precede the study of texts, for how often are our minds led to the shocking, the terrifying and the bewildering—all of these symptoms, the evidence of a growing malaise—rather than to their basic underlying causes?
Applying the same principle, I would urge that such funds as may come from the lottery should go not only to the visible fruits which we all eat but also to the basic roots of the plant. For example, the arts could not exist without crafts and crafts could not exist without schools and the people who produce these and other projects which aim—and this is just one of my interests—to channel the wild energies which are now rampant in certain classrooms into better purposes, partly by music and singing.
It seems to me that this House is the ideal assembly of men and women to formulate a platform totally divorced from party lines, a platform which would reflect a profound analysis of causes and would suggest approaches affecting the future of the peoples of these islands, and indeed of the world, for their environment—cultural, physical and spiritual—is already ours and everyone's responsibility.
Such a platform would deepen the understanding of many other contemporary situations and dilemmas. I feel that we must all try to fathom the processes which interact between apparently disparate conditions—in counterbalance and tension as with gravity or the magnetic forces which both attract and repel, and which, when even only partly understood, might lead to a greater consensus of public opinion, a coherence instead of the inexorable process of souring which, as curds and whey, can only separate.
Consider the inherent dangers in democracy, in which unbridled freedom may well lead to chaos. Music is the one art which can create order out of chaos—as does the gift of life to matter—for music creates a living, pulsating work out of random aural vibrations. This principle, applicable to society, even to sound, has actually been demonstrated by leaving children alone with a host of varied musical instruments and the injunction to listen, thus transforming noise not only into sound but into a message. Gradually one or another will find a rhythm, a melody, better organised, more expressive, which will attract attention and imitation.
Take chaos versus dictatorship—the examples are only too close, too present. Take the issue of the free market with its release of dynamic energies, yet entailing untold suffering and sacrifice for all peoples including our own, or the relationship of culture to crime. We know about that from Hitler's Germany.
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Study the advantages of the prophylactic versus the merely therapeutic; or the confrontation between states and cultures and between many more such dualities which I must spare you today. But, to take only the latter—states and cultures——we are witnessing the proliferation of states and the extinction of cultures. In other words there are more national anthems—often commissioned of Englishmen with, no doubt, overtones of Empire—and less music. There are more bombs and fewer songs. What we actually need are fewer sovereign states and more autonomous cultures. It is time that the great trees in the centre of each cultured garden were tended and determinedly protected rather than that high, harsh walls be allowed to throttle the garden. I would allow the voices of cultures the rights of initiative and veto against proposed legislation of joined states in the same way as the House of Lords, a cultural institution, possesses similar rights with respect to the House of Commons.
May I be allowed to plead for one other among many issues which, to your relief, I will ignore today? I believe the issue is quite non-controversial for it is only a consideration of economy rather than of policy which inhibits our decision to rejoin the world's cultures assembled within UNESCO. Directly after the war, in 1945, this noble concept was born right here in London after a long gestation and against the backdrop of those tragic war years. Its first Secretary-General was none other than our own Julian Huxley, the great biologist. Conceived as a non-political assembly, it was soon politicised by the United States and the USSR, yet it remains an inspiration to the world, with a first-class Secretary-General and employing thousands of highly educated, dedicated people. If we want to play a role in the building of a somewhat better world, it is imperative that we play it not only on a European but on a world stage. No doubt we are waiting for the American lead, but do not noble Lords agree that our voices unanimous might urge an independent initiative? Perhaps in due course I could move one or two resolutions.
How I wish that this great House might succeed in extending those virtues of conduct which have proven their worth within these walls and well beyond over the centuries. Perhaps this prayer I have voiced would be in a goodly manner achieved by the platform I suggest: a platform which would be continually improved, refined, revised and discussed in every pub, school, club and, above all, in the media. In turn, the echoes might bring about a more informed public opinion and might serve to guide our political platforms as well.
As Plato says,
"Music is a moral law. It gives wings to the mind, soul to the universe, flight to the imagination, charm to sadness, and life to everything".
I know I have taken my time and wish to express my gratitude to my fellow Lords, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for calling this debate and for his wonderful words, thereby legitimising my one and only maiden speech—in one way a form of wedding. Perhaps the Right Reverend Lords Spiritual will bless it.
3.55 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, it is a great honour for me fulsomely to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, on behalf of the whole House. I believe we all agree that his speech was quite outstanding in its depth, breadth, substance and in its brilliant presentation. We are all grateful to the noble Lord and we hope to hear him speak on many occasions in the future.
I am happy that when we hold debates on the arts there are no fights across the Chamber. We all seem to be on the same side and, indeed, over the years that I have spoken in arts debates many of the same speakers have made speeches. Again and again we press hard for the arts.
One of the indices of the quality of a society is the role of the arts in the social and personal development of the individual. Therefore aesthetic cultivation is a central factor in education. Yet the 1988 education Act, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Donoughue, only included music and the visual arts as part of the arts curriculum. During the passage of that Bill I moved an amendment from these Benches which sought to replace the words "music and art" with the phrase "the arts". That term would have included dance and drama in the arts. Drama is the fastest growing subject among those who take examinations beyond the age of 16. It deserves something better than to be treated as a minor branch of literature. However, that is what has happened.
We need to devote more effort to making dance part of physical education. The decision that has been taken on dance would be laughable if it were not so sad. I believe that I moved the amendment to which I have already referred at a late hour of the night. Nevertheless it was only lost by two votes. It was an all-party amendment and the support we received from the Benches opposite was reflected in the narrowness of the defeat. Since then the Government have laid statutory orders which have resulted in even music and the visual arts becoming optional subjects for children at the age of 14 while dance does not have to be studied at all at secondary level.
Experiencing the arts in any of their forms whether as a viewer, listener or participant is an essential humanising experience. Introducing youngsters to the many manifestations of the arts will create not only an audience now, but will also encourage future propagators of the arts to bring to bear the kind of persuasion and pressure that is needed to force administrations to give the arts the priority they merit. Generally, I think it is acknowledged —a number of Tories have told me this—that on the whole Labour administrations have done more for the arts than other administrations, but they have still not gone far enough.
I do not believe that any government have really dealt with the arts as seriously and as positively as they should. I remember that when I was a Minister at the DoE during the last Labour administration I not only had to fight the Tories on this issue, but often had to argue—and was frequently on the losing side—with my own fellow Ministers in order to get money for work and experience that touched on the arts. Although my
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post did not cover the arts—my noble friend Lord Donaldson was arts Minister—we worked very closely together and pressed very hard for funding.
It is really a question of a general attitude across all administrations. That is not good enough if we are to consider ourselves a civilised country. All administrations put the arts very low down the pecking order. Although individual Ministers work very hard and do the best that they can to get money out of their government, the job is often regarded as very low down the pecking order of Ministers. Ministers often admit that they would rather have a post which seemed to be more serious than the arts. Until we get rid of that attitude and the arts hold their place and are supported at a very much higher level it is difficult to see how the position will alter.
My noble friend Lord Donoughue mentioned the importance of local authorities. The local authorities' role in the arts is of the greatest importance because they are the largest donors to theatres—which are my great love. However, it is no good saying that they should give more money because they just do not have it. Although I agree that funding of theatres should be a statutory requirement, how can authorities obey such a requirement when their resources are cut and they are capped? It is impossible for local authorities to do the job that they would like to do.
That means that theatres are often in a parlous state. Until a few years ago sponsorship was very good. Now businesses are finding it difficult to give large sums. At the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, of which I am a director, we find that small amounts are being given, but large sponsors are pulling out. They say that one of the reasons for that is that if the Government do not come in at a higher level they do not see how they can do so themselves.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am most grateful for the opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, has given us this afternoon to debate the funding of the arts. Perhaps I may say what an enormous privilege it has been for me to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin.
I would venture to suggest that no debate on this subject or on the Government's policy towards it would be complete without a mention of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts. Noble Lords who followed the progress of the lottery Bill last summer will, I hope, know that my interest in that organisation is as deputy chairman of the trustees of the foundation. I have been privileged to hold that post for just over a year now.
Unfortunately, a number of noble Lords have come up to me today and asked: "What are you doing speaking in this debate? I didn't know that you knew anything about the arts at all". I am learning all the time, but I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that my co-trustees include Tim Rice, as chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Attenborough, Dame Janet Baker and Mr. Richard Eyre, to name but a few who have considerably more knowledge of the arts world than I have. I suspect that they have forgotten more about the arts than I shall ever know.

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The foundation came into being in July 1991. It is greatly to the credit of the Government that they recognised at that time the great potential of an organisation such as the foundation and that they played such a critical role in its creation. Every year more than £20 million finds its way from the foundation to numerous arts organisations across the country. The 2½ per cent. reduction in football pool betting duty in the 1991 Budget is one of the two central pillars in the funding of the foundation. That amount of about £20 million is matched by a sum double that contributed by the football pools punter—the clients of Littlewoods, 'Vernons and Zetters—making some £60 million a year in total. By statute, two-thirds of that sum goes to sport and one-third to the arts. Therefore, in some two-and-a-half years approximately £150 million has gone to thousands of deserving causes in both sport and the arts with grants ranging from just a few hundred pounds to more than £2 million.
As trustees we try to target as much of our money as possible to projects which reach all sections of the community, the grass roots and, of special concern to us, the young and disadvantaged. I therefore hope and believe that it is of great importance to the arts world that the foundation continues its work. The reduction in pools betting duty is guaranteed until 1995 and I hope that the Government will soon announce—perhaps even tonight—a continuation of that reduction which will allow us to continue.
Time does not allow me to mention more than a few of the grants that we have made in the past year, but I should like to give your Lordships a flavour of what we do with one or two examples. We gave £438,000 to the Halle Orchestra in Manchester; £500,000 to the National Film and Television School; and £250,000 to the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in Edinburgh. At the other end of the scale, perhaps I may give just three examples: £300 to the Garlieston and District Pipe Band in Wigtownshire; £500 to the Perth Jazz Extravaganza; and £500 to the Kennedy School of Irish Dancing in Belfast. I must admit that I find some of those very small grants the most enjoyable to distribute because they bring so much to so many people in particular interests. I do not believe that there is any area of the United Kingdom which has not now benefited in some way from funding from the foundation.
The debate allows me to make two general points on the foundation's position in relation to other bodies with a role in funding the arts in this country. The first is the national lottery. Obviously our income depends on the viability of the pools companies, and we hope that they will remain successful. To their credit, the Government have made a number of concessions to allow them to compete fairly with the lottery. I shall not rehearse this evening all the arguments that we heard during the course of the Bill, but there are still areas where the playing field is not level —television advertising and the total tax rate of the pools, which is much higher than the lottery. I hope that the Government will continue to bear those issues in mind.
The second issue I should like to touch on is the foundation's relationship with the Arts Council. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, is to speak
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next. I am also delighted that my noble friend Lord Gowrie is to be the next chairman of the council. We have had an extremely fruitful dialogue with the council and we continue to benefit considerably from the advice that the council's experts provide to us on all sorts of funding and grant-giving matters. We are most grateful for that.
However, my fellow trustees and I are concerned by rumours, or whispers, that we hear that we may soon be asked to pay for that advice. That would not be a popular move. One of our overriding objectives is to deliver as much of our income as possible to deserving causes, and we would not like to see worthwhile applicants losing out to a new, additional expense. If for a relatively short amount of someone's time, and consequently cost, we give an amount of money many times larger to a worthy cause in the arts field, that surely is very much in the interest of the Arts Council with its overall responsibilities for the well-being of the arts.
I suspect that if the foundation were asked to pay for that service—I emphasise that we have not yet been —the result could be that we would use the service less and that could therefore lead to a less efficient targeting of our grants.
To conclude, I hope that I have persuaded your Lordships that the Foundation for Sport and the Arts plays an important role in the funding of the arts; and long may it continue to do so.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Palumbo: My Lords, first, perhaps I may pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, for the excellence and elegance of his maiden speech. The noble Lord is an idealist and a visionary and those qualities are refreshing in these difficult days. However, I fear that those selfsame qualities, admirable though they are, do not always fit easily with the reality of arts funding at the coalface. In any event, the great authority and gifts of the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, will add immeasurably to the quality of debate in your Lordships' House. I look forward, as will noble Lords, to the noble Lord's continuing and frequent contribution to public affairs in this place.
Next, I should like to correct, if I may, certain comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, as they affect the Arts Council. First, the Arts Council does not employ 200 people; it employs 155 and that number will soon be 130. Secondly, the administrative costs of the Arts Council represent 3.7 per cent. of its budget and they are falling. I believe that that compares rather favourably with some of the regional arts councils whose budgets are 20 per cent. Thirdly, the activity analysis to which the noble Lord referred was an activity analysis that we were requested to make at the behest of the Department of National Heritage. Fourthly, your Lordships will know that I do not ever seek to whinge either inside or outside this House. But the fact of the matter is that in five years I have served five different Ministers or Secretaries of State. That is a great many Ministers. There has never been a moment in those five years—not one moment—when we have not been reviewed, counter-reviewed, surveyed, appraised and tested against market forces; and that has cost a great

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deal in time and effort. We estimate, although the calculation is imprecise and always will be, that it has probably cost the taxpayer something of the order of £6 million in an attempt to establish value for money—and I doubt very much whether we have been able to do that.
The arts are fundamental to a civilised community. They are the key to the life of the mind. They embody celebration, the raising of expectations and the uplifting of the spirit. The industry of the arts accounts for visible and invisible earnings and they are a major employer. In these few, unforgiving minutes left to me, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the following matters.
First, in any post-war, independent audit of our national talents, none would be found more successful and none more unsung by Government than the arts. The arts in this country are internationally acclaimed. Our Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company have no rival. English is the international lingua franca, and the pre-eminence of our language is reflected in the pre-eminence of our arts. That pre-eminence is hard won, for demands of financial support far outstrip supply.
So great is our stock of national talent that the arts have become the victim of their own success. Criticism, analysis, vilification, calls for abolition or reform, reports and inquiries strike the lightning conductor of the Arts Council of Great Britain and its chairman. We are accustomed to taking the flak.
The Arts Council of Great Britain is not a perfect institution. I have never claimed perfection for it. Mistakes are sometimes made—of course they are; and when they are we regret them. But equally, on some occasions, the blame that we receive is unjust. Take, for example, the future of regional theatre. It was never the wish, nor the decision of council, to withdraw funding from one regional theatre let alone 12, and I am happy to say that not a single regional theatre has had its funding withdrawn—and I hope that none shall.
The problem of London's orchestras stretches back for 30 years. No other capital city in the western world boasts the luxury of seven symphony orchestras, as we do, all competing for the same venues, the same audiences and the same sponsorship, all underfunded by reason of government parsimony. We have sought to refocus inadequate resources in order to enhance the musical life of London and perhaps we have taken the first small step along the path of prudence, but against what hail of criticism for daring to question, let alone disturb, the status quo.
We have, at the Arts Council, further been criticised for adopting so-called fatuous policies of "social engineering". Is it fatuous to apply a modest proportion of our funds to enable disabled people to participate in performances and to have access to exhibitions, theatres or concert halls, or to reward the rich artistic talent of our Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities? Is it fatuous to provide access to the arts in hospitals or prisons? It cannot be. People may call those policies fatuous. I call them a response to the reality of our times and to the fulfilment of our chartered purposes.
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In the past five years we have been proud to see the arts' subsidy from Government rise by 15 per cent. in real terms in what I had hoped was a latter-day conversion of the real worth of the arts and their place upon the political agenda. This year the Government have imposed the first cut for 48 years and in the next three years that cut will be sustained to produce a net loss in available funds for artists of 12 per cent. darkening that brief dawn of a 15 per cent. increase. That amounts to irresponsible neglect of a precious national resource which generates a three-fold return for every pound of taxpayers' money invested in it. The Government's timing, of course, is impeccable coinciding with contemporary decline in available funds for the arts from its mainstays of the local authorities, box office, sponsorship and charitable foundations. Little wonder that we spend per head on the arts in this country so much less than our European neighbours. The greater wonder is that the arts in this country are so successful and so cost effective. I am well aware of the vital necessity to constrain public expenditure, but I am also aware that success feeds upon itself, and that it should be encouraged and built upon, not penalised.
Is it not an act of the purest folly to apply funds for the refurbishment of the Albert Memorial at the expense of the performing arts when it is abundantly clear that funds from the national lottery are imminent and would be wholly appropriate for such a purpose? Lottery money will be applied for capital purposes only: for the restoration and creation of arts buildings. But if core funding is reduced, so too will be our ability to guarantee their operational cost.
The architecture of this Chamber is itself a living example of what artistic genius can produce when there is the proper combination of vision and the commitment of funds. The artist strives for excellence to create what is best in our contemporary culture and the monuments which will be the fit marks of whether we are or are not a civilised community. It is up to the Government to put that matter beyond doubt.
Yesterday was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Without being impious, I can only hope that the same blinding light and impact of conversion will profitably fall upon the Treasury and upon the Department of National Heritage.
4.19 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, on his notable and moving maiden speech and, if I may, to follow his distinguished lead modestly by saying a few words about the state of classical music including opera in this country, and to speak of some of the difficulties faced at the present time due to the cuts in arts funding.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, is taking part in the debate, and I listened to his speech with great interest. Although he had achieved an overall increase of some 16 per cent. in real terms in the Arts Council's budget before the current cash cuts, the Government's grant-in-aid to the council for 1994–95 has been reduced by £3.3 million. That is a 1.7 per cent. cut. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth,

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said, this is the first cash cut for the arts within living memory. In consequence, there has had to be a reduction in all music expenditure of over £550,000.
The first victims of these savage cuts might have been two of our four great London orchestras and for the added reason that certain people in the Arts Council —I am sorry to have to say this—quite erroneously apparently wanted a super-orchestra to rise from the ashes of the two most likely victims: the Philharmonia and the RPO. Although all four orchestras can now survive through the wise recommendation of the Hoffmann Committee, much uncertainty remains. It has been a humiliating experience for these orchestras. Even now, the RPO—of which I am an honorary life member —is still waiting to know what its grant will be for next year. The public subsidy to the Berlin Philharmonic is four times as large as that for all four London orchestras put together.
In contrast, all Britain's leading funded orchestras are in a financially critical state. I hope that the Arts Council will strive to restore confidence among its major music clients as quickly as possible. Why, one must ask, has the joint Arts Council/BBC review into national orchestra provision been put on ice? It is surely essential that this should be completed so that financial objectives and the necessary strategies to deliver them can be clearly defined. May I ask the Government to use their best endeavours to persuade the Arts Council and the BBC to continue this review with an independent chairman? I think that is essential.
We must not forget the tremendous contribution to classical music made by the BBC, which has an annual commitment to live music performances of about £30 million. The corporation is the biggest single employer of orchestral musicians in the country, with responsibility for five great orchestras. During the Prom season at the Royal Albert Hall, which is entirely funded by the BBC, 5 million people tune in to hear these concerts which are performed before packed audiences. Radio 3 transmits annually over 100 complete operas from the world's great opera houses and commissions about 30 new works from emerging new composers. I hope that the Government, when considering the future of the BBC, will remember these achievements and the cultural debt we owe to the BBC and not throw them away for ideological reasons.
English National Opera, at the London Coliseum, is suffering from the frozen Arts Council grant and business sponsorship is in decline. The result is that new productions at ENO have had to be cut in favour of revivals. But audiences decline if the production has been seen too often. It is essential that the opera companies are able to continue staging more new productions of operas which excite interest and attract audiences and also attract the most talented singers and conductors.
Covent Garden has the lowest subsidy of any opera house in Western Europe and consequently the highest seat prices. May I also remind the Government of the fact that La Scala in Milan is expected to generate only 30 per cent. of income while Covent Garden has to generate as much as 64 per cent. If our European partners, particularly Italy and Germany, give this level
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of support to opera, why cannot we? As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, Welsh National Opera has had to announce cuts for the next season. These will include cuts in staff and the cancellation of a new production for the spring of next year.
In spite of all these difficulties, the Royal Opera House and our opera companies are striving hard to maintain standards and I should like to pay a tribute to them.
I hope that the Government will try to redress their own dismal record and enable the Arts Council to give our orchestras and opera companies the support they deserve.
4.25 p.m.
The Duke of Saint Albans: My Lords, it is with particular trepidation that I rise today, as it is nearly 127 years since a temporal Saint Albans addressed your Lordships' House. My ancestor spoke at some length on the Irish question. However, this long silence has not made me lose sight of the need for brevity and non-controversiality on this occasion.
I have to declare an interest in that I am president of a small opera company. Although a grant has never been received from the Arts Council, the local authority has up till now made a modest annual contribution. I understand that this is likely to cease as from today, due to a reorganisation of the authority's spending arrangements.
Not going back quite so far as 1867, it is 28 years since I first heard the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, playing the Beethoven violin concerto under the baton of the late Dr. Klemperer at the Royal Festival Hall. Little did I imagine that we would be fellow maidens nearly three decades later.
That concert was to prove a momentous event in my life. Although I had previously responded to music, it was then and there that the power of music really spoke to me. Through music I began to learn the meaning of art—all the arts are interconnected and are generally based on the same principles.
The importance of the arts goes far beyond the money that comes in from tourism, the preservation of our heritage and the entertainment they can provide for all of us. It is through the arts that people can best widen their horizons so that they may be incited to experiment, to dare to create something new or develop the work of others. Even the cleverest—I use the word advisedly —and most capable scientist almost certainly will not persevere with the inevitable difficult problems and hardships that he usually meets face to face if hi s horizons are not especially wide. That is why, in the final analysis, a nation's achievements, whether materialistic or spiritual, owe a great deal to the arts. That is how Greece became the cradle of modern civilisation. Their government then was not richer. They had no more money than we have today. Therefore, governments must sponsor the arts and create the climate that will entice additional private sponsorship —an essential in the world today.
It would be wonderful and convenient if it were the other way round—for private sponsors to lure the Government. But life seldom, if ever, works like that.

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The Government must lure the private sponsors with all the means at their disposal. We cannot do without them, whether it is for our theatres, opera houses, concert halls, galleries, music and drama academies and so forth.
We must consider ourselves fortunate, civilised and grateful that our country can provide such a prestigious and appropriately variegated list. Our metropolis has been for several generations the centre—perhaps the greatest in the world—for music, drama and other forms of art. It is clearly essential for the capital to continue to rank first as far as excellence is concerned: all the more reason not to allow ourselves to become complacent but to maintain our basic strengths that have given us such an invaluable heritage.
4.31 p.m.
Lord Charteris of Amisfield: My Lords, it falls to me to congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, on his maiden speech, and I do so with the greatest pleasure. I hope we shall hear him often in this House. I hardly think we may find an occasion when we shall hear him in his hereditary position of Grand Falconer of England, but I am sure there will be many other interesting subjects which he can talk about.
It is a great privilege to take part in this interesting and important debate which the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, has moved. I propose to restrict my remarks to the funding of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, of which I had the great honour to be chairman from its inception in April 1980 until March 1992. The fund is frankly peripheral to this debate but it is of course of great importance in ensuring that our museums and galleries can acquire objects for people to see.
I should like to begin my remarks by paying a wholehearted tribute to the Government—I thought that would surprise them !—on the manner in which they have supported the fund from the moment it started until now. This marvellous support makes the decision to reduce the resources of the fund next year even more remarkable and regrettable. The Act which set up the fund, the National Heritage Act 1980, decreed that the fund should receive an unspecified annual sum of money, and also that it should receive from Government such other monies as might be available.
The fund was endowed with £12.4 million when it was set up, which was all that was left from the resources of the National Land Fund, of which I shall say more in a moment. For the first 10 years the fund received an annual grant of £3 million. That sum was of course quite inadequate for what the fund was expected to do, which included the setting up and endowment for 14 country houses, the assistance for the acquisition by museums and galleries of great paintings and sculptures, from Altdorfer's "Christ taking leave of his Mother" to Picasso's "Weeping Woman", and much else. However, the Government had the great good sense to make use of the provision in the Act which spoke of other monies—to the tune, I may say, during those first 10 years, of £78 million.
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I have sometimes heard this money described as "having come off the back of a lorry" but I repudiate that. I have made it perfectly clear that it was all laid down in the Act that this might happen. At the end of the first 10 years the Government announced that the fund's annual grant would be increased to £12.5 million a year for three years but that there would be no more extra money. I am glad to say that that promise was fulfilled but I am not so glad to say it has now been announced that for 1994–95 the £12.5 million will be cut to £8.5 million.
When one considers that £8.5 million is about what it costs nowadays to endow one country house and that for a great picture or a great piece of sculpture £2 or £3 million is par for the course, you can see that £8.5 million is very meagre as a grant for the fund. It would indeed prove wholly inadequate for what the fund is intended to do were it not for the share of the lottery money which the fund will receive for heritage purposes.
I must assume that the fund's annual grant was reduced because of the prospect of lottery money, and if I am correct it was clearly contrary to the Government's express policy on additionality and everything else which has been said about the lottery money being the icing on the cake and not the absolute substance of the cake itself.
I fear very much that the National Heritage Memorial Fund is going to become marginalised and, indeed, lost in the plethora of lottery money; and that it should become lost may indeed be Treasury policy. Perhaps the noble Minister, when she replies, will comment on this point. If that should happen, there is one aspect which I should deeply regret. The fund is a memorial fund and it was set up, as was the National Land Fund which preceded it, in memory of those who had given their lives to preserve our country.
Your Lordships will remember what happened to the National Land Fund, established by the Socialist government in 1945 with £50 million—the product of the sale of surplus war equipment. It was decimated by the Tory government in 1957 by having the original £50 million withdrawn and leaving it with only about £10 million. That is one hell of a way to treat a memorial fund, one might say. I urge the Government, with all the power at my command, not to let this happen again by starving the fund and by reducing its annual grant to a sum which will make it impotent. As the recovery from recession proceeds and as things get better, I hope with all my heart that her Majesty's Government will find it possible to provide those other monies for which the Act makes provision.
4.37 p.m.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I wish to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, on their maiden speeches. They have chosen to speak on an important topic this afternoon.
I wish to deal with two distinct issues: first, the overall management of arts policy by the Arts Council and, secondly, the provision of finance for education in the arts, particularly dance education. These two issues

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are apparently disparate, but in fact on closer examination I shall argue that both are part of a single failed arts policy.
First, then, the management of arts policy and more specifically the management of public money by the Arts Council: I speak from the perspective of someone who has served on the boards of two major contemporary dance companies. In both roles I have been involved in detailed negotiations with the Arts Council's Dance Department over a number of years. In all cases the manner in which those negotiations are conducted has, I believe, resulted in a significant waste of resources in terms of time and effort of dance company staff and board members and, which is perhaps more serious, a significant waste of public money.
The reason is, quite simply, that Arts Council officers will never ever tell you what their view on any matter is. Imagine what it is like sitting in a board meeting, trying to devise a new and constructive policy or what amounts to a new and constructive way of spending public money, and there in the corner sits a senior officer of the Arts Council, taking exhaustive and detailed notes, who refuses to comment on any idea you put forward, refuses even to hint whether a planned action is a good idea or not and intervenes only to repudiate any suggestion that the Arts Council may have a point of view.
As a result, the boards of companies are reduced to a continuous game of shadow boxing, trying to guess what will please the sphinx in the corner. In doing so they make mistakes, sometimes serious ones. On one board on which I served, anxiously glancing at the Arts Council representative sitting in the corner, we approved the expenditure of £10,000 of public money in support of a project which the appropriate committee of the Arts Council, unbeknown to us, had already decided to close down. The person in the corner knew that we were unknowingly wasting public money and said nothing. That person could say nothing because the decision, although already made, still had to be rubber stamped by yet another committee.
Noble Lords may take those remarks as an attack on the Arts Council, and in a way they are, but only in a way. The great problem that I see with the Arts Council, and the reason why so much public money is occasionally wasted in its operations, is that the organisation suffers from a massive lack of self-confidence—of course I am not referring to the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo. Afraid to be committed to a view, afraid to say what they think, the officers of the council desperately cover their tracks in a myriad of committees and layers of appraisals informed by rafts of criteria —all to disguise the bitter truth that none of them has the confidence to take the final decision and defend it; to back the arts. Yet it is backing the arts—dangerous, innovative, often unpopular art—which should be the fundamental role of the Arts Council.
That role can only be fulfilled by people with the self-confidence to make judgments; to declare and defend those judgments publicly and to carry them through. But today the Arts Council lacks self-confidence. Its officers know that they have no backing from the Government, who subject the organisation to
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the humiliation of annual funding, eliminating the possibility of any long-term planning. The staff of the Arts Council know that every controversial decision will be pilloried in the tabloid press to the delight of government Back-Benchers and the smug satisfaction of Ministers. They know that they are on the line and that they have no power to make controversial decisions.
The Arts Council fails to work because it is not independent enough; it is not funded enough and it is not backed enough. It can only work if its self-confidence is restored and it can only recover that self-confidence if its independence is restored, its long-term funding is guaranteed and it is run by people with the guts to make decisions and stick to them. It is the failure of the Government to support the Arts Council that has eroded the organisation's self-confidence and accordingly led to the waste of taxpayers' funds to which I referred earlier.
An even greater waste of resources—particularly a waste of talent and a bias against excellence—is evident in my second example of the Government's failed approach to arts policy. I refer to their failed approach to vocational training in dance and drama. As noble Lords will be aware, students taking vocational courses in independent institutions are not eligible for mandatory grants. Instead, grants are awarded by local education authorities according to their discretion. Faced with severe funding difficulties in recent years, it is not surprising that local authority discretionary grants have declined sharply. That decline is exacerbated by the fact that independent institutions, although officially classified as Colleges of Further Education, are not supported by the Further Education Funding Council and consequently student fees must cover administrative and capital costs as well as tuition.
The reaction of many, although not all, local authorities to those two factors has been twofold. First, even though their funding from central Government, defined within the standard spending assessments, contains a substantial sum to cover discretionary grants, they have in fact stopped giving discretionary grants altogether. Secondly, where discretionary grants are given, they are given at only a low level, often amounting to just a few hundred pounds to fund a course where the fees are £6,000 or £7,000 and living expenses have also to be covered. If in dance one has real creative talent, whether one will be able to exercise 'that talent depends on how wealthy one's parents may be. To add insult to injury, full-time students in dance are not eligible for the Government's student loan scheme.
The consequences for the pursuit of excellence in British dance are severe. Our dance schools—which are among the best in the world—are, on the one hand, forced to lower standards and compromise artistic integrity by admitting students with the crucial characteristic of the ability to pay; arid, on the other hand, they are forced to take large numbers of overseas students, who, while they may be very good, tend to return home, draining the flow of talent into British dance and dance education. In the face of that short-term policy, which denies the nurturing of talent and the pursuit of excellence, the Government have played a game of "pass the responsibility", claiming that

