Sitting of 24 May 1994

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS
  PRIVATE BUSINESS
    RIVER CALDER (WELBECK SITE) BILL [Lords]
    Read a Second time, and committed.
Oral Answers to Questions
  HEALTH

    Care in the Community
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the progress of care in the community; and if she will make a statement.
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mrs. Virginia Bottomley): The community care reforms have got off to a good start, a view confirmed not least by the Association of Directors of Social Services—who are responsible for implementing them—and by the Audit Commission. I am confident that the foundations have been laid for a system providing quality, diversity and choice for users and carers. In implementing care in the community, we must be sure that the most vulnerable patients, especially those who are severely mentally ill, are cared for properly. That is why I am introducing a series of measures, including supervision registers and the proposed new power of supervised discharge, to protect both patients and the public.
    Mr. Greenway: Is not it typical of this Government that they should put the vulnerable first? Will my right hon. Friend assure me that under no circumstances will dangerous people be released from psychiatric care into the community, where they could be a threat to others? Will she also reassure all elderly people that they will always have the hospital and medical treatment that they need, regardless of their age?
    Mrs. Bottomley: We recently issued guidance on the discharge of patients from psychiatric hospitals. Patients should not be discharged unless or until it is safe to discharge them. We are also introducing supervision registers and hope to introduce the power of supervised discharge. No one wants to turn back the clock to the old days of incarceration in isolated communities, but there are psychiatric patients who need active support in the community; they need resources targeted on them and we seek to achieve that. My hon. Friend will be well aware that his constituents, like mine, have increased their life expectancy by another two years in the past 10 years. Some
    166
    16 per cent. of the population are over 65, and 40 per cent. of the health budget is spent on them—and quite rightly too.
    Mr. Hinchliffe: Is the Secretary of State aware of the very real fears among many people concerned with community care over the Government's proposals to reduce the number of inspections of care and nursing homes, bearing in mind the circumstances of the recent case of a woman in a private nursing home in Dulwich who died with ulcers which had live maggots on them at the time of death? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh No."] Conservative Members may shout, but in my constituency an elderly lady choked to death in a private care home simply because the staff had no basic first aid training. In view of those cases, is not it nonsensical to move towards reducing inspections? Should not we be increasing them instead?
    Mrs. Bottomley: Care in the community provides support for some of the most frail and vulnerable. They need access to complaints procedures and confidence in the places where they live. However, there is a difference between inspections satisfying standards of care and petty bureaucracy and interference. Many of my hon. Friends report from their constituencies concerns that left-wing authorities have been hostile to the private and independent sectors. We want to reduce some of the petty regulation. None of that should undermine the safety of the individuals concerned.
    Mr. Barry Field: Has my right hon. Friend seen the threatening letter that the Liberal Democrat-controlled Isle of Wight county council sent to pensioners about care in the community, despite the fact that the Government gave the council an additional £1 million? Does not that have more to do with political ambition than with providing care in the community?
    Mrs. Bottomley: My hon. Friend, who is a great champion of the Isle of Wight, is absolutely right. Care in the community has been formidably generously funded.
    Madam Speaker: Question 2. Mr. Dalyell.
    Mrs. Bottomley: May I finish my answer, Madam Speaker?
    Madam Speaker: I thought that the right hon. Lady had finished. We seem to have made a very bad start with questions today. I hope that hon. Members will be more brisk from now on. Of course the right hon. Lady must finish what she has to say.
    Mrs. Bottomley: I know the Liberals only too well in the Isle of Wight, as does my hon. Friend. I also know the Liberals in Portsmouth, who circulated scare stories about pensioners paying prescription charges. That is par for the course. We get on and deliver the policies and fund them fairly.

    Human Foetus Research
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has had from the Research Defence Society about her policy in relation to research on the human foetus.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville): I have received no such representations.
    Mr. Dalyell: How come that in January, Ministers welcomed the public consultation that was initiated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority on donated ovarian tissue, yet come April, they agreed to an amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight), apparently drafted in their Department, to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, which completely pre-empted what they had said back in January? What happened to change their minds between January and April?
    Mr. Sackville: May I make it absolutely clear to the House that the drafting help that was afforded to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) was simply to put her amendment in order? It was the subject of a free vote in the House of Commons and, in the event, it went through on the nod. Every single hon. Member was able to vote entirely according to his or her conscience.
    Dame Jill Knight: Is my hon. Friend aware that I was in touch this morning with the Research Defence Society, with which I have some connections? The society assured me that it has absolutely nothing to say about the matter, and that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) had been misinformed. The society exists to protect research against animal liberation groups and is absolutely nothing to do with the preservation of human fertilisation from the eggs of aborted foetuses.
    Mr. Sackville: While I am aware of the continuing and consistent interest in research of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), I am also aware of the accuracy of what my hon. Friend has said.

    Health Service Staff
    Mr. Win Griffiths: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate she has made of the effect of this year's pay award on the number of health service staff employed by trusts and health authorities.
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: None. The pay award is covered by efficiency savings. The estimate that we have made is that by using efficiently the extra £1.6 billion provided for the National Health Service this year, a further 4 per cent. of patients will be treated.
    Mr. Griffiths: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer; I hope that it turns out to be true. If it is, I ask her to speak to the Secretary of State for Wales, because the chairman of the trust in my constituency, which is in Wales, has written on behalf of all the other trusts to tell him that the provision made for funding in Wales will result in cuts in staff and services to patients. Will she please give him advice on how to achieve the targets about which she has just told me?
    Mrs. Bottomley: I have frequent discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales. Both of us are determined to put patients first and to use the resources that the taxpayer gives to the health service to provide an ever higher quality and quantity of care. That is taking place in Wales, and in England, too.
    Mr. Rowe: Is my right hon. Friend aware that one of the inhibitions to the continuing astonishing success of the trusts is the continuation of the Whitley national scales?
    168
    Will she give the House some assurance that that shadow, which hangs over all the negotiations conducted by trusts, will soon be looked at again?
    Mrs. Bottomley: One of the most important freedoms that NHS trusts have is the ability to devolve pay and negotiations. Pay is the central cost in the NHS, and inflexible, rigid patterns, much loved by the Labour party—the poodle of the public sector unions—is an inhibition to our using our staff as flexibly and effectively as we can for patients.

    Community Care
    Mr. Ronnie Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she last met representatives of the local authority associations to discuss community care changes.
    Mr. Heppell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she last met the Carers National Association to discuss the community care changes.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Bowis): I frequently meet the local authority associations and the Carers National Association to discuss a range of issues including community care.
    Mr. Campbell: When the Minister next meets the association, will he take up the case of community care for drug abusers? Is he aware that five teenagers in my constituency have died over the past two years, four of them in the past six months? People are beginning to feel that care in the community is not quite working. Although some money has been put into it, we feel that those teenagers died without even getting to the first stage of care in the community. Will the hon. Gentleman call for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding their deaths?
    Mr. Bowis: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, from his experience in Northumberland, will acknowledge that the inspectors of social services have recorded that a very good start has been made there. That is a great tribute to Northumberland's director of social services.
    The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to one particular point about young people. I am aware of the problem affecting them—it is solvent abuse. I am also aware, as he is, that a special group has been set up to look into the problem. It will report to the health authorities, which can then take appropriate action.
    Mr. Heppell: Does the Minister accept that carers of people with psychiatric disabilities need respite as much as, if not more than, other carers? How does he account for the fact that although 25,000 psychiatric beds have been lost from hospitals, only 9,000 additional places have been provided in day centres? Why is there such a disparity?
    Mr. Bowis: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point and I fully accept that carers need a break. The whole House would pay tribute to the contribution of carers to care in the community and community care. That is one reason why, in this year's financial settlement for local government, we incorporated an additional £20 million for respite services for carers. We want to build on what has been achieved.
    The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is important that health authorities, when planning their services, take account of the need for respite care in psychiatric cases as well as the need for acute services. I am sure that he is

    169
    pleased about the recent report from the Carers National Association, which shows that of those surveyed who had had an assessment, 78 per cent. had received some form of respite in the previous year.
    Mrs. Lait: Will my hon. Friend ask East Sussex county council how it justifies the Lib-Lab policy of referring all respite care cases to county council homes, at a cost to the council taxpayer of £100 per week more than the cost in the private sector? Does he agree that that is a waste of public money—some £3.5 million a year—and will he please tell the council to stop it?
    Mr. Bowis: I shall certainly pass on my hon. Friend's words to East Sussex county council. I cannot answer for Labour or Liberal policies in that area; I doubt whether the House could understand them even if the parties explained them themselves. It is right to say, however, that if authorities fail to use the range of provision available, including the whole of the independent sector—private and voluntary—they will not get the best service for those in need in their areas. I imagine that the Audit Commission, when it does its surveys, will have something to say about that.
    Mr. Waterson: Does my hon. Friend agree that this would be a good moment to remind local authorities, including East Sussex county council, that the 85 per cent. figure for funding in the independent sector is a minimum, not a maximum?
    Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend is right. That 85 per cent. represents the continuation of the 100 per cent. provision for support for community care in the independent sector under the old social security system. The purpose of the 85 per cent. figure is to give stability to the voluntary and private sectors during this period of change—and, indeed, stability for the residents in the homes. It is also to give authorities and the private and voluntary sectors time to diversify so that they can make an even greater contribution to community care.
    Mr. McCartney: Would the Minister like to be a bit more candid about the issues raised in the report of the Carers National Association? Did not 93 per cent. of respondents say either that services had not improved or that they had worsened since the introduction of community care? Perhaps the Minister could be a bit more open about the problems affecting both funding and access to services. That would help the Opposition to come to terms with many of the problems that carers now face—the greatest of which is the Government's disastrous policy of trying to write off the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. Can the Minister give us some indication of whether his Department will provide more time for that Bill, so that it can become law?
    Mr. Bowis: I suppose that the hon. Gentleman has read the report to which he referred. I certainly have, but, having listened to the hon. Gentleman, I suspect that he has only read the press release that accompanied it. He would learn most by reading the entire report, and I commend it to him.
    If he had indeed read the report, the hon. Gentleman would know that the survey was carried out just a few months into the new community care system. More important, he would have read that 72 per cent. of carers interviewed said that they had found the assessment thorough, 75 per cent. said that they had received a break,
    170
    92 per cent. said that they encountered no difficulty in obtaining services at weekends and 92 per cent. said that they felt that their position was at least as good as it had been before, if not better.
    We care about carers. We recognise the contribution that they make, and we are intent on working with them and continuing to improve care for people in need in our community.
    Madam Speaker: We must be brisker.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome some of the positive advances that have been made, but will the Minister bear in mind early-day motion 1176, which reveals some anxiety in the House about the concern expressed by the Carers National Association in regard to needs still to be met?
    Mr. Bowis: We shall continue to work with carers, and with the hon. Gentleman, if he brings any specific matters to our attention. I cannot say off the top of my head that I am acquainted with the early-day motion that he mentioned, but we shall examine the issue carefully with the carers. As the hon. Gentleman said, progress is being made; we look forward to further progress in the future.