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discretionary grants are the sole responsibility of local authorities, while at the same time local authorities point to the squeeze which central Government imposes on their finances.
It is time for the Government to assume the responsibility which is truly theirs. As a first step, would it not be appropriate to ensure that the proportion of funds within standard spending assessments, designated for discretionary grants, should actually be spent on discretionary grants? Will the Government ensure that that happens? Secondly, would it not be appropriate to make full-time students eligible for the Government's student loan scheme? In the longer term, is it not right that the highest quality vocational schools should be accorded the status of maintained institutions, thus making their students eligible for mandatory grants? The disgrace of wasted talent and neglect of excellence which characterises the discretionary grants debacle, is a tragic example of the human and economic cost of the Government's short-termist approach to the arts. At the present time the Government's policy, both towards the Arts Council and towards dance education, is the denial of excellence and, for good measure, is also economically inefficient.
4.47 p.m.
Lord Crathorne: My Lords, first, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for giving us this opportunity today. Secondly, I congratulate the maiden speakers. We must all feel extremely privileged that we appear on the same billing as the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin.
It is probably true to say that, whatever the level of government support for the arts, we would still be like Oliver Twist—asking for more. One of my economic professors at Cambridge taught us his own particular law of economics; he called it Haggenbrook's Law—whatever the level of income there is always a requirement for 20 per cent. more. I believe that he was talking about student income, but the same can be said of arts funding.
I listened with particular interest to what my noble friend Lord Charteris had to say. Indeed, his speech about the National Heritage Memorial Fund means that my speech will stay well within the eight minutes allowed. The fund achieved great things under his inspired chairmanship and he passed the torch to a worthy successor in the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild. I have the privilege of being a trustee and should like to add one or two points to what was said by my noble friend.
First, in regard to the lottery, if predictions are correct we shall have at least five times the amount of money to spend than we have at the moment. We are told that the lottery money is the icing on the cake. But the government cake will be totally overwhelmed by the icing. The Government stressed that lottery money should be additional money for new and different projects and purchases. That is fine as long as core government funding remains. As my noble friend Lord Charteris explained, our grant is being cut, which makes the additionality point a difficult one to sustain. I urge
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the department of National Heritage, when it draws up the guidelines for the NHMF, to give the fund the flexibility to make the best and most imaginative use possible of the lottery money.
Perhaps I may touch on another point raised by my noble friend. I refer to the memorial aspect of the fund. At every meeting we are conscious of the fact that we are there to preserve what the men and women of this country died to save. It would be hard to over-emphasise that point and I am worried that the NHMF is in danger of eventually being swept away by the tidal wave of lottery money. That, as we have heard, happened once before in the 1950s when the land fund all but disappeared. It must not be allowed to happen again.
The last point that I should like to make is quite a specific one and it concerns Canova's sculpture of "The Three Graces" which has been in the news again recently. It was in the news because the Secretary of State extended the stop period for another 18 months preventing it from going to the Getty Museum in America during that period. The sculpture was first removed from its specially designed temple at Woburn to go to the Treasure Houses Exhibition in Washington in 1985 and it had never really found its way back to Woburn since then. Opinion is somewhat divided about just how special "The Three Graces" is. One famous professor of art described the sculpture as being "bedroom" art, but there are others to whom "The Three Graces" is a sublime work which should remain here at whatever cost. In my view, if the sculpture is saved by lottery money it should be returned to the temple at Woburn which was designed to house it. It loses a considerable part of its significance once divorced from that original setting.
The 18 months' stop has been designed to give lottery millions time to start rolling in. But the National Heritage Memorial Fund cannot today guarantee to save "The Three Graces" in 18 months' time. It depends on what other items come up at that time. We can only consider the case of "The Three Graces" on its merits alongside other applications for lottery money in due course.
I should like to end with a general point because, with the arts, all of us speaking in the debate, and indeed the Secretary of State himself, are all on the same side. I just hope that the points and pleas for additional arts funding made today will strengthen the hand of the Secretary of State in fighting for arts funding which we all know to be so enormously important and effective.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for giving us the opportunity to debate the important question of arts funding and to say that I have found the debate extremely interesting. In particular, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, on his spirited defence of the Arts Council, which is a kind of beating boy of the arts and which has faced over the past 14 years very considerable difficulties in conducting itself in an appropriate way, in keeping that very important principle of the arm's length relationship

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from central government, in maintaining its independence and in standing as the defender of the arts more generally.
I should also like to associate myself with everything said by my noble friend Lord Thomson of Monifieth on the heavy responsibility which now falls on the BBC and Channel Four in maintaining standards in broadcasting and television owing to the deplorable consequences of the Broadcasting Act 1988 which were foreseen at the time and neglected by those who pushed it through Parliament.
I must declare an interest on this occasion as I am chairman of the governors of the Royal Ballet and have been associated with the Royal Ballet in one capacity or another over many years.
In what I have to say there are only two points I want to make. First, I would ask a question which I hope the noble Baroness will find time to answer when she replies. I simply cannot understand what the policy of the Department of National Heritage towards the arts is. I hope she will give us a clear exposition of what its policy is and what its priorities are. As a number of noble Lords have said, it is a fact that the arts repay government grants two or three times. Overseas sales and the expenditure by foreign visitors amount to £6 billion per annum. British drama, opera and ballet are a national asset.
It is also a fact that the Arts Council grant has been cut by £3.3 million for the first time in history. It is also a fact that additional funds of £16 million have been found for the British Library—hardly the greatest success story of the past few years; in fact it is something of a scandal. That £16 million has been found just before the national lottery comes on stream. The policy is unintelligible. What are the department's priorities? Why is it funding a capital project when the lottery is just about to come on stream, and why is it cutting the performing arts? It is an extraordinary policy which demands justification. It is a policy which appears totally to neglect the maxim that one should support success. It is a policy which appears to be based on the principle that one starves the goose that lays the golden egg.
I want to explain what starving the goose that lays the golden egg means, for instance, to the two companies of the Royal Ballet. I do not have to remind your Lordships of the reputation of those two companies. They are two of the great dance companies in the world today whose pre-eminence is emphasised by the position in which the Russian companies now find themselves and by the position of the New York City Ballet today.
It is generally recognised that those two companies have never danced better. They boast great dancers, male and female, mostly trained here, but they have attracted great dancers from abroad. Their international success has rarely been greater. Only last week the Royal Birmingham Ballet was in Turin dancing "La fille mat gardée" and its performance was hailed by Corriere Della Sera as "a triumph"; Mukhamedov was described as "forte e fiero" and Sandra Maadgwick as "absolutely delicious". Their reputation abroad is enormous, a point which must be taken into account.
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The Arts Council grant to the Royal Opera House has been frozen. That amounts in real terms to a cut of about 3 per cent. To meet this and to continue to reduce the deficit, Royal Ballet performances are being cut from 120 to 96, opera performances have been increased by that number since people are prepared to pay more for opera and touring abroad by the Royal Ballet has been increased. Touring abroad is fine as long as it is not done excessively. The increase in the size of the company which was promised has been postponed. The balance of the repertory has been altered and there has been an unfortunate tilt to full-length ballets and classical works at the expense of triple bills, new works and experimental works.
That is a way to kill a ballet company. It is the quickest way one could have of killing a ballet company. It drives away dancers, choreographers and audience. A ballet company cannot exist by repeatedly performing the small repertory of classics. If it does, its audience will be reduced to a small hard core of balletomanes and it will never break out of that audience. It will not hold, develop or attract great dancers. Frederick Ashton made Fonteyn into the great ballerina that she was. Mukhamedov came here because he wanted to dance the works of MacMillan.
New works are the lifeblood of a ballet company. Choreographers must be allowed to experiment and the way they do that is by doing triples—that is, short works which have to be performed in triple bills. That is what is at risk.
The director of the Royal Opera House has given an undertaking that this shift in the balance of performances in the repertory will be corrected directly the deficit is eliminated. But unless funding is increased it is difficult for me to see how that deficit can be eliminated. If it is not eliminated, presumably we shall be in the same position as we are today.
The second point I wish to make on that count is this: touring abroad is fine as long as it is not done excessively. But if it is done excessively, which I believe to be the position now, it means that the British taxpayer, who is paying for the ballet, is deprived of the opportunity to see it, and that is wrong. What this situation emphasises is the urgent need for the establishment of a dance house which the Arts Council has supported. It is high time that steps were taken to establish it.
For all these reasons, what is required of the Department of National Heritage is a clear statement of what its priorities are and the willingness and ability to fight for the funds to make those policies possible.
5.1 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, I rise to speak in this very valuable debate as a modest consumer of the arts, mainly in the Scottish context because I cannot afford the price of tickets in London. When the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, mentioned at the outset of his speech to your Lordships the pre-eminence of the English language and, by inference, the pre-eminence of English culture, I am sure that he did not intend to provoke a nationalist argument in your Lordships' House.

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But it raises an important point because in dealing with the question of funding it is important to recognise that Scotland, as a separately identifiable nation within the union, has a wealth and depth of culture and associated characteristics which one would naturally expect from a nation with its own identity. Within that nation the cultural activities are diverse, encompassing music, language, song, dance, arts, theatre and so on. In considering the question of funding there is a problem —perhaps unique to Scotland but which perhaps applies to certain other parts of the United Kingdom—that the physical characteristics and structure of the country, with a large, non-urban landmass carrying a small but valuable 20 per cent. or so of the population, is there along with the main population of almost 80 per cent. contained in the urban central belt. That creates obvious structural and logistical problems in disseminating the arts and in supporting them in all their forms in all regions of the country. To that extent, the per capita quotient may not appeal to accountants, but it may be a necessary reflection of the difficulties in getting arts to the more remote areas.
In that respect, one must not be all gloom and doom. One must pay tribute to the fact that £9.5 million has been given to Gaelic television to promote the language, which is proving to be a major success. It is hoped that that will not be just a one-off payment and that people will shake their hands and walk away. Obviously, the use to which the £9.5 million has been put will be closely scrutinised and analysed. We hope in Scotland that the support of the Gaelic language television and, with that, the support of the community which speaks that language, will be continued.
We also welcome the fact that the Scottish Arts Council is being brought under the Scottish Office, which is already responsible for various aspects of Scottish culture; the Scottish Film Council, museums, national galleries, libraries and so on. It is an important strategy which should bring about a coherent cultural approach to the arts in Scotland and which will be able to recognise the particular Scottish issues and needs.
Along with that there is the move for the establishment of a new Scottish Arts Council. As has been mentioned already, it is important that the composition of the arts council is very closely looked at and that, once established, it should be properly funded and at such a level as to carry out its functions properly and not to be another strangled quango, saying much and doing little.
Out of the £250 million which my noble friend Lord Donoughue mentioned, it is estimated that local authorities in Scotland spend £100 million on culture and supporting the arts. That is really a phenomenal contribution bearing in mind the strictures within which the local authorities work. I suggest that the contribution of the local authorities should be mirrored by the Government's contribution and support for the arts. We hope that the local authorities, the Scottish Trades Union Congress and all relevant groups will be represented on the new Scottish Arts Council to represent the geographical diversity of interest and cultures.
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The Government must recognise that promoting the arts could stimulate tourism, provide a welcome jobs boost and expand cultural activities in Scotland. The Government and the Prime Minister should consider appointing a Minister for the Arts in Scotland specifically to deal with the special character of Scottish culture development. Such a Minister would be directly accountable to Parliament where he would present an annual report and be subject to the scrutiny of a Scottish select committee and of Parliament itself, but not necessarily in that order.
The Government must also look at ways of increasing the level of funding for the Scottish Arts Council to at least the same level as its Welsh counterpart. It is disappointing to say the least that the Government's cash settlement for 1994–95, taking out the element in relation to crafts, apparently leaves arts funding in Scotland at a standstill whereas the Welsh Office is providing the Welsh Arts Council with a 4 per cent. increase in its budget. It would be useful to see that reflected in Scotland.
At present the funding of the arts is derisory in the United Kingdom. As I understand it, we spend one-third of 1 per cent. of government budget on the arts and the Scottish share has to come out of that. We compare unfavourably with our European colleagues. Indeed, Catalonia does better for the arts than Scotland, but that is not casting any aspersions on Catalonia, though it certainly says something about the Government.
The BBC was mentioned. I suggest that the level of network programmes and others made by the BBC in Scotland should be increased to represent the number of licence holders and viewers in Scotland. Between 7 and 8 per cent. of the licence holders involved have only about 4 per cent. of production. The making of more programmes in Scotland is vital to the development of the arts in non-urban areas and rural areas—call them what one likes—and to the overall expansion of cultural activities in Scotland. In that regard the BBC has a unique role to play. One would like to see more Scottish programmes going on network and, if nothing else, to defuse the image of Scotland given by such programmes as "Rab C. Nesbit" and "Taggart" on independent television. That is not Scotland and certainly does not represent Scottish culture.
It is also to be hoped that Scotland's share of the national lottery and the Millenium Fund will be used to promote cultural activities throughout Scotland and not for one major prestige product. I understand that a good example might be the provision of mobile theatres, which I understand is presently done by the Royal Shakespeare Company, to take cultural activities of all kinds to remote areas where venues may not be easily obtained and in particular to take cultural activities to the Highlands and Islands.
The Government might also consider a special grant to develop the promotion of Scotland abroad, again taking the lead from Wales, where the Welsh Office has allocated £100,000 to the Welsh Arts Council for international initiatives. I am not jealous of the Welsh only because they gave us a good thrashing at Cardiff Arms Park a fortnight ago—
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: Hear, hear!
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, I hear some cries of joy from the Front Bench. But those are serious issues which I have sought to put before your Lordships' House in a constructive spirit.
In conclusion, the promotion and funding of the arts is of vital importance at this stage in an age when our native culture and, indeed, culture itself is being eroded day by day by a never-ending sea of inconsequential, mind-numbing productions of pap on television aimed solely at the ratings, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, said. That tide can be turned only by an enthusiastic and co-operative approach towards the real arts and the dissemination of culture, not only in Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom. We will work with the Government if the Government will work with us. We all look forward to the promotion of the arts being improved.
5.10 p.m.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, this debate is proving to be constructive in part, particularly in acknowledging the great contribution made by the arts to the life, economy and reputation of this country. But we must be realistic to the extent that resources are finite and, while making demands for additional funding, due cognisance must be taken of the implications of such demands on the tax structure and/or reducing expenditure in other areas in order to raise such additional resources.
In my Barbican Centre role, I am probably the only person speaking in this debate who is an employee of an arts organisation. As such, I feel that I have a responsibility to put to your Lordships' House a personal view, from my working perspective, of the issues raised by the title of this debate to balance what I fear is turning out to be a fairly subjective debate. The arts are one of the greatest assets of this country and have an enviable international reputation, as my noble friend Lord Palumbo so eloquently described. As they have such an enviable reputation, why is there the constant demand that they need more funding? I fear that we spend far too much time looking at funding levels overseas where, let us remember, their arts are not as successful as ours.
Of course, I acknowledge that there is a genuine need in some areas where local authorities have been cutting back on their funding. Not all local authorities can, or wish to, fund the arts to the extent that the City of London Corporation funds the Barbican Centre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the London Symphony Orchestra (among other arts funding activities), thereby taking pressure off central government. I know that I am in a very fortunate position: not only is there no cutback, but the funding is actually increasing. However, the corporation is not a "soft touch". It insists on sound financial accountability, a point that I shall come to again.
Naturally, everybody would like more government funding, but I want to suggest that before we make a structured—and I use that word advisedly—appeal for more funding we must consider the following six points.
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Is the arts sector convinced that the current funds are well spent? Is the arts sector convinced that it should have additional funding at the expense of other government expenditure? Does the arts sector think that the public at large would be quite happy to pay additional taxes in order to increase funding if it is not acceptable to requisition funds from current recipients of government expenditure? How would the arts sector spend the additional funding? Who would benefit from additional funding? And, finally, is there a better way of arts funding than the current system?
I will briefly give your Lordships some indication of my answers to those six questions. Are current funds well spent? I doubt it. I refer to the Sunday Telegraph of 23rd January. The D'Oyly Carte company would be homeless because the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham is likely to have to close, and I quote,
"after a number of loss-making projects culminating in a home-grown, ill-fated musical "Bertie" with losses approaching £500,000".
It is just as easy to make bad decisions in the arts as it is in any other area of business—as I know only too well. By promoting an overseas orchestra to play four concerts in the Barbican Hall, I lost some £200,000. There are those who say that that money was well-spent, but I doubt it. Our audiences were pathetically small so not many people benefited from the exercise (each member of the audience that did attend was subsidised by us to the tune of over £50 per head.)
There is an absolute requirement to improve (and in some cases to introduce) financial accountability in the, arts. Many organisations do have such accountability, but many do not. The Arts Council of Great Britain organises appraisals of its clients but, having taken part in one of those appraisals, I have to concede that a wily arts organisation could be quite capable, of pulling the wool over the eyes of the appraisers—and I was one of them. I am not saying that they do, but if I were being appraised I think I would not have too much trouble in so doing!
I believe that there is a case to be made for the Arts Council to act as consultants to its clients on business and financial practices. I am aware that not all arts organisations can have a strong professional management structure as the Barbican has, but there could be a role for the Arts Council to take on this responsibility for those who lack such a structure.
I should like to correct the impression that might have been taken as being true about the apparent incompetence, spinelessness and deaf-mute characteristics of Arts Council officers. That is not true. I attend meetings twice a month which are also attended by officers of the Arts Council of Great Britain and I certainly cannot recognise the picture that was painted by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell.
I turn now to my next question: should there be additional funding at the expense of government funding in other sectors? I cannot resist making the point that one man's pile of bricks in the Tate is another man's kidney dialysis machine. And what about the Accident and Emergency unit at Bart's?
On the third question: do we think that art increase in taxes specifically to fund the arts would be acceptable to

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the British public? Well, perhaps this should be tested. At the time of the next general election, it will be interesting to see if it is mentioned in the Party manifestos. All that I can say is that the arts sector is unlikely to think that that would be acceptable—witness the reaction to VAT on tickets and to the suggestion that there might have been VAT on books in the most recent Budget.
On the fourth question: how would additional funding be spent? Not, I hope, on yet more administrators! I guess that the reply would be, "It is up to us to determine how any money should be spent; we will not brook interference". But the furore created recently in the Brian Sewell controversy encourages me to think that those who fund—the taxpayers, you and I, my Lords—will always be somewhat uneasy with unfettered expenditure by creative people.
It is a bit like new investment in manufacturing industry—everybody wants it—or expenditure on new product development, which is acknowledged to be "a good thing", but which frequently fails to match up to expectations. As is generally known, some 90 per cent. of all new product development never gets beyond the prototype stage. If there were specific projects which could be ring-fenced or earmarked, I would support additional funding but, surely, this is what the lottery money is supposed to do.
On the subject of lottery money, may I sound a note of warning? Unbridled expansion of arts facilities funded by capital from the lottery would directly impact on current revenue funding by the Department of National Heritage when such arts facilities would be looking for shares of a currently committed budget.
And to my fifth question: who would benefit from the additional funding? Answer: it depends on the projects, but let me just offer another word of caution. In my experience of four years' standing, I can assure your Lordships that many projects are put on by the arts sector for the enjoyment, entertainment, education and enlightenment of those who work in the sector. Not too often do you hear the question asked, "Will the man or woman in the street benefit from this?"
Then again, the artists themselves could benefit from the additional funding. None of us would want to see British composers die as paupers as did Mozart; but, dare I suggest that sometimes additional funding could have the result of keeping second or third-rate artists and performers in business when for the greater good of the arts in Britain as a whole it might be better if they tried their hand at something else.
What we must not do is to dilute the acknowledged pre-eminence of the arts in Britain by encouraging the young girl with a pleasant voice to believe that she will be the Kiri te Kanawa of the 21st century.
Now to the final question: is there a better way of funding? I suggest that there are at least two better ways of funding the additional moneys that so many noble Lords have requested today.
I should like to ask the Minister—and I have given her notice of this—whether she could prevail upon the
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Treasury to look kindly on the suggestion that the American system of tax breaks for individual funding for the arts should be introduced here.
I make that suggestion because, despite what the perception might be, the reality is that the projects, the companies, the art forms which receive the greatest amount of government funding through the Arts Council are very often enjoyed by that segment of the population which could easily afford to pay the true price of the ticket. I believe that those people would be much more prepared to fund the arts if they felt that the Government were supportive of their intentions that the arts should thrive and recognise it by giving them tax breaks.
We should, however, be aware of the possibility that if the US system were introduced here, there could be a reduction in current charitable giving through both Gift Aid and the Charities Aid Foundation. Is that something that we would be prepared to risk?
The second suggestion upon which I should like to have the Minister's view is this. As a significant part of current funding and the demands for additional funding are based on the aim to carry out an educational role, would it be possible to fund from the Department for Education those arts activities which are recognisably educational? The Minister looks in horror, I fear.
Many of your Lordships have drawn attention to the great contribution to arts funding made by local authorities (51 per cent. of total arts funding in each of the past two years) and business sponsorship. Business sponsorship is not in decline. There was a blip in the figures last year due to the Japan Festival and Glyndebourne. It is increasing. The average annual increase has been 15 per cent. over the past nine years. We should be, and must be, proud of the arts, but let us not fall into the trap of thinking that by throwing money at something it will be even better. That is a fallacy.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Howell: My Lords, I apologise to the House for having had to ask my noble friend Lord Eatwell to change places with me because I was chairing a meeting of the sports group elsewhere. I shall return to that in a moment because it is the first point that I want to make. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Donoughue for his devastating speech and for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. We rarely do so. The number of noble Lords taking part shows that we should return to it more frequently.
In 1964 Harold Wilson appointed Jennie Lee to be the first Minister for the Arts and myself to be first Minister for Sport. Before the 1966 election, I wrote to Harold Wilson and said, "I think that you have made a mistake". Harold Wilson was a Prime Minister who did not like to be told that he had made a mistake, so he ignored my advice that he should bring together the arts and sport in one department. I am glad that we have done that at last. So I am a little critical of my colleagues who wish to divide up the subjects again today and debate the arts apparently in isolation from sport.
The reason I chose to say what I did was that I believe sport, like the arts, is a cultural pursuit. We should not engage ourselves in distinguishing between one

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person's cultural pleasures and leisure interests and another person's cultural pleasures and leisure interests. They go side by side. In any case, it is ludicrous to suggest that those people who like to watch football or cricket, by some odd quirk of logic, do not appreciate good theatre or good music. We have to provide right across the board; in other words, we have to have a philosophy and social purpose about leisure which I thought the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, in his excellent maiden speech, was describing. He was trying to set out what the soul of music and the arts should be. I would say also, the spirit of sport. Those things go together.
The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, told us about all the economic jargon that she would like to apply to the arts, but she missed out the most important one which I investigated when I was Minister for Sport. We must assess the cost of failing to provide leisure facilities and the effect that that has on crime, hooliganism and so on in our society. We did that, and it is considerable. So, if we are to strike a balance, let it be a true and proper one. Everywhere we look now—we are closing down sports centres and locking people out from them—we see an increase in the amount of juvenile delinquency, hooliganism and boredom in our society. That is something which I know everyone on all sides of the House regrets, but we must understand the reason for it.
If millions of people have no jobs, no leisure resources and no one to provide for their leisure, what on earth do we think will be the result? In any proper philosophy and policy for the arts, we must have regard to the availability of leisure time, the provision of facilities and then to the exercise of choice. It is up to individuals as to which of the facilities—sports, arts, theatre, music and so on—they wish to pursue. As I say, if we fail to provide them, we shall find a lower quality of life and all the problems associated with that factor.
The second point I wish to make, which has already been referred to, relates to the funding of the Arts Council, and the Sports Council, I add in passing. One cannot turn off funding like a tap. That is not possible for the Government, the Arts Council, the Sports Council and certainly not for local authorities. It will have a devastating effect on the provision of facilities unless an assured continuation of funding can be guaranteed. I shall illustrate that point in a moment by talking about the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra of which I have long been a patron. Indeed, one of the things I treasure most in my public life, despite all my years spent on sport, is that I was chairman of Birmingham City Council when it made the first grant to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the 1940s. That led to this magnificent orchestra, with its wonderful director of music, Simon Rattle, being available to the nation as well as to the citizens of Birmingham.
I can talk also about the theatres, in particular the Alexander Theatre which the city has kept going at great expense. I regret to say to the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, that it was the private company, as I am sure my noble friend Lady Fisher will outline in a moment, that collapsed, not the Arts Council or the City of Birmingham.
Baroness O'Cathain: Bad management, my Lords.
Lord Howell: My Lords, bad management in the private sector. I do not know what we do about that, except to note that it happens also in the noble Baroness's domain so far as concerns the concerts she was promoting, which were apparently unsuccessful. I return to the subject of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and local authority spending. First, there has been a drop this year of £2.5 million in the amount of money available to local authorities for patronage of the arts. It was £323.2 million, as my noble friend Lord Donoughue said, and it has dropped by £2.5 million this year because of all the restrictions and capping of local authority expenditure. It is £15 million less this year than it was in 1991–92.
Again, I say to the Minister and the Government, if you are interested in promoting arts (and sport)—in parenthesis —you must have regard to the fact that for both sport and the arts local authorities are the great providers. They provide the mass of facilities so that ordinary people can enjoy themselves in the cinema or in the theatre or kicking a ball backwards and forwards on the sports field. Therefore if you restrict local authority spending, whatever the economic rationale may be, you are doing great damage to sport and the arts. That is the first lesson we must learn.
I do not know whether it was mentioned in my absence, but the decision of the DNH to spend so much on the Albert Memorial, at the expense of live theatre and music—
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, no.
Lord Howell: My Lords, is it not? I believe that it is. I shall be glad to hear the Minister talking about that in a moment. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra earns 60 per cent. of its own revenue. It has 101 players and, as I say, a brilliant musical director. Ten years ago it was earning only 40 per cent. It has gone to great lengths to raise its own revenue. At the same time, the city council is making a donation of £1 million and the Arts Council a donation of £1.4 million. It should not go without mention that it pays £240,000 in VAT and £700,000 in PAYE, so it is earning revenue for the Treasury too.
I have reached the end of my eight minutes, so I shall not trespass upon the generosity of the House. I merely say, as other speakers have, that I believe that sport and the arts represent the soul of the nation. They are the end product in people's lives. Good housing, good homes and good education are important, but the way people can express themselves and develop their personalities is through the arts and sport. A nation that neglects that essential fact is doing its citizens a great disservice.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Skidelsky: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, on his profound maiden speech. I was moved by it and considered it to be an important contribution to the debate. I regret that I may have to leave the House shortly before the debate is to conclude.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, that we need more money for the arts. Apart from their

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civilising influence, the arts are a good investment and are good for all the economic reasons that have been mentioned. But I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain. The fact that the arts need more money does not mean that all or most of it must come from the state. That is an important point to make because during the past few years we have learnt that the institutions which rely entirely or largely on public funding are likely to be caught short when that funding dries up or is reduced. Moreover, they are likely to be subjected to an intolerable degree of inquisition in the names of accountability and value for money. That is the modern way of the state.
That is not only as a result of Thatcherite ideology of the recent recession. There has been a general shift of opinion, backed by voters throughout the Western world, in favour of a reduction in taxes and in public spending for which taxes are raised, as a share of national income. The implicit assumption in the current debate about whether taxes are greater under the Conservative Party than they would have been under the Labour Party is that lower taxes are a good thing. The debates make no sense outside that context. If one is being moved by politics towards a lower tax system, the extra money for the arts must come from private sources. There is no long-term alternative to that. In parenthesis, the only justification that I can see for the National Lottery as a tax system—it is a very regressive tax system—is that politically it is easier to raise money for the arts in that way than through the otherwise silted channels of orthodox finance. But that reinforces the point that I am making. There is less tax tolerance.
In Britain the arts are especially vulnerable to any move to reduce public spending. Early on the British Monarchy lost control over supply and therefore we have never had the Continental tradition of lavish state patronage of the arts. The arts have always had to struggle against a penny-pinching Treasury and there was nothing new about that in the 1980s. One great lost opportunity of the 1980s was the failure to make progress with the British Library. The project was announced by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, in 1978 and it is still unfinished. It was held up until 1985. At that time there was a wonderful opportunity to get on with it because there was a great deal of spare capacity in the economy and low cost. Its building was finally started towards the height of the boom when all costs were rising. Therefore, the cost of the project escalated and it is still unfinished. That is a scandalous example of Treasury penny-pinching.
However, I do not accept the gloom and doom which the arts lobby tends to tell. There is artistic life apart from public subsidy; indeed, it has never flourished more abundantly than at present. The arts centre at my own university of Warwick is the largest and most successful of its kind outside London. It has received some university subsidy but it was built largely from private subscription. It earns about 70 to 75 per cent. of its running costs in box office takings and sponsorship. It does so by offering a varied and attractive programme of performing arts to audiences which come in from all around the region. It, too, is suffering from the
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recession, but that kind of ratio of private-to-public income should not be beyond the attainment of most performing arts centres.
While what the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, called a central subsidised core of arts funding should always remain, it is right that an increasing share of arts income should come from the private sector. That is not just because of the tax constraint but because the supply of arts should always be responsive to demand. Of course, we must be willing to subsidise experiment, but we must recognise that art forms for which there is a persisting lack of demand cannot be sustained by subsidy alone. That is the Achilles' heel of the whole system of art subsidy.
Perhaps I may reinforce an earlier point. If we decide to go down the American road, as I think we must, we have to make it easier for givers to give and sponsors to sponsor. We have a charitable tax regime, which is in many ways as liberal as the American regime, but the process of giving and sponsorship is much too enmeshed in bureaucracy. Why do we need the Inland Revenue to intervene between a gift and a receipt? If in America I want to give money to a charitable cause I write out a cheque and deduct the amount from my taxable income. In this country we stick to variations of the old covenant system, which was devised for a completely different tax regime. The fact is that any piece of paper that has to be applied for, looked for and processed is a cost to the donor and to the recipient. I urge the Treasury to take up Michael Heseltine's passion for deregulation and to make it easier for donors to give, sponsors to sponsor and organisations to receive.
I conclude by echoing what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain. I ask that a long holiday be taken from attacks on the Arts Council—that remarkable and quintessentially British institution which was started largely by Lord Keynes. To a large extent the Arts Council has been made a scapegoat for cuts in public spending. It has had to make difficult choices about quality. As a result there has been a never ending story of grief and outrage from those whose support has been reduced or cut.
But there is another factor which is more distressing; it is that much of the abuse of the Arts Council has been led by the press, and in particular by the recently compulsorily-retired Secretary of State for National Heritage in the arts pages of the Guardian. It is foolish for arts correspondents constantly to rubbish the Arts Council because they are playing into the hands of those who wish to abolish it and to transfer its remaining responsibilities to the National Heritage Department. In my view, that would be a disaster. I welcome the vigorous defence of the Arts Council put up by the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, and his defence in print of the arm's length principle. It is for Parliament to decide on how much to allocate to the arts, not to run an arts policy. The arm's length principle was devised to insulate the distribution of arts money from politics and to relieve the Secretary of State of tasks for which he has neither the competence nor the credibility. But that principle cannot live on a diet of destructive criticism.

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appeal to the media, therefore, to lay off the Arts Council. It must be remembered that each year more than 100 people give it days and months of unpaid service. My motto would be to err on the side of generosity and to be constructive in criticism. Otherwise the press will run the risk of destroying an institution which since the war has done very well by British arts and, in the process, run the risk of damaging the prospects of the arts in this country.
5.40 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, I too express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Donoughue for introducing the debate which for me provides an agreeable interlude between talking about the police service last week and prisons next week.
The theme that I wish to address briefly is the nexus between national power and prosperity and public patronage of the arts. Other speakers have floated that idea to some extent. There is two-way traffic. It is not just that flourishing arts are a barometer of national self-confidence and well-being but the arts contribute to national confidence, prosperity and well-being. If one looks historically at the high spots of cultural activity, one can see that in the fifth century BC the Athenians embezzled ship money to build the Parthenon. It is clear that that society felt self-confident; all its citizens were involved in it; and it was prosperous. That has been a lesson to us all. An example outside the European mainstream of culture is the Tang Dynasty. Court patronage caused poetry, music, dance and ceramics to flourish for nearly 300 years.
Renaissance Italy may have appeared to have had private patrons, but the Medicis were ruling Florence, the Sforzas were in Milan and the Montefeltros were in Urbino. They were the effective public patrons of the day. Above all, the patronage of the Church and the Papacy meant that money went to people like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and so on. Therefore, it was not small, private patrons or businesses which provided the money in those days, unless the Church is seen as a business. I believe also that the self-confidence, energy and prosperity of Italy in those days not only produced the arts that flourished. It was the fact that the arts flourished that produced the self-confidence and prosperity.
In those days artists were seen primarily as craftsmen in need of employment. It is only with Victorian England that we have the romantic idea that artists should starve in garrets if they are to produce better art. I detected a hint of that in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain. Also—and it worried me —I believe that she felt that second-rate and third-rate artists could be easily identified. Surely it is a function of public patronage of the arts that people are encouraged before it becomes clear that they are first-rate artists. Art must be nourished in its early and embryonic state.
Nevertheless, public patronage in Victorian England produced great, exuberant public works. Waterhouse's great town halls and natural history museum belied his nickname of "slaughterhouse", because most of his buildings were created in red brick. The two that I know
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best are the Manchester town hall and the Natural History Museum. Of course, they are not red brick. Other examples of such buildings are St. Pancras railway station and most of Whitehall. They exemplify the national self-confidence and prosperity of the Victorian era, but I am sure that they contributed also to the public mood of self-confidence and optimism of the age. I believe that that is a major function of public funding of the arts.
In the 20th century this country seems to have lost much of that self-confidence. I believe that that has been due to public mean-spiritedness as regards the arts. As my noble friends Lord Donoughue and Lord Macaulay said, we are much less generous in that respect than our European neighbours. France, Germany and Holland contribute twice the amount in public funding to the arts. It is perhaps no coincidence that we are now below those countries in the European table of poverty of nations. We have now fallen below the average for the rest of Europe. To some extent that is a reflection of what has happened to this country.
For the past 15 years the Government have been both philistine and parsimonious. They have welcomed a retreat to Victorian values. But I believe that reliance on private sponsorship is not enough for the arts. We have heard that not only has private sponsorship been reduced—although that is debatable—but public spending has been reduced, and there has been that shocking cut of over £3 million from the Arts Council budget. There has been a consequent reduction of £0.25 million to the English National Opera, of which I too am a great fan.
If the Prime Minister is serious about reducing class differences in this country, one of the most effective ways to do that would be to promulgate a common culture. I agree with my noble friend Lord Howell that cricket and football are part of that culture. However, there are other aspects which should be encouraged and disseminated throughout our society.
Culture is enhanced by live performances. They need to take place outside London. We need to have not just the Welsh National Opera touring the country but the English National Opera needs to be able to fund touring examples of its works. Major artistic projects should be funded not just because they produce a financial return to the country but because they contribute to national self-confidence, buoyancy and prosperity. As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, modest expenditure can produce excellent results for the arts.
I am reluctant to suggest anything that would restore the fortunes of the present Government but, to use the old adage that people need circuses as well as bread, I suggest that perhaps they should concentrate less on bread and more on circuses and increase rather than diminish their support for the arts.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I am happy to join with other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Menuhin, on his wonderful maiden speech. The noble Lord's genius and vision have for many years

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shone out of the music that he has played. How nice it is that there should be an opportunity in your Lordships' House for him to extend that vision to all areas of life.
I congratulate also the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, on his maiden speech. He is known to be an exceedingly musical fellow. Like the noble Duke, I attended the concert at which my noble friend Lord Menuhin played the Beethoven concerto under Dr. Klemperer, and I found it, as did the noble Duke, a revelation. It is nice that the timely and welcome debate of the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, should give my noble friend Lord Menuhin an opportunity to receive excellent notices for a concert several decades after he gave it.
My noble friend mentioned the excitement of conducting a great orchestra. There has been much debate about great orchestras and indeed, about a super orchestra. I believe that one small factor was left out of all those multifarious debates. It is quite true that you cannot make a super orchestra by abolishing other orchestras. It is equally true that you cannot make a super orchestra merely by throwing money at it. One small factor is absolutely necessary: it is called Solti, Karajan or Rattle. Without a music director of genius, you do not have a super orchestra however much money there is.
There are vast opportunities before us for arts funding. I notice that today several complaints have been made about the sheer amount of money which the British Library absorbs. I hope that that is a complaint made only in the light of funding that the arts are not receiving in other directions. I confess to a slight connection these days with the British Library because I am now chairman of the National Sound Archive. I foresee that vast opportunities are available on the site of the British Library. I hope that the Government will have the good sense never to sell off those four acres but will use them for good purposes; for example, a multi-media centre. The wonders of computers enable one to call up not merely the catalogue of the library next door but also a file of all the newspapers, and catalogues and, indeed, reproductions of all the great museums of the land. Multi-media is the thing of the future. I can think of nothing more exciting for the 21st century than a multi-media centre that would demonstrate the interlinked nature of all the arts.
There is a hope that the film industry may at last attract a decent share of arts funding. It has been very much the Cinderella of the arts world for many years. The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, mentioned that Elstree is to close. Only the other day a letter was received from Steven Spielberg, who is surely one of the most imaginative and successful film producers ever, saying that he would like to make several more films at Elstree Studios. It would be ironic if he came to make those films and found that the studios were closed.
As all noble Lords have pointed out, it is a tragedy that so many people will suffer from cuts to arts funding. Many noble Lords have mentioned English National Opera, and rightly so, because no organisation has done more to remove the quite unnecessary and inaccurate curse of elitism from opera. Opera never was
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elitist; it was always very expensive and will remain so. But English National Opera has really brought it within the reach of many people in a way that no other company that I can think of has done. It is not just the great companies, it is also hundreds of small theatres, dance companies and music groups all around the country which will suffer.
Almost more dangerous is what training and education are suffering at present. For example, it is notable that local authority grants to young people about to train—whether in performance or technique or in acting schools, music schools, dance schools or technical schools—are discretionary. Goodness knows, they look discretionary when one looks around the country. The imbalance of funding for young people from the local authorities of this country is quite astonishing. One really has to decide at birth where one is to live if one's education is to be decently funded. Somehow that situation must be remedied. If it is not, we shall not have the arts in the future in the flourishing state we have them today. The new young practitioners of the arts will simply not be there.
Finally I turn to the lottery. It is something to which we all look forward with such excitement. It is not yet a perfect lottery. I could have wished that it did not rely quite so much on the profit motive. More importantly, I could also have wished to see the Treasury offer matching funds to respond to the excitement of the lottery instead of diminishing it by lopping 12 per cent. off it in tax. Perhaps such things are past praying for, though I hope not. At all events, great things will no doubt come out of it.
I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, was worried that the exclusive nature of the lottery's capital funding might be damaging. I have always believed—and I very much hope that the Minister will confirm this in her response—that, although it is intended that the funds shall go to capital funding, in the event of new endeavours, endowment funding to put alongside the capital funding is permissible. Indeed, I suspect that that principle would be essential for an organisation which also grew dramatically. As the noble Lord said, it is pointless to have new or enhanced facilities of one sort or another if revenue funding cannot then be obtained. The Arts Council will surely be in the position of saying, "We can scarcely deal with the clients we have, so we cannot handle any new ones".
I am sure that that endowment principle must somehow be built into the lottery. I can think of one instance in that respect, and I declare an interest in it immediately. I have in mind Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. It now rests under the shadow of the recent death of Sam Wanamaker, who laboured for over two decades to bring the development to fruition. Indeed, if one looks at Southwark now, one can see that half the bays of the theatre are there. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is arising. It is not, I believe, an act of piety; it is an act of renewal, excitement and discovery. There is one aspect of the greatest of all our dramatists about which we have no idea: how he must have felt in his own theatre. We have no clue as to where he started from. We have seen hundreds and thousands of productions of all his plays, but we do not know about

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his point of departure. However, soon we shall. It will be a tribute to Sam Wanamaker, and, I hope, a tribute to this nation to see the theatre arise. If any endeavour deserves a good whack of the lottery funds—and it has received not a penny of public subsidy thus far—surely it is the Globe Theatre in memory not only of Sam Wanamaker but also of our greatest dramatist.
5.54 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, many speakers have stated this afternoon that they were the chairman of an organisation or the member of a committee concerned with dance activities, and so on. However, I can honestly say that I have never been fortunate enough to be chosen for any of those illustrious positions. If I recall correctly, I took drama when I was at school and we put on a performance of "Macbeth". I thought that I should play Macbeth, but I was given the task of being one of the witches. Indeed, it was a very small part. Therefore, my knowledge and, perhaps, my fame do not lie in that direction.
I should like to talk specifically about Birmingham. No doubt some Members of the House will say, "Yes, we thought you would". My noble friend Lord Howell and I started together in politics. He started a little earlier than myself when he was elected to the city council; but, nevertheless, we were both colleagues on that council and then neighbouring Members of Parliament, though my noble friend has a longer service in Parliament.
By maintaining a network of what we call prestigious arts organisations, such as The Royal Ballet, the City of Birmingham Orchestra and the Birmingham Rep., and by putting its money into such arts, Birmingham has achieved a high profile on the international stage. That, in turn, makes Birmingham a much more attractive place in which to live and work. But, most importantly—not only for Birmingham citizens but also for the welfare of the country—it encourages inward investment in the locality. It is not just the people who live in Birmingham who benefit from our theatres and our art galleries. The people living in the wide area of what we call the West Midlands region can also benefit.
Within the last month the exhibition of all the Canaletto pictures came to an end. Some of the pictures were lent by Her Majesty the Queen. I can recall the absolutely shattering attendance at the gallery. Crowds of people queued up every day to view the exhibition and the extension of the exhibition had to be continued for two extra weeks. Incidentally, it was not a free exhibition; one had to pay to get in.
In providing support for prestigious involvement in the arts, the council also asks such organisations for help as regards payment for pensioners, those who are unwaged and the disabled. In other words, such organisations are asked to give something back for the benefit of the people. Further, part of the funding goes towards visits in schools. I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, is back in his place. I must say that I enjoyed his speech this afternoon.
I can remember very clearly when a member of the City of Birmingham Orchestra came to visit a school for children with learning difficulties of which I am a
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governor. The man started to play the violin. All 10 of the children present gazed at him as if struck by magic. When asked by the teacher afterwards what he thought about it, one of the children said, "That man made that fiddle talk". I thought that that was a wonderful expression for a child with learning difficulties to use. He certainly got something out of that violin music.
It seems to me that many people have much more ambitious ideas about what will happen to the national lottery funds than I have. Indeed, I am very sceptical about the lottery. To be quite truthful, I believe that it is another Government wheeze. What we get in one hand they will take away with the other. That is the natural run of things. We shall never get any more. It is just like something out of a Dickens' story: you ask for more, but it is not forthcoming. Therefore, all the optimism which we have heard this afternoon does not reflect my view.
I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, who spoke about the National Library. As regards the Albert Memorial, the mind boggles to think how much the Government have spent in shoring it up over the past three or four years. It must have cost about £5 million. Moreover, it is now suggested that we should spend another £11 million on a crumbling monument. I believe that Queen Victoria did not care for it greatly when it was proposed. I suggest that the £11 million I have mentioned would be better spent on crumbling Victorian schools than on crumbling Victorian statues.
It is unfortunate that the education cuts, especially the cuts in the funding of school orchestras and orchestral instruments, are having a serious effect upon school orchestras. The provision of musical instruments is not a top priority in the budgets of many schools. However, if we do not encourage the study of music in our schools, in the long term we may lose potential performers. I wish to mention specifically the cut in project funding. Project funding helps smaller organisations. Often it constitutes the first rung on the ladder for new actors, writers and designers. In the long run we shall lose the talents of those people through cutting project funding and that will threaten future artistic development.
I thank noble Lords opposite for nodding at me. I am keeping my eye on the time. Like other noble Lords, I believe that the live arts are labour intensive and income generating. They also provide a rich culture. The most important factor is the enjoyment we derive from that culture. We must ensure that we pass on that heritage to the younger generation.
6.2 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for introducing this debate. It was a rare privilege also to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, and indeed of my noble kinsman the Duke of Saint Albans.
I would like to concentrate on the funding of the musicians of the future: of the young people in our conservatoires in general, and in our oldest Conservatoire in particular. I refer to the Royal Academy of Music. I will tell your Lordships how London is still managing to maintain its position as the music capital of

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the world by a series of bold and imaginative initiatives; but I regret that this is more despite Government funding than because of it. The three Government funded conservatoires in London are the academy, the college and Trinity. Compared with La Villette in France or the Juliard in America they are very small both in their amount of grant and in their numbers of students. It was for those reasons that my noble friend Lord Gowrie suggested some years back that the three should combine, and hinted that should they do so a larger grant would be forthcoming.
The combination has worked up to a point. There is now a vocal faculty shared by both the academy and the college. However, tentative moves to run a combined early music course have met with the response that there is no more money available. This is not, therefore, a major success. I mention it only to contrast it with a success which is rather big. I believe that it is unique in Europe. It is a collaboration that has grown up between the Royal Academy of Music and King's College London on a new Bachelor of Music course.
Noble Lords will know of the common criticism levelled against musical training, which is that if you read music at a conservatoire you learn how to perform but you do not learn about the academic side of music; that is, its history, its development or its nature. Conversely, should you read music at, say, Jesus College, Cambridge, you come out strong on theory but weak on performance. There just are not enough good orchestras in Cambridge, or indeed Oxford, to give students a chance to develop their playing. So now for the first time we have the best of both worlds—an academic performance course. For instance, a bassoonist on such a course could also learn about counterpoint and Gregorian Chant. However, he could go wider still. He could also be reading Thomas Hardy, or philosophy, or even business studies. This is a remarkable spin-off from the original Gowrie concept. However, it is not the spin-off that was envisaged. It is something different and altogether more exciting. There is nothing else in Europe today that is anything like this Bachelor of Music degree.
As regards the funding of the Royal Academy, one only has to look at the back page of the brochure entitled The Development of Excellence to see the extent to which the academy has gone out into the market place. Abbey National, the Laura Ashley Foundation, Baring Brothers, Coutts, Marks and Spencer, Ciba-Geigy, and Guinness are mentioned. I could go on. I would single out Industrial Distillers and Vintners who fund all chamber music activities. I must mention also, as a slightly lighter aside, a gift from the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Indonesia given on condition that the academy performs a piece that he has himself composed entitled "Liberation". I gather it is a 20 minute sand dance. My noble friend may remember such numbers from her music hall days.
Most sponsors give with no strings attached. For example they have funded a £2 million refurbishment of the Duke's Hall. They support individual students who would otherwise be unable to come to the academy. In addition, British Telecom and Toyota sponsored the
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visit of the academy's sinfonietta to Tokyo: the Steel Charitable Trust has been paying for master classes and Thorn EMI has installed a recording studio. All of this private sponsorship is the result of considerable efforts by the academy's managing director, Peter Madams and the director of commercial activities, Peter Shellard.
But having criticised the Government I must also give them credit where credit is due because six years ago it would have been largely pointless to raise this private money as the grant would have been reduced by a similar amount. The academy was then on deficit financing. With the 1988 Education Reform Act all that changed. Now what you raise you keep. Doubtless that has encouraged the academy's fund raisers to achieve such magnificent results.
I am in danger of giving the impression that everything in the garden is lovely. However, that is far from being so. The academy is clinging on by the skin of its teeth. The Government grant has been frozen for the past two years. In real terms it has therefore declined. Student accommodation is now paid for rather reluctantly by local authorities. In some cases it is means tested. But the biggest difficulty is the changeover from grant to loan for the individual student. I am in sympathy with the broad reasoning behind student loans, which is that those with a good tertiary education should earn more than those without it, and should therefore be in a position to pay the grant back when they get jobs. However, musicians do not make a lot of money. Ordinary orchestral players are far from being plutocrats. They earn £60 for an evening performance and that is not the sort of amount that will leave you with a fistful of fivers to repay your student loan. This is a difficult problem. The student loan principle is sound in general, but there are those students who have chosen careers which are artistically rewarding but which are also near guaranteed to ensure poverty, and musicians are among them.
I would therefore ask Government to give grants not loans to those studying classical music. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, asked for much the same concession for students of dance. In addition, I have one very specific suggestion that would help both the academy and Kings. Both of them need a physical focus for their Bachelor of Music course. They need a building; and there is one midway between the academy and the British Library. It is an elegant structure called the Diorama. Could not the Government buy this building and give it jointly to the academy and Kings? They would call it the Centre for Advanced Performance Studies (or CAPS). In that way the Government would continue the good work which they started with the Education Reform Act 1988.
6.9 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, I appreciate that in the course of the debate a number of noble Lords have referred to the importance of the arts to the economy of the country. Therefore, I shall not repeat the many figures that have been presented in the debate. However, they show clearly that any reduction in government subsidy is not only culturally, but also economically, short-sighted. While, as has been said,

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other European countries have been generous, real cuts have been imposed in Conservative Britain. That is not to suggest that one relies only on the Government to fund the arts. Obviously there are other sources, but the Government must take the prime responsibility.
It was the late Baroness Lee, the first Minister for the Arts, who stated that the industrial patron was the heir to the virtually extinct wealthy private patron of the past and that she looked to industry and commerce to play their part in ensuring that the arts were made more widely available. That view has become even more relevant with the increase in leisure time and cultural activities as part of the social infrastructure.
It is true that neither central government nor local government can nor should be the sole financial provider. There have to be essential degrees of interdependence between the commercial and subsidised sectors and the democratic control and widening of access to the arts. That does not accord with the statement made by the then Arts Minister, Richard Luce, who told the regional arts associations, as they were then, that they had to be weaned away from the welfare state mentality—whatever that is. He added:
"My vision for the millennium is for private patronage to match or even outstrip public patronage".
That meant either an enormous growth in sponsorship or a severe cut in public funding. However, it seemed ludicrous to suggest that sufficient private funding could be obtained to pay for the arts. The record shows that that is not the case. There has been some growth in private funding, but it has been nothing like as much as anticipated.
Public subsidy is seven times greater than the amount contributed by sponsors, even though the Government's publicity devised to encourage firms to sponsor the arts states:
"Sponsorship is a payment by a business firm…for the purpose of promoting its name, products or services; it is a commercial deal not a philanthropic gift".
If such sponsorship comes out of the advertising budget it can be set against taxation. In the words of the Inland Revenue, it is money spent wholly and exclusively for the purpose of trade.
In many cases sponsorship has now become advertising. As a consequence it is often of a short duration. It creates uncertainty for arts organisers attempting to plan long-term ventures. The Secretary-General of the Arts Council summed up the position when he said that sponsotrship comes and goes. Its coming and going, however, is determined not by the needs of the arts organisation, but by the wishes of the sponsor.
That is not to condemn sponsorship—just the reverse. But the Government's view of sponsorship as an alternative to public funding goes far beyond that of the present Director General of the ABSA, who made it clear that the ABSA did not want to do the Government's job and that the Government's job was funding the arts.
That uncertainty about future funding is particularly felt by the regional arts boards. In the present economic climate more and more of their time is spent on fund-raising activities. There are five negative factors which strengthen that need: the decline in box office
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takings as a consequence of the recession; the reduction in central government support finance; the Government cuts on local authorities, which will inevitably mean cuts in their donations to arts organisations; a decline of 13 per cent. in 1992–93 in private sector sponsorship; and a reduction in available trust funds.
Arts organisations feel that the time and resources that they have to devote to fund-raising would be better spent in doing the job that they are committed to doing. To quote Julian Spalding, Director of Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries, they were
"scampering about, raising money from companies with large promotional budgets …and having no time left to develop the heart of what they do".
That is all the more reason why praise must be given to the dedication, commitment and enthusiasm of those who work in the regional arts. The regional arts hoards, in partnership with local authorities, have made considerable achievements, particularly in the extension of cultural access, ethnic involvement and the participation of young people.
As in other regions, in my own area—Yorkshire and Humberside—there is throughout the whole region an exceptional diversity and wealth of artistic activity. There are nearly 300 performing arts venues, more than 150 art galleries, more than 70 professional theatre companies, six building-based producing companies, and an extensive range of receiving theatres featuring touring companies and local productions. They include the Leeds Grand Theatre where in the early 1970s I was a local authority member of the board and remember the delight and excitement we felt when it received the Arts Council grant which enabled it to become the home of the internationally acclaimed Opera North, whose attendances are the highest in the country outside London. A new theatre is to be opened in Huddersfield in 1994, and there are two outstanding dance centres—the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and the Yorkshire Dance Centre. There are at least 66 arts and cultural festivals, including the Leeds West Indian Carnival which is held in my old playground—Potternewton Park. However, it seems to me that by their actions the Government are putting all those magnificent achievements and the arts and cultural life of the region at risk.
Further, the line of accountability which the Government now draw between the regional arts boards, the Arts Council and themselves is, I fear, to be used to centralise policy control. That can have two consequences. It can become harder for the boards to co-operate constructively and flexibly with local authorities, and policy can become increasingly influenced and budgets constrained by centralised priorities. That view is strengthened by the Secretary of State taking it upon himself to choose and appoint the chairs of the boards.
It is equally true that the growth of a free market economy in the arts, as perceived by the Government, cannot provide for the necessary social and cultural facilities on a sufficiently wide basis. Cuts in public funding inevitably mean a cut in the range of options that should be available.
We need to see the provision of arts as a statutory duty on local authorities, regional arts boards made