    General Practitioners' Contract
    Mr. Oppenheim: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received about the general practitioners' contract.
    The Minister for Health (Dr. Brian Mawhinney): We have received various representations on aspects of the general practitioners' contract. We welcome the continuing and constructive discussions with the profession, and others, that have resulted.
    Mr. Oppenheim: Will my right hon. Friend cast his mind back to what was said when the GPs' contract was being introduced? Did not both the doctors' trade union and the Opposition go around frightening the sick and the vulnerable, telling them that cytology and immunisation would decrease and doctors' lists would massively increase? Given that the result of the contract has been a significant improvement in services, how can we trust any pronouncement from the Labour party, which was prepared to use the sick and the vulnerable as pawns in its own political game?
    Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour party was against the contract and against deprivation payments; through its spokesman, it said that the immunisation levels were too heroic for GPs to attain. In all respects, indeed, the Labour party has been as wrong as it was about Jennifer's ear. I extend that deprecation to all on the Opposition Benches—apart from Offa, whose last Health Question Time this is. I wish her a long, happy, peaceful and politics-free retirement.
    Ms Lynne: Can the Minister assure the House that under the new GPs' contract that is currently being negotiated, which would allow GPs to stop night visits other than in exceptional circumstances, other services such as night surgeries will be in place before any GP night visits are curtailed? Although I understand the reason for the changes, I think that patients' needs must be protected.
    Dr. Mawhinney: The whole House will be disappointed that the hon. Lady did not rise to apologise to the pensioners of Portsmouth, and those in need on the Isle of Wight, for her party's policies. I am happy to confirm, however, that 24-hour cover, home visits and GPs' responsibility for their patients have been retained, and that over time primary care centres will be developed, providing an additional option for patients.

    Notifiable Diseases
    Mr. French: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is her policy in respect of additions to and subtractions from the list of notifiable diseases.
    Mr. Sackville: The notification system is one of the methods by which health authorities are alerted to the need to prevent further cases of a communicable disease. It also assists in the planning and valuation of long-term preventive strategies, such as immunisation campaigns.
    Mr. French: Is my hon. Friend aware that the streptococcal infection known as necrotising fasciitis—a galloping gangrene-type disease, which can eat human flesh at the rate of an inch an hour—is not on the list of notifiable diseases? Does not he feel that the definition of "notifiable" ought to be revised to include conditions that are rampant and lethal and in respect of which early diagnosis and recognition of the symptoms may make the difference between life and death?
    Mr. Sackville: I can assure my hon. Friend that if notification in any way contributed to the treatment of the individual patient or to the prevention of the infection spreading to other patients, I would certainly recommend it. I am aware that a number of severe streptococcal infections become necrotising fasciitis. It is extremely rare that there is a cluster of such cases such as that in his area, which is being investigated urgently by the Public Health Laboratory Service. I am advised by leading public health experts that, except for the Gloucestershire cluster, the pattern and number of those cases is not out of line with what is normally expected. However, I assure the House that we will continue to do everything possible to find the source of those infections and ensure that there are not further incidents.
    Mr. Blunkett: I do not think that the House or the country will be at all satisfied with that reply from the Under-Secretary. Is not the cluster in Gloucestershire completely out of line with previous experience? Will the Under-Secretary tell the House not only what the PHLS is doing but what steps he and the Secretary of State intend to take to allay understandable fears by indicating how the infection is being tracked and what preventive measures are being taken across the country to ensure that this extremely worrying development is laid to rest?
    Mr. Sackville: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the literature on the subject reports that there has been only one other case of a cluster of such infections, which was in Norway. We are leaving no stone unturned in trying to locate the reason for the cluster and find the connection between the cases, some of which, tragically, have been fatal. The Public Health Laboratory Service is investigating and is giving every assistance to the local national health service staff in Gloucestershire. That process will continue until we have some answers.
    Mr. Knapman: My hon. Friend will be aware of the real concern and anxiety that exist in Gloucestershire, especially in my constituency. My hon. Friends and I met the chairman and the chief executive of the local national health service trust recently and they are doing all that they can. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that the Department of Health will do its very best to try to find a cure to this awful disease at the earliest possible date?
    Mr. Sackville: It appears that, when the infection reaches the stage of necrosis, the only answer is surgery. We will ensure that those cases, if they continue to appear, are treated with all dispatch.

    General Practitioners
    Mr. Mandelson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much, on average, general practitioner fundholders spend on purchasing health care in the private sector.
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: General practitioner fundholders can purchase health care from whichever hospital best suits the needs of their patients. In 1992–93, fundholders spent just over 1.5 per cent. of their budget with non-NHS organisations. In doing so, they have improved waiting times, convenience and standards of service for patients.
    Mr. Mandelson: Is not it a scandal that the draining of public funds from the national health service to private medicine has doubled since 1991 and that the national health service has been denied much-needed cash as a result of that policy? Is not it also a classic illustration of the two-tier health system that the Government are creating? Is not it now time for Ministers to impose a strict limit on that diversion of public funds to private health care?
    Mrs. Bottomley: The hon. Gentleman may think that 1.5 per cent. is a substantial sum, but I have to disagree. As ever, he is scaremongering and speaks as the political apparatchik that he is. His obsession with the ownership of the means of production shows him to be the clause 4 socialist so typical of the Labour party. He failed to tell us that no patient in his constituency waits more than 12 months for treatment and that a maternity unit there recently received a quality award and has won "Heartbeat" awards. There have been a great many developments, in addition to the further initiatives pioneered by fundholders, from which all patients benefit.
    Mr. Forman: Did I hear my right hon. Friend say 1.5 per cent? Does not that represent exceptionally good value for money for patients and for the health service? What proportion of general practitioners are now in fundholding practices?
    Mrs. Bottomley: Yes, my hon. Friend is exactly right. A modest amount is now spent in the independent sector, but we are motivated by patients, not by the means of providing care. We want to look for ever-better value for money that provides quality and quantity of patient care. Just over 35 per cent. of the population benefits from GP fundholding practices, but we want to extend the benefits of fundholding as far and wide as we possibly can. Fundholding has changed the balance of power in the NHS and changed it in favour of the patient.
    Ms Primarolo: Is the Secretary of State aware that £268 million—a not insubstantial amount—was spent in private hospitals in 1992–93 Is she also further aware that one fundholding practice in Colchester spent 90 per cent. of its funds at a local private hospital? Does she agree that it is unacceptable that taxpayers' money should be used to subsidise private hospitals and private profit when national health service hospitals are running out of money and turning patients away? When will she protect the NHS against private medicine—a move which would benefit patients?
    Mrs. Bottomley: Now you see them in their true colours, Madam Speaker—a party dominated by the public sector unions. Patients will not trust the Labour party until its spokesmen renounce their National Union of Public Employees sponsorship. The Labour party is dominated by the interests of the public sector unions, not the interests of patients. I recall Barbara Castle's comments on her decision to abolish pay beds. She said that it was
    "an essential political sweetener for the unions."
    A recent document again revealed the vendetta against the private sector and the private bed. Our prejudice is in favour of patients.
    Mr. Congdon: Does my right hon. Friend agree that fundholders have introduced innovation in their approaches to patient care, which have demonstrated the benefits of devolved budgets? Is she aware that GP fundholders not only spend under their drug budgets but spend less than non-fundholders?
    Mrs. Bottomley: My hon. Friend identifies precisely why GP fundholding has been so successful. GP fundholders prescribe around 4 per cent. more cost effectively than non-fundholders. That is one of many examples of the way in which GP fundholders have used the resources at their disposal cautiously and effectively, acting as good stewards so that they can extend the quality and quantity of care. GP fundholders are not given more money, but do more with the money that they are given. We want to level up a top-tier service.

    Asthma
    Mr. McFall: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the estimate of the number of individuals suffering from asthma in each of the past five years.
    Mr. Sackville: A recent estimate suggests that there are 2.5 million in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. McFall: Does the Minister realise that asthma is now the health scandal of the 1990s? There are more than 3 million sufferers, and one in seven of all children suffer from the disease. In addition to the human suffering, there is an economic cost. Does he accept that any preventive medical programme should take that into consideration? When will the Government start doing something about the increasing number of asthma sufferers?
    Mr. Sackville: The hon. Gentleman shows his total ignorance of the fact that the new doctors' contract includes a chronic disease management programme, which means a call and recall system for asthma sufferers to ensure that their management of the disease is properly organised, that they are monitored and that they are aware of all the medication and of all the other action that can be taken.
    Mr. Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend undertake to re-examine "The Health of the Nation" and to think about setting targets for asthma prevention, as I understand happens in Scotland?
    Mr. Sackville: Yes, but we believe that we shall make a great deal of progress on asthma treatment now that we have a proper monitoring programme within primary care.

    National Health Service Trusts
    Mr. Ainger: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many NHS trusts have cut any senior executives' pay following the establishment of a remuneration committee.
    Dr. Mawhinney: That information is not available centrally.
    Mr. Ainger: That answer does not surprise me, but several independent reports and monitoring services have suggested that when trusts move from general management control within the NHS to so-called independence, the senior executives receive very significant pay rises. Moreover, the independent monitoring services have identified the pay rises for 1992–93—the latest year for which trust accounts have been published—and found that some chief executives received increases in salary of 33 per cent. Is not it possible for the Government now to instruct the trusts to set up proper remuneration committees to ensure that that gravy train is ended?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's trade union friends will be pleased by that pat on the back. On 28 April, the Secretary of State announced codes of conduct and accountability that require NHS bodies to establish audit and remuneration and terms of service committees. That happens to be the case. I shall give the hon. Gentleman some information for which he need not look to monitoring committees: for every manager in the health service there are 26 doctors and nurses and senior and general managers represent 2 per cent. of the work force and 3 per cent. of the wages bill. What is most important, and what the Labour party has again demonstrated that it does not understand, is the fact that the health service exists to deliver more patient care, of higher quality, and at greater convenience, year on year. That is what is happening, and managers are playing their part in making it happen.
    Mr. Hayes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the perpetual scaremongering by the Labour party does appalling damage to morale in the health service, where there is really a hell of a lot of good news? Is not that scaremongering nothing more than cynical manipulation of the fears of the elderly and frail?
    Dr. Mawhinney: My hon. Friend should understand that Labour scaremongering is really embarrassment and an attempt to cover up the paucity of Labour health policy. The truth is that for every 100 patients treated in the year before the reforms, this year we expect to treat 121—a marvellous record. When the Labour party was in power, 1 per cent. more patients, on average, were treated in the health service each year. Since our reforms, more than 5 per cent. more patients, on average, have been treated per

    175
    year. That is a measure of the co-operation of the doctors, the nurses, the other professionals and the managers in developing more and better health care.
    Mr. Blunkett: How the Minister knows that, when he does not collect the information centrally, is beyond all of us. In view of his original answer—that the information is not collected centrally—perhaps he will tell us why the Gloucestershire royal trust, in a letter to me dated 13 April, said that it would not answer any questions from Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—and would answer only to the NHS management executive? And does not that "Hear, hear" from Conservative Members reveal that the Conservative party has abandoned even the least pretence of believing in democracy?
    Dr. Mawhinney: First of all, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the decisions of the trust are a matter for the trust. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] The decisions of the trust are a matter for the trust. As the hon. Gentleman and Labour Members continually denigrate the work of those who work in the health service, it may be that the trust has decided to side with those who work in the trust providing more and better patient care, rather than pampering to the political ideology of the Labour party.