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more democratically accountable locally and being allowed to appoint their own chair; the encouragement of more private industrial and commercial support for the arts outside the metropolitan area, and the restoration of the central and local government revenue funding in real terms. Only then will the regional boards be able to balance and continue to provide for the needs of both the taxpayer and the artist.
6.12 p.m.
Lord Rix: My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, has instituted this debate on the funding of the arts for it gives me the chance to add my voice—the 23rd, as it happens—to those trying to persuade the Government to put the arts a little higher on their list of priorities. I wish to associate myself with many of the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Palumbo on the vagaries of arts funding generally. Some of your Lordships may remember that that was the root cause of my resignation from the Arts Council last summer. However, I have no desire to boil old potatoes, for that is a stale and fruitless exercise.
I also wish to say that I am more in sympathy with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, than those of my noble friend Lady O'Cathain. Many an ugly duckling in the arts has become a glorious swan, but no one is helped if the pond of financial support is frozen over.
Ever since that Greek poet, Thespis, left subsidised Athenian theatre and pushed his actors round on a cart, thus beginning the long history of the strolling players, there has always been some form of patronage for drama. The impresarios of the day were successively the clergy, the trade guilds, the aristocracy, the court and then the monarch himself. After that it was the turn of the actor-managers, the commercial managers, the local authorities and the enlightened creation of the independent Arts Council, funded with increasing generosity by successive governments. That was the theory anyway. In practice, it was somewhat different.
Successive governments have funded the Arts Council, but their generosity has been subject to arbitrary cuts, standstills and occasional handouts, according to the prevailing Treasury wind. When complete collapse has threatened, there has been a modest, but much trumpeted, increase in subsidy—never quite making up the erosion of the previous years. When times are hard the subsidy is once again treated as a mere frill and furbelow and trimmed with as much thought as a petticoat might well receive, while the biggest client, the theatre, has suffered accordingly. It is an easy target for, to quote Hamlet,
"the play, I remember, pleased not the millions; 'twas caviare to the general".
After all, there is always the telly to keep boredom at bay, and soon the lottery. At least that will mean that the Government can repair the buildings with some of the proceeds, even if there are not enough performers and plays to keep those theatres from going dark. And what will television drama do then, without its seed bed of live performance?
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Live performance in the theatre has often been in jeopardy. But government funding and the Arts Council were supposed to put a stop to all that, or at least to increase the chances of stability. When I first became an actor-manager in 1947, the theatre was still picking itself up from the detritus of war. Commercial theatre was all, with a few non-profit distributing companies, as they were known, helped by the embryonic Arts Council sending out small-scale tours. The rest was the apogee of the West End, the often unsuitable small cast productions in vast, privately owned touring theatres and, with a few notable exceptions, weekly rep in the smaller towns, often twice nightly. Such venues provided many an actor with his basic training. I spent three years in such mind-boggling work. Your Lordships should try learning John Tanner in Man and Superman in five days. But at least we grasped the fundamentals even if we did not grasp the lines.
The Arts Council gradually burgeoned, local authorities began to buy up the crumbling theatres for tours and constructed others to house excellent short-run repertory; theatre in education and youth theatre became a staple feature of growing up; new writers were encouraged, as were large, medium and small-scale touring companies; the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in London came into being, and, fairly recently, the aspirations of disabled people and their involvement in the theatre began to be addressed. From that splendid list you might think that the Government had no need to reproach themselves: "You might think that; I couldn't possibly comment". Why? —quite simply because there has been no sensible, steadfast funding policy for the arts and subsidised theatre over the past 20-odd years, and now the Government hold forth on the benefits of sponsorship and the need for local authority support. That is absolutely true, but why should commercial sponsors and local authorities be interested when the public subsidy rug is liable to be pulled away from under the feet of arts organisations with a joyous abandon which would do credit to Joey Grimaldi himself?
The chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Geoffrey Cass, comments,
"British theatre is the envy of the world, and there is a remarkable and fruitful cross-fertilisation between the subsidised and the commercial sectors. The subsidised sector is crucially important, and the United Kingdom has a unique network of regional theatres upon which the health of the RSC and the RNT and all other theatre depends. But each of those theatres in its own way is suffering the same problems as the great flagship companies; an inadequate and capricious funding policy which observes neither cultural nor business principles. There seems to be a complete lack of governmental corporate memory".
So says the chairman of the RSC from the Barbican and Stratford-on-Avon. What says Philip Hedley, the director of that other Stratford, this one at the Theatre Royal at Stratford East?
"The two major planks of the Arts Council Royal Charter are the need to support the artists in their work and the need to make the arts accessible to the broadest possible cross-section of the community. Both planks are being hacked at by government policies".
Mr. Hedley then goes on to point out that problems begin with education, that drama is no longer a vital part of the school curriculum and, coupled with local

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authority cuts, this could ensure the demise of theatre in education and children's theatre companies within two years.
Local theatres too will suffer, for there is no support for school visits, as will our highly respected drama schools, with prospective students depending as much on geography as on talent, as we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Birkett, because so many authorities are not able or willing to give grants to student actors and dancers. Without such training for artists, there is little hope that our pre-eminence in the theatre can be maintained.
Finally, on disability, a disabled person wishing to enter the theatre as a member of the audience or as a member of the company is often denied access by being met with a variety of excuses, while training for such employment is virtually non-existent. The Arts Council began to address the issue in my time, and I believe continues to do so under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Snowdon. I trust that Her Majesty's Government will continue to give that valuable initiative all possible support. John Earl, the director of the Theatres Trust, assures me that the trust will play its pad in making access available both back and front of house, as will the Society of London Theatres and the Theatrical Management Association. At least that is one crew all rowing in the same direction.
We still have a number of splendid (sometimes splendidly tatty) theatres. We have immensely talented playwrights, actors, actresses, directors, designers, producers, technicians and administrators. Unhappily, their lot is often no better than the actor in. the last century who wrote:
"Who but one haunted by a restless burning desire for dramatic distinction would welcome years of poverty, privation, sickness of soul and body, a constant sense of self-imposed beggary".
We stand at the gate of the 21st century. Surely such poverty should not accompany the arts into the millennium (whenever that is) and beyond.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Plant of Highfield: My Lords, that is a rather difficult speech to follow. I remember that the very first theatrical experience I had was seeing the noble Lord, Lord Rix, in a performance of "Dry Rot" at the Whitehall Theatre in the early 1950s.
I wish to spend most, if not all, of my speech discussing some of the principles on which state funding of the arts might be thought to rest. Noble Lords may think this a rather arcane and philosophical issue to raise, since no one is proposing to remove state funding for the arts. However, it is important to figure out the political basis for state funding. There are people, economic liberals in particular, scattered around the think-tanks who keep up a constant criticism of state funding for the arts. In recent months, various Treasury Ministers—in particular Mr. Dorrell and Mr. Portillo—have been arguing for a more limited role for the state. Mr. Dorrell spoke about the state not doing things that the private sector, whether the market or the voluntary sector, could do equally well, so why should the state support the arts, or, to put it another way, why
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should the state support the private preferences of individuals? Why should it subsidise them? Why should one set of taxpayers subsidise the subjective private preferences of another set of taxpayers? That is the crucial issue to address. I shall say a few words about that, although it is a large topic to deal with in a short space of time.
Broadly speaking, there are two responses to the challenge, "Why should the state subsidise one set of preferences?". The first is an economic response. We have heard some of that reasoning this afternoon. The other is more idealistic.
The economic response falls into two parts. The first is the claim made by some political theorists and economists, and most recently by John Gray—an important Conservative political thinker—that in fact culture is a public good in the economist's sense of that word. That is to say, a public good is a good that requires collaborative production but from which you cannot exclude non-contributors. It will therefore not be produced by a market, since, if you cannot exclude non-contributors, everyone has an incentive not to contribute. So public goods are paradigmatically goods like defence and clean air. They cannot be produced by markets because every individual has an incentive not to contribute to the costs since he or she cannot be excluded from the benefits. One claim is that culture is a public good in that sense and even economic liberals who want the most limited state possible argue in favour of the public funding of public goods.
Is culture a public good? In one sense it is and in another it is not. Culture is a little like language: we are born into a particular cultural context, we learn a particular culture, we operate within it, we derive an identity, both personal and national, from it. In that sense, it is a public good because one cannot exclude people from it.
In another respect culture, and particularly cultural events, is unlike public goods in that it is perfectly possible, and usually happens, that people can be excluded: namely, they have not got the price of a ticket. So the most one can say is that cultural things are only mixed public goods. They have some aspects of public goods: in some ways they are analogous to a language; in others they are quite different and they look like normal marketed commodities. It might be argued that the mixed nature of culture as a good is best represented by a mixture of funding—state funding, private funding and so forth—because that reflects the complex nature of the kind of good that culture is. That is an important argument.
The second economic response is to say—as has been said by many noble Lords this afternoon—that state expenditure is justified because there are positive spillover effects of cultural activity. It attracts tourists, creates wealth and has beneficial effects on other types of business such as hotels and restaurants. Therefore state funding is justified because of the positive spillover effects.
That argument needs more careful handling than it sometimes receives. The economic liberals will clearly reject it because it does not calculate the opportunity costs of other investments subsidising other preferences

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which might or might not produce even more beneficial spillover effects. Thus I am not too happy about using that argument in favour of public funding of cultural activities.
The more idealistic approach is the one on which I wish to put most weight. It will be difficult to outline in the two or three minutes remaining to me, but it would go something like this. If we take the view, as many economic liberals do, that choice should be at the centre of our concern, then surely choice is not just a matter of having the capacity for choice; but it is also about having a range of significant alternatives between which one can choose. Choice and culture are linked together; choice is not just the sheer capacity to choose between A and B, it is to have the A and B available in order to choose between them. So one argument for sustaining cultural activity through the state, along with the private sector and voluntary action, is to sustain a range of significant alternatives within which people can choose.
I do not think it works to say: "We must turn culture into a marketable commodity because we must have choice", if the effect of that marketisation of culture is to lead to the diminution of the range of alternatives that people would otherwise have. For example, if opera cannot be turned into a wholly marketable commodity because it is so expensive, that would limit the range of options and therefore limit the range of choice.
It is also important to say that, if we believe—and in a sense this is parallel to the argument going on at the moment about moral values—that there are standards of human excellence, of worthwhileness in human life, which are not just matters of individual choice, then it is wrong to turn those values, whether they are aesthetic or moral values, into entirely market-based values which are a matter of individual subjective preference. If we really believe that there are intrinsic to human life and to human activity certain standards of excellence and worthwhile life, then it is wrong to turn them into wholly marketable commodities. Not all human goods are the same kind; not everything can be comprehended by the market. It is important to recognise a range of different spheres in our lives in which different kinds of values and institutional structures operate. It is because of that pluralism about the nature of human goods that I think we have to recognise that there is an indispensable role for state support for the arts.
6.35 p.m.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, first I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, for initiating this debate. It is indeed timely because much has occurred in the arts world in the past few years. It also gives us the opportunity of hearing two distinguished maiden speakers.
I hope that my noble friend Lord Menuhin will excuse me if I confine my remarks to music. I have been conversant with the musical scenario in this country for the past 50 years. During this period much has been achieved, foremost being the attainment of a remarkable standard of instrumental playing. The technical competence and the general musicianship of our musicians is admired throughout the world, so much so
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that our leading orchestras have had no difficulty in attracting a galaxy of international conductors to these shores. The ability of our youth orchestras to tackle what were once considered some of the most difficult scores in the repertory is truly amazing. It accounts for the fact that very often the officials of the European Community Youth Orchestra have been obliged to limit the number of British participants, otherwise more than half the orchestra's personnel would consist of British musicians.
We have produced conductors like Sir Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner and Simon Rattle, among others, who enjoy international reputations and have held important posts abroad. A constant stream of fine singers has been produced, many of them emanating from the Principality. On the creative side, a country that can number such composers as Vaughan Williams, Tippett, Britten, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies can certainly hold its head high. We have much to show in the field of musical scholarship; a notable example being our total upstaging of the French, apropos the complete new edition of the works of Berlioz now under way. All in all, I am sure we have a lot to be proud of, definitely sufficient to dispel once and for all that absurd notion that ours is a "land without music".
But I have considerable misgivings about the future of music in this country. I fear that henceforth my remarks will be in a minor key, as it were. I believe that music is suffering from the effects of a two-pronged attack; the result of changes on the educational front and inadequate funding.
I have just referred to the superb level of instrumental playing which we now witness in Britain. That has come about largely as the result of children in England and Wales having had the opportunity of learning an instrument free of charge. Research has disclosed that almost three-quarters of the players in our orchestras have benefited from that tuition. Now there is a danger that all the good work which has been so meticulously built up over the years may be threatened by recent legislation. More and more schools are no longer able to afford professional teachers while the musical specialist in state schools is rapidly becoming an endangered species. The standard of teaching will inevitably decline if there are fewer children learning music. So, too, will the level of excellence of our youth orchestras and, in turn, that of our domestic symphony orchestras. Where will the players of and the enthusiasts for the great mainstream of Western classical music come from in the future? Heaven forbid that we should end up like America where music in schools is nearly non-existent and where audiences in the concert halls and opera houses grow greyer by the year.
Here in this country, in the past few weeks, we have seen the lamentable fiasco of the Hoffmann Committee and the London Orchestras. It is hardly surprising that that episode has brought forth a torrent of criticism of the Arts Council. Now, like other noble Lords this evening, I confess that I have a degree of sympathy for that much maligned organisation for the simple reason that I think it operates under difficult, well nigh impossible conditions and that we ought to look at the broader picture.

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In passing, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, on his recent appointment and sincerely wish him well. It is my belief that since the last war the arts in this country have been underfunded by all governments. By comparison, as the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, said, we allot only a proportion of the money that France and Germany receive. At the moment, arts funding here is reaching a point of decline. Central and local state subsidies are gradually receding. I am convinced that we ought to allocate greater sums, but therein lies not only a financial problem but another insidious factor which I think needs stressing.
We live in a harsh economic climate. If the noble Baroness, whose appearances at the Dispatch Box are always so refreshing, were by some miraculous chance to announce a huge increase in the arts budget, both she and the Government would be criticised, if not crucified, in the media and vilified by every philistine in the land. For we must not lose sight of the fact that there are many who would enjoy seeing the collapse of the Arts Council and the ending of all arts funding. Among them are people who consider there is no such thing as quality: nothing is better than anything else and, by extension, no culture is more important than another. They equate a Madonna pop song with a Schubert Lied, a saucy seaside postcard with a Rembrandt drawing, and "Eastenders" or "Neighbours" with, say, a play by Shakespeare or a novel by Dickens. It is an appalling fact that a good deal of current educational thinking of recent years has been along these lines.
What is anathema to such individuals is anything that smacks of élitism. I wholly agree with the former President of the United States, George Bush, who once asked, "What is wrong with élitism if it means excellence?" That is precisely what it does mean. It has nothing to do with social position or snobbery, but everything to do with excellence—a point understood by those Hackney councillors whose foresight in enabling children from one of the most deprived areas of London enter another magical world to see the Prokofiev ballet "Romeo and Juliet" at Covent Garden was so sadly frustrated by the idiotic political correctness of a headmistress. I echo the view expressed in a Sunday Telegraph editorial following the James Bulger murder that all concerned in this terrible case should campaign against what it called "the revoltingly low standards of popular entertainment". Therefore, I consider élitism not as an objection but as an objective.
I should like to put forward one further reason for treating the arts with a degree of generosity, even in these times. Some years ago an article appeared in The Listener—a magazine whose demise I greatly regret—under the name of Mr. Harold Wilson, as he was then: now, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. He argued that in future we would have more time for leisure as a result of technical inventions. What has happened is that fewer and fewer people are working longer and longer. Unfortunately, in one way the noble Lord was absolutely right. There are many more people with time for leisurely pursuits; namely, the unemployed. I am sure we shall not experience full employment in our country, or at least not in the foreseeable future. There will be many with vacant lives
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and vacant time, but must they therefore have vacant minds? Many will see no hope but to turn to drink, drugs and crime. Is it not possible that some of these unfortunate individuals might perhaps enjoy a happier and more rewarding existence if they were to be acquainted with some form of artistic activity? As Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has succinctly put it:
"A child gripped by music is one less child on the streets".
I shall conclude with some resounding words of Ralph Vaughan Williams:
"Music is not just a tickling of the ear, but an expression of a vision through magic casements of the eternal verities."
I fear that as a consequence of current educational heresies and financial cutbacks in future fewer of our citizens will be vouchsafed a glimpse of this vision.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, many noble Lords have spoken about the importance of the arts in enhancing the quality of life in our country. I agree wholeheartedly with their words. I would particularly like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, for his uplifting speech and also to congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, on his maiden speech. The cultural life of our country is something about which we can all feel proud, and we should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Donoughue for moving this debate.
It is because of my business background and past chairmanship of a concerts society that I would like to speak about business sponsorship and the arts, having had experience both as a giver and as a receiver. I would like to speak about the extent of business sponsorship, its benefits and its shortcomings, and to make two modest but I think helpful proposals on the basis of my experience.
First, the extent of business sponsorship: out of a total public arts budget of £631 million in 1992–93, £253 million came from central government; £321 million from local authorities, who have a proud record of supporting the arts; and £57.7 million from business sponsorship. The business sponsorship was down from £65.5 million in 1991–92. This was a disappointing drop, but it still demonstrates the commitment that business has to the arts. This contribution by business is pump-primed by a helpful grant from the Government to the Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme of £4.8 million in 1992–93.
Business, therefore, makes an important contribution to the arts, and rightly so, because most people in business are genuinely pleased to be able to contribute towards the nation's cultural heritage. And there are benefits to business. Sponsorship is certainly cost-effective, and companies can help their image and raise their profile by being associated with prestigious arts events. They become better known and better liked. An active local cultural environment helps companies retain key local staff, and property companies have been known to sponsor a local arts project to help popularise and fill a development in the area. Arts organisations, too, benefit from their association with business. They get money, and some management skills from business rub off on to the arts organisation. The community also

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benefits. For example, Nestle's sponsorship of the London Mozart Players means that they perform in local schools, hospitals and old people's homes, and they are able to give master classes for local amateur musicians.
This is all very well as long as there is a sense of partnership and adequate arts funding. But there is a suspicion that the Government see sponsorship as a replacement for funding. This is dangerous because it radically alters the relationships and emphasises the drawbacks. The major drawbacks are that business sponsorship is usually short term and very selective. It is short term because in times of recession or business difficulties arts sponsorship is one of the first costs to be cut. Also, most businesses like to change their sponsorship fairly frequently because the PR becomes stale. Fresh sponsorship is news. Because of that, the commitment is rarely for more than two years and only the top half-dozen arts organisations in this country can rely on sponsorship deals for longer than that period.
The danger for the arts organisations relying too heavily on sponsorship is that they often have to book artists and venues up to two years in advance, and that is usually before the sponsorship deal is signed. As well as the risk, it makes it difficult to plan. Sponsorship is selective, because companies favour well-known arts organisations and venues. As a result, much sponsorship seems to be focused on London, and smaller organisations in the regions are overlooked. However, while researching this speech, several people mentioned to me that it is now becoming more difficult to persuade guests to attend arts functions in London because more and more people find it unpleasant and difficult to travel in central London during the evenings. Perhaps the opening of ABSA offices in the regions is having an impact but, even so, a third or more of sponsorship will still be London based.
Also, sponsorship often depends on the personal whim of one or two senior company managers or directors, usually in the marketing department. A new marketing director often means a review of sponsorship. All this adds to the risk. It is because of these risks that I would make my first proposal. The Government should declare their intention that sponsorship should be limited to 10 per cent. of the total arts budget and that individual arts organisations should be discouraged from having more than 25 per cent. of their budget provided from sponsorship. Within stated limits, sponsorship money will be matched to maintain these ratios. I am not asking for more money, but just more effective management. That would demonstrate to business the Government's commitment to the arts and would encourage business to continue sponsorship by reducing the worry that arts organisations will become dependent on their sponsorship for their financial security. It is important that the risk of collapse by arts organisations if sponsorship is withdrawn should be minimised because that results in a total waste of funds. It also eliminates the excessive dependency of arts organisations on important sponsors. As noble Lords may have observed in another context, a dependency culture is both unhealthy and undesirable.
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My second proposal is also modest, but much in keeping with current thinking about deregulation and cutting red tape. It concerns the tax aspect of sponsorship. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, referred to it, as did my noble friend Lady Gould. With so many decisions in business based on tax considerations, it would be nice to remove one. Some noble Lords may be surprised to learn that when company executives attend arts occasions at the expense of their company, they are in fact hard at work persuading overseas clients to buy their products—otherwise the cost would not be tax deductible. I say that only partly in jest because company executives pay a great deal of care and attention when arts events are being used to promote their businesses. When firms sponsor an arts event, for it to be tax allowable they must show that it is done for advertising or promotion purposes.
That is why sponsors and arts organisations spend a lot of time, money and ingenuity converting sponsorship into advertising. As a result we have those endless souvenir brochures full of useless advertising—often by the sponsor's suppliers. Unfortunately, every tax inspector in the country seems to interpret that differently and there are great inconsistencies as to what is and is not allowed. In addition, different Customs and Excise officers take varying views on the position of VAT on "sponsorship in kind". Could not all that charade be avoided by simply relaxing the tax legislation to make arts sponsorship the acid test rather than advertising? The effort and expense could be better used in the arts project itself.
Arts organisations have to compete extremely hard for business sponsorship, not only because there are many other pressures on business for their funds, but also because other organisations are competing for sponsorship. My proposals of a simplified and consistent tax regime, together with a financing arrangement which ensures that arts organisations do not become dependent on business, will help to encourage the arts, which is an end that we all wish to achieve.
6.52 p.m.
Baroness Flather: My Lords, I too believe that the arts are the lifeblood of our country. Artistic activity enlivens all our lives, and all sections of society have a role in contributing to its well-being, be it the state, the community, local government or private sector. Each of us also has a responsibility as individuals, whether we participate or perform or are simply part of the audience.
As has already been said, Britain has an unrivalled record in this field, something of which we can be justly proud. We must continue to maintain and sustain that record. In recent years a new element has been added; there has been a blossoming of arts activity from the minority communities. To speak of Britain's multicultural society is not to be politically correct; it is simply to state a fact. It is vibrant and alive in its artistic and cultural diversity. But it needs to be nurtured and encouraged to contribute to the mainstream arts activity. There are already dancers, actors, film-makers and musicians who have created a fusion between the East and the West—Tara Arts theatre company, Shobana

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Jevasingh's dance group and Meera Syal's new film, "Bhaji on the beach". Some noble Lords may be familiar with onion bhaji; it is not about onion bhaji. "Bhaji" is a term for an older brother. I hope that your Lordships will go to see the film.
This is a particularly exciting time for people like me who have been brought up to see the two cultures as separate entities. Our frontiers are being extended and our lives enriched by this coming together. While the media has been focused on major symphony orchestras, a new national voice for music-making across the board is being launched tomorrow. It is called the "Main Music Agenda". Once again it is an affirmation of unity out of diversity.
Dare I mention the Notting Hill Carnival? The United Kingdom was one of the few countries that did not have its own carnival; it does now. It is extremely popular with tourists from all over the world and draws a huge tourist population from Europe.
I feel privileged to have participated in a debate in which the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, made his maiden speech. The first time I heard the noble Lord perform was in Bangalore in South India, around 40 years ago. I have never forgotten that wonderful occasion. If I remember correctly, he has a great interest in Indian music.
I welcome the appointment as chairman of the English Arts Council of my noble friend Lord Gowrie, who sadly is not here this afternoon. He has a long track record and is a former Minister of the Arts. I am only sorry that he excluded Vikram Seth's book—A Suitable Boy from the Booker prize list because he felt that it was too long. I am sure that he will bring a badly needed fresh approach to the administration of the Arts Council. I hope that at the same time there will be a fresh look at the funding of minority arts. We all wish to see funding increased in our favourite areas, and many noble Lords spoke about that. I ask for no such increase; only for fairness and equitable distribution of the cake, giving support for artistic merit and excellence alone.
Quite apart from the contemporary theme, there are vast collections of antiquities from the Indian sub-continent in the museums here. As far as I know, there has been no agitation for their return. But it is painful that they are not used or shown due to a lack of space and resources. What a joy the Nehru Gallery is at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It provides a wonderful combination of the popular and specialist. Groups of tourists, schoolchildren and specialists can be seen together any day of the week. The gallery is making an Indian experience come alive, not only for the public in general but also for the young British-born Asians who also need to learn something of their inheritance. The British Museum's exhibition on Hinduism, supported by lectures, is another good initiative.
The quality of this debate underlines the strength of this House. Noble Lords who have spoken here today have brought years of experience and special knowledge to the debate. The arts of the minority communities are thriving. Let us include them in a wider vision of the arts. Let us support them because they are surely worth supporting.
6.58 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness, who spoke to us with her usual charm, will agree that there could be no more informative or incisive an opening to the debate than that given by my noble friend Lord Donoughue. I know that the much admired Front Bench Minister will do all she can to reply. Having replied often in the past, I am glad that I am not in her shoes, never having faced a more difficult task than the one that she now faces. However, she has only 20 minutes so she may escape intact.
I propose to speak about one aspect only of the arts; that is, poetry. I say "poetry" rather than "prose". When I asked someone on the telephone this morning for the number of the Poetry Society, they obviously did not understand my use of the word "poetry". However, I am sure your Lordships know what I am talking about when I say "poetry" as opposed to "prose", and that is my topic for the next few minutes.
It was said by Sir Winston Churchill many years ago when he was Home Secretary—a Liberal, of course, in those days—that the civilisation of a country can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners. I am inclined to agree with that formulation, but I would also say that it might be judged by the way that it treats its poets. The question I am posing in these few minutes is whether we are treating our poets as they ought to be treated. It was said of Lord Rosebery, the Liberal Prime Minister, 'who can be seen depicted in one of the corridors of the House, that, if not a poet, he was the stuff that poets delight in.
I do not know the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, well enough to know whether he is the stuff that poets delight in, but I am quite ready to believe that he is. But at any rate there is no doubt that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, the new chairman of the Arts Council, is not only the stuff that poets delight in but is himself a distinguished poet, who delights in poetry. I am quite sure that everyone concerned with poetry is building up great hopes, which I hope will not be cheated, and is becoming positively excited at the thought that the noble Earl, a poet, is to take over the Arts Council.
A few facts about the help given to poetry should be mentioned. Literature receives 0.5 per cent. of the total money spent by the Arts Council and poetry, which is one of the larger, relatively speaking, beneficiaries receives only £145,000 per year. My credentials as a spokesman for poetry might be questioned. I can assure the House that T.S. Eliot was kind enough to ask my wife and me to escort him and his wife to a Buckingham Palace garden party for their first visit there, and so I have some background. Leaving that aside, I have close contact with the Poetry Society, and perhaps the House is aware of what it contributes in the wonderful work it does in the schools, through its magazine and elsewhere. I am proud to be allowed to speak, if unofficially, on the society's behalf today.
Those who are very well versed in the subject may be aware that all has not been well between the Arts Council and the Poetry Society. The Arts Council has, no doubt legitimately, poked its nose into the affairs of the Poetry Society—it is entitled to because it produces

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money for it—and has not been satisfied. But things are much better now. I am told that relations are far better than they were and I think that the trouble between the Arts Council and the Poetry Society is a thing of the past.
I look to the Government to say clearly, bearing in mind that they have a distinguished poet about to take over the chairmanship of the Arts Council, whether they are prepared to do more for poetry in this country than they have done in the past. If not, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but I hope that they will give a much kinder answer than that.
7.3 p.m.
Lord Broadbridge: My Lords, in the past, and I am thinking mainly of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, what we have come to call "the arts" were funded by patronage, the patronage of the aristocracy and gentry; and relationships were often very close and supportive. For example, the artist J.M.W. Turner not only sold pictures to the Earl of Egremont but stayed at Petworth for long periods over his patron's lifetime and was treated as a member of the family.
This sort of arrangement was supplemented and latterly substantially replaced by the patronage of the new social classes thrown up by the Industrial Revolution, many of whom made, by any standards, great fortunes and often in new centres such as Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. In short they wished to emulate the gentry; indeed to become the gentry. Our own century has seen a progressive shrinking of the gap between the wealthy and the poor. It is an arguable cliché to say that today the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer but, even if true, this is microscopic compared to the general trend of history of which I have spoken. Not many are in a position now to spend the amount of a member of their staff's annual wages on a good dinner. In summary, the great and wealthy patrons of the past are no longer present to command the high ground of support for the arts by their patronage.
But there is another factor. We do still have wealthy people but they have a much wider choice of outlets for their spending and support than their predecessors. For example, they buy yachts, private aircraft and overseas homes, whereas their predecessors, I believe, supported and spent their money mainly on art, architecture, the performing and visual arts, silver and jewellery. Today's grandees are presented with a comparatively much wider range of spending opportunities.
But while the scale of private patronage has greatly diminished, at the same time the breadth and therefore demands of the arts have breathtakingly widened. The 18th century patron did not have the All Singing, All Dancing Gombolan Folk Dancing Ensemble among his options for support. (I confess that I have just made up that group.) As an inevitable result, a great gap in the need for funding and support has arisen, which gets greater as each year passes, largely due to a population with more leisure time.
At the start of the last world war, the question "What are our war aims?" was very much on the minds of
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many people, as well as of course winning the war itself. In the field of the arts I ask the Minister who is to reply what are our arts aims? A legacy of our imperial and post-imperial past is that we are among the leaders in the arts internationally and arguably the leader in some fields such as drama and music. I believe strongly that a national majority fervently wants us to maintain this position, and quote in support that research shows that currently some 79 per cent. of our citizens attend some form of arts, or "cultural event" broadly defined, annually, and 71 per cent. think that the arts enrich the quality of their lives.
The arts are one of Britain's most successful industries: cultural spending makes up some 5.5 per cent. of all consumer expenditure. If we accept the maintenance of the arts at present levels as a national objective, together with the maintenance of our position among the leaders of the first division internationally, a substitute for the private patronage of the past is not simply desirable but essential. For many years the Government have increasingly taken on this burden, though I prefer to use the word "challenge". But the level of support is as crucial as its existence.
As many speakers have already noted at various levels of outrage, the government appointed vehicle for much of this —the Arts Council—has this year had its financial allocation reduced by 1.7 per cent.—namely, £3.3 million, which is 3.7 per cent. in real terms. That is their first ever cash cut for the arts and seems to contradict the 1992 Conservative Party manifesto to,
"maintain support for the arts".
Further, I understand that a real terms reduction of 10 per cent.—another noble Lord quoted 12 per cent.—over the next four years is widely anticipated. I readily admit that it is difficult to decide what should be spent in absolute terms, but in relative terms Britain per head of population spends only £9.80 on the arts, which is 41 per cent. of West German spending, 46 per cent. of that of France, 56 per cent. of that of Canada and 35 per cent. of that of Sweden.
I turn briefly to a different field to paint an analogy; namely, home heating. We may graphically, as it were, draw a line between living in very warm conditions—such as the Library of this House—to zero degrees centigrade and below. But one cannot simply survive at any point on this graphical line as though existence is a simple gradation and it is hard cheese if it is cold. At a certain low level as we go down there is a sudden and dramatic discontinuity, a collapse of the system. Hypothermia sets in, commonly with side-effects such as death. This is the crucial problem facing the arts in Britain now, especially with the smaller outfits. Financial hypothermia is about to lead to widespread collapse, or, borrowing from John Cleese's celebrated film, "dead parrot syndrome"—but without the humour of his sketch. Financial cutbacks beyond a certain point lead to sudden death in the arts, and many arts organisations are staring this prospect in the face.
Separately from the Arts Council, the situation has been made even worse by other arts supporters also cutting back. The most recent ABSA survey shows a 13.5 per cent. reduction to £57.7 million. Local authorities, which provide much more than the Arts

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Council, have dropped £2.5 million from the 1992–93 level and £15 million from that of 1991–92. Many believe that the creation of unitary local authorities will worsen this decline, and the proposed national lottery must only contribute to capital and not revenue requirements by obligation.
In conclusion, we find ourselves with one of the world's richest artistic agendas threatened by diminishing support which, make no mistake, will imminently start a savage decline in the level of the arts in Britain. We realistically risk becoming, compared to now, an arts mediocrity with a great past. Is that really what we want? Is that really the best we can do?
7.10 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, we have had a long and interesting if somewhat one-sided debate. Most of your Lordships seem to have come here today more minded to admonish the Government for their policies and their practice in funding the arts than to praise them. The general air has been one of disapprobation. Indeed, it could be epitomised in the words of that fine poet of Armed Services' life, John Pudney, who wrote,
"Complaints is many and various".
We have heard two splendid maiden speeches, one from the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, who spoke with unimpeachable authority and, if I may say so, with deep wisdom about the problems of musicians and their audiences and in doing so, "fiddled his way" into the hearts of this House, and the other from the noble Duke, the Duke of Saint Albans, who spoke so calmly and so cogently about the importance of government funding for the arts.
The complaints of so many noble Lords and Baronesses concerned the wide spectrum of the arts. In attempting to sum up the past four hours it may be helpful if I rehearse them by subject rather than by speaker. Many noble Lords spoke about the Arts Council. We, too, on these Benches welcome the appointment of the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, as chairman of the Arts Council, and I suspect the only other published poet in this House at the present moment—oh no, I beg the noble Baroness's pardon. She is one too. We are a small group.
I have worked with the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, when he was Minister for the Arts. I can assure the Arts Council that it is in for an exciting future. My noble friend Lord Donoughue argued strongly for the continuation of a reformed Arts Council especially important for its defence of the arm's length principle, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter and the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky. The noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, showed how successful it has been despite being beleaguered by the Government's ridiculous efficiency demands which have taken up far too much of its time.
The Millenium Fund was mentioned. To my mind the problem was summed up by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, when he said that it was no use building splendid premises for music, theatre and so on if the companies who work in them are starved to death. There is no more to say.
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On the question of patronage and sponsorship, these have been mentioned by several noble Lords—that is, by the noble Lord, Lord Broadbridge, just now, and especially by my noble friend Lord Haskel. Encouraging sponsorship is government policy but, as has just been pointed out, sponsorship has declined. We on this side of the House would like to know what the Government are doing about it, as my noble friend Lady Gould said.
Turning to the subject of music, the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, pointed out that the highly successful Welsh National Opera must go on being strongly supported. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, put the urgent case for adequate funding of the ENO and so did the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, and my noble friend Lady Hilton of Eggardon.
Opera has been seriously cut and is dangerously damaged. The noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, reminded us that "music feeds those intangible tangibles" and pleaded for the proper funding of our great British orchestras, as did my noble friends Lord Strabolgi, Lord Howell and Lady Fisher. The work of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts was described by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, and especially its help for music. It is indeed doing vital supportive work. So does a crutch. The noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, described a visionary new course in music education. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, fears for the future of music in this country, and well he may. No one has defined or defended the Government's policy on music.
Turning to the theatre, fewer noble Lords spoke on this subject, although the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, mentioned the excellent arts centre at Warwick University and my noble friend Lady Birk demonstrated the difficulties that local authorities have in funding our superb local and smaller theatres. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, showed that theatres have long been a soft target for government parsimony. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, told us of the carnival and of the multi-cultural film and theatre which we need so much to support. Again, what is the Government's policy for them?
I turn next to our museums and galleries. My noble friend Lord Donoughue referred to these places as "the national collective memory", and so they are. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, reminded us that he was notably successful in fostering splendid developments in Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Charteris of Amisfield, paid a superb, two-edged, compliment to the Government regarding the funding of the National Heritage Memorial Fund which has done so much for museums. But no one defended the Government's policy on museums which is not surprising because nobody knows the Government's policy for museums and galleries.
Several noble Lords mentioned ballet and dance. Again, my noble friend Lord Donoughue reminded us that countless students have been prevented from taking up places in education establishments because the number of awards has been cut by half. He was eloquently supported by my noble friend Lady Birk and by the wider arguments for dance from my noble friend

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Lord Eatwell. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, could not understand the Government's policy on dance. I hope that he will shortly be enlightened.
My noble friend Lord Donoughue, like my noble friend Lord Plant, made a magisterial survey of the whole field of the arts. There is little for me to add beyond a little fine tuning. Perhaps our debate has had a centre of gravity in London and the South-East. I might redress the balance just a little if I mention the problems of the region I know best, the Principality of Wales, where the old Welsh Arts Council is soon to be reincarnated as the Arts Council of Wales. I can do that because Scotland was very well served by my noble friend Lord Macaulay.
In Wales, despite tremendous developments over the past 20 years, there are major concerns for the future of the arts. Box office and commercial sponsorship are being badly hit by recession. Local government arts funding is under severe pressure and is being cut back by several authorities in Wales. The work of artists in schools is suffering due to local management of schools funding changes. Small arts companies and individual artists cannot market their services to every individual school.
Local government reorganisation is a great potential threat to major arts facilities presently supported by county structure. For example, Theatre Clwyd receives £1.5 million from Clwyd County Council and Wales's Theatre in Education companies are all funded by the LEAs. Welsh National Opera —a flagship company if ever there was one—is suffering from the combined effect of these changes and its income is plummeting. Grant-in-aid to WNO from the Arts Council of Wales will increase in 1994–95, but the touring grant from the Arts Council in England is at a standstill and the company is now having to curtail its activity if it is to remain properly solvent next year. That is a worrying situation at a time of major upheaval and reorganisation. I beg the Government to think again about the level of funding that the Welsh Office should be giving to this new body.
Moving a little wider, the position of local authorities throughout the United Kingdom needs highlighting. Spending on the arts by local authorities is discretionary. Nevertheless, they provide more money for the arts than central government. It is estimated that the total arts spending by local authorities in 1993–94 is £323.2 million whereas government spending was £225.6 million. There is of course considerable regional variation in local authority arts spending. Kensington and Chelsea, for example, spends £3.49p per head whereas West Glamorgan spends a miserable 36p. The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, developed that point.
It is imperative that the Government accept a duty to ensure that an adequate level of cultural activity is incorporated into the new authorities' legal responsibilities, as proposed for Scottish unitary authorities, otherwise the bedrock of local support for arts activity will rapidly be eroded.
As in so many places where the arts and heritage meet, the Department of National Heritage is the object of grave suspicion. I shall take one simple example.
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After its press release on 22nd December, it appears to many people that the department is trying to alter the rules to bring the notorious statue, Canova's "The Three Graces", within the ambit of the national lottery. The noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, mentioned that. Any question about funding leads Ministers to say, "Oh, wait until the lottery comes", but the lottery will not solve every shortage of funds. In any case, since it is supposed to be additional, normal levels of government funding must be kept up and not held back. As Shakespeare says,
"in delay there lies no plenty".
Finally, I am sorry to have heard so little this afternoon —until my noble friend Lord Longford rose—about government policies for, and funding of, literature. I had hoped that the noble Baroness, Lady James of Holland Park, would be speaking because your Lordships' House has no more persuasive advocate for the written word than she. We in this country have the luck to have produced the finest language in the world and it is not unlikely that it will become the world language. In it, we have created the greatest literature that the world has ever known yet what encouragement, what assistance, do the Government offer to the writers of our own generation? I wait to hear.
My comments do no more than fill a few small gaps. One after another this afternoon your Lordships have arraigned the Government for lack of cohesion, direction and vigour in their present policies and chronic under-funding of the arts. In 1992, the Conservative manifesto promised:
"We will maintain support for the arts".
In December 1993, the Arts Council of England received a cash cut of £3.3 million, equivalent to a cut of £7.1 million in real terms. That indicates a massive failure of government policy. Where are their promises now?
As we now await the Minister's response, I can only end with the words that are often uttered by my noble friend the Opposition Chief Whip from this Front Bench, in his cheerful Geordie voice and usually (quite improperly) from a sedentary position: "Now answer that!"
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Now answer that!
7.22 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I'll do me best! The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, has initiated a most interesting and stimulating debate. I feel very stimulated. One expects nothing less when the arts are debated in your Lordships' House, given the range of expertise and experience assembled here. In that context, I join in paying tribute to our two maiden speakers. I turn first to my noble friend the Duke of Saint Albans who I must advise the noble Lord, Lord Charteris, is also the Hereditary Registrar of the Court of Chancery. I hope that his speech will herald a continuing interest in these subjects.
Secondly, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Menuhin, not only for his speech, but also for his genius and his humanity and generosity in the encouragement he has offered to young musicians for so long through the Yehudi Menuhin School.

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There is a degree of expertise in all aspects of the arts within this House that must give me pause in standing to sum up such a wide ranging and expert discussion. It must be shattering for the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, the head of the Arts Council, to find that he has a sixth Minister, be it ever so humble, standing before him today.
Some of the issues raised this afternoon, such as education matters, which were referred to particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, and my noble friend Lord Mersey, are outside the main area of funding for the arts. I will return to these later, but I should say at the outset that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, while he does not have responsibility for education, is fully aware of the vital importance for the future of our cultural life of proper education in the arts at all levels.
Your Lordships must forgive me if I do not mention all those who have spoken. I have listened carefully to your Lordships. I must advise the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lord, Lord Morris, that in my personal capacity I am a devotee of poetry and share their enthusiasm for it. In my official capacity, however, I must again say—and I shall no doubt say it again—that under the arm's-length principle, decisions on the funding of poetry are a matter for the Arts Council. However, I remind the noble Earl that there is a Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey where composers and others are graciously allowed to lie.
This is an exciting time for the arts in this country. The terms of this debate relate to support for the arts and I would not wish to minimise the vital importance of a soundly based arts economy. But we should also raise our eyes to assess the state of the arts themselves in Britain in 1994. I continue to be amazed by the enormous richness and diversity, not to mention the sheer volume, of the arts in this country. One needs only to look at the weekend press to be staggered by what is on offer in London and the regions. Since the war, we have seen a burgeoning of creative talent and a progressive expansion of the arts infrastructure. For example, there have been established 19 new dance companies, six national dance agencies, 34 new regional theatre companies, and the list goes on. The past 10 years in particular have seen a quite remarkable trend in major capital developments in the arts. We have seen new theatres, such as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and concert halls such as St. David's Hall in Cardiff, Symphony Hall in Birmingham and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. There is now a Tate of the North and a Tate St. Ives. More and more people are using their leisure time to go to the opera, visit an art gallery or to become actively involved in the arts through local choirs, operatic societies and drama groups. I was delighted to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, of the success of the Canaletto exhibition.
If we turn to funding and management of the arts in general, the picture is frankly better than many would lead us to believe, if less good than some would prefer to see. We have all received the figures that were quoted by the noble Lords, Lord Donoughue and Lord Broadbridge, about international comparisons, but it is extremely difficult to make worthwhile comparisons
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between different countries. In many cases, figures for public subsidy are not available and, where they are, it is not possible to make direct comparisons because of the diversity and definition of funding sources and the activities supported. The figures that were quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, were themselves published along with a number of caveats.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage secured more funding for the Arts Council in the public expenditure settlement than had been expected. He has acted decisively over the past year to ensure a more effective structure and tighter administration for the council. The Crafts Council wall receive additional money for its important work in developing the crafts in Britain. The business sponsorship incentive scheme has been rewarded for its success with additional funding over the next three years. Major businesses, such as Allied Lyons, are seizing the initiative and putting very substantial sums into sponsorship of the arts. Let us, in the words of a once popular song,
"Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative".
This is a most appropriate moment for a debate on the arts. Like Janus, we are able to face both ways and watch the old receding and the new approaching. It is inevitable that, in a debate such as this one, I should concentrate on the Arts Council. But there are other important supporters of the arts. As has been said, the local authorities are key patrons. One has only to visit the centre of Birmingham 10 see the performing arts and public art together in a magnificent setting. Together, local authorities spend annually much the same as the Arts Council, and sponsorship from the private sector shows directly the confidence of companies in the arts and in the improving economic climate.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, spoke about local authority funding. He quoted examples of individual local authorities' actions. There will always be differences in levels of local authority support for the arts, but overall support from local authorities appears to be holding up well. I hope that they will continue to appreciate what good value the arts represent.
My noble friend Lord Crickhowell asked about paying Arts Council chairmen. There are no plans to offer payment to the chairmen of the Arts Councils of England, Scotland or Wales.
In April this year, the Arts Council of Great Britain will cease to exist, and the Arts Councils of England, Scotland and Wales will take up their separate lives. The noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, who has been such a distinguished chairman since 1989, will step clown and my noble friend Lord Gowrie will become the first chairman of the Arts Council of England. I know that he will read today's Hansard and that he will be grateful for the remarks of kind encouragement that, various noble Lords have made. At the same time, the regional arts boards will take over from the Arts Council responsibility for the funding of 42 more arts organisations.
The noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, said that over the past year or so the Arts Council has undergone a series of reviews, the end of which was announced last November by my right honourable friend the Secretary

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of State for National Heritage. The noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, made a series of points. The first related to the activities analysis and the response of the DNH; and the second concerned the endless reviews that have taken place over the past five years.
With regard to the first point the noble Lord raised, the activities analysis was an essential part of the process of better focusing Arts Council activities and streamlining them. On the second point, the reviews were aimed to achieve greater delegation of the arts to the regions and to improve efficiency throughout the arts funding system. The noble Lord will be interested to know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has now indicated that the process of reviews is at an end.
The outcome of those reviews is that there is common ground on a number of points among the council, Ministers and the wider world. First, the arm's length principle: that is the principle which has governed the relationship between Ministers and the council since it was founded and which keeps the funding of individual arts organisations out of the political arena. It is a slogan that trips easily off the tongue, but a concept which many people, I fear, seem to have difficulty in accepting. I can assure your Lordships that we understand it and adhere to it. It follows therefore that it is not for the Government to seek to intervene in matters of artistic judgment, although there can be occasions when it is right for Ministers to convey to the Arts Council public and political opinion which has been expressed to them.
Secondly, we all want to see the widest possible access to the arts; for example, the Government attach great importance to the work of the council and regional arts boards in encouraging and promoting touring. It is a tremendous privilege to be able to see our great companies performing around the country, and those performances have introduced many people to the delights of drama, opera or dance. Thirdly, the Arts Council accepts that it must be ready to explain more clearly the basis for its decisions.
Fourthly, we need to streamline the system. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has set the Arts Council a target of gross savings of 8 per cent. in its administration costs in a full year, money which can feed through into support for the arts.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, asked me about the administration costs of art's funding. With regard to the DNH vis é vis the Arts Council and the regional arts boards DNH running costs, first, its initial costs reflect one-off set-up expenses; and, secondly, they are set to fall by over 10 per cent. in real terms in the period to 1996–97. On the Arts Council, the Secretary of State has acted to streamline administrative costs—8 per cent. gross in a full year; and with the regional arts boards the costs will be kept under close view through the planning process. That all adds up to a strong and effective Arts Council, working in a clear and well-structured relationship with government for the good of the arts in Britain.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, is well acquainted with the work of the regional arts boards, and the move
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to increase delegation of funding responsibilities to the boards reflects the Government's belief that decisions are often best taken close to those who will be affected by those decisions. Support for the arts depends upon the combination of Arts Council, regional arts boards, local authorities and private sector sponsors. Its effectiveness and health are something upon which the Government keep a close eye. The regional arts boards combine local knowledge with a national perspective and have unrivalled expertise in bringing together those different and sometimes disparate parties to form productive and lasting partnerships.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, raised two points. One was on the centralisation of policy and the other was on the Secretary of State's appointment of chairmen of regional arts boards. As to the first, the whole thrust of government policy in that area is towards deregulation, not centralisation. On her second point, the Secretary of State's approval for the appointment of chairmen of regional arts boards has been required since the boards were established.
I turn now to funding for the arts, and in particular the level of government support. As I said, there is every reason to be positive about the arts. Our commitment has been amply demonstrated over the years, with significant increases in real terms in the Arts Council's grant-in-aid. Between 1979 and 1993, the real terms increase was some 45 per cent. Against that background, although I understand the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, I do not think it fair for this year's provision to be hailed with criticism. Government funding remains substantial, but subsidy for the arts is a call on the public purse and must be considered alongside all other such calls. Over a year ago, in the 1992 public spending round, in a difficult economic climate, the Government signalled a reduction in Arts Council funding for 1994–95. That is the basis upon which the Arts Council had to plan throughout the past year. Nevertheless, in this year's public spending round, and despite the continuing need to keep a tight rein on public expenditure, we have managed to find more money for the arts than was planned.
The noble Lords, Lord Palumbo and Lord Howell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, all touched on the question of the Albert Memorial which, if I am occasionally allowed to speak personally, I find absolutely super and worthy of repair, but funding for work on the Albert Memorial comes from English Heritage. There is no new money in the DNH's budget for next year, and my right honourable friend is open to suggestions for other sources of funding which will relieve the burden on the taxpayer. But he cannot direct money from the National Lottery to particular projects. I am glad that I got that off my chest!
Against earlier plans, the Arts Council will receive an extra £800,000 in 1994–95, resulting in grant-in-aid of £186 million, and an extra £1.6 million in 1995–96, which will be maintained in 1996–97. In allocating those funds for 1994–95, the council has in the vast majority of cases managed to protect funding for revenue clients. There will be some reduction in the amount of

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developmental work but regional theatres and the national companies, among others, will receive the same amounts as this year.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue and the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, compared UK Government funding with the levels of private and public funding for the arts in other European countries. As regard sponsorship, Britain is fortunate in having the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, which collects information in the levels of sponsorship while the arts in other European countries benefit from private-sector support. Therefore, it is not possible to assess accurately the level of that support. However, business sponsorship in the UK is well-established and continues to make an increasingly important contribution to the arts economy. Informed observers have suggested that sponsorship in other European countries is not at such an advanced stage of development.
In the past 20 years or so there has been a remarkable increase in business sponsorship of the arts. In 1976, business sponsorship stood at a modest half a million pounds. By 1992–93 business support amounted to some £58 million. Much credit for this steady and significant growth goes to the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, which has developed a pivotal position in business investment in the arts. The Government's own initiative—the Business Sponsorship Initiative Scheme—has also played its part. Established in 1984, the scheme has so far attracted nearly £70 million in new money for the arts; £46.5 million from business sponsors and £22.7 million from government awards.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, that the underlying trend remains healthy. In recognition of the success of the business sponsorship incentive scheme the Government are giving an additional £300,000 to the scheme in each of the next three years. I submit to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that business sponsorship is not declining. This month alone has been the announcement of a splendid new partnership between Allied Lyons and the Royal Shakespeare Company of £3.3 million over the next three years and of BT's new three-year commitment worth over half a million pounds to British orchestras.
The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain—who kindly gave me notice of her questions—and the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, asked why we cannot have the same system as the Americans. The whole basis of taxation in this country differs totally from that in the USA. When filing tax returns in the USA every single item of expenditure must be shown. Your Lordships will recall the recent brouhaha concerning the amount claimed by President Clinton for the price he quoted for his underpants. I am glad we are spared that system. Different tax systems develop along different lines. The funding of the arts by the USA Government is considerably lower than ours. I remind your Lordships that in the UK those art organisations which are registered charities benefit from the Government's incentive for charitable giving and there are tax benefits for companies whose sponsorship of the arts is a commercial undertaking.
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But, as in America, there are also incentives for individual giving. Payroll giving allows a donation to a charity to be deducted from income before tax. Higher-rate taxpayers are able to claim tax relief on covenanted and gift-aid donations, which reduces the cost of the donation by 20 per cent. I am sure that there is considerable scope for promoting the greater use of these measures. Work is already in hand, supported by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, to see how this might best be done.
For the future, there is the exciting prospect of the national lottery. By early next year this should be providing very significant additional sums on a continuing basis for the arts, sport, heritage, charities and millennium projects. Money for new buildings, for the badly needed refurbishment of existing ones and for new equipment could all come from lottery proceeds. I wish to pay a warm tribute to the work of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts. Since it was established in 1991 it has made 3,725 grants to arts organisations with a total value of over £52 million.
My noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara advanced the case for an extension of the reduction of the football pool betting levy to ensure the continuation of the foundation beyond 1995. That is being actively considered and will be discussed with both the foundation and the pools promoters before any decision is taken. I know that the foundation has an excellent working relationship with the Arts Council. It will be for the council to consider whether in future it should seek to be paid for the advice that it provides, but I am sure that due note will be taken of my noble friend's remarks.
The annual funding from the Department for Education was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain. To the extent that all good art has an educational value, it is difficult to know where the distinction might be drawn. There are, of course, considerable pressures on public expenditure and it must be for individual departments of state to decide on their own funding priorities. Nevertheless, I will bring the noble Baroness's suggestion to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education.
I return to the national lottery. It is important to note that the bodies which will distribute the funds—which for the arts will be the Arts Council—will be expert in their fields. After taking whatever further expert advice they need, they will be able to decide on priorities in their own area against which to assess applications. The lottery will be able to fund projects which are important to the nation's quality of life but which do not have first call on public expenditure. I hope that these extra funds will have a real impact on improving the provision of and access to the arts in this country.
I wish to make it crystal clear to the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, that, as the Government have repeatedly stated in Parliament, it is not intended that money from the national lottery will be a substitute for public expenditure. Lottery proceeds will not be brought within control total and we will not make any case-by-case reduction in conventional expenditure programmes to take account of any future lottery awards.

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The noble Lord, Lord Birkett, asked whether endowment funding will be allowed under the national lottery. He also commented on the Treasury duty at 12 per cent. In very exceptional cases the endowment funds may be created to ensure future maintenance costs. However, in general distribution bodies will wish to satisfy themselves that capital projects have a viable future with access to revenue funding from other sources. The level of lottery duty has been set in the Finance Act. It is required to offset the loss to the Exchequer created by the diversion of other expenditure which would have been taxed towards the lottery.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, asked about the Government's approach to broadcasting. The Government recognise the importance of broadcasting and they accept that the BBC has a great deal of influence in the country through its patronage of the arts. However, the future of the BBC and other broadcasting companies goes beyond the terms of this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Charteris, and my noble friend Lord Crathorne asked about the National Heritage Memorial Fund. We recognise fully the important role of that fund in protecting the best of our national heritage. The fund will receive £500,000 more than planned in 1994–95 and a further £1 million above the previous planned total in the second year, giving a grant of £8.8 million. We do not intend that lottery funds will substitute for core NHF funding.
I should like to mention "The Three Graces". I should like the noble Lord, Lord Crathorne, to know that the decision on any deferral period for "The Three Graces" will be taken shortly. I note my noble friend's view that "The Three Graces", if retained in this country, should return to Woburn.
The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, asked about alleged reductions in the provision of music teaching in schools. The introduction of local management in schools has resulted in new ways of providing extra-curricular music provision. In many parts of the country new agencies and trusts are working very well and services have increased. That is certainly true of students taking music within the curriculum. Record numbers of pupils are now taking music at GCSE level.
I pay tribute to the work that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, has done over the years. I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon, has agreed to chair the latest initiative. Both as a junior Minister, and as the wife of a man who was totally disabled, I much appreciate the work that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, has done.
I look at the vast number of tourists entering this country. Many of them come to the UK for the sole purpose of satisfying their cultural tastes. This country has an enormous wealth of talent. I look at the busloads of people, some elderly, some young and some in wheelchairs, who visit our theatres, concert halls and museums—and those numbers are growing. This country has a magnificent tradition in the arts and it now has a rich and vibrant cultural mix. Moreover, it has a Government and local infrastructure committed to the continuing support of the arts throughout the United Kingdom. I look to the future with optimism.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, this has been a fascinating and often extremely entertaining debate. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed so impressively and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sale of Goods (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
7.53 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the order of commitment be discharged.—(Lord Renton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery
7.54 p.m.
The Earl of Perth The Earl of Perth rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether the proposed dismantling of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery will be fully considered before any action is taken.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, on 30th November the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland announced that there is to be a new gallery of Scottish art built on a green site at Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow. The sequel was a widespread outcry against the announcement; against the concept of such a gallery of Scottish art; and above all, against the closure of the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, which will probably be put up for sale.
That announcement has provoked no fewer than 19 of your Lordships to take part in this debate, despite the late hour. More remarkably, there are to be three maiden speeches. I believe that to be something of a record. I must point out also that there are to be three speeches from the Drummond clan, which, again, I believe to be some sort of record: there are to be speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, my noble friend Lady Willoughby de Eresby, who is to make her maiden speech, which is a treat in store, and myself. Moreover, we look forward to the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart. It has taken him far too long to do that. We welcome the legal points that he will make. Last but not least, we shall have the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield. I say to those noble Lords that, having made a start, they should keep it up. Indeed, I thank all noble Lords who are to take part in the debate.
Before I develop the reasons why I and many others are totally against the trustees' announcement, I wish to praise the trustees, director and staff of the National Galleries for the splendid work that they have done over the past 10 years. They have rejuvenated the National Gallery and have made fine acquisitions. They have also given us splendid temporary exhibitions. Having paid that tribute to their past role, I must say that I and many others have become fearful in the past two years about

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what they were up to. We wondered what they were planning and what new ambitions they had. Now we know. The culmination has been the proposal to set up a new edifice in Glasgow.
That edifice would house a gallery of Scottish pictures chosen from—perhaps I should say "plundered"—from three national galleries; that is, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art. It is to be a kind of ghetto of Scottish art. The proposal is wholly wrong and I shall touch upon four reasons why that is so.
The first is what I would call the art reason—that is, the concept of having a special gallery confined to Scottish art. That is wrong. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Haig, and others will develop that further. The second is the archival and historic reason, and I shall return to that later. Thirdly, there are legal reasons. I shall rely on and look forward to the remarks made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, in that respect. Last, and in a way most important, there is the economic reason. If it should go through, it will be a scandalous—and I use that word advisedly—waste of money, wherever the money (say, £30 million) comes from. Again, I shall return later to that aspect.
There was a public meeting last week in Edinburgh called by the Saltire Society. No less than 10 other Scottish societies joined in calling for it. I was there. It was a remarkable and moving happening. It took place at night and yet over 1,000 people came to listen, the old and young from all walks of life. They overflowed the conference room, which seated only about 250, and went into the galleries of the Edinburgh College of Art and then even into the streets. Luckily, there were, in degree, loud speakers. The audience listened earnestly and anxiously to the speakers, including Tim Clifford, the director of the National Galleries. But, I have to say that neither the chairman nor any of the trustees turned up. They had been invited jointly and individually. I cannot imagine the reason for their absence. Was it that they had been ordered from on high not to attend? Were they afraid? Alternatively, did they consider themselves superior to the ordinary man and believe that, therefore, they had no need to listen to him? The sequel at the meeting was a very good debate and a motion was passed asking the trustees to think again or to resign. As far as I know, that was carried by 1 vote against and 999 for the motion, if the figures are exact.
I should like to take this opportunity to say thank you to one and all who have written to me. I should also like to thank all those who have written letters to the Scotsman and other Scottish newspapers and those who have written articles in the press about this lamentable business. I could speak for two hours on all the information that I have been given as background. However, I shall not do so. I shall confine myself to three points. First, we are told that there is inadequate space for the many pictures which are in store. Shortly, that argument will be nonsense. I wonder whether noble Lords realise that, in three or four years' time, the National Portrait Gallery will vacate almost half of its space when the "antiquities" go to the new Museum of Scotland. Further, across the road are the York Buildings which would be wholly appropriate as an
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extension. I feel confident that there is enough space for even the most greedy demands of the trustees. The Pieda report which was specially commissioned by the trustees bears that out.
My second reason concerns cost. The Pieda report concluded that the National Portrait Gallery complex—that is, the York Buildings, and the rest—was the cheapest solution capital-wise and certainly the cheapest solution as regards running costs. Let us remember that the building was given to the nation by Mr. Ritchie Findlay, a Scotsman, and we have just spent about £4 million on its total restoration.
My third ground is what I would call the historical research reason. I have placed in the Library a memorandum on the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and its future written by Basil Skinner. I recommend any noble Lord who is interested in the matter to read it. It was written before—and I stress the word "before"—the trustees made their announcement. The trustees have said, "You did not object earlier", but it is very difficult to make objections when the trustees play their cards so close to their chest. The memorandum shows that over the past 110 years the National Portrait Gallery has collected or been given 3,000 original portraits. It has 20,000 engraved portraits and 120,000 fully indexed photographs of Scottish people. That treasure is housed in the capital, next door or close to Register House and close to the National Library of Scotland. It is the very heart of Scottish history and of the Scottish people and must remain in the capital.
I have one last point to make before I turn to discuss what should be done. The issue has, sadly, degenerated into a contest of Edinburgh versus Glasgow. That should never have happened. However, it was encouraged by the trustees. It was a sort of auction that they put to the cities: "Who will give us most?" It is a most undignified and unfortunate happening. Here I should, perhaps, say that the noble Viscount, Lord Weir, who is a really well-known Glasgow citizen, has asked me to tell the House that he cannot be here this evening. He is in the Near East. He is wholly against the project as put forward, even though he is a Glasgow man.
What is to be done? If the Secretary of State, who has not yet received the official appraisal from the trustees, decided on receipt of the latter that it was wholly unsound and not legally correct, then he might turn it down on those grounds. In that case, I and many others would rejoice. However, it may be difficult for him to take such action because, after all, the trustees were appointed by him.
The second possibility is one that I would like to stress more strongly than any other. The trustees are meeting on Friday. I should like them to tell the Secretary of State that they would welcome the setting up of an independent inquiry. If they believe in their proposals, they should not be afraid of that. I urge them to do so. Such an inquiry should be set up quickly with an urgent ending to it, let us say, by the end of June.
I hope that I have developed sufficiently my total opposition to what has been proposed. Once again, I should like to thank from my head and from my heart all