    Practice Nurses
    Mrs. Roe: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many practice nurses are currently employed by general practitioners; and what the figures were in 1979.
    Dr. Mawhinney: Many practice nurses work part time. Translated into whole-time equivalents, the number rose from 992 in 1979 to 9,605 last year—an increase of nearly 900 per cent.
    Mrs. Roe: Does not that figure show clearly the phenomenal development in primary care and general practice since 1979? Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the opportunity for GPs to delegate a wide range of tasks to practice nurses both eases their work load and makes a significant contribution to the achievement of targets on immunisation and screening?
    Dr. Mawhinney: As always, my hon. Friend has it exactly right. She will be pleased to know that in 1979 there were approximately 20,000 practice staff and in 1993, the figure had risen to approximately 54,000. To put it another way, in 1979, we were spending £43 million on practice staff and last year, we spent £514 million on practice staff, which has enabled GPs to do precisely what my hon. Friend identified.
    Mr. Bayley: Will the Minister agree to bring in a change to the funding of the health service so that the same capitation funding formula applies to fundholding and non-fundholding GPs, the two-tier system is abolished and the patients of both types of GP have an equal opportunity to benefit from practice nurses?
    Dr. Mawhinney: There no two-tier system, as the hon. Gentleman knows—there is a proper allocation of capitation resources to fundholders and non-fundholders. Indeed, I believe that I am right in saying, if he casts his mind back to the evidence that I gave to the Select Committee when he was a member of it, that some of the
    176
    latest information suggests that GP fundholders may be receiving marginally less per number of patients than non-fundholders.

    National Health Service Patients
    Mr. Thurnham: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the latest figure for the number of patients treated in NHS hospitals in the North Western region before 1 April; and what was the equivalent figure in (i) 1990–91 and (ii) 1978–79.
    Mr. Sackville: Hospital patient activity in the former North Western region rose from 503,000 in 1978–79 to 711,000 in 1990–91 and 775,000 in 1992–93.
    Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Bolton hospitals trust on slashing waiting lists to nil for those who have been waiting more than 18 months and to half for those who have been waiting more than 12 months? Does he look forward to Bolton's new £45 million hospital—the largest in the north-west—which will slash waiting lists even further?
    Mr. Sackville: My hon. Friend and I have a common interest in congratulating Bolton hospital on its achievements over the past 10 years. I pay a tribute to my hon. Friend for the part that he played in securing that wonderful new hospital for Bolton.
    Mr. Lewis: Is the Minister aware that I waited 20 months for a first appointment with a specialist in Bolton hospital? Is not that a hidden waiting list?
    Mr. Sackville: We have made enormous progress in cutting down the unacceptably long waits. The hon. Gentleman's GP had the option to ensure that his case was treated as a priority.

    Priorities And Key Challenges
    Mr. Brandreth: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received following the publication of her Department's paper on priorities and key challenges 1994–95 to 1997–98; and if she will make a statement.
    Dr. Mawhinney: Since the publication of that document on 18 April, a number of questions have been asked by one hon. Member and we have received a small number of telephone calls from members of the public. No representations have been made.
    Madam Speaker: Mr. Brandreth.
    Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
    Mr. Brandreth: The House has clearly mistaken me for my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames). Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the national health service is the largest organisation in Europe, costing about £100 million per day? Can he also confirm that the service is being used by more patients than ever and that, where three years ago, 100 patients were treated in hospital, it is now 121? Will he confirm that his key priorities will be best practice and increased patient care?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I can confirm exactly what my hon. Friend said and that that is true in his part of the country and in Chester. The Government have presided over a huge

    177
    increase in the number of patients treated, a significant increase in the quality of treatment, a huge improvement in the convenience of that treatment to patients and a major expansion—64 per cent. in real terms—in resources delivered to the health service for the benefit of patients. That is a record of which we are proud and to which the Opposition can only aspire.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Dr. Wright: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 24 May.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Dr. Wright: What does the Prime Minister say to the woman in my constituency who phoned my office the other day to thank me for taking up her husband's case in relation to the Child Support Agency, but who said that could close the file—the file that I have here—because her husband had just killed himself? Has not the time come when it is no longer enough to say that we all support the principle of the agency—which we do—or that it is being kept under continuing review—which it no doubt is? Has not it become a monstrous and inhuman shambles that has to be changed and changed now?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman knows what I had to say about that recently. I have nothing to add to that today. On the personal circumstances that he mentioned, neither he nor I can know all the circumstances behind that tragedy. On reflection, he may think that it was unwise to raise it in that fashion.
    Sir Cranley Onslow: As the British electorate clearly cannot expect Opposition Members to spell out the full horrors of the sort of centralised and federal European Union for which they want people to vote on 9 June, will my right hon. Friend consider inviting Mr. Delors to come over here and do the job for them?
    The Prime Minister: The President of the Commission is welcome here in the United Kingdom at any time. I hope that when he comes, if he comes, he will spell out yet again that he believes that the fact that we are not part of the social chapter will make us a great magnet for external investment—I am sure that he is right about that.
    Mrs. Beckett: Does the Prime Minister recall what his party promised the British people in its last Euromanifesto? It included the promise that the Conservatives would not put value added tax on gas and electricity, saying:
    "We stand by that pledge; we will honour it".
    Has not it become clear that the Government are incapable of honouring any pledge?
    The Prime Minister: It is not remotely clear. Like every Government, we have to respond to the reality of events in the interests of the people of this country. The right hon. Lady should bear in mind some of the contradictions in what she and her colleagues have said and done. On one day they attack our tax proposals and on the next day they propose a string of new taxes. They then ask
    178
    for fresh expenditure, but the shadow Chancellor says that there is no commitment. There is no consistency whatsoever in any of their policies.
    Mrs. Beckett: If that is the Prime Minister's answer to why the Government broke the promises in their last Euro-manifesto, will he explain why, at the general election in 1992, he and his party promised not to extend or increase VAT, not to increase national insurance contributions and not to impose any other taxes and charges, and even promised tax cuts year on year? Why is it that, in manifesto after manifesto, the Government make promises that they then betray?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady is misquoting and misunderstanding. If she wants to talk about movements away from manifestos, she might look at the distinctions between the European socialist manifesto to which the Labour party is committed and the domestic Labour party manifesto for the European elections. She might then explain to the British people why, in this election, what it is saying domestically is not what it has agreed to internationally.
    Mrs. Beckett: Did not the Government prove at the last Euro-election and general election that they will say and do anything to get elected? The people now know that after the broken promises of the Euro-election and general election campaigns. Why should anyone trust the Government ever again?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady will also know that we made it clear that we would create the right circumstances for growth, and we have; that we would bring unemployment down, and we are; that we would get interest rates down, and we have; and that we would create the conditions for sustained growth without inflation, and we have.
    Only a few weeks ago, the Labour party was signing up to promises in Europe to which it dare not admit domestically in the current election. If the right hon. Lady will not admit to that, she will find that, throughout the campaign, quote after quote after quote of what the Labour party has signed up to not long ago will be brought up. The Labour party is now trying to duck, dodge and weave around those promises because it knows that the British people will not stand for its policies on Europe.
    Mr. Dykes: I thank my right hon. Friend for yesterday reminding the British public yet again that we gain enormously in real sovereignty and strength in Europe by working closely, harmoniously and positively with the other member countries.
    The Prime Minister: As I said last night in my speech, which I know that my hon. Friend will have read, our policy is to make a success of the European Community and to make sure that it regains the affection of people, not only in this country, but right across Europe. That is the policy of the Government, and I set out a range of ways in which we believe that that can and must be brought about. It is essential to the future well-being of the country that we are able to ensure not only that the European Union is accepted by the people but that it continues successfully for many years to come.
    Mr. Ashdown: The Prime Minister will be aware that, for as long as he continues to hold firmly to the view that there will be no question of negotiation with the men of

    179
    murder in Northern Ireland for as long as they continue with violence and unless and until they renounce it permanently, he will continue to enjoy the full support of the vast majority of this House and, I believe, the majority of the country. However, is he aware of just how much the momentum for peace in Northern Ireland is now evaporating? Does he accept that it is urgent and important that the British and Irish Governments should now put forward joint proposals based on the joint declaration through the constitutional parties in Northern Ireland, if the high hopes for peace which we enjoyed at Christmas are not to be killed off by the new wave of terrorism being implemented by both sides?
    The Prime Minister: I think that the whole House will share the right hon. Gentleman's wish to see an end to violence. Where I would take issue with him is in his assertion that there is an evaporation of the movement toward peace in Ireland, both north and south of the border. I do not believe that that is the case, and it is not the information which comes to me.
    After what has happened in recent weeks, but one question remains to be answered: when will the IRA give up violence? There never has been any justification—now, clearly and undoubtedly, there is not a single shred of justification in anyone's mind—for its barbaric murders. It is losing support on all sides and becoming increasingly isolated. We should stick with the joint declaration and pursue the discussions that we are having with the constitutional parties and with the Government of the Republic of Ireland. We should also pursue the mechanism that we have been following for the past two years, which is bringing us nearer to peace than we have been for many years.
    Mr. Kynoch: Will my right hon. Friend take time to consider what would be the impact on traditional British interests were we to forgo completely the national veto in Europe, as urged by the sell-out Liberal Democrats?
    The Prime Minister: I think that it is—
    Mr. Skinner: It is that lot behind me.
    The Prime Minister: Tempting though it is to respond to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I shall respond first to my hon. Friend.
    It is inconceivable that any responsible party would wish completely to eliminate the national veto or dilute it in any way. On vital issues, it is important that that national veto remain. I shall give just one example. Had we had no national veto at Edinburgh, where we discussed future financing, under qualified majority voting we could have lost our rebate of £3 billion a year, which was so hard-fought for by my predecessor and retained in those discussions.
    Mr. Ainger: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 24 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Ainger: The Prime Minister will be aware—it is now a matter of public record—that, on 20 April, the Minister for Social Security and Disabled—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will put a direct question to the Prime Minister.
    Mr. Ainger: Is the Prime Minister aware that, on 20 April, the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People instructed his civil servants to produce amendments designed to ensure that the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill would be talked out? Is he also aware—I am sure that he is—that, only 16 days later, the same Minister denied to the House that he gave those instructions? Will the Prime Minister now do the honourable thing and, first, apologise to the 6.5 million disabled people for the deceitful and shabby way in which they have been treated and, secondly, sack the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People for misleading the House, the disabled and the country?
    The Prime Minister: The answer to the direct questions is certainly not.
    The Government's record on assisting people who are disabled is very good. We have made it perfectly clear that, over the next few months, we shall consult to try to find a Bill that will achieve assistance for disabled people, but not a Bill with a cost of £17 billion. Until and unless the Opposition say that they are prepared to impose costs of £17 billion on private industry, their attitude over the Bill is utterly and totally bogus.
    Mr. Allason: Tonight, the House will be asked to review the provisions of the prevention of terrorism order. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is high time that the abuse of the broadcasting ban, which is so widely circumvented by all the broadcasting media, should be reviewed so as to prevent known terrorists from appearing on television and having their voices dubbed by out-of-work actors from Northern Ireland?
    The Prime Minister: I understand the frustration that my hon. Friend feels about that matter. A number of complex matters are involved, but I will certainly discuss them with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage.
    Mrs. Bridget Prentice: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 24 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mrs. Prentice: Why do so many people believe that foreign millionaires can queue jump their way into Britain? Can they do that because they give substantial donations to the Conservative party?
    The Prime Minister: I do not think that the hon. Lady quite understands the immigration rules, which are very complex. If she did, she would know that for a long time—even under the last Labour Government and I believe since 1970 or before—the immigration rules have allowed people of independent means to come to the United Kingdom. That has been the position for a very long time.
    Mr. Bill Walker: During his very busy day, will my right hon. Friend consider having a wee dram to celebrate the fact that the Scotch whisky industry is now in its 500th year? Is he aware that that industry provides massive employment in Scotland, provides export earnings of £2,000 million and brings pleasure to many?
    The Prime Minister: I am more amenable to the suggestion that I might have a wee dram than I am to many that I get these days, and I would be happy to take up that suggestion. I am happy to join my hon. Friend in his

    181
    congratulations to the Scotch whisky industry, which has been a huge success. It is increasing its exports of a product
    which is enjoyed in every part of the world.
    Mr. Bayley: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
    Madam Speaker: After the statement, please.

Competitiveness
3.30 pm
The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Michael Heseltine): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Government's White Paper, "Competitiveness: Helping Business to Win", which we are presenting to Parliament today. The Government are also presenting to the Trade and Industry Select Committee a memorandum replying to its report on the "Competitiveness of UK Manufacturing Industry". The report is a valuable contribution to the competitiveness debate. Its analysis and conclusions have much in common with the White Paper. I am very grateful to the Committee for its work in this area.
Our prosperity as a nation depends on the wealth that we generate. Our companies must be able to compete with the best in the world. There is no simple agenda; nor is there a totally accurate snapshot at any one time of how well we are doing. We face a continually moving target. Inexorably, our competitors move on, developing new products, finding better ways of doing business, and strengthening their capabilities. In a thousand different ways, they seek continually to improve their competitiveness.
Our analysis in the White Paper is sweeping. We have addressed the principal factors of competitiveness. We have considered long-term trends. We have looked at our performance over successive economic cycles. We have addressed our strengths and our weaknesses. The White Paper includes a number of major announcements. It also refers to many continuing reviews and indicates further announcements that will be made later this year.
The heart of any analysis of competitiveness must be the macro-economy. The United Kingdom is today in a powerful position: gross domestic product is rising; unemployment continues to fall; underlying inflation is at the lowest level for a generation; manufacturing productivity is at an all-time high; interest rates are among the lowest in the Economic Community; total plant and machinery investment has risen by more than 50 per cent. since 1979; and exports are at record levels. We are thus in an excellent position to take advantage of the recovery as it takes hold in the rest of Europe. In addition, the GATT agreement will open markets further and give a boost to world trade of more than 10 per cent. over the next decade.
The White Paper considers in detail the vital contribution of educational standards and training opportunities. With permission, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will make a separate statement later today setting out a range of new initiatives to improve standards in education and outlining new plans for training and apprenticeships. The White Paper also covers a wide range of other areas.
The adequate supply of finance for business is a matter of continuing concern. Under the Treasury's industrial finance initiative, my hon. Friends the Financial Secretary and the Economic Secretary are conducting a wide-ranging review of the workings of our capital markets, savings, the flow of funds to business and the implications for taxation and other policies. Their findings will inform the Budget decisions. In the meantime, my Department will be considering ways of extending the "business angels" concept to provide greater informal investment to small
184
companies. The White Paper also sets out our commitment to extending the private finance initiative as a means of funding major infrastructure investment.
Businesses are naturally concerned about the late payment of debt. There is no common view about what should be done, but it is widely recognised that there needs to be a change in business culture. I can tell the House that the Government will in future require all Departments and their agencies to comply with the Confederation of British Industry prompt payment code and to set out their performance against that in their annual reports. [Interruption.]
We shall work with the business community to develop further the proposal for a British standard for prompt payment. We shall take the necessary steps to implement proposals to require public companies to state their payment policies in their directors' reports. We shall simplify court procedures for debt recovery and we shall review court systems with a view to increasing the scope of the informal small claims procedures. If there has not been a significant improvement in the next two years, we shall reconsider the case for legislation. [Interruption.]
The quality of management has a vital influence on the performance of our businesses. Our best managers are as good as any in the world, but we need to raise the average. The White Paper sets out our proposals for extending best practice. The proposals build on my Department's benchmarking challenge to trade associations. Business Links, which will be open in all parts of England by the end of next year, will be the focal point for new services, ranging from consultancy and innovation to design.
I can announce two further initiatives by my Department to improve management performance. First, we shall set up a network of regional supply offices in England to work with private and public sector purchasers to promote supply chain partnerships. [Interruption.] Secondly, we shall work with the British Standards Institution and with industry to develop BS 5750 and product certification standards further to promote continuous improvement. [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order.
Mr. Heseltine: Innovation is a key driver of competitiveness. Last year's White Paper on science, engineering and technology explained how the Government intended to direct their own substantial research and development expenditure towards competitiveness. There has been much progress since. The present White Paper builds on those changes.
The higher education funding councils will increasingly reward universities for the work that they do in partnership with industry. That will amount to a significant proportion of the relevant income from industry. The proportion of the councils' agreed total budgets used for that purpose will increase. The councils will take full account of the results of the technology foresight programme in allocating the funds between subjects. Individual academics will be rewarded for undertaking collaborative work with industry. [Interruption.] My Department will work with financial institutions and industry to help achieve a joint understanding of the importance of innovation.
We shall introduce a range of new services through Business Links to help technology transfer. New funds will be provided for innovation and technology counsellors in Business Links to provide advice and guidance to

185
companies on innovation. "Innovation credits" will be made available through Business Links to encourage smaller firms to discover the value of outside help by offsetting the cost for first-time users. [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. Would the Secretary of State forgive me? I should be much obliged if the House would now settle down. It is a long statement. [Interruption.] Order. It is a long statement. There are often complaints that not enough Members are called to ask questions after statements. That can be done only if the statement is heard in the first place.
Mr. Heseltine: Networks of local contacts will be established across the United Kingdom to make local sources of innovation support more accessible. National centres of expertise will be linked through an actively managed network. We shall also help the process of innovation by increasing the exchange of people between industry and higher education through an extension of the successful teaching company scheme.
On support for exports, my Department is more than three quarters of the way to meeting the objective that I announced last year of bringing in 100 senior export promoters from the private sector. We shall extend this initiative by helping to fund about 70 export counsellors with private sector experience to work in each of the larger Business Links.
We shall be developing a partnership with the banks to reach more potential investors and continuing our drive to encourage firms to improve their language skills. Once the Business Link organisation approaches completion at the end of next year we shall have in place the most comprehensive export support network this country has ever seen.
The United Kingdom has an exceptional record in inward and outward investment. We have attracted the lion's share of inward investment in the European Community from United States and Japanese companies over many years. The White Paper contains a package of measures to help the United Kingdom to maintain its leading position. We shall also be looking to see how we can better help companies to exploit competitive advantage through outward investment.
The quality of our communications and transport infrastructure underpins the competitiveness of our companies. We already have one of the highest levels of investment in the world in telecommunications, including fibre-optics and mobile networks. We are giving further encouragement to the development of digital broadcasting technologies. The White Paper sets out our plans to open up more of the radio spectrum for commercial use.
The future of the BBC will be dealt with in a further White Paper to be published shortly. We shall be announcing later in the year the results of our review of the restrictions on ownership of broadcasting and newspaper companies. We shall be publishing a consultative document on the Post Office and responding to the recent report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry.
The White Paper set out our policies across the full range of transportation. Public investment in roads, rail and public transport has nearly doubled in real terms since 1978–79. The private finance initiative is now being applied to the development of significant infrastructure projects, such as the Heathrow express, the modernisation of the west coast main line and the channel tunnel rail link.
186
Work is in hand on the exploitation of new technologies for the more sophisticated road traffic management systems needed to cope with tomorrow's demand.
During the 1980s, almost all the United Kingdom's principal airports and many of the smaller ones benefited from major investment to improve facilities and increase capacity. Within the European Community, only Germany has invested more per passenger. Most of this investment has come from the private sector, particularly following the privatisation of the British Airports Authority. Following work by the Civil Aviation Authority and Government Departments, we shall be consulting on the proposal that National Air Traffic Services should be established as a private sector contractor to the CAA. This will facilitate the substantial investment needed in this sector, while delivering greater management efficiency. The United Kingdom's high safety standards will be maintained through continuing regulation by the CAA's safety regulation group. In view of the increased pressure on aviation facilities in the south-east, we shall also be seeking views on the scope for developing business aviation at the Ministry of Defence airfield at Northolt.
London is one of the world's great cities and most important economic centres. We have recognised this by establishing a new Government office for London, in close partnership with public and private sector bodies, to provide concerted delivery of Government services. We welcome the steps being taken by the private sector, the Corporation of London and the Bank of England to enhance London's position as a financial centre.
The competitiveness agenda extends to all areas of the country. We have already brought together the delivery of key Government services by establishing Government offices for the regions. I have also announced the concept of regional challenge, which will enable eligible areas of England and Wales to compete for part of the money available from the European regional development fund. I can now tell the House that the first competitions in 1994 will involve total prize money of between £150 million and £200 million.
We will consider later this year how to extend the "challenge approach" to further domestic programmes. The Government are determined to make further progress on deregulation. We have just completed the first stage of the review of the 3,500 regulations affecting business and more than 500 measures have been identified for action. The Health and Safety Commission has carried out the most extensive review of health and safety legislation for 20 years. The commission has made wide-ranging recommendations. The Government welcome and accept those, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will set out the details in his statement.
A new deregulation task force has been set up to act as the focal point for further Government initiatives. Those will include proposals to set up equivalent private sector led task forces to scrutinise European legislation in conjunction with business men from other EC countries. In addition, the Government are looking at ways to simplify and improve company and insolvency law.
As part of their audit of competitiveness, the Government have looked in upon their own administration. The Efficiency Unit of the Cabinet Office will shortly be starting a review of management planning and control systems in Departments to ensure that they reflect best practice in the public and private sectors. We shall publish a White Paper on the civil service—
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
Madam Speaker: Order. The House must come to order.
Mr. Heseltine: We shall publish a White Paper on the civil service setting out our conclusions on the Efficiency Unit's review of career management and succession planning for the senior civil service.
Finally, we shall evaluate the "competing for quality" initiative to see how best it can be developed in future years, including making greater use of innovative ideas and approaches from the private sector. The extensive range of Government initiatives that I have announced today will all be contained within the present public expenditure control ceilings, despite the significant extra resources that will be made available for education and training. But competitiveness goes far beyond the actions of Government. The White Paper sets out and reports on a formidable agenda for change and improvement across both the public and private sectors. It embraces the activities of all our companies and harnesses the energies of all our people. I commend the White Paper to the House.
Mr. Robin Cook: I welcome the admission by the President of the Board of Trade that Britain faces a problem of competitiveness. May I help the President by putting that problem more bluntly than he dared? Will he confirm that since 1979 Britain has moved from a £7 billion surplus in manufactured trade to a deficit of £8 billion and that since 1979, alone among the G7 countries, Britain's industrial output has barely risen? Will he confirm that since 1979, as a percentage of gross domestic product, Britain's industrial investment has almost halved? [Interruption.] If Conservative Members think that that has nothing to do with competitiveness, they do not understand the nature of the modern world.
Will the President confirm that since 1979 Britain's income per head has fallen from the European average to below the European average and the European Commission now expects growth in Britain in 1995 to be lower than in Germany, France or Italy and will he remind the House which party has been in power since 1979?
May I assure the President that he will have the total agreement of the Opposition in giving priority to restoring the competitiveness of British industry? All that we would ask first is that he agrees that the need to restore that competitiveness exposes 15 wasted years that the Government have spent in power.
May I compliment the President on the glitzy presentation of his White Paper, which puts it in the coffee table class of White Papers, but may I also warn my colleagues that those of us who have had the chance to examine briefly its contents find that the gloss rubs off easily? I have been able to find only two specific proposals from the President's own Department: an uncosted proposal for regional supply offices and an unspecified proposal to improve British Standard 5750.
Does the President recognise that it exposes the bankruptcy of his White Paper that on the day Trade Indemnity reports the biggest reported late payment of debt within British industry, he proposes to look at the issue again in two years' time?
What was the point of felling all the trees to provide a 160-page White Paper if the President did not have one new idea to put in it? How much did it cost? Was there no better way of spending the money in his Department? Will
188
he confirm from the last passage in his statement that the document and the entire review has not provided one extra penny for spending in his Department—a Department with a budget that is now at the bottom of Whitehall—and is that not a far more eloquent statement than the White Paper of his Government's priority for industry?
How dare the President congratulate the Government on setting up an office for London, when they will not let the people of London vote for a strategic government for London.
Will the President share with the House, as he did not in the statement, the contents of the health and safety review? Will he confirm that it states that 100 health and safety regulations—40 per cent. of the total legislation on health and safety—are to be scrapped? Why cannot the Government accept that better safety is not a burden on business but a saving to industry because it cuts the cost of injury, compensation and lost production? Competitiveness cannot be built on taking greater risks with the work force.
If the Government are really serious about addressing competitiveness, why does the White Paper not offer a single new measure to stimulate research and development? Why does it offer not one new policy to boost industrial investment? Why does it not do anything to achieve a better balance between the higher level of dividend payments and the poor level of profits ploughed back into business? Why does it not offer any plan to tackle the crisis in the defence industries or to help convert the skills and machinery in the industries to civilian production?
We are grateful to the President for producing the White Paper because it exposes how little the Government have to offer industry. It is a bankrupt statement from a Government on the verge of liquidation. It is an admission of 15 years of failure in the past and a confession that they have no policies for the future. It confirms that the only service that the Government can now provide the nation is to make way for a Government with fresh ideas, which the White Paper has so dismally failed to provide.
Mr. Heseltine: In anticipation of the intervention by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), I assumed that it would be as bad as it turned out to be. It occurred to me that it would be wholly beyond the hon. Gentleman's ability to rise to take part in any sort of serious intellectual analysis of the problems facing the country. I can say only how sharp a contrast there is between the political rubbish spoken from the Opposition Front Bench and the intellectual input of the Labour-led, all-party Select Committee that has reported to the House and tried to deal with the issue seriously.
If I had to defend the record of the 1980s, I would do so with pride, because I remember what we inherited in 1979. I know that lurking behind the hon. Gentleman's statement is a yearning to put the unions back in power, to take back into public ownership the industries that we have privatised, and to continue on Britain's relative industrial decline, which had haunted us for decades. Despite the trivialisation by the Labour party, which would not understand a debate about competitiveness even if it was published by Transport House, we now know that Britain is poised to seize an initiative in the world that has been denied us for decades.
The 1980s was the first decade since the war in which Britain's economy grew faster than that of France,