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those who have put down their names to speak in the debate. I should especially like to thank the maiden speakers.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I am sure that we are all greatly indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for raising this matter, which is couched in typically temperate terms. His Motion simply asks that the matter be fully considered before a final decision is taken. As he has pointed out, that means fully reconsidered first by the trustees. Then of course the Government come into it because, as the noble Earl has said, the Government appoint the trustees. If this £30 million for a new building at Kelvingrove is to be found, only the Government can find it.
If I could have the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for just one moment, I should like to mention in his presence as he is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Government, and I think all concerned in politics in all parties at this time, have a duty to try to save government expenditure of that magnitude unless there are overwhelming reasons for spending it.
I have to confess that I have known both Edinburgh and Glasgow—members of my father's family have held academic posts in both places—those two great cities, since I was a child. I have visited both of them many times over the years. I feel that it would be wrong to approach this matter in a way which arouses rivalry between those two great Scottish cities which, after all, are only an hour's distance from each other.
In these days, to my mind, we have to face the fact and accept the fact that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh is an elegant, purpose-built building and has served its purpose well for over 100 years. It really does serve both its original purposes and its present purposes pretty adequately. It provides a visible record of people who were notable in Scottish history by means of paintings and sculptures. It provides vast reserves of other paintings, engravings and even photographs of such people, and it provides a valuable source of information and research for historians and genealogists and archivists. In recent years its remit has been enlarged to include portraits of prominent living people and portraits which are a credit to Scottish portraiture, even though they may be of people who are not or were not prominent. If it were dispersed from Edinburgh, Scotland would therefore lose a valuable national asset.
Now a brief word about Scottish art for Scottish art's sake. Of course the present Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh contains works by those marvellous Scottish portrait painters: Allan Ramsay and Raeburn, and a few by Wilkie, who is not primarily a portrait painter, and some by Alexander Nasmyth and others. But to take those away to form part of an exhibition of Scottish art in a new building at Kelvingrove would not only deprive the Scottish National Portrait Gallery of some of its most inspired and historic portraits, but it would also surely be quite unnecessary because those were prolific painters and
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some of their works are already displayed in galleries in and near Glasgow including the famous Burrell Collection which is a marvellous addition to the cultural life of Scotland and of Glasgow. One could multiply the reasons for leaving things well alone but I hope, with the noble Earl, that this matter will be fully considered not only by the Government and by the trustees, but also by academic people, by the art world and even by local authorities. We do not want those concerned to plunge into what could be a most unfortunate decision.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Renton, has just told your Lordships that he finds the wording of the noble Earl's Question temperate. I find it a little anodyne. Of course the fullest consideration must be given to the position of the National Portrait Gallery in its present form and place. I do not think that anyone could deny that the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, aided by the Pieda economic appraisal of a new national gallery of Scottish art, have for their part given the fullest consideration to the issue. Nor has there been anything other than the widest consultation by the trustees—contrary to what has been said in the press—including their own professional staff. If the Question of the noble Earl implies that that is not the case, then that is wrong.
What has truly happened is that controversy has arisen over the recent decision of the trustees of the national galleries about a new national gallery of Scottish art. If the noble Earl will forgive me, I believe he has posed a wholly insufficient Question. The issue is much wider than the National Portrait Gallery. The larger issue is whether Scotland should have a national gallery of Scottish art. The trustees have decided that it should. Then two consequential decisions of the trustees have to be addressed. One is concerning the impact the new gallery will have on the existing galleries: the National Gallery, the National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Portrait Gallery, all of which are in Edinburgh. The second decision is where within the nation of Scotland the new national gallery of Scottish art should be situated. That is really what this debate is about.
It has for long been the policy of the trustees that there should be a gallery devoted to Scottish art. The policy gained independent support in 1981 from the report of the Williams Committee. The national galleries have 2,000 oil paintings by Scottish artists, or of Scottish subjects, and about 900 other paintings besides. Normally almost one-half of those Scottish works languish in store, unseen by the public to whom they belong. There are currently eight Raeburns on display and 70 in store. Consequently, it is Scottish art which has suffered most from lack of space for display. That is what provides the strongest case for a new national gallery of Scottish art for the benefit of Scottish people and visitors to Scotland.
Scotland is a small country but with a fine painting tradition. If we are severe with ourselves we may have to acknowledge that we have not produced a very large number of painters of unquestionably world class, whereas no one would deny that our scholars, David

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Hume and Adam Smith, are of world class. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie must, as painters, surely be major contenders.
Let us get away from the limited form of this Question that has been brought before your Lordships' House by the noble Earl. Let us exclude the bad arguments. First, there is the proposition that the existing national galleries will become national galleries of non-Scottish art if a national gallery of Scottish art is founded. That is simply untrue. The existing national galleries have always included some of the best of Scottish art in its broad European context. The trustees have made it absolutely plain that this will continue to be so, just as before, if the new gallery is founded wherever it is placed. Therefore there is nothing in that argument at all.
Next—this word found its echo in the noble Earl's speech —it is argued that a national gallery of Scottish art will become a "ghetto of Scottish paintings", pointless outside its European context. That is the most astonishing argument of all. In two to three years' time, as the noble Earl well knows, the National Museum will vacate its half of the building in Queen Street which it shares with the National Portrait Gallery. The antiquities collection will then be moved from that building to a new purpose-built building in Chambers Street in Edinburgh. It will be called the Museum of Scotland. I understand that the Government are funding the whole of the building costs of about £24 million. I believe that the noble Earl, to his great credit, is chairman of the appeal fund. It aims to raise the fitting out costs of some £8 million. That new museum will tell the history of Scotland through its artefacts. No one is stigmatising that museum as a ghetto of Scottish artefacts.
Nor do those who urge the retention of the National Portrait Gallery, as and where it is in Edinburgh, stigmatise that gallery as a ghetto of Scottish portraits. Equally, I do not see how the debate about a national gallery of Scottish art is advanced by stigmatising it as likely to prove to be a ghetto of Scottish art.
Those who peddle that argument sell their country short. There is no reason whatsoever why a national school of painting, remarkable not least because of the smallness of the nation, should not be displayed at its best in a single place and on its own. The people of Scotland and visitors to Scotland will prosper from seeing much of what for far too long has been the stock of basements.
The noble Earl mentioned as one of his reasons the economic argument. Much fewer than 200,000 people visit the National Portrait Gallery each year; 800,000 every year will visit the new national gallery if it is established in accordance with the trustees' decision.
The Earl of Perth: My Lords, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord on what grounds he says that. He will recall that the National Portrait Gallery, almost alone among Scottish galleries, in the past three years has increased the number of visitors from 117,000 to 179,000. The noble Lord's figure of 800,000 is pure guesswork.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, it is not guesswork at all, it is the assessment of the trustees. It turns upon the fact that the decision has been that the national gallery will be in Glasgow. The figures for Kelvingrove are of that order and give every ground for belief that a similar figure would be achieved for a national gallery of Scottish art in Glasgow.
Before I leave the ghetto insult perhaps I may say simply that it lacks even factual foundation. Just as it is the case that about 40 per cent. of the oil paintings currently on display in the National Portrait Gallery are by English or foreign artists of Scottish subjects or of Scottish interest, such paintings will also be displayed in the national gallery of Scottish art. In fact, the majority of paintings pre Allan Ramsay in the national collections are by non-Scottish artists.
Let us move in this debate which has been promoted by the noble Earl from bad points to the real point. A new gallery of Scottish art would be a contradiction in terms without the very best of Scotland's distinguished portraiture as its core. It is the consequence for the National Portrait Gallery which is the point in controversy.
I do not diminish the National Portrait Gallery. So far as I know there are only three other galleries of its kind in the world—in London, Dublin and Washington. However, the very existence of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the current campaign for its continuance in its present form and place is surely support for the principle of a gallery of Scottish art.
The central issue which the trustees addressed was whether the concept of a gallery of Scottish art, which the National Portrait Gallery currently represents, should be carried further into a new national gallery devoted to the whole development of Scottish fine art, including portraiture. The only serious attempt to dispute that that is the real issue has been made by those —and I would not have mentioned the name of Mr. Skinner but the noble Earl did so —who advance the extraordinary proposition that the National Portrait Gallery is not a gallery of Scottish art at all.
It is they who diminish the purpose of the National Portrait Gallery. They argue that it is not primarily an art gallery but a national archive and that the paintings are there not because of their artistic excellence but because they are authentic likenesses of historically recognised Scots. That argument will not begin to do. The collection is huge, as the noble Earl said. Any art collection of that size will inevitably be of variable quality, but it unquestionably contains many paintings of the highest quality in fine art terms which would have their natural home in a national gallery devoted to the whole development of Scottish fine art, including portraiture.
Therefore, the decision of the trustees. ought to be supported. The Pieda report made clear that the existing portrait gallery could not be the home of a national gallery of Scottish art. An area of 2,597 square metres is required, more than double the gallery space in the portrait gallery, and more than five times the space provided by the new wing in the National Gallery, where Scottish paintings are currently displayed. The fact is that a new gallery is required.

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It was assumed by many when the idea for a new national gallery was first mooted that Edinburgh, as the capital, would be bound to win. However, Glasgow has won on its merits. Nevertheless, Edinburgh will not be denuded of Scottish paintings. Some of the very best will continue, as today, to be shown in their international context in the National Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Also, Edinburgh has its own City Art Centre with a fine collection of 500 or 600 Scottish paintings.
I hope that I do not nourish unworthy thoughts by wondering whether the current campaign for the preservation of the portrait gallery, as it is and where it is, is a cloak for an absolutist claim by the capital, Edinburgh, to be the home of a national gallery of Scottish art if there is to be one. That is a claim which I heard the noble Earl in terms put at the same time as declaring that he regretted any confrontation between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Such a claim by the capital cannot be accepted. A nation's assets belong to all its people. Although the capital has a claim as such, it cannot be an overriding claim. If Dean College in Edinburgh had been the favoured site I wonder whether there would have been such an orchestration of protest for the preservation of the National Portrait Gallery in its present form and in its present place, or rather whether the current debate would have been what new use the city of Edinburgh could find for that fine building in Queen Street which the National Portrait Gallery currently occupies.
Surely the true issues in this debate are: should there be a national gallery of Scottish art? If yes, where, on the overall merits of the rival proposals by Glasgow and Edinburgh, should that be—Glasgow or Edinburgh? And whether, in whatever location, it should be established only if the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh remains without change, as it is and where it is. If that were to be a precondition, a national gallery of Scottish art would never be established at all.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, I must begin by doing something that I greatly dislike doing: that is, asking to be excused very soon after the completion of my own speech. I have done that only once before in my membership of your Lordships' House and I apologise for doing so. However, a very few days ago I emulated Lord Finchley in Belloc's memorable rhyme: I stood upon a kitchen table in order to mend the electric light. Happily, I was not electrocuted but there was the most appalling crash and I am very doubtfully recovered. Therefore, perhaps I may, please, have your Lordships' indulgence.
Despite that disability, I was extremely anxious to speak in the debate this evening partly because, despite my somewhat ambiguous Scottish credentials, I nonetheless believe that the voice of Hillhead should be heard in your Lordships' House. Hillhead is vividly—some of your Lordships may think too vividly—represented in another place at the present time. However, it is nonetheless desirable that an alternative Hillhead voice should be heard. As many noble Lords
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will be aware, that constituency, although only one-tenth the city of Glasgow, contains within it about two-thirds of the cultural institutions through which the remarkable Glasgow renaissance of the past 12 or 15 years has expressed itself. Of even more direct relevance, it contains the preferred site, adjacent to the great Kelvingrove Gallery—itself a magnificent expression of Glasgow self-confidence in the last decade of the 19th century—on which the proposed gallery of Scottish art would stand.
Nevertheless, I do not propose to make a long, rolling speech. Indeed, I differ somewhat—not wholly by any means—from the noble Lord, Lord Irvine. I believe that there are good reasons for preserving the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in its present form and on its present site in Queen Street, Edinburgh. I do not believe that that is necessarily destructive of the scheme for a gallery of Scottish art. I believe that the somewhat idiosyncratic but attractive 1889 building has many advantages. There are three reasons for trying to preserve it.
First, the more I contemplate the unnecessary and often destructive change which we have imposed upon us—at the present time of institutions which work reasonably well and have a certain place in the hearts of those who use them—the more cautious I am of destroying good institutions. Secondly, I do not think that the great majority of the building's contents are essential to a gallery of Scottish art. As the noble Lord admitted, many of the artists are not Scottish and many of the portraits are not art, but nonetheless they are extremely interesting mementoes of the history of Scotland. They are a record of the history of a nation, often of its government, and as such are probably well suited to its political capital. Edinburgh is, of course, the political capital. But it is much more doubtfully the artistic capital, certainly not so far as indigenous Scottish art over the past 100 years or so is concerned, as it is also more doubtfully the commercial, intellectual, educational or demotic capital.
The fact is that Scotland is a two-capital country; a two-headed eagle. Neither Edinburgh nor Glasgow is like Paris, London or Vienna on which everything is centred. The position is much more equivalent to that of the United States which is pre-eminently a two-capital country. The same applies to Italy. Except for the somewhat unhappy 74 years when Berlin temporarily dominated, Germany has been a three or four-capital country. There is nothing wrong and a good deal right with such dispersal.
However, what I believe is unique to Scotland is that the two capitals are within 45 miles of each other. That has some advantages and some disadvantages. The advantage is that it makes them almost a single touristic unit. The disadvantage is that it is easy to set them at each other like two contestants in a cock fight. For the purposes of after-dinner speeches, that is amusing and even legitimate and I must confess to being guilty of having sometimes indulged in it myself. But a destructive and bitter battle over the bleeding body of Scottish galleries and museums is a different and more serious matter.

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I think that the trustees have made a courageous decision and should be broadly congratulated upon it, although I believe that they should show more flexibility on the subject of the portrait gallery. I am also prepared to admit that there was room for argument about the validity of a purely indigenous gallery. I found the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, very convincing on that point. The issue was canvassed a decade-and-a-half ago. But the decision was taken two-and-a-half years ago. There was precious little complaint from Edinburgh until it became clear that the site was to go to Glasgow. Furthermore, there is a great store of good pictures currently not being shown.
I therefore regard the decision in favour of a gallery of Scottish art as taken, and largely unchallenged for more than two years. That being so, I am sure that the right place for the gallery is Glasgow, a co-capital. There are three national galleries already in Edinburgh. Glasgow is a city with a great artistic tradition which, moreover, has provided great enthusiasm, an excellent site as well as a more modest alternative—with two striking designs—and can probably more easily raise both public and private money.
I agree with much of what the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said about the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but I also believe that any new national gallery in Scotland should be in Glasgow.
8.38 p.m.
Lord Mackenzie-Stuart: My Lords, this is the first time that I have had the honour to address your Lordships' House. I have no intention of being controversial, but should I so seem I certainly do not seek the protection which I know that your Lordships' House so generously accords to a maiden speaker.
Perhaps I may begin, as did the noble Earl, Lord Perth, on a positive note by paying tribute to the trustees, and in particular to the dedicated staff, of the various national galleries of Scotland. We are well served by our national galleries and I hope that that is sufficiently widely recognised. It follows from that that any development which enables more good pictures to be seen by a wider public is to be welcomed. I refer to good pictures in general, be they Scottish or non-Scottish.
However, I do not wish this evening to go into the broader question of whether or not the Scottish National Portrait Gallery should be dismembered to form part of this wider display. That I leave to other speakers. In my view, it should not, because the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is more than a gallery of art; it is an archive, and to that extent it has its own particular function. We can go to the portrait gallery because some of the pictures are indeed superb; we can go to it because we seek an authentic likeness of a notable figure.
My sole object in intervening this evening is to suggest that I have serious doubts and anxieties, as matters now stand, about the legality of the trustees' proposal to close and dismember the National Portrait Gallery. It seems to me that the trustees cannot close the gallery unless they first obtain the authority and permission of a public Act of Parliament.
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My reasons for saying so can be quickly explained. As noble Lords know, in the late 1880s Mr. John Ritchie Findlay of the well-known family who were proprietors of the Scotsman newspaper, paid for the construction of the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. One of the curious things about this saga is that it now seems impossible to discover the precise terms and conditions under which Mr. Findlay made this generous gift to the nation. But that he did impose a number of conditions is evident from Section 7 of the National Galleries of Scotland Act 1906 which, in essence, created the present administrative structure of the national galleries. It set up a board of trustees and so on. What Section 7 said is that the Crown—not the trustees, but the Crown—is to hold the portrait gallery:
"for the purposes and subject to any rights for or subject to which",
it was held in 1906. That is a cumbersome and awkward phrase, I am sure your Lordships agree, but it makes clear to my mind that in 1906 the Crown took over the gallery under certain terms and conditions. The most important of them plainly implied, I suggest, that the gallery should be devoted to a historical collection of Scottish portraits, whether or not they were major works of art.
In other words, in terms of the 1906 Act, the Crown took over the National Portrait Gallery on terms and conditions which, to my mind at least, constituted a valid charitable trust. The law of Scotland has always viewed the concept of charity with a perhaps more generous eye than it has in the past been accorded by the law of England. That being so—and this is my anxiety —it seems to me that Mr. Findlay's charitable intention can only be defeated if Parliament, through the medium of a public general statute, chooses otherwise.
I end by putting a question to Her Majesty's Government. Many people in Scotland wish to know whether Her Majesty's Government are prepared to initiate such legislation in order to destroy the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and to set at nought Mr. Findlay's's charitable intention. I have far too high a regard for the Scottish Ministers, both collectively and singly, to attribute to them the characteristics of Attila the Hun. In those circumstances, I look to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, to set my mind at rest.
8.44 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I am sure that I speak for the whole House in congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, on an important and highly relevant maiden speech If I may say so, he is a source of great pride to Scots. He is a most distinguished lawyer; he has been a senator of the College of Justice in Scotland; he was the very first British judge of the European Court of Justice and for four years was president of that Court. He has been a Member of this House, I think, since 1988. This is the first time we have had the privilege of hearing him speak and I hope that he will do so again very soon.
There are three main reasons for maintaining a national museum or national picture gallery: to ensure that the nation's collection of treasures is properly cared for and safeguarded; to make the collection available to

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scholars for research and other purposes; and, very important indeed, to ensure that the public can fully enjoy and appreciate those treasures.
I know from three years' experience—all too short—as a trustee of the National Museums of Scotland that the balancing of those three purposes is by no means easy. Indeed, professional museum people, as well as informed and committed laymen, often disagree deeply about how the balance may best be achieved.
In the case of the National Museums of Scotland, after much consideration the trustees came to the conclusion that the best way to enhance public enjoyment of the Scottish collection was, as the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said, to create a new museum of Scotland alongside the existing Chambers Street building in Edinburgh. The Secretary of State for Scotland agreed to back that with £24 million of taxpayers' money. The project is proceeding and the noble Earl, Lord Perth, is playing a noble part in raising the additional money.
The problem faced by the trustees of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, it seems to me, is in some ways similar. The existing building, though designed for the purpose not much more than 100 years ago, was given to the nation on whatever terms they turn out to be. In my view, that building does not easily lend itself to modern ways of displaying pictures or to meeting the rising expectations of the modern public, who, when travelling abroad or viewing television, have become used to fine modern galleries elsewhere.
As a result, in my experience—and I do not have the figures—the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is not nearly as well visited as it could be apart, up to a point, from the short summer months at the time of the Edinburgh Festival. Whatever else we may say, I do not think that the status quo will do. As the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said, the accommodation could be extended into the old Museum of Antiquities. The trouble is that that building would be interesting but awkward as well. I do not know what can be done to the inside of the buildings; they are important and cannot be messed about too much. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why the trustees looked elsewhere. I felt they were quite right to look at the idea—as I believe they did—of building on the site which had been occupied by the old Scottish & Newcastle Brewery. It was right beside the Palace of Holyroodhouse and it would have been a wonderful spot for a bright, up-to-date gallery where people could look at the portraits of those who have come and gone at Holyrood over the centuries.
My understanding is that little interest was shown in the idea either by the people of Edinburgh or by Edinburgh District Council and it came to nothing. Since then, as we have heard, Glasgow District Council and others in the west of Scotland have displayed keen enthusiasm which has moved into the vacuum. The trustees have, not unnaturally, responded by going for a much bigger project at Kelvingrove.
Time has moved on since 1880, even since 1980. I agree with the voice of Hillhead; there is, in my view, much to be said for a new gallery containing part of the Scottish collection. It could be sited partly in Glasgow,
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as suggested, or perhaps the voice of Stirling or Dundee might be heard. Either university would benefit enormously if a museum could be built in one or other of those places. In the case of Dundee, it would be an excellent asset for the College of Art. I am sure that in any of these places such a gallery would be warmly appreciated and very much visited. But again I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, that I do not think that the collection of portraits should leave Edinburgh.
These pictures portray the main players in the history of Scotland. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, that for scholars they are part of the national archive. They include portraits of all sorts of quality and they include photographs which probably show most of the noble Lords present in the Chamber tonight, and probably one of the noble Lord himself; I am not sure. This archive should stay conveniently close to the Register House and the other homes of the Scottish archives. For Scots themselves and for visitors, they should be viewed in the capital city of the country whose story they represent. In whatever building these portraits are displayed, I would hope it might be possible to show them in a much more attractive way than at present. They should remain in Edinburgh and I believe that most Scots, wherever they live, would agree with that.
I hope that the trustees' startling proposal will at least have two effects. First, it will awake the good people of Edinburgh from their slumbers so that they and the rest of the people of Scotland seek to retain the national collection of portraits in Edinburgh but much more attractively displayed. Secondly, I hope that the trustees will seek the means to proceed with another gallery and perhaps, if they have not already done so, look at one or two other possibilities besides that of Kelvingrove. Wherever the gallery goes, it must be much visited, much enjoyed and very well displayed. I think the noble Earl has done us a very good turn by asking this Question, and I hope that great things will come out of it.
8.53 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, I too should like to express appreciation to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for introducing this subject tonight. It is well timed, since I understand that the trustees will meet this week. I hope that copies of Hansard will be available to them to assist them in their proceedings. It is also well timed because last night we had the Scottish Peers' Dinner, an excellent occasion which enabled Scottish Peers to meet informally, and to come to some kind of consensus that we, as Scottish Peers, have some responsibility for the welfare of our nation. We try to come to wise judgments, not as party politicians but, as in a case like this, on what is best for our country.
One of the unfortunate things about this whole debate of course is the "Edinburgh versus Glasgow" syndrome. I suppose it is inevitable in the other place that, if you are a constituency MP from Edinburgh, like the Secretary of State for Defence or Lord James Douglas Hamilton, you will put in a word for Edinburgh and use

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your authority to do so. Similarly, Glasgow MPs have entered the fray and put the case for Glasgow. Fortunately, in the House of Lords we have no constituency responsibilities, and it gives us freedom to discuss these matters in a quite objective and reasonable manner. In the Glasgow/Edinburgh situation, I remember there used to be a little chap at Glasgow's Queen Street Station who issued tickets to people going to Edinburgh. Whenever anyone came and said, "I want to go to Edinburgh", he would say, "No, no: you don't want to go to Edinburgh; you mean you've got to go to Edinburgh!" So there is an underlying strain which we may not recognise in this discussion.
It is not easy to reject the advice of the trustees. The trustees who have come to this decision are presided over by a very distinguished citizen of Edinburgh. It is one of the better quangos, and the trustees give their services to the best of their ability to do what is right. At the same time, I must say that in this case I reject their decision, but not because it is Glasgow. As has been said, if the decision had been to site the new gallery in Edinburgh there would have been little protest, but as it is to be established in Glasgow there is protest. However, I am not protesting against this decision to site the gallery in Glasgow. I am against the gallery itself. I think we are in great danger in this country of becoming a nation of museum keepers.
I notice that in the projections for this gallery it is estimated that it will cost between £20 million and £30 million to build in Glasgow. The Secretary of State for Scotland has made clear that he is not committing himself to financial support for the proposition, so that £20 million or £30 million will have to be raised elsewhere. I visited the British Library at St. Pancras yesterday. When the Bill concerning that library was passed, the price tag was £120 million—a reasonable figure. But it was a false prospectus. The gallery is now estimated to be costing £450 million. Projects like this tend to get out of hand, and so, while we may say that the new gallery in Kelvingrove will cost £20 million, I suspect that the cost will be substantially greater before it is completed.
So here we are looking at building a new gallery. I appreciate the interest of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, in these matters. I sit on a large charitable trust and try to make judgments about the various claims on our funds that come before us. In fact I have a meeting tomorrow morning at 9.15 in London and will be looking at a mass of claims for financial support. At our last meeting we looked at one claim which happened to be an appeal from the noble Earl, Lord Perth, to contribute to the fitting out of the new Scottish museum. The Secretary of State has already paid £20 odd million for the building, but the noble Earl is looking now for something between £8 million to £6 million for the fitting out of that building in Edinburgh.
Also on my agenda tomorrow I notice another appeal from something called the Dynamic Earth Museum, Edinburgh—the old site of the Scottish & Newcastle breweries at Holyrood. It is a proposal for a new museum depicting man's growth from early times. It is
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a desirable project. It is estimated that it will cost £14.7 million, of which it is anticipated that £2.2 million will be raised from various charitable institutions.
Tomorrow I shall be looking at appeals for the Dynamic Earth exhibition and from the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for the fitting out of the Museums of Scotland; but I shall also be looking at appeals from the homeless and from the carers associated with caring for cases of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I shall be looking at the need for people to be taken off the streets and out of cardboard boxes in Scotland. In my priorities, I could not possibly justify additional expenditure on another museum in Glasgow costing £20 million or £30 million. It is all extremely desirable, but we are in a society where we must live within our capacity to produce wealth and we are limited by that to making priority decisions.
I therefore support the noble Earl, Lord Perth, if only because acceptance of his view will frustrate the Glasgow proposition and limit the expenditure that may be involved.
9.2 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn: My Lords, I feel that I cannot match the expertise of so many distinguished and knowledgeable speakers or the authoritative maiden speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackenzie-Stuart. My only expertise is that for a good deal of the time I now live within a quarter of a mile of the National Portrait Gallery, having spent many years away from Edinburgh, most of them abroad. If that produces some expertise, then that is my only qualification to speak in this debate.
Being away from Edinburgh and then coming back gives me a starting point. It is clear to somebody coming back to Edinburgh after many years' absence that an enormous amount has been done by the national galleries. Instead of those rather gloomy caverns I remember as a boy, we have a splendid National Gallery and a marvellous Gallery of Modern Art and the National Portrait Gallery has been improved beyond recognition. They are all great fun to visit. For that I believe, like other noble Lords, great credit must go to the director, the keepers, the trustees and all the other staff of those galleries.
The other impression I drew on returning to Edinburgh was that there was a need for more wall space. Every museum is presumably like an iceberg, with a great deal more below the surface than on display. In the national galleries of Scotland, there is a shortage of hanging space, with the result that when there is a temporary exhibition much of the permanent exhibition must be hidden. The question then arises of how to provide the new space. I have some doubts about producing a gallery of Scottish art. But equally, knowing that the experts believe that there is a good case for one, I am prepared to listen to them, with the caveat that, if there is to be a new gallery, it should be adequately funded for its running costs as well as all the, problems involved with capital costs mentioned by other noble Lords.
With regard to where the new hanging space should be, my first preference would be to expand the facilities

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in Edinburgh. However, Glasgow put forward a good case, energetically argued, which was accepted. So be it; good for Glasgow. Let us hope that if it gets the chance, it can make a success of it.
The question of the National Portrait Gallery and what to do with it also arises. In that case we are on different ground. Having the advantage of living nearby, I have been able to visit the gallery many times over the past few months. It contains a mixture of great, medium and relatively unknown Scots painted by brilliant, mediocre and pretty bad painters. As was pointed out, it is certainly not great art, but it is a great archive, and that is a tremendous asset. I cannot see the case for uprooting that great archive, with all that goes with it—not just what is seen on the surface but all the back-up—and transplanting it to another part of the country.
If we are to provide further hanging space somewhere else and that place is to be Glasgow, fine. But I find myself sharing the views of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, that it is not necessary to have as a fundamental part of the new gallery the collection from the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. It should be possible to have a rotating display from the National Portrait Gallery which could go to whatever new gallery is set up. There are plenty of paintings in order to do that without destroying the National Portrait Gallery collection and all that goes with it.
I am left with only one further point—apart from supporting the view of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that there should be a chance to think again. We should avoid that great form of planning blight which is indecision blight or future shadow. We should avoid a situation in which, because there is an idea for some great new project which has not yet been funded, the existing projects should be starved of funds. In the national galleries we have plants that have grown and flourished. But they need to be fed with a constant supply of foliar feed so that their lives do not wither away. I hope that not only will there be a chance to think again but also that the process before making the final decision will not be too long.
9.7 p.m.
Lord Bruntisfield: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for providing the opportunity tonight for your Lordships' House to debate the proposals which have been adopted by its board of trustees for the future of the Scottish national galleries. If the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, feels out of his depth in addressing your Lordships, you can imagine how I feel on this my maiden speech after so many wise and comprehensive speeches. That makes it extremely difficult for me who actually supports the noble Earl to make this speech without repeating much of what he has told your Lordships. If I do so, I crave your Lordships' indulgence and I am sure that you will put it down to my inexperience.
The proposals came as a shock to the public when they were announced on St. Andrew's Day last year. I believe, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, that there had been the minimum of public consultation. My information, coming, I may say —I do not want to
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mention names—from the horse's mouth, is that 50 letters were written to various members of the public asking for their views. That is not my idea—and I doubt whether it is the idea of many of your Lordships—of wide public consultation. It is alleged, furthermore, that not even the professional senior staff had been conferred with properly before these far-reaching decisions were announced to an amazed Scottish public. I do not know whether that is true. I can only repeat to your Lordships that I was told it on the best possible authority. Since that day there has been nothing but a deafening silence from the board and from its individual members, and now, not surprisingly, deep concern is rife among those people in Scotland who are interested in our heritage and in our national treasures.
It would be a misapprehension were your Lordships to see this controversy, as some tonight would have it, as just yet another example of Glasgow-Edinburgh wrangling. This is surely a time to put that out of our minds, to forsake prejudice and to look at this problem dispassionately. This time the squabble is alleged to be about the siting of a new museum of Scottish art which the trustees are proposing to build in Glasgow. I do not hear much of that. The main concern that I hear is about the dismantling of the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh which will result if the proposals as they now stand are allowed to go forward. The abandonment of its building adds further hurt to injury.
I believe that the silence from the Edinburgh public was caused largely because they thought that the whole project sounded crazy and they simply could not believe that it was true. They waited for an explanation from the trustees but none was forthcoming—only complete and utter silence—until slowly the public realised that the board was serious in this crazy idea. Then the gale of opposition began to rise. The opposition to destroying the portrait gallery, down even to selling its unique home—a splendid Victorian Gothic building, as your Lordships have been told—has now reached gale force; in fact storm force. Its collection was to become part of a new museum of Scottish art and the sale of the building was to help fund the cost of creating this new museum.
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is not an art gallery at all; it is a portrait gallery. There is a very great difference between the two both in content and in purpose, as some of your Lordships have already pointed out. To the one, visitors go to see works of art and schools of art; to the other, they go to see portraiture. In our case it is a unique and incomparable collection of authentic Scots' portraiture of Scottish people down through our history to the present day. It portrays people of all sorts, not just the great and the famous, but ordinary, everyday people going about their day-to-day business. We see how they looked to their contemporaries; we see their faces and the clothes that they wore. We see them on state occasions, at home, at work and at play.
Some individual pictures are of course masterpieces and worthy of a place in any museum of art, but most, as other noble Lords have said, are not. Some are very moderate pictures indeed, interesting only for their subject matter and not for the manner in which they

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have been painted. Some of the artists are foreign, some are by English artists and only around one-fifth of the collection is by Scots. That collection would sit ill in a museum of Scottish art where most of it is neither Scottish nor art. But that is the trustees' proposal for this unique collection. It is a collection of authentic portraiture consisting, as your Lordships have been told, of 3,000 portraits—I shall not repeat the figures—a great many engravings and literally thousands of photographs. It is a collection which is one of our most valuable treasures illustrating our history and culture and bringing vividness to our archives and life to the printed word.
In fact, I believe, as my noble friend Lady Carnegie said, that this collection serves the same function as a record office. Moreover, it adds illustration, as does a history book, to our history. It adds vividness to our archives and life to the printed word. I believe that it is more akin to a record office than an art gallery. It is that authenticity of portraiture which makes the collection so valuable and unique. That is why it must be preserved and why the trustees' proposals must be resisted. The effective destruction of such a unique Scottish national treasure would be unforgiveable.
The reason given by the trustees is that the building is now too small, but as your Lordships have heard, that can be a matter for strong doubt. There are simple and obvious solutions. I shall not go through them again. To my mind the desire of Glasgow to house this new museum is completely understandable. If there is a requirement for such a museum —and many in the art world say that there is not—and if the funds can be found to build it (two very big "ifs") then let it go to Glasgow by all means or indeed to Aberdeen or Inverness or any other town or city in Scotland that would like to have it. But never, never must this be allowed to be done at the cost of the loss of the portrait gallery.
I support the noble Earl, Lord Perth, in the Question that he is asking tonight and I hope and trust that the Answer he receives will be in the affirmative.
9.19 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, in common with other Members of your Lordships' House, I would like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for introducing this Question even at this late hour. I have a further duty to perform in accordance with the traditions of your Lordships' House and that is to welcome the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield, who has just spoken. At the same time I also welcome the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart.
I was given certain printed information about the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield, which indicated that he was born on 23rd June 1899! Having had the privilege and pleasure of dining with him last night, I realised that he could not possibly have reached the tender stage of 94 years of age. I am glad to see that, on further examination of the information provided, he was born much later than that. That being so, I am glad that your Lordships' House will have the privilege and pleasure of hearing him speak again on whatever subject he
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decides to contribute. If I may say so, he made a most perceptive and balanced contribution to this important debate on the arts in Scotland.
I hold no brief for anyone on the controversy that has arisen. However, I declare a passing interest in so far as I have developed an interest in the arts, which developed from walking to and from the magnificent Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. That was where I cultivated my interest. The gallery was free, so people could simply walk in and acquire an interest in the arts. The new proposal to move the gallery to Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow is a pleasant prospect and accords with the situation of the Burrell Collection in Pollock Park which allows people to wander in as they please and to look at the various exhibits there.
I did not know what I was going to say in this debate until I heard what the noble Earl, Lord Perth, meant by the terms of his Unstarred Question in which he focuses on the proposed dismantling of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, and despite the noble Lord's efforts to prevent it happening, the debate has widened to include two further issues. The first is whether there should be a new gallery at all and the second is, if so, whether it should be in Edinburgh or Glasgow. That is an unfortunate development.
Much of what I would have said has already been said by my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg who is recognised as a connoisseur of the arts, and especially of painting. I go along with what he said. Far from dismantling anything, my noble friend did a demolition job on opposition to the principle of a new gallery and in justifying the siting of that gallery in Glasgow.
Having looked at the position, it is my view that Scotland has a unique opportunity to move into the 21st century without being held back by the past, glorious as it may have been in its time, and by parochial nostalgia for the past. I am afraid that those are great drawbacks to the Scottish character—and not only in relation to the arts. We have a terrible propensity for looking backwards over our shoulders instead of looking forwards. Some of the contributions that we have heard today exemplify that characteristic.
Throughout the world, art galleries are becoming modern, custom-built and, in the main, pleasant places to visit. They are places where information can be obtained and paintings displayed without the need for improvisation in existing buildings which, I understand, was necessary on the first two floors of the National Portrait Gallery because of the light. There is no need for improvisation in custom-built galleries. All the problems of exhibiting and preserving colour, and all the rest of it, would be eliminated by modern methods. As far as I am concerned, we should enter the new century, looking forward to a new national gallery for Scottish painting.
Scotland must not be seen to drag its heels on this matter. As was said in the previous debate, tourism is a big feature of our life nowadays. Tourists come to this country to look at the arts. The more modern the gallery and the better presented the exhibits, the more people will come to see what we have to offer.

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The noble Earl, Lord Perth, gave some attendance figures. The figures that have been produced show that between 1991 and 1992, the National Gallery increased its attendances by 43,000; the National Portrait Gallery increased its attendances by 35,000 and the Gallery of Modern Art increased its attendances by 10,000. The Glasgow Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum had just over 1 million visitors in the Year of Culture of 1990. In 1991, its attendances dropped to 893,000 and have now levelled out at a total of 868,000. The figures produced by my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg confirmed those published figures. That shows that the gallery will have a large catchment area if it is built in Glasgow. The point was made that moving the portrait gallery would destroy the essential ingredient of the gallery. That does not stand scrutiny when one looks at the trustees' proposals. Far from negating the portrait gallery's purpose, the proposed new setting will enhance it. The new gallery will continue to collect and display historical portraits.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, hoped that he could go and see authentic portraits of people from the past. If Holyrood mythology is anything to go by, it is not a good idea to rely on them. Tourists are told that the portraits of the various Scottish kings in the long dining room of Holyrood Palace were the result of the artist going down to the nearest pub and getting out someone whom he thought might resemble the king. He painted him, paid the sitter, and then went down to the pub to get another one. So it is not a good idea to rely too much upon what one sees in the gallery in relation to Scotland's past.
The noble and learned Lord raised an interesting legal point which will no doubt have to be faced by someone. I believe that he has made the appropriate inquiries. It is up to the objectors to the proposal for a new gallery to justify their objections, because, as my noble friend Lord Irvine said, there was silence for about two years while the trustees were formulating the proposal that they have now put forward. There was wide consultation, if what we are told is to be believed. My view is that if we are in favour of the principle we should get on with it.
The idea of having another commission to examine the trustees' findings, with respect to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, makes a nonsense of the whole thing. If we were to adopt that attitude, we could go on having a commission into a commission and nothing would be done. If Glasgow had taken that view on the Burrell Collection, we should never have had the Burrell Collection. We would never have had the concert hall, because the same arguments were advanced against the concert hall in Glasgow: the money would never be found. Glasgow said that the money would be found, and went ahead. The money was found and the concert hall is now one of Scotland's prize possessions.
I was in the portrait gallery on Sunday. No great, widespread outrage was exhibited there. There were about 50 people in the place spread over three floors. There were no flags or banners outside saying, "Save the portrait gallery", as we have had on other occasions. There is an exhibition there at the moment called "Dynasty", which has nothing to do with the television
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series, I am glad to say. The exhibition is housed in most unsuitable and gloomy rooms. As the noble Baroness said, such exhibitions could be set out more graphically in new and modern surroundings. There could be video presentations. If one goes to the Usher Hall for a concert one can listen beforehand to a talk on whatever is on in the hall so that one can better understand the music. There are video presentations of what the gallery is all about, and so on. We must move with the times.
The building in which the portrait gallery is housed does not attract people. It is said to be near Register House. It is, but not many people fancy the walk from Register House, over the hill, down to Queen Street and then back up with no bus service serving the gallery. The gallery is past its sell-by date. The time has come to move on.
In another connection, during a recent visit to Tripoli, I visited a custom-built gallery. I was overwhelmed by it. Any child who wants to know about the history and culture of his nation can walk into that gallery, albeit one floor is devoted to a certain individual whose name I shall not mention, and by the time he leaves he will be in no doubt as to what his nation is all about. Everything that a person could possibly want is there.
If the pessimists who do not want this step to take place succeed, it may be that at the end of the day another proposal will go ahead, leaving the National Portrait Gallery in its old Victorian building as an artistic rump while the rest of the artistic world modernises itself.
9.32 p.m.
Baroness Willoughby de Eresby: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble kinsman Lord Perth for bringing to your Lordships' notice the threat to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I realise that the subject is contentious and I crave your Lordships' indulgence. While I am grateful for having been given the opportunity of joining your Lordships' House, my reason for speaking is that I use the research facilities of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
The renown of this Victorian Gothic building rests on the integration of the historical portraits, both inside and out, with its architecture, which is somewhat like your Lordships' House. This combination of the building, with its collection of paintings and archive, which makes the portrait gallery not only one of the great cultural institutions of Scotland but also a monument to those who have played their part in making Scotland's history. Dismantling this institution would not only be cultural vandalism but an act against Scotland's historic past.
As we have heard, over the past 10 years Her Majesty's Government have spent well over £4 million. But it was spent not only on the centenary repair programme but on upgrading the exhibition rooms to a standard that will take the gallery well into the next century. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, and others mentioned how gloomy some of the portraits seem to be. But the conservation required nowadays for our early portraits does not allow for a great deal of lighting.
The figures for attendance at the three national galleries of Scotland during the past four years show

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that the annual increase has been far greater for the portrait gallery than for either of the other two galleries. Now that it has a restaurant, that increase looks set to continue. The paintings not on show are admirably accessible. For the trustees to propose closure now rather than before the start of so much renovation makes a nonsense of planning. The core services of the three national galleries in Edinburgh are presently shared. Removal of the historic portraits and the archives will inevitably lead to a duplication of services, with the attendant increases in government running costs.
Full consideration of the proposal to dismantle the portrait gallery, suggested by my noble kinsman Lord Perth, would allow for curatorial consultation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield, that, so far, that has been sadly lacking. It would allow also for public discussion. So far, no public meeting has been called for by the trustees to debate the issue. Full consideration would give the opportunity to consult those who use, visit and mind about their portrait gallery.
It would allow also for the consideration of the trustees' other proposals. Here in England there is a portrait gallery and a gallery of English art in the Tate. No one has felt the need for the Tate to encompass the portrait gallery. I should support any proposal for the provision of a gallery to show the best of the Scottish paintings now in reserve. I should welcome any suggestion which allowed some of those paintings to go to other towns as well as Glasgow. Glasgow has a claim and has a building, which is empty at present, suitable to house some of those paintings. I believe that there is a case for allowing more thought to be given to the proposals to show Scottish paintings.
If the wishes of such a great and imaginative benefactor as John Ritchie Findlay can so easily be ignored, what assurance is there for others who may wish the museums and galleries to benefit? Therefore, I hope that time may be found in which further consideration can be given to the future of the National Portrait Gallery. Above the memorial portrait of Findlay which hangs in the Scottish Portrait Gallery is an inscription which translates as, "Effort on behalf of civic good is never useless". I feel that further effort on behalf of the gallery would be of great benefit.
9.38 p.m.
Lord Quinton: My Lords, it is my great pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, on her excellent maiden speech, which is based, as mine will not be, on direct personal involvement with the institution on whose behalf she spoke. Even though I disagree with the noble Baroness, that in no way detracts from my admiration for her speech or from the great interest which I am sure noble Lords shared with me in listening to it.
I begin by using the wording of the Unstarred Question asked on our behalf by the noble Earl, Lord Perth. It refers to the "dismantling" of the National Portrait Gallery. I thought to myself that that was rather strong language to use for the proposal that is before us. Whether or not it is dismantling, it seems to be the incorporation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery into a wider and more inclusive gallery containing
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works by Scottish artists, having Scottish themes and subject matter. It is not so much dismantling as "remantling" in a substantial aesthetic fur coat.
I say that because my dictionary, in a rather pathetic state of etymological conservatism, defines "dismantling" as,
"taking off the outer protective covering".
But our ordinary sense of the word is either destroying something—that is perhaps rather a loose way of using it —or, more sensibly, taking a thing to pieces. In his speech, the noble Earl used the word "plundering". But surely that is no part of the proposal? It is not as if the contents of the National Portrait Gallery are to be scattered hither and yon. They are to be associated with other comparable and continuous bodies of art with some central Scottish reference in a larger and more inclusive gallery. The form in which the Unstarred Question is asked in a way begs the further question. It ascribes to the proposal a destructive intent which it surely does not have.
I was very interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, said in making a comparison between the proposal and the English position, which is a gallery of British art, although I fear that I shall find myself in a fearful state of complication here. As the noble Baroness said, in England at any rate there is the Tate Gallery. The left-hand and generally wonderful side of it is British art and the right-hand—and to my mind not so wonderful—side, a brickyard, broadly speaking, contains modern and international art. That is a curious, contingent and really rather quaint juxtaposition. It is certainly not ideal to have modern art lumped together with British art.
But it would seem to me to be quite intelligible to have on the right-hand side of that great building a little way beyond us along the Thames a national portrait gallery, afforced perhaps with other topographical material in the space vacated by the modern 20th century art, some of it British but most of it foreign, which would be more appropriately housed on its own.
It is not that the proposal is either to disintegrate the. Scottish National Portrait Gallery or to put it into some kind of absurd and irrelevant context. If anything, it is to put it into a context which I think would be quite appropriate for our own English National Portrait Gallery; in other words, the local one. Fine thing though that is, there is no particular reason for it to be isolated from the rest of British art, as the great bulk of its contents is work by British artists—though of course pretty well exclusively, except by some sort of accident, of British sitters or subjects.
I assume that the real argument against the continuation of the present. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, apart from this large and imaginative idea, is the deficiencies of the building itself. I did not just rely upon my own rather superficial observations but went to the length of looking around at one or two artistic guidebooks. I shall just quote a few phrases from them. The general drift is that the Scottish collection of national portraits is ill housed. One says,
"Its interior is uncongenial and dull".
It talks about its "inflexible layout". Another refers to the "lack of intimacy". To modify the cruelty of those

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observations, I should point out that throughout the remarks are accompanied by praise of the administration of the national galleries of Scotland for doing the best that they could with a building which, alas, is no longer suitable for the display of the kind of material that it contains. It clearly has a place in the hearts of many people but, as one or two other speakers have said, it is not a place which anyone would, de novo, put up for a national portrait gallery today.
There are two main duties which are incumbent upon a national gallery of art or system of art galleries. The first is to display as many of the pictures that it possesses as possible. The second is to display them to as many people as it possibly can who would like to see them or would enjoy seeing them. It is surely the case that this proposal is strictly in conformity with both of those principles. The idea is to get much more space for the display of Scottish art. In the hands of what I must call the national gallery system a large proportion of it is kept in store. This will be an opportunity for more of it to be put out.
It seems on demographic grounds—but not only on those grounds—that a siting in Glasgow would be more beneficial because Glasgow is a conurbation of 2½ million people and Edinburgh, in its glory, is more a sort of "urbation" of half a million. There is not this huge surrounding froth of population that you get in Glasgow like a great cloud over the land. That phenomenon reveals itself in the large numbers who annually visit the City Art Museum in Glasgow, which is of a greater order of magnitude than the galleries in Edinburgh.
I am an enormous admirer of the National Gallery in Edinburgh. It is my favourite, human-sized museum on this side of the Atlantic. It is comparable only to the Frick in the United States. For an idle, fairly philistine man that is the most perfect thing because one can see the whole works between one main meal and another. It is not like launching oneself into some vast aesthetic Harrods, like the Tate, where one department leads on from another. These museums are perfectly designed for the moderate appetite. It is a wonderful thing that Edinburgh has the main national gallery, with its world-class glories of Raphael and Titian, but there surely is alongside that a good case to be made for having a museum of Scottish art.
For a long time everyone on the other side of the Channel despised British art generally, both English art and Scottish art. They both have their distinctive qualities and they both have their strengths. If they are to be given a fair exposure, that must be done in the form of reasonably comprehensive and inclusive national galleries of local art. I hope that the general idea will be supported. I am sure it will make an enormous difference to the artistic potential of Scotland as a place to visit by bringing up to the surface a lot of hidden material. I believe that the gallery will be more likely to achieve the best it can by being placed where the largest number of people who are likely to visit it will be situated. Therefore I do not view the proposals of the trustees of the national galleries of Scotland with anything like the trepidation felt by the noble Earl, Lord Perth.
9.48 p.m.
Lord Balfour of Burleigh: My Lords, I wish first to associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Quinton, and others before him, in expressing appreciation of our three exceedingly good maiden speakers. I very much hope that we shall benefit from their vigour and clarity many times in the days to come. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for initiating a debate which includes three maiden speakers. That is more than I, with my limited memory, can ever remember hearing.
The proposals we are considering today are in respect of the problems the trustees perceive themselves to face. The great and growing collection they now have of 2,900 pictures makes it possible for them to show only 25 per cent. There is frequent disruption for temporary exhibitions. The number of cafés is inadequate and lecture rooms are largely non-existent. The trustees say there is a strong need—I am sure they are right—to bring modem technology to the aid of catalogues, archives and references. These, too, are great and growing problems. I must commend the trustees for the way in which they have planned to put no less than 170 pictures in Duff House near Aberdeen and about half that number in Paxton.
This success in making the great pictures accessible in a physical sense to the people in Scotland is enormously important. In my days at the Arts Council we laboured to bring the performing arts within the reach of all as far as was reasonable. However, that is difficult. I hope that, whatever may happen in terms of the provision of galleries, this goal of providing exhibitions in suitable places around the country to increase that accessibility will continue. Their solution is that, and I quote,
"A small collection of Scottish art would remain at the Mound and Belford Road to place Scottish art in an international context",
and thereby,
"to separate the vast majority of Scottish pictures from the international collections at the National Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art and to amalgamate them with the existing collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery",
in a new gallery in Glasgow.
I should like to identify myself with those who hope very much that it will be possible to make a suitable distribution of our great pictures between both Glasgow and Edinburgh to eliminate the ridiculous battle which is constantly alleged between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This morning I asked three people who are not closely associated with the issue what they understood the problem to be. They said that, from the news, it was clearly a battle between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The solution which the trustees have propounded should answer the critics who continually complain of the difficulties of seeing the Scottish school. In that respect I believe that this proposal should command our support. However, it appears to me to open up a new field of fierce and continuing controversy as to the dividing line between the top tier of Scottish painters in their international context in Edinburgh and what it will be very hard to avoid seeing as a second tier of painters in Glasgow. Views of relative merit will, as we all know, be subject to continuing change. Instead of those changes being reflected discreetly by the gallery staff,

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they will take place under the searchlight of a transfer of pictures between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and will be seen in terms of promotion and demotion. I cannot help thinking that in that way the trustees will saddle themselves and their successors with a continuing dilemma and embarrassment. No item of news could be less interesting than the promotion of Quinton and the demotion of Balfour, to give two totally fictitious examples.
I believe the portrait gallery to be unquestionably an archive. Its inclusion within a great gallery of Scottish art seems to me to present grave problems. Those have been expanded upon by several of your Lordships and I do not wish to go further than to say that I believe that priority must be given to consideration of the retention of that great portrait gallery, built only 100 years ago with such devotion for its purpose.
However, I believe that the fundamental issue is one that has not yet been mentioned. It is one of management. I was asked recently by one of those most concerned with the proposals of the trustees which we are discussing why I thought the proposals to revolutionise and re-establish the Scottish Museum attracted such slight public criticism in comparison with the torrent of criticism which they are currently facing. I believe that in solving difficult problems the first requirement is to ask the right question. I believe that that person asked the right question and we would do well to ponder why there is such a problem.
A management faced with problems which it believes needs new, bold, and imaginative solutions must develop and make clear its vision. However, that is not enough. The task then is to develop that vision in all its practical detail, with the aid of all the expertise available in the organisation. I do not say for a moment that that is easy. All those who have had to do it know how difficult it can be. It is difficult and time consuming to meet entrenched and opposed views which, however, must be persuaded. Sometimes views which at first sight seem entrenched may turn out to have merits which may modify or be incorporated into an improved vision. But the vision will be translated into successful reality only if it finally engages the loyalty and determination of the staff. I believe that when these issues are suitably rethought, public support will follow.
9.55 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble kinsman and clan chief for initiating the debate and for his able exposition of the situation. I should also like to congratulate the three maiden speakers: my noble friend Lord Bruntisfield, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, and my noble kinswoman, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, all of whom we shall look forward to hearing again. I should like to say that I had the pleasure and honour to know and love my noble kinswoman's noble parents, and how very proud they would have been to have heard her tonight. I first met my noble kinswoman at a children's dance given by other Drummond kinsmen where, for some reason never entirely explained, a horse was led around the ballroom.
On the issue of the Scottish national gallery, there are, I think, three distinct concerns: physical, financial
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and historic. I shall try to deal with each of them as briefly as possible. First, on the physical concern, we in Scotland are all very grateful to the trustees of the Scottish national galleries and to Mr. Timothy Clifford, the director, for all that they have done over the past few years to expand, renovate, refurbish and generally to bring our Scottish galleries into the eminent place which they now hold in the art world. However, like most galleries, or indeed like dragons, the trustees find themselves sitting on a hoard of treasure which, due to lack of space, they are quite unable to display—and in this case it is a hoard which increases at the rate of some 20 pictures a year. In the present Chinese astrological year of the dog, they must obviously be more dog-like and spread bones around. Two new outlets have been started in Banffshire and in Berwickshire. Pictures are loaned generously and sent on exhibition. Yet still the hoard exists. So the answer seemed to be to start a new gallery as a new Scottish gallery of national art.
Now we come to the financial question. Dr. Mackay of Pieda, who sometimes advises the Scottish Office, pointed out that the attendance rate at the Glasgow Art Gallery was considerably higher than at that in Edinburgh. With between 700,000 and 900,000 attendance figures, there is more scope for financial, profitable infrastructure—shops, restaurants and so on—to maximise income. So, on the face of it, Glasgow certainly seemed the ideal choice, particularly as it is in the European Community development zone and would therefore be eligible to pick up a Community grant of approximately £10 million towards the total cost of a new building, which would cost about £30 million, whereas Edinburgh would not. There would of course be a gap still of £20 million to be found from Government or other sources. However, by 1998 the antiquities section is due to vacate the splendid neo-Gothic Queen Street Gallery and to move to the new building for the Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street, thereby releasing the whole of the building to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. There are also the York Buildings opposite, which are Crown property, currently used for museum offices. For an expenditure of perhaps £1 million or £2 million, they would convert to another gallery to house surplus pictures. That would save the Government about £18 million in funding and would not eventually prejudice building a new gallery of Scottish art in Glasgow —still leaving the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh—when the financial climate of the country is right.
It might also be worth pointing out that the attendance figures in Glasgow, while much higher than those in Edinburgh, have dropped steadily from over a million in 1990 to somewhere over 800,000 in 1992, whereas attendance at all the national galleries in Edinburgh has been rising steadily over those three years—the attendance at the National Portrait Gallery most steeply of all. Figures are known to be misleading, but on those figures it would be possible to draw a graph where early in the next millennium the attendance figures might converge.
Finally, I come to the historic issue. With the removal of the antiquities, the great Gothic revival building designed by Sir Robert Rowland Anderson would revert