189
Germany and Italy. In the 1960s and 1970s, which the hon. Gentleman should remember, Britain had the slowest growth rate in the EC and the G7 countries. In the 1980s, the UK had the fastest growth in manufacturing productivity of the G7 countries. In contrast, in the 1960s and 1970s, we were at the bottom of the league. In the 1980s, for the first time in decades, we held our share of world manufactured exports after decade upon decade of decline. In the 1980s, Britain's industrial relations improved to become the best since records were first kept in this country. Britain has the highest proportion of people of working age in employment of any EC country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Reading!"] Yes, I have page after page of the record of the 1980s.
The reason why I can produce a track record of which we are proud is that the facts are on our side. When the hon. Member for Livingston produces his competitive White Paper, we shall find that in 15 years of opposition all that the Labour party has come up with is 15 reviews that it intends to conduct. It has no real ideas, no real proposals, and that is just as well, because it has no real prospect of power.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Perhaps we might have some order before we proceed.
Mr. Kenneth Baker: I congratulate my right hon. Friend not only on his White Paper, but on sinking the shadow spokesman's campaign before it was even launched.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the long-term competitiveness of British industry depends essentially on the education system of our country and on our schools? Will he, with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, build on the initiatives—if necessary with additional resources—undertaken in the 1980s to improve the technological education in our schools, including computer-assisted learning, technology colleges, and technology for all children up to 16, so as to ensure that all our young people, whenever they leave school, have an expertise and knowledge of the new technologies on which the future prosperity of our country will depend?
Mr. Heseltine: I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend, who personally played a significant role in advancing those causes in both the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Education and Science as Secretary of State. I hope that he will understand if I say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will be dealing with those matters, and I believe that the House will be excited by what he has to say.
Mr. Don Foster: Does the President of the Board of Trade agree that his statement and the mode of its delivery have at least given short-term job security to his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister? Does he further agree that small businesses should be the engine room of recovery but that his statement today has given little support to small businesses? Indeed, many of them will be very disappointed that the only action that he is taking on late payment of debt is to establish what is little more than a charter mark. Will he not at least rethink that element of his statement and introduce urgent legislation in respect of late payment of debt to small businesses?
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman will regret that intervention when he reads the White Paper. There are now 600,000 more small businesses than there were when the Government were elected. A recent publication of figures by Barclays shows that a net growth of small businesses has resumed after the recession. There is no doubt in the minds of small business men where their best political interests lie, and that is on the Government Benches.
Sir Michael Grylls: Does my right hon. Friend accept that people will welcome this serious White Paper, which will build on the competitiveness of Great Britain which, as he said, is so essential? Will he try to build on the policies that our right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor introduced in his Budget—the enterprise investment and Venture Capital Trust schemes—to provide equity and loan finance for small and medium-sized firms on acceptable terms? Is not a good deal more work needed there? Will he use his influence to carry on the good work started by the Chancellor in his recent Budget?
Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is very much associated with support for small companies. We place great importance on the enterprise investment scheme and we are consulting on the Venture Capital Trust scheme proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor. We shall also build on the opportunities which now exist, especially by encouraging awareness among the local Business Links of potential investors—business angels—who are increasing in number. It is important to draw their existence to the attention of small businesses.
Mr. Richard Caborn: I want to raise a point about the procedure surrounding the release of the response to the Select Committee report, which unfortunately is not before the House today because it must first go to the Committee. However, it should be part of our discussion on the White Paper. Should not that response be delivered to hon. Members before they put questions on the White Paper? Otherwise, we have only half the information needed for debate. Perhaps there could be a one-hour embargo, or something of that nature, so that hon. Members can be—
Mr. Geoffrey Dickens: Why is the hon. Member here?
Mr. Caborn: I am trying to ensure that hon. Members are well informed. Obviously, some of them are quite ignorant of the points that I am raising.
I hope that my suggestions will be given serious consideration. Many important points are not in the White Paper, but in the response to the Select Committee report. The Committee's analysis is not dissimilar to that contained both in the White Paper and in the response to the report. However, I am concerned about some of the language used, such as "re-examine", "under review", "reviewing" and "considering".
I want to raise three points with the President of the Board of Trade. Why did he not respond to the suggestion for a training levy, which was forcefully promoted in the report? There is also no response to our suggestion on the financing of small and medium-sized businesses or to our point about hostile takeovers. The Committee said that technology transfer should be viewed as a framework of operation. Unfortunately, there is only a part response to that point. We want a full response to the points raised.
Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman because, as I said earlier, the report for which he is responsible as Chairman of the Select Committee is very important. It attempts to analyse many of the problems seriously and, in my view, very constructively—in sharp contrast to the attitude of the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook).
There were few points in the Select Committee report with which the Government disagreed. There were some, but not many. In the memoranda that we published we clearly set out our reasons for any disagreements. For example, we do not believe that a training levy is the right way to proceed. It would be bureaucratic. It has been tried, but it did not find general acceptance—although we very much welcome the interest in further and better training operations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will talk about that shortly.
I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman as I was not able to help him in his request that I make the White Paper available to him in advance of the rest of the House. That is the convention and I felt that I had no alternative but to stick with it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. It seems that I have to remind hon. Members that we are not in debate on the White Paper. We are questioning the statement on the White Paper made by the President of the Board of Trade. May I now have brisk questions and answers please?
Mr. Tom King: Our country's competitive position is excellent at present, and the supporting resources provided by the Department are much improved. Many excellent British companies are doing outstanding work in exports. Does my right hon. Friend agree, however, that many companies have not yet realised what opportunities exist overseas, and how vital those opportunities are to our balance of payments? Will he reinforce his efforts to ensure that every company in the country realises that there may be very good prospects in export markets as well?
Mr. Heseltine: I am wholly in sympathy with my right hon. Friend. Trying to achieve that result, however, is an enormous management task. We must face the challenge of establishing a Business Links network in every major town and city, setting up databases to find out exactly which companies are capable of exporting and then securing the personnel to visit, encourage and guide those companies.
We have been helped immensely by the private sector, which has now seconded nearly 80 people to my Department, and I have announced today that an additional 70 will be recruited in the provinces to reinforce those arrangements. The fact that our exports are at an all-time high, while exports to the non-EC countries are 8.5 to 9 per cent. up on a year ago, augurs extremely well for the future.
Dr. Jeremy Bray: Given the right hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm for analysis, will he tell us what estimate he has made of the effects of the measures that he has announced on either growth or productivity?
Mr. Heseltine: No. As the hon. Gentleman will know, trying to make forecasts about the result of specific inputs is something that no Government of whom I am aware have ever tried systematically to do—except those who believe in command economies, and we know what
192
happened to them. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given the overall view of likely growth patterns in the country's economy over the years ahead, and I have no reason to dissent from that view.
In the White Paper, we are largely discussing two issues: maintaining the macro-economic framework—which is fundamental to competitiveness—and, persistently and in detail, working away at improving the supply side of the economy.
Dr. Michael Clark: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his initiative in producing the White Paper. Will he concede that, although we spend a great deal of our time criticising what is wrong with our industry and our companies, many of those companies are effective, efficient and world class in terms of competitiveness? Will he ensure that his Department looks at those companies as well, analyses what they are doing right and sets out their criteria for other companies to follow?
Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is one of the principal thrusts of the policy that we are pursuing in working closely with British companies—particularly the best companies, which are performing a remarkable role in many fields in benchmarking down the supply chains to pass best practice out into companies that are not immediately in touch with the agencies and Government organisations within my direct influence. We are seeing a huge expansion in the spread of best practice through the trade associations, the Confederation of British Industry and the supply chain; that is clearly one of the most effective ways of improving national performance.
Mr. Peter Shore: What role does the exchange rate play in the right hon. Gentleman's analysis? Does he not rejoice in the fact that, since September 1992, we have no longer been locked into the exchange rate mechanism at DM2.95 to the pound?
Mr. Heseltine: I know that the right hon. Gentleman never ceases to make his own particular point, but he will have a much wider, more historic perspective in mind. Time and again, Britain has had the advantage of a short-term competitiveness opportunity as a result of devaluation. The problem is that—largely as a result of the Labour party's policies—we blew it by not controlling inflation.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on what I consider to be a very constructive package of initiatives? The Government have created the right climate for the expansion of industry: low interest rates and low inflation. Is my right hon. Friend aware, however, that perhaps the greatest impetus that he could give manufacturing industry would be the introduction of 100 per cent. capital allowances, as practised in many other countries of the European Community and throughout the world? Will he do that, and will he give me an assurance that he will accept an invitation to come to Macclesfield and open the new Business Link premises in the next few months?
Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend will realise that of course any tax judgment is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor, but I remember very well that we decided that it was advantageous to the wealth-creating processes to have reductions in the level of corporation tax and to remove the artificial incentives of

193
tax allowances as part of that package. If I remember correctly, under Lord Lawson that was the right economic decision to take. Having given industry the major advantage of lower tax rates, some now want to go back to total capital allowances, which would be to have one's cake and eat it as well. That must be a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor, but it is important to realise how much we have already done.
As for my hon. Friend's most generous invitation to visit Macclesfield, that would give me huge pleasure, but I am not yet able to offer a date.
Mr. Barry Jones: What is the consequence of the right hon. Gentleman's White Paper for Britain's aerospace industry, which is still the source of many skills, many jobs and a great many exports? With the Germans now coveting British Aerospace's Airbus wing technology, will the right hon. Gentleman take a strategic decision in favour of the future large aircraft, which would help British Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and Shorts? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that tens of thousands of jobs depend on that decision and that, today, he could give confidence to British Aerospace and the whole industry?
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman raises the interests of a most important industry. I share that view, and it has been my privilege as a member of a Conservative Government to help to create the European Space Agency, to sell Tornados to the Saudis, to get the European fighter aircraft programme off the ground, to launch the EH101, and to give general and continuing support to that industry to the tune of £1.5 billion since 1979. Although I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's support, I can assure him that the Government need no advice on this matter.
Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the timely White Paper. Will he join me in congratulating my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade, who this very day has succeeded in normalising our trading relationship with Malaysia despite the Labour party's efforts to damage British prospects? My right hon. Friend mentioned that he would like to improve the competitive advantage of our outward investment. Will he expand on that?
Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is generous in referring to my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade, who is never satisfied with normalising relationships but is hellbent on improving them, which he is doing with remarkable success across the world. As for outward investment, we shall be looking to the export promoters who have been seconded to my Department for the purposes of encouraging exports to look for outward investment opportunities as we realise that that gives an additional competitive advantage to British companies and will lead to massive repatriation of profits in the future.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: How on earth does the President of the Board of Trade expect businesses large and small voluntarily to settle their debts when the Government are giving the nod and a wink to Tory Members not to settle their debts at Lloyd's?
Mr. Heseltine: The one way that British industry would find it encouraging to settle its debts is to listen to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and realise that, if anything went wrong, he could be part of a governing party.
Sir Anthony Grant: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he is absolutely right to reject any silly socialist subsidies for industry, which seem to be the only policy of the Labour party? My right hon. Friend is also absolutely right to identify the late payment of debt as the biggest problem from which the small firms sector suffers. Will he bear in mind that statutory interest is not so simple as it seems, that it can sometimes work against the interests of small firms and that the idea of publicising and exposing to shame the activities of larger firms is therefore the better solution? Does my right hon. Friend—we were in government together—also recall that when the Labour party was in office, the small firms sector almost disappeared entirely?
Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The punitive tax regimes of the Labour party made it impossible for the small industrial sector to generate itself, and the punitive capital and wealth taxes meant that family businesses were bound to be sold into the hands of publicly quoted companies which had massive tax incentives to take them over. My hon. Friend is absolutely right also that the various legislative answers to the better payment of debts may have particularly onerous effects on small businesses which often use their creditors as part of their companies' financial package. If we look at the balance sheets of small businesses, we often find that the people who might suffer most from a rigid regime would be those very companies starting up.
Mr. Alex Salmond: Does the President of the Board of Trade accept that the only industry to get a substantial boost from today's announcement is the paper, printing and publishing industry? How could he take so long to say so little of substance? Looking at the full nine pages of his statement, can he tell us where the beef is?
Mr. Heseltine: I know that it is customary in the House to indulge in that sort of fatuous intervention—[interruption.] As the hon. Gentleman sits there, pregnant with a big idea, I often wonder what goes on in his mind. The only conclusion that anyone watching the performance in the House this afternoon and the antics of the Opposition could draw is that the House has lost the capability to hold any rational debate about anything that is of genuine concern to the country at large.
Dr. Keith Hampson: My right hon. Friend is to be congratulated on producing the first comprehensive analysis of our industrial problems and the first coherent approach to them since the Labour Government's 1975 White Paper, which was wholly unmemorable and hopelessly ineffective. There is now at least a focus which, so far as I can see, follows exactly the trend of the thinking of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). In particular, it focuses on the role of Government in helping businesses to help themselves. Above all, small companies—
Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. I have cautioned the House a number of times this afternoon that I am not prepared to listen to statements. This is not the time for statements; it is the time for questions, and I am looking for a question from the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Dr. Hampson).
Dr. Hampson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the central thrust of the White Paper is to ensure that small businesses which have the potential for growth are to be helped to become the powerful medium-sized companies of which we are particularly short when compared with our major rivals?
Mr. Heseltine: I very much sympathise with my hon. Friend, but one of the reasons why we are short of medium-sized businesses, which are so characteristic of, for example, the German economy, is that when the Labour Government were in power they wiped them out.
Mr. Michael Clapham: From his reading of the report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, the President of the Board of Trade will be aware that the United Kingdom spends less on civil research and development than any of our competitors, both in absolute terms and per capita. What precisely will his statement do to obtain more Government investment in British industry?
Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman is right, but he does not draw the right conclusion. In terms of public expenditure, the Government spend broadly the equivalent of what equivalent countries spend—it is the private sector that spends less. A careful analysis of the private sector shows that there is nothing in the structure of the British capitalist system which makes it inevitable that that should be the case. In some industries—for example, the pharmaceutical industry—Britain spends a great deal on research and development and is in a world-class position. This is one of the subjects that my hon. Friends the Financial Secretary and Economic Secretary to the Treasury will be considering in their analysis.
Mr. Tim Devlin: Is my right hon. Friend aware that successful manufacturing businesses in the north of England will greatly welcome the White Paper, but that they will feel that the problems with which it deals are of such fundamental importance that they should not be the subject of petty party politics? Will he therefore take every possible step to bring at least a large proportion of the Opposition on board to support his proposals?
Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend sets me a task beyond the wildest dreams of human politicians. Anyone studying the White Paper will realise that we have deliberately tried to consider economic cycles as opposed to the tenures of any one Government. We have deliberately tried to examine the problems in the context of decades. When I came to the House today, I had not the slightest intention of turning this matter into a party political issue, but I was not so naive as to think that that would be the attitude of the Opposition, so I had a devastating response to any wholly irresponsible intervention.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Why did the Government not introduce the more interesting parts of the document four years ago, when they might really have had some impact? What has changed?
Mr. Heseltine: The performance of the British economy has changed. The more the hon. Gentleman and the House examine the document, the more it will be realised that we are building on the strengths that now exist in the British economy but which simply did not exist in the early 1980s.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. We now move to the second statement.

Education, Training and Employment
4.19 pm
The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Hunt): With permission, Madam Speaker, I shall make a statement on the policies and plans in the White Paper, "Competitiveness: Helping Business to Win", for which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and I are responsible.
The only sound basis for sustainable jobs is a competitive economy, and a labour market that is efficient in bringing employers and employees together and allowing them to negotiate freely, and avoids the rigidities that did so much damage in the 1960s and 1970s. That is the background to our strategy for employment set out in the White Paper, but it is far from the whole story. The further development of education and training is another important focus of the White Paper, which also announces the conclusions of a comprehensive review of health and safety regulation.
At our request, the Health and Safety Commission has carried out the most extensive review of health and safety regulation for 20 years. We are publishing the results jointly with the commission this afternoon. The commission, after extensive consultation, has made wide-ranging recommendations to simplify and modernise our legislation. They include the removal of more than 40 per cent. of the regulations that currently affect the generality of business and which, in the view of the experts, can be removed without adversely affecting health and safety conditions.
The commission's proposals also include new and better guidance on the regulations criticised for complexity, improved advice to industry—especially small businesses—on how to comply with the law, and new strategies to make the enforcement of health and safety law more consistent and effective. The Government welcome and accept the commission's recommendations and will consider with the commission and others how best to carry them into effect. In particular, we shall consider them in the context of the scrutiny of local authority enforcement, on which a report is due shortly.
We are committed to a system of health and safety that maintains high standards without imposing unnecessary burdens on business. Our system is world class, and we intend to keep it that way. Implementation of the commission's recommendations will help our efforts both to create a safer and healthier working environment and to improve business competitiveness.
I shall now deal with education and training. Making the most of all our people is fundamental to competitiveness. Good basic education is essential. So is lifetime learning. Both depend on a coherent education and training system that really motivates individuals, and delivers results to rigorous standards. That is why the national targets for education and training, endorsed by Government and promoted locally by training and enterprise councils, and in Scotland by local enterprise companies, are so important.
Our progress in recent years is striking. More of our young people are doing well at GCSE, and GCE A-level, than ever before. We have the highest graduate percentage output in Europe. More people are being trained at work. Our work force is better qualified.
198
But we must raise our sights still further. The White Paper announces a package of measures that builds on our existing policies and successes. We shall commit more than £300 million to the new measures over the three years to 1997–98.
The new initiatives are, first, accelerated modern apprenticeships to give vocational training to 18 and 19-year-olds entering the labour market to help them to achieve the technical and supervisory skills which are critical to their—and our—economic success. Training will be to NVQ level 3 or above and should last an average of 18 months. The Government will invest £107 million over three years. By the end of the decade, the initiative will produce 30,000 extra skilled and qualified people each year, nearly doubling the achievement at that level which is already planned through modern apprenticeships.
Secondly, there will be better careers education and guidance for young people. An extra £87 million will be made available over three years. We are adding to the depth and quality of the independent advice that young people get at key decision-making stages, particularly at ages 13, 15 and 17. Each pupil will receive a statement of their entitlement to careers education and guidance, and careers officers and teachers will get extra training.
Thirdly, there will be a training boost for small firms, which are the economic lifeblood for so many people in a modern developed economy but which can be inhibited from full-scale training programmes by their size. We therefore intend to help firms with fewer than 50 employees to train suitable individuals as trainers, ensuring that they have up-to-date skills which they in turn can pass on to others. Over three years, £63 million will be contributed by Government.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: How?
Mr. Hunt: I shall explain it.
We want to strengthen standards, choice and diversity. We plan to provide more and better opportunities for 14 to 16-year-olds to take vocational courses at school, and a new general diploma for 16 to 18-year-olds to reward those who gain good GCSEs in English, maths and science, plus two others or their vocational equivalents. In addition, we will work further to strengthen standards in GCE A level and AS qualifications and their Scottish equivalents, in the new general national and Scottish vocational qualifications and in our system of national vocational and Scottish vocational qualifications.
We also plan closer partnership between education, training and employers. Over three years, £23 million will be made available to help to provide at least one week's work experience for all young people before they leave education. There will be new targets for education-business links, and new arrangements for ensuring that further education in England makes the best possible contribution to developing our skills base.
Training and enterprise councils will work more closely with the further education sector and offer particular support through a new competitiveness fund to meet key local skills needs. That will, for example, enable colleges to purchase more state-of-the-art equipment for training.
We will also have wide consultation on the practical implications of learning credits to give all young people the power to buy their own education and training from schools, colleges, employers and other recognised providers.