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to its original use, as envisaged by its donor, John Ritchie Findlay, proprietor of the Scotsman, in his generous gift in 1882, as a National Portrait Gallery for Scotland. His descendants and heirs have been in touch with me and have told me not only of their own pride in their great-grandfather's gift to Scotland, but also of his original intention that it should be a national portrait gallery to house the likenesses of the great men and women who have served Scotland throughout her history. They are deeply distressed and concerned at the suggestion that these pictures should be dispersed and the building sold or put to other use.
The criterion for accepting the pictures was not originally for their artistic merit, as Mr. Basil Skinner, a former deputy director curator, has pointed out, but for the historic importance of the people they represented. The gallery was established with its own directors and staff and an advisory committee. In the early 1980s, the advisory committee was abolished and the criterion for acceptance enlarged, with portraits of living people becoming eligible and also historical landscapes which have since changed.
It seems to run counter to the intentions of the original benefactor that the collection should be divorced not only from its original custom-built magnificent building with its pillared hall and its mural of Bannockburn, but also from the capital of Scotland.
I am aware that Perth, Stirling, Scone and Dunfermline can all lay claim to that distinction, or indeed, if one went back to Pictish times, Abernethy. But certainly since the reign of James IV, Edinburgh has generally been recognised as the capital. The only other national portrait galleries in the world are situated in London, Dublin and Washington, D.C. There is also a new one, again largely funded by a generous private donor, to be opened in Canberra, Australia, in March. I am sure that there would be a tremendous outcry should anyone try to transfer them, say, to Manchester, Cork or Chicago.
Bearing all these points in mind and the very considerable public disquiet over the matter, I would support my noble kinsman and clan chief's suggestion of a commission appointed by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to look into the whole matter.
10.2 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I feel tonight like the Irishman as he approached the fracas outside the Dog and Duck and said: "Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?"
As the merest of mere Welshmen, I should not have the lightest velleity, let alone an opinion, as to whether the next national Scottish museum should be in Edinburgh or Glasgow. However, as the Vice-Chairman of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London, perhaps it might be helpful if I were to offer a word or two about our sister institution, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
As has been said, there are very few national portrait galleries in the world. The American in Washington was founded as late as 1962, the Australian in Canberra is
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about to open this year. The Scottish is by far the most important, after London (founded in 1856) and is at present properly housed in a neo-Venetian palace in Queen Street, Edinburgh, built by Sir Rowland Anderson at the expense of J.R. Findlay, the then owner of the Scotsman, who dedicated its use to:
"the illustration of Scottish history".
We do not seek to interfere in fellow trustees' affairs in any way and we would wish to continue the present very amicable relationship with our Scottish colleagues regarding purchases, exhibitions and research wherever the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is situated; but we would stress, first, the historical significance of the collection, illustrating the annals of a very important country; secondly, our regret if its excellent work, especially its basis in the biographical study of eminent Scots, were to be totally submerged in a larger institution in which the paramount concern was art rather than history; and, thirdly, our worry as to what would happen in a gallery of Scottish art to the many magnificent portraits by non-Scottish artists like Batoni, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Zoffany. If, as I hear, the present proposals reassure us on these three points, it would give us, in the words of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer,
"a happy issue out of all our afflictions".
It is in the public interest to note that half of the Queen Street building devoted to Scottish antiquities will be vacated in 1998 when the collection of Scottish antiquities is transferred to the grand new building in Chambers Street, and that no future use for the premises has been agreed. That building is important. Secondly, we understand that figures in the region of £20 million to £30 million have been suggested for the erection of a new gallery on a greenfield site, and we would advise that this may well be an underestimate and suggest that, first, when a brief and designs were prepared in 1987 for a possible move of the London NPG to purpose-built premises in Docklands—we did not do it in the end—the estimated cost was £70 million. Secondly, when a brief and designs were prepared in 1988 for the demolition of the London NPG's subsequently acquired Orange Street buildings for the construction of purpose-built 20th century galleries with an archive housed beneath, the estimated cost then was over £30 million.
National portrait galleries are essentially Victorian creations: halls of fame with a strong educative and moral purpose. In our own case, the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, reflected those Victorian values—"back to basics"—when he stated:
"There cannot, I feel convinced, be a greater incentive to mental exertion, to noble actions, to good conduct on the part of the living, than for them to see before them the features of those who have done things which are worthy of our admiration".
It was in this spirit that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery was born in 1882 and it is significant that it was Thomas Carlyle, the greatest historian of the age, who was its midwife. But it should not be thought that the trustees are always utterly solemn. I recall that at a meeting of the London NPG some years ago the trustees were offered free a drawing of Miss Christine Keeler by Mr. Stephen Ward. One crusty old trustee rose up quivering with rage and said, "We cannot have that

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woman on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery." "Why not?" said another one from a sedentary position, "We have got Nell Gwynne." The offer was accepted.
There have been many other ways in which the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has developed since its foundation. The great reference archive, established as long ago as the 1930s, now comprises tens of thousands of photographs of Scotsmen and women of all periods. It has become, as we have heard, a most important facility for historical and cultural research. The more recently founded Scottish Photography Archive, based on the collection of portrait photographs by the pioneers D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson, is equally important. It has grown rapidly to embrace every type of subject matter to become a substantial collection of international significance, sending out exhibitions to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. All these developments and many others have extended the scope of the portrait gallery while providing the public with services and expertise unavailable elsewhere in the world.
The National Portrait Gallery in London would fervently hope that in this exciting new development the identity of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery would not be subsumed or lost. We would like to think that half a dozen or so galleries would still be identified as portrait galleries; that exhibitions of portraits, photographs, likenesses of all kinds, would continue at the high standard they have always achieved; that the very valuable archive would maintain an identity, and that the expertise of the staff would be retained. In that hope we send our best wishes to the national galleries of Scotland and to this brave new venture: lang may its lum reek !
10.10 p.m.
Earl Haig: My Lords, I believe the noble Earl, Lord Perth, is right to table this Question for the Government. The preservation of the portrait gallery in Queen Street is one of the main responsibilities of the trustees of the National Galleries. It has been handed down to them since the time of the Society of Antiquities under Lord Buchan, forbear of the noble Earl who is to speak next, and since the time of John Ritchie Findlay, who helped to build the gallery in Queen Street.
Whatever the plans being made by the trustees may he, they should not include the moving of the portrait gallery to Glasgow. As the noble Earl suggests, the least that should happen is for more time to be given to consideration of the plan. The decision to move the portrait gallery arose as part of a package to establish a gallery of Scottish art in Glasgow. That will enable the trustees to exhibit large numbers of Scottish works in the collection which cannot be seen due to lack of space, and to reveal the greatness of the Scottish School.
One of the paramount objectives of trustees over the years has been to show Scottish work of high quality in an international company. Providing that objective is retained and the quality and character of the display in the National Gallery is maintained, the trustees are justified in considering a separate gallery for some of the overflow of Scottish works, if necessary in Glasgow.
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Having said that, I believe the current plan for a gallery of Scottish art in Glasgow has been inflated and is overambitious.
It is perhaps right to consider the historical justification. We have had some magnificent painters and architects who found their inspiration not only in Scotland, but in France, Italy, Germany and Holland. It would be wrong to over emphasise the Scottish Border as an artistic frontier; separation would not apply since: the days of the Enlightenment. Much as I would. welcome the work of Scottish artists being put more on the map, the effect of present proposals would weaken the presentation of Scottish art in Scotland. It would jeopardise the very good national gallery set-up in Edinburgh; it would use up some of the money needed for the proper management of the national galleries and perhaps some of the purchase grants as well. The plan to indulge in an expensive new gallery would bring no benefit to the creative artists, who are earning little, and no benefit to the commercial galleries, which are under financial strain.
I am afraid that some of my remarks may sound blunt; but the needs of the gallery must transcend personal feelings. However, I congratulate the director, Timothy Clifford—who I have seen somewhere in this building—on his birthday today.
I confess that the expansionist policies of the trustees fill me with alarm. They run counter to the way things were managed in the days when I was a trustee under the chairmanship of the late Lord Crawford. In those days we had a strong chairman who was an expert in all things pertaining to works of art. The members of the board of trustees, were selected because of their knowledge and expertise in the arts; they were closely in touch with the keepers of the different galleries and with developments in each gallery through a system of advisory committees for each of them.
For a time I was chairman of the advisory committee for the National Portrait Gallery and served on the management committee of the Gallery of Modern Art during its first years. I mention this because, sadly, since the time when the present director, Tim Clifford, took over in 1986, these advisory committees have been scrapped, with the controls centred on one board to whose meetings the keepers are given only rare admittance. As a result, decisions have been made which do not have the support of the staff.
Very little time has been given for the exploration of matters concerning the sale of the portrait gallery, the possibility of using the whole gallery after the departure of the museum of antiquities, its preservation as an historical monument, or ways and means of raising the large sums of money which would be needed to build a new gallery and to cover the cost of running and servicing it. Although the trustees maintain that proper consultation was carried out and that a number of luminaries were written to, I very much doubt whether their policies are in line with the views of an overwhelming number of members of artistic and cultural circles in Scotland. This was clearly demonstrated when more than a thousand people attended a public rally at the Edinburgh College of Art last week.

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The issue was quite clear. For the people of Edinburgh and from many corners of Scotland the works of art hanging in their allotted places on the walls of the portrait gallery and the national gallery are occupying places deep in their hearts and in their psyches. To move those works would leave these people with the sense of having been robbed. This feeling transcends the rivalries between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the status of one city as against the other.
I believe that whatever the rights and wrongs of a gallery of Scottish art may be—and there are serious doubts over the wisdom of separating the native school from the European school—quite apart from that, the overriding view of very large numbers of Scottish men and women is against the move of the portrait gallery to Glasgow—a move which would alienate all those who cherish and value the sandstone edifice in Queen Street, a monument which fits so well with the castle, the Scottish National War Memorial and the other historic buildings in the city. In my view the present plans should be examined by some independent board of inquiry set up by the Secretary of State for Scotland. All the options and locations should be considered by a small committee composed of members expert in the visual arts or in architecture.
The very real difficulties over space facing the trustees should be considered in the context both of Edinburgh and Glasgow locations. For instance, in Edinburgh, the York Buildings opposite the portrait gallery in Queen Street might be re-adapted. A new gallery might be built opposite the modern gallery in Belford Road. With regard to cost, the funding required should not be so prohibitive as to delay the implementation of plans into the next century.
Other questions include whether to limit the works in the new gallery to Scottish works only. With regard to the pictures, there are a number of ways to shuffle the pack. The first step might be to decide which works should be excluded from the shuffling on grounds of their significance as part of the national collection either in the portrait gallery, the national gallery or the gallery of modern art. The next step might be to select from the pack to be shuffled those paintings, drawings and water-colours which are of real interest and which are worthy of inclusion in the new gallery. These might include some of the Wilkies and Mactaggarts, the Glasgow Boys, some of the Colourists, something of Mackintosh and painters as late as Gillies and Maxwell. There is a large collection of Victorian art and design which could form a nucleus for the new gallery. One final option: might Glasgow be willing to fund the new gallery on the understanding that national gallery pictures would be lent to it?
It is because there are many avenues still to explore that I support the noble Earl, Lord Perth, in his Question tonight.
10.20 p.m.
The Earl of Buchan: My Lords, I speak to your Lordships' House late at night and of necessity, briefly, in support of my noble friend Lord Perth, on the subject of the dismantling of the Scottish National Portrait
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Gallery. All right-thinking Scots everywhere will be grateful to the noble Earl for raising this matter at the 11th hour.
As far as maiden speeches are concerned, I feel not unlike the character in "The Importance of Being Earnest". To congratulate on one may be regarded as good fortune, but to have three to do looks like carelessness. I congratulate my noble and learned friend Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, on his maiden speech. To those who wish to save the National Portrait Gallery, his legal point is a very welcome one. As far as the noble Lord, Lord Bruntisfield, is concerned, he is too modest about his speaking ability. He has struck right home with the point about consultation of which there has been none on this subject. I congratulate him both on his speech and on raising that point.
As regards the noble Baroness, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, let not noble Lords think that this is a Drummond monopoly. I myself can claim some distant kinship with the noble Baroness. I congratulate her on her eloquent and detailed defence of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery which is welcome as a counter to certain airy-fairy remarks about Libyan art galleries.
The trouble with speaking late in your Lordships' House is that noble Lords have said it all already. But I would like to make one particular point on the so-called Edinburgh versus Glasgow squabble which does not exist in my mind. However, it is fair to point out that on 15th January, in the Herald, there was a facile and, I hope, premature piece of Glaswegian triumphalism on this subject, both unseemly and unnecessary in my view. On the subject of Glasgow and its existing art galleries, be careful Glasgow: this is what can happen in your fair city.
Intending to visit the Burrell gallery with my family, I arrived at Queen Street station. A noble Lord has already mentioned Queen Street station which, twice in one debate, must be something of a record again. Not knowing my way to the Burrell gallery, I went up to a police sergeant who was accompanied by a constable and his dog—both officers in full uniform—and asked the sergeant the quickest and cheapest way to the Burrell art gallery. Eventually I deciphered what he meant to say—a brusque and brief answer, "never heard of it". I left uninformed and wondered whether I should have put the request to the dog.
Now to the main issue. I have to cover very briefly some of the points already made. Scotland's capital city has a greatly successful National Portrait Gallery. It is a unique building on which a large sum has recently been spent. It has the well-known portraits already mentioned (Raeburn, Ramsay, Wilkie, etc.). It has a helpful and skilful staff. It has an excellent reference library which I know well because I use it. It has obviously got room to expand and it is possible to argue that it could easily move into the Society of Antiquities when it moves out.
My own interest in this has been mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Haig. It was in fact the 11th Earl of Buchan who founded the Society of Antiquities at the end of the 18th century. It was from this that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery grew. That is a fact which noble Lords probably know. In 1879 the Laing bequest of 26 portraits formed the basis of the Scottish National

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Portrait Gallery collection. The gallery does not stand on its own. As noble Lords have mentioned already, it is close to the National Library, the Record Office and the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments. That is obviously the greatest help to researchers, visitors, international scholars and the like. Why on earth destroy that invaluable national and artistic asset, the envy of the civilised world, and one of the few such galleries in the world? Let other galleries he built anywhere, but please do not dismantle the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
What can be done about this? Perhaps I can ask the Minister to convey to the Secretary of State for Scotland our feeling that we are fortunate at this time to have such a greatly respected and highly successful Secretary of State. Perhaps I may dwell on some of his recent achievements. They include the White Paper on Scotland's position in the United Kingdom and the local government changes. They are great achievements although they may be slightly controversial. Under his regime, he has managed to reduce unemployment in Scotland and, most important of all, the crime figures for Scotland are improving. Hence we have the popular saying, "Where Lang leads today, Clinton would like to follow". Therefore, how can we not be confident that he will make the right decision over the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which is to reconsider the whole matter and abandon the decision that was made by the trustees, apparently on behalf of Scotland, but widely believed to he decided by only a very narrow majority?
10.26 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, we have had an incredibly interesting debate which has shown that almost all those who have spoken have an intimate knowledge of Scottish art. It is not something in which I claim to be an expert, although I enjoy galleries and visit them frequently.
We have heard three maiden speeches today, which is a tribute to the subject that we are discussing. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, made an interesting and highly provocative speech in which he suggested that perhaps we are wasting our time and that a new site may need to be publicly agreed before the Scottish National Portrait Gallery can be moved. If my note of his speech is correct, I am sure that it was through inadvertence that he made the same mistake as almost every other noble Lord who has spoken against the idea of the new gallery when he suggested that the old gallery would be destroyed. That has never been on the cards as far as I have been able to gather and, like most other noble Lords, I have read and looked at the figures until I am almost blind.
It is suggested that, wherever it is located, the new gallery of Scottish art will have 2,597 square metres of gallery space, which would comprise 470 square metres in the National Gallery's new wing and 1,185 square metres in the portrait gallery. The existing size of the Findlay building, which the portrait gallery shares with the National Museum, is only 1,980 square metres. In addition to greater space for exhibiting works of art, the proposed gallery of Scottish art will provide the following new or enlarged facilities: a lecture theatre,
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conference suites, an artists' studio, improved restaurants, improved bookshops and an integrated library of Scottish art.
I have never tried to hide the fact that I am completely a Glasgow person—I could not. I am fond of Edinburgh and enjoy visiting it, but I like getting the train back to Glasgow.
The debate has reminded me that about 20 years ago, as a junior Minister at the Ministry of Transport, I was involved in a similar controversy. British Rail decided that certain functions it had inherited or started had nothing to do with running a railway. One of them was the Railway Museum at Clapham. The suggestion was that it should be given to the Department of Education and Science, which should find another home for it. British Rail was helpful and provided the Roundhouse in York, which was the perfect location for a railway museum. But when the London establishment heard that it was going to lose the Railway Museum we had much the same reaction as we are getting here tonight. I do not believe that the people involved were anti-anything, they just did not want to lose something they already had.
Many meetings were held. Of the people I met while discussing the proposal, I believe that John Betjeman was the only one who had been to the Transport Museum at Clapham. It was a most unsuitable place for a Transport Museum. Access to it was not easy.
I do not want to be too conspiratorial, but the attendance figures for the museum at Clapham were less than for the small, old colliery museum in York. Lo and behold, about a month later and before the final decision was made, one of the most popular television shows on the air at that time did a show from the Railway Museum at Clapham. People were shown around all the sights, and that must have been worth a great deal of money to the museum. I merely give that example to illustrate that people do not like change. Edinburgh people have the portrait gallery and they do not want it to move.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding. There is no intention, and there never has been, to destroy the collection. I gave the figures from the Pieda Report of the independent consultants. The noble Earl always does things with such gallantry and gentleness that he is extremely persuasive, but there is no suggestion that the National Portrait Gallery will be destroyed. That is a travesty. The trustees have made it plain that the new National Gallery of Scottish Art will have a portrait division which will continue all the functions—archival, research, and everything else—carried out by the existing National Portrait Gallery.
The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, argued that the portraits should remain in Edinburgh, but I understand that the portraits in the collection represent the core of Scotland's contribution to art. I understand that in this sphere we have made a genuine contribution to international and European art. So one cannot be in favour of the new National Gallery of Scottish Art but say that it should exclude the Scottish portraits. Those more versed in this matter than I am may be able to confirm that that is the position. To argue that the portraits must remain in Edinburgh is to say that the

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whole gallery must remain there, and that the new gallery should not be established. That is the impression that I have gained from the discussions.
My reasons for believing that we should move the gallery have already been given tonight. I believe that the area covered by Glasgow will mean that many more Scots will see the collection. The attendance at the Kelvingrove gallery is two to two-and-a-half times greater than the attendance at the Edinburgh galleries. If the collection is as important as people say, I want the ordinary people of Scotland to be able to see it.
I noticed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, register the point about the Burrell collection. That matter should be cleared up right away. The Burrell collection presented an extremely difficult legal situation that Glasgow spent years trying to break. It was a silly idea and ties up with the other silly idea that the Burrell collection should be 28 miles from Glasgow and four miles from Killearn. I cannot see many people going out there on a regular basis.
I wish to make one other point in favour of reconsideration of the proposal. It was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe. Perhaps the gallery that has been suggested is a little grandiose. There is another building in Glasgow which, for other reasons, I prefer should be used. It is the old Sheriff's Court building, which is massive and attractive. More important is the fact that it is right in the heart of the merchant city. It would be available and within walking distance—there would be no need to make a journey out to Kelvingrove Park. I know that the suggestion is controversial, but the building is suitable unless another big gallery is built in Edinburgh, the prospect of which is doubtful. In many ways Edinburgh has a number of attractions, some of which I hope Glasgow can have.
The present gallery is far too small. The idea is that we should have the new Scottish gallery in Glasgow at Kelvingrove but it could be in the Sheriff Court. I am sure that the two Ministers on the Front Bench know the court building well and can tell the House whether, refurbished, it would be a satisfactory building.
This has been an extremely interesting debate. Inevitably, the arguments became repetitious. Indeed, most of what I said has already been said several times. I have enjoyed the debate and I hope that it has gone some way towards clearing up the feelings in Scotland about the gallery.
10.38 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, I am sure that the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, whose Question has given us the opportunity to discuss the future of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery against the background of the proposal by the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland to establish a new national gallery of Scottish art. I pay tribute to the noble Earl for his long-standing and valuable contribution to the cultural life of Scotland. As one who must regularly
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pass through Perthshire, the contribution of no fewer than three Drummonds causes me some trepidation because I must reply to the debate.
I add my congratulations to those who made their maiden speeches tonight. I share membership of the Faculty of Advocates with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart. He was a distinguished President of the European Court of Justice. As your Lordships will have observed, he wears his legal erudition lightly, but that is not at the expense of either the accuracy of his legal analysis or, possibly regrettably for me, the precision of his questions.
I extend my congratulations also to my noble friend Lord Bruntisfield on his contribution. I appreciate that he has a passion and affection for the Scottish Portrait Gallery. That showed itself clearly, as it did in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Willoughby. She demonstrated that she is immensely knowledgeable on this subject and made an extremely erudite contribution to the debate. In the light of the warmth with which all those contributions were received, I hope that those speakers will be encouraged to participate in your Lordships' debates in the future.
Noble Lords have mentioned the affection and admiration in which the National Portrait Gallery is held in many quarters. I do not have time this evening to rehearse the origins and history of the portrait gallery, but I cannot let the occasion pass without acknowledging the debt we owe to its founder, John Ritchie Findlay. Without his persistence and generosity, a well-loved and respected national institution might never have taken shape. It is a fitting tribute that the home of the National Portrait Gallery bears his name to this day. As my noble friend Lady Strange emphasised, his contribution was extremely important and I note what she said in relaying the views of Findlay's successors.
I should emphasise at once that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has not yet received fully developed and costed proposals from the trustees. I am sure your Lordships will acknowledge that it would be inappropriate for him to express a view on them in advance of that. The noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, gave figures as to possible attendances at a new gallery in Glasgow, the space available elsewhere in Scotland and what is needed. I cannot confirm or refute the noble Lord's figures until that appraisal has been considered. But of course my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will consider very carefully all aspects of the proposals when he receives them.
In the meantime, we very much welcome the wide debate which is now taking place on the various issues. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, that he is very welcome to join in that debate. I have no doubt that the trustees of the national galleries will have been reassured by the firm, warm support which they received from the noble Lords, Lord Irvine of Lairg and Lord Macaulay of Bragar. I suppose that the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, was to be expected to offer his support.
There was an interesting development. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, whose absence we understand, offered an altered concept; namely, the preservation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

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Nevertheless, he indicated his support for the provision of a new gallery. As I understand it, that proposal was supported by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyhorn.
I know that my right honourable friend is keen to have your Lordships' contributions and this evening's debate affords the Government the opportunity to set out a number of relevant factors that should be taken into account. The Government have kept an open mind on the proposal to establish a gallery of Scottish art from the outset when in 1991 the Secretary of State agreed to the use of funds by the trustees to carry out a comprehensive investigation and appraisal.
At the same time my right honourable friend has always made it clear that the Government were not committed to providing the funding for the project; and last autumn he confirmed again to the trustees before they announced their proposals that there is no question of government funding for a new gallery for the foreseeable future. That decision was made in the light of public expenditure constraints and the demands of other Scottish Office spending programmes such as health, education and housing over the next few years. With respect to my noble friend Lord Renton, perhaps I may say that I do not think that it can be alleged that the trustees or the director have at any time sought to bounce the Secretary of State for Scotland into a significant item of capital expenditure. The appraisal that I understand is to be put before the Secretary of State is not based on the assumption of a significant public contribution. I see that my noble friend Lord Renton wishes to respond. I give way.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I am much obliged. Perhaps I may make so bold as to correct my noble and learned friend. I did not suggest, either by implication or expressly, that that was what the trustees were trying to do. I said that if the conclusion was reached that public money was needed, we should, this time, be very careful before spending it.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, if that is my noble friend's point, I am glad that he took the opportunity to correct the position.
Although that position had to be made clear to the trustees, I can assure the House that it does not reflect any disregard for the arts in Scotland. On the contrary, the Government's record in recent years of promoting and funding the arts in Scotland is outstanding. My right honourable friend has allocated some £60 million this year to those arts and cultural organisations for which he is directly responsible. The overall provision is set to increase in 1994–95 when my right honourable friend assumes responsibility for the Scottish Arts Council which has been allocated nearly £24 million.
The Government's record on funding capital projects for the cultural heritage is particularly good. Since the mid-1980s, we have provided £25 million for the three national institutions' major building projects and a further £55 million is programmed for the next five years, including the cost of constructing the new Museum of Scotland. The city of Glasgow has had a share too: we should not forget that the Government
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contributed over £9 million in the early 1980s towards the construction costs of the home of the Burrell Collection.
From the start, the Secretary of State has not been under any illusion about the magnitude of the task which the trustees set themselves. It was made clear to the national galleries that they would have to develop a sound case for the concept of a gallery of Scottish art and undertake, in investment terms, a comprehensive appraisal of the available options.
It was also stressed that the trustees would have to consider carefully the effect of their proposals on the existing grouping of the national galleries' collections and the buildings in which they are currently house—including, of course, the National Portrait Gallery.
The trustees' proposals have been the subject of some small criticism in Scotland, but we should not overlook the dedication with which they fulfil the onerous task of looking after the national galleries on our behalf. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour, rightly paid tribute to them for their efforts. Under their recent stewardship, the galleries mounted an exciting programme of exhibitions, and visitor numbers have increased from 510,000 in 1988 to nearly 750,000 in 1993, an increase of more than 45 per cent.
The trustees are indeed to be congratulated on their initiative in exploring how and where more of the national galleries' Scottish collections could be displayed. They, with the director of the galleries, have put a great deal of thought, over a long period of time, into the proposals that they have now announced.
There was some reference made during the debate to the meeting held last week in Edinburgh which must have been a difficult one. I think that we ought to have some regard for the director for having the courage of his convictions and being prepared to attend the meeting in the face of such overt hostility. However, having said that, I can assure the House that once the appraisal has been received by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State he will certainly wish to take a little time to pay close attention to what the trustees say in their submission.
No one should be in any doubt that, while it is for the trustees to develop and put forward their proposals, the final decision on any new gallery is for the Secretary of State for Scotland. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Buchan, is thereby assured.
The Secretary of State has certain statutory and public expenditure responsibilities to observe and I shall turn to those matters in a minute. I can assure the House, however, that in examining the trustees' proposals my right honourable friend will also take full account of the very many representations which he continues to receive from a wide range of interested individuals and organisations on such matters as the case for a gallery of Scottish art, the future of the National Portrait Gallery and the trustees' preference for locating any new gallery in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. As I have already said, we have not yet received the trustees' detailed proposals and we are bound to keep an open mind on the various issues until their detailed submission is available.
Perhaps it would be helpful, however, if I said something about the location issue, if only because the

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trustees' announcement of their preference has aroused considerable interest. I should make it clear that the possible establishment of a new gallery is of national significance, and it is not a matter of contention between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for emphasising that that was the proper basis on which this matter should be examined.
I should also wish to emphasise that the Government have as yet formed no view on the location of any new gallery. Indeed the present position on this has rather put the cart before the horse. The soundness of the case for a new gallery and the economic and funding issues are of prime importance: the location then has to be supported by the outcome of the trustees' formal appraisal of the options.
I hope your Lordships would find it helpful, and reassuring, to have some explanation of my right honourable friend's responsibilities in relation to these matters. Although he has ruled out government funding for the project, the Secretary of State has recognised that the trustees may wish to seek funds from other sources. Even so, under the conditions attached to the payment of grant-in-aid to the National Galleries set out in a financial memorandum, the trustees are still required to submit their proposals to the Secretary of State for consideration.
In addition, in the case of the proposed national gallery of Scottish art, my right honourable friend would have to take into account a number of statutory provisions, particularly certain provisions in the National Galleries of Scotland Act 1906. Firstly, under Section 4A(4) of that Act, the trustees would require the approval of the Secretary of State to acquire land for a new gallery, even if the land were provided free.
But the most important of these statutory provisions relate to the National Portrait Gallery. Section 7 of the Act provides that the National Portrait Gallery building is vested in the Secretary of State for the purposes for which it was held when the Act was passed—that is, in 1906. I would respectfully agree with the view of the
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noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, that it follows that Section 7 would have to be amended if those purposes were to be changed, for example, by the building ceasing to be used as a National Portrait Gallery.
In addition, my right honourable friend would have to make a statutory order under Section 2 of the Act to prescribe a new gallery as part of the "National Galleries of Scotland" as defined in that Act, and to de-prescribe the existing National Portrait Gallery. It will, therefore, be clear to your Lordships that no fundamental changes can be made to the current arrangements relating to the National Portrait Gallery without the approval of the Secretary of State and, should he wish to take that step, without the agreement of both Houses of Parliament. However, such measures would clearly be some way down the road.
The crucial step now is the submission of the trustees' proposals and any other suggestions from them to my right honourable friend for consideration. I reiterate that he has an open mind and that he welcomes the public debate on this matter. I know that he will study with great care the thoughtful and deeply held views of this House from the views of the noble Earl, Lord Haig, that the Glasgow proposal is over-ambitious, to the warm support given it by my noble friend Lord Quinton.
I am sure that your Lordships will have listened carefully to the assurances that I have given on behalf of the Secretary of State for Scotland and the further safeguards afforded by the provisions of the 1906 Act. I hope that your Lordships will therefore be able to accept the Government's view that at this time a public inquiry into the future of the National Portrait Gallery would be inappropriate.
In closing perhaps I may indicate to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, our thanks for providing the opportunity for this relatively short but nevertheless important debate on a matter which has aroused great interest throughout Scotland.
House adjourned at five minutes before eleven o'clock.

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