199
Credits have long been advocated by leading economic institutions, including the Confederation of Business Industry, and many individuals. We see attractions in that approach. It would be consistent with our policy of promoting choice and diversity. However, we do recognise that such a wide-ranging change in funding arrangements would require careful preparation.
We are encouraging lifetime individual learning and helping employers to make sure that their investment in training meets business needs. We shall be looking closely at individual accounts for training and at whether career development loans can be made more accessible. "Investors in People" marketing will be boosted.
Altogether, the Government are investing more than £300 million in this package of measures over the three years to 1997–98. That reflects the priority that we are giving to education and training in our drive to compete. People are the key to a successful economy, and we have to be ambitious, both as individuals and as a nation, to succeed. There is no great future for our great nation unless we remain a highly skilled, high-value-added and high-wage economy. Our whole way of life depends on that.
This is an ambitious set of proposals, and I commend them to the House.
Mr. John Prescott: Today, the House has heard two statements from the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and for Employment on the White Paper, which reveal that they have totally failed to understand the scale of the economic problems facing Britain's industry and are at variance not only with the facts, but with the Government's published facts.
We are promised more statements, White Papers and studies. After 15 years of economic incompetence, they offer us more and more statements. We must consider the Government's record when considering further promises from any Secretary of State belonging to this Government.
The House will welcome any statement that improves health and safety at the place of work. Does the Secretary of State agree, in accepting the recommendations of the health and safety review, that health and safety is not now a burden on business as the Government first suggested? Will he now ensure that sufficient funds are found to make health and safety regulations effective and reverse all the cuts that he has imposed on the health and safety budget over the years?
The House would welcome any statement about improvements in training and education. Indeed, we welcome them as far as they go, but they do not go far. Why do the Government accept so little in training and education for our people? The Secretary of State said in the statement:
"Making the most of … our people is fundamental to competitiveness",
and that good basic education and training are "essential". He went on to say that the progress "is striking". The statement is a statement of illusion; it is not true; it is not borne out by the facts.
It seems that Opposition Members must bring home to the respective Secretaries of State the fact that the Conservatives were in office in 1979, and the record is there for all to see. I shall say something about it.
200
There have been 22 statements on training in this Chamber since 1979—some announced new schemes, some shut down old schemes. Sixteen training schemes have come and gone, and only two lasted more than five years. All the schemes were launched with the razzmatazz of media publicity, but were irrelevant to the skills crisis facing Britain. They are more about catching headlines than producing skills.
Does the Secretary of State not recognise that deregulation, privatisation and voluntarism have failed, and that it was a mistake to abolish 21 of the 23 training boards and their statutory training levy, which cost us one third of trade apprentices—more than 150,000?
The Secretary of State said that our progress in recent years has been "striking" and that our work force is better qualified. Is he aware that Britain has the lowest skills level of any major industrial nation and has fallen from 13th to 19th place in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development skills league, and that the United Kingdom has the worst trained and educated work force in the European Union, with skills at half the level of France and Germany and lower than those in Spain and Portugal, according to the Community's figures?
Even if the Secretary of State achieves the 150,000 modern apprenticeship places, does he accept that he is only taking us back to the level in 1979? His aim to secure 30,000 NVQ-level apprentices is a pitiful drop in the ocean compared with Germany's 600,000 apprenticeships a year. At this rate, it will be another 25 years before we catch up with the levels of Germany today.
Is it not true that employers have abdicated their responsibilities to train, and that they have ducked their obligations to the work force and to society to invest in skills? Have not they been led by a Government who have cut £1.5 billion from the employment budget since 1985, and a further 5 per cent. of the training budget this year?
In his statement this afternoon, the Secretary of State made it clear that £300 million will be available during the next three years. That is totally inadequate, and it must be seen against the £3.6 billion that has been cut from the training budget since 1989. How does he intend to finance the £1.5 billion cost of the modern apprenticeships with a reduced budget? What will he sacrifice for the new scheme? If the Government will not even maintain their own training budgets, how does he expect that, left to their own devices, private companies will keep up their investment in training?
In his reference to learning credits, does the Secretary of State really mean training vouchers? Is that a proper response to our skills crisis? Is it not a Green Shield stamp approach to the vital provision of skills, which is irrelevant to the real issue? Will the vouchers cover the full cost, or will they continue to short-change the unemployed who have been plunged into debt, like thousands of our students today?
Does the Secretary of State not see that, in every area of training, the Government have heaped failure upon failure? He refused to accept training funds from Europe and the privatised Skills Training Agency collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving training centres idle, trainers on the dole and thousands of trainees with nothing to learn and no one to teach them.
Training in this country is in its deepest and most acute crisis ever, and the White Paper will not answer the long-term training problems of this country. But there are things which the Secretary of State could do in an

201
emergency programme. Why does he not take back the bankrupt privatised training centres that lie empty, as in my constituency, and open them for trainers and trainees? Why does not he call upon major companies with spare training capacity to make those facilities available to others?
Finally, will the Secretary of State now recognise the desperate underfunding of training in this country? Will he return to the principle that has been successfully adopted by every country in Europe and has been advocated by the Trade and Industry Select Committee, of a statutory training levy? Britain's skills crisis requires no less.
Mr. Hunt: In many ways, there has been a competition on the Opposition Benches this afternoon—a competition to produce the most negative response to the White Paper. I think that the shadow Secretary of State for Employment has just won that competition. His was a very negative response.
On health and safety, I wish that the hon. Gentleman would continue his dialogue with the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who attacked the health and safety proposals a few moments ago. He said that they were taking greater risks with the work force, but the shadow Secretary of State for Employment knows that the proposals come from the Health and Safety Commission, on which sit representatives of the TUC. I regard what has been said as a gross slur on the TUC. I understand that the trade union representatives agreed—[Interruption.] No, I am going to continue with the point, because it is very important.
I understand that the TUC representatives agreed to the report which I, on behalf of the Government, have now accepted. To say that the 'TUC would flirt with the idea of taking greater risks with the work force is, I believe, a gross slur on the TUC, the employers and the tripartite Health and Safety Commission. I hope that the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) will consider withdrawing his allegation, and join the shadow Secretary of State for Employment in welcoming any measures that ensure that a simpler form of health and safety will mean a safer system of health and safety.
I very much welcome the welcome by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) for the measures that I have announced this afternoon—I did find a welcome in what he said—but I want him to rethink the background to his welcome. He made no detailed recommendations on how the new modern apprenticeship scheme should proceed.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: It is the Secretary of State's statement.
Mr. Hunt: The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that I have invited the shadow Secretary of State for Employment and his team to see me and put forward proposals on how we can make the greatest possible success of the new modern apprenticeship scheme, which has been welcomed by employers, the TUC and organisations throughout the United Kingdom. My door is still open, and I await their constructive proposals.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East should rethink the background against which he has given his welcome. He has continued talking down Britain. I can give precise figures for the average annual percentage growth in the European Community between 1980 and 1990—the OECD cycle. The hon. Gentleman has talked
202
down the achievements in the British economy—[Interruption.] I will come to the further point that he made in a moment. [Interruption.] I am giving the correct figures, which were thrown into doubt by the shadow Secretaries of State earlier. Between 1980 and 1990, growth in the United Kingdom exceeded growth in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium.
The hon. Gentleman also claimed that the UK has a low-skill, sweatshop economy with a low skills base. Not only is that incorrect, but we have managed to attract a record level of inward investment. How have we managed to attract 3,500 companies from the United States? How have we managed to attract more than one third of all the investment that has come into Europe from the rest of the world? It is because we have a world-class skilled work force.
As the hon. Gentleman made no other substantive points, may I just answer his point about the budget? He must see that £300 million against the fact that my budget will now rise from some £2.2 billion to about £2.5 billion, which I shall be investing over three years just for young people, to get modern training leading to high-quality qualifications. Those are significant steps forward, and the day will come when the hon. Gentleman will recognise that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. May I now have brisk questions from Back-Bench Members and brisk answers from the Secretary of State?
Sir Malcolm Thornton: I welcome the proposals to bring education and training much closer together, particularly careers guidance, which will be on offer to secondary pupils from the age of 11. That is a significant development. How does my right hon. Friend propose to monitor the results of what is happening? The input is important, but monitoring the output is equally important. Will he also remind the House that one reason why we lost so many apprenticeships was the high cost of paying apprentices artificially high wages compared to their fully qualified counterparts?
Mr. Hunt: My hon. Friend is right to look back at the history of the old, traditional apprenticeship scheme, which was built on time serving, whereas the new, modern apprenticeship system focuses on high-quality qualifications to NVQ level 3, which is equivalent to two A-levels. The old apprenticeship scheme had set, rigid minimum wages, restrictive practices and demarcation lines, which renstricted the young apprentice to one machine or one machine shop. We are now dealing with training a multi-skilled, high-opportunity work force.
On my hon. Friend's second point, I now calculate that, every year, 1.5 million independent interviews will be conducted throughout the country to help young people to make the right choices at the ages of 13, 15 and 17.
Mr. David Rendel: Will the Secretary of State back up his welcome support for lifetime learning by reducing the restrictions on training the unemployed, particularly getting rid of the 21-hour rule?
Mr. Hunt: It is important to target resources. Given that two thirds of all those who become unemployed find a job—come off the register—within six months, we must recognise that the real target must be those who have been

203
unemployed for a considerable time. That is why we must have checks and balances in the system, to target the most effective help on the longer-term unemployed.
Mr. Nigel Forman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement will be welcomed because it has one clear and positive focus—that we should invest more heavily in human capital in all the appropriate ways? Is he also aware that it is vital to do so continuously over a long period? The lead times are long and, unless the policy is sustained, it will not have the success that it deserves.
Mr. Hunt: I agree with my hon. Friend.
Mr. Greville Janner: First, on the health and safety regulations, does the Secretary of State agree that it takes no great genius to bury regulations that have long been dead? We are worried about how many live ones will be interred with the bones. Will he give the House an absolute guarantee that no provisions that really protect people at work will be abolished?
Secondly, how much has it cost the public for the Secretary of State and the President to produce a document that seems to be unadulterated Tory propaganda, complete with a photograph of the Prime Minister?
Mr. Hunt: On health and safety rules, this is the first in-depth inquiry into the full range of health and safety legislation which the Health and Safety Commission has conducted for 20 years. It has spent a considerable amount of time on it, and it assures me that none of its recommendations will place health and safety in the workplace in jeopardy. We have one of the finest records in the world on health and safety, and I give the hon. and learned Gentleman my undoubted, categorical assurance that I intend to keep it that way.
On cost, I shall let the hon. and learned Gentleman have that figure. This is not a party political occasion. The White Paper was destined to be published some time ago, but, due to the tragic events that occurred, it was delayed. I hope that the document will form a foundation for further discussions on an all-party basis right across the spectrum for many months and years to come, and that it will provide a secure foundation for education and training in particular.
Mr. Peter Viggers: As the chairman of a sixth form college, I can see for myself the attraction and relevance of vocational training for the young, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the best basis for lifetime learning is a good, focused and rigorous training in reading, writing, arithmetic, history and geography?
Mr. Hunt: I agree with my hon. Friend, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has introduced the much welcomed proposal for the new general diploma. My hon. Friend will be aware of the targets for lifetime learning. The White Paper reveals that the National Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets, which includes some distinguished people, such as one of the leading personalities from the trade union movement, will review the targets to ensure that they are brought up to date. Those lifetime learning targets are among the most important facing the British nation at the present time.
Mr. John Evans: Is the Secretary of State aware that the statements in the document and his article about incentives to work which appeared in The Sunday Times will be regarded as an insult and an outrage by the 500 workers who are being sacked from the Beecham factory in St. Helens and whose work is being transferred to a lower-paying, non-union plant in Devon? Is it not about time that the Secretary of State insisted that, where companies sack workers simply to increase their profits, they should be responsible for paying the wages of those workers until they find jobs?
Will the Secretary of State and the President of the Board of Trade accept my invitation to meet some of those Beecham factory workers in Committee Room 14 tomorrow afternoon to talk about the White Paper?
Mr. Hunt: The hon. Gentleman has a particular constituency interest, which I share. The closure—I very much regret it and the redundancies which have occurred—took place in Merseyside where my constituency is. Just before I came into the Chamber, I received a letter from the hon. Gentleman inviting me to the meeting to which he referred. Sadly, I shall be in the midlands tomorrow. However, I ask him to make a careful note of all the points that his constituents wish to put to Secretaries of State. I will be very willing to see him and his colleagues after tomorrow's meeting has taken place.
Mr. Richard Page: As one of the few Members of the House who has completed an industrial apprenticeship, I accept and understand what my right hon. Friend is trying to achieve today. On that he is to be congratulated.
How will he disseminate the information in his statement to employers, and particularly to the youngsters who will take up the apprenticeships? Will he, for example, use trade associations—particularly the lead trade associations per industrial sector—to get the message across?
Mr. Hunt: Yes, I will. We are spearheading the new modern apprenticeship scheme in partnership with the training and enterprise councils and the industry training organisations. They are currently working up models that will form the basis of the new NVQ level 3 qualification, which is the objective of the new modern apprenticeship system.
We are getting a great deal of help from all sectors, and all parts of every sector, in the United Kingdom. Some new sectors that do not have a tradition of apprenticeship are getting very excited about the opportunities that the new modern apprenticeship scheme will offer.
We anticipate that more than 200,000 young people will participate in the new modern apprenticeship scheme at any one time. When the scheme is up and running, we anticipate that the number of those qualifying and achieving NVQ level 3 will increase from 40,000 under the scheme we have announced already to 70,000 per year. My hon. Friend is right: we have to get the message across in every possible way.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: What about the kids who leave school with no qualifications and drift into crime, drugs and joyriding, as we have learnt from the television and the wireless? Does the Secretary of State not remember the old days when the National Coal Board

205
provided apprenticeships for electricians, fitters, blacksmiths and joiners? In those days, we turned out qualified workers by the thousands—and at less expense.
Mr. Hunt: I hope that the new modern apprenticeship scheme will give many youngsters a real opportunity, challenge and sense of pride and achievement in gaining a new modern apprenticeship. That is why I hope that we will receive co-operation from both sides of the House in ensuring that the scheme is a great success.
Turning to the problem of unemployment among young people, I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that, according to the figures that I announced a short time ago, unemployment fell most markedly among young males aged between 20 and 24 years. We now have one of the lowest rates of youth unemployment in Europe. Admittedly, at 15.4 per cent., it is too high; but the European average is 20.7 per cent.
The rate of unemployment among males and females aged under 25 years is 23.7 per cent. in France, 31.7 per cent. in Italy and 38.9 per cent. in Spain. The hon. Gentleman can see that we are doing extremely well in comparison with our competitors. However, we are determined to do more, and the new modern apprenticeship scheme will offer many new opportunities to young people.
Dr. John G. Blackburn: Does my right hon. Friend accept the very warm welcome that his statement has received today—particularly from the hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have a thirst for training?
Does he also accept that this country has the best job creation record in Europe and, in addition, that we have the highest percentage of our work force in employment? Does he agree that this success story can be attributed in very large measure to national vocational qualifications—the real training powerhouse in this country—which are supported by the Government?
Mr. Hunt: My hon. Friend is correct in all his facts. It must be a matter of considerable pride that a higher percentage of the working age population are in work in the UK than almost any other country in Europe. Some 70 per cent. of those aged 15 to 64 are in work. That compares favourably with other European countries—Germany with 65 per cent.; France with 60 per cent.; Italy, 56 per cent.; Ireland, 52 per cent.; and Spain, 49 per cent. People must recognise that ours is a great success story. The whole point of the White Paper is that we do not intend to rest on our achievements; there is much more to accomplish, and we intend to do that.
Mr. Alan Simpson: Will the Secretary of State explain what his proposals will do for a city such as Nottingham, where last year more than 1,000 school leavers were unable to take advantage of the training guarantee because employers found the scheme and its resources either worthless or unworkable? How does the Secretary of State square that with the news I received today about the closure of Prospects Training, a Nottingham company with a very good record of providing training for young people? It is being forced to close not because it cannot deliver quality training, but because others can deliver it more cheaply without the quality guarantee.
206
What in his proposals guarantees special needs training requirements—
Madam Speaker: Order. Brisk answers and questions, now; otherwise, I will have to bring questions to a close.
Mr. Hunt: There is a great deal in the White Paper for the hon. Gentleman's area, if only he would see the positive side. The UK work force exceeds 25 million. The prospects for that work force and the competitiveness of the economy depend on our bringing forward the proposals in the White Paper. I regret any redundancies or loss of training providers anywhere, but the hon. Gentleman must recognise that we are continually investing in the future—and that is inherent in the White Paper.
Mr. Richard Tracey: Both my right hon. Friends will be aware how squarely their White Papers have hit the target, judging from the carping comments of Opposition Members. Has my right hon. Friend seen the impartial commentary in The Times of today written by Professor Tim Congdon? He paints an extremely rosy picture of this country's productivity and job prospects, but also warns against excessive Government intervention in maintaining that and in making sure that the unions are kept reined in—
Madam Speaker: Order. How many more times do I have to remind the House that we are not concerned with what appears in newspapers? We are concerned with what appears in the White Paper and, indeed, with what the Secretary of State has had to say. Perhaps the Secretary of State will reply very briefly to that question and to those of any other hon. Members I might call.
Mr. Hunt: Madam Speaker, I hope that you will forgive my hon. Friend. There are so many good things to say about the economy and this White Paper that it is very difficult—
Madam Speaker: Order. We are not discussing the economy; we are discussing the Secretary of State's statement.
Mr. Hunt: There are many good things in the White Paper too, Madam Speaker.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: Will the Secretary of State tell us what he means by young people "buying skills from schools"?
Mr. Hunt: Buying skills will occur through a credit system for every school leaver aged 16 to 19 years. As the hon. Gentleman will see from the White Paper, we propose this as an idea—which we find very attractive—involving a credit with real cash value. It is a pretty significant change in funding, and that is why we will consult about it. In the meantime—
Mr. Spearing: From schools?
Mr. Hunt: Yes—a voucher. School leavers will have the opportunity of receiving a credit which will then enable them to purchase further education or training from schools, colleges, employers and other providers. I hope that that has explained the situation to the hon. Gentleman. He will find that it is set out very clearly in the White Paper.
Mr. Anthony Coombs: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the huge improvement in

207
competitiveness of British industry in the past few years, especially since the days when we were derided as the sick man of Europe under the last Labour Government, has gone hand in hand with the improvement in industrial relations, which has given us the lowest level of strikes ever? Will he especially confirm that the £31 million that will be spent on the modern apprenticeship scheme will go towards improving the rigour of the national vocational qualifications on which employers in this country depend?
Mr. Hunt: Yes, I can confirm that the £31 million will go towards improving the quality of NVQs. I also confirm that my hon. Friend is right. We now have one of the lowest levels of strikes and industrial unrest anywhere in Europe. In 1992, the United Kingdom strike rate was lower than that in Germany, France or the United States. That is a record of which we have every right to be proud.
Mr. Alan W. Williams: Is the Secretary of State aware that only 30 per cent. of our 18-year-olds have qualifications equivalent to two A-levels, compared with 68 per cent. in France and more than 80 per cent. in Japan? When the Conservatives have been in power for 15 years, why are we falling so far behind our international competitors?
Mr. Hunt: The hon. Gentleman has made out an important case for performance tables and for the testing regime that we have introduced, as well as the core curriculum. If he looks at the foundation learning targets, he will realise that we have the type of targets that really will enable us to maintain our competitiveness in world terms. It is important that we meet those targets. The White Paper sets out the blueprint for achieving the targets that we have set ourselves.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: We shall now move on.

BILL PRESENTED
  FINE DEFAULTERS (RESTRICTION OF POWER TO IMPRISON)
  Dr. Lynne Jones, supported by Mr. Richard Alexander and Mr. Alex Carlile, presented a Bill to restrict the power of magistrates' courts to impose imprisonment for default of the payment of fines: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 8 July, and to be printed. [Bill 120.]

Hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam
5.1 pm
Mr. David Winnick: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Yesterday there was a reference to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). You made your comments. Can I ask you whether the hon. Lady will give an explanation and an apology to the House about the original statement she made, that the amendments tabled were her own? Obviously they were not. Will the hon. Lady come to the House and apologise?
Madam Speaker: As I have already told the House, the matter is under consideration by me. I have heard from the hon. Lady. I am considering it now.

Statutory Instruments, &c
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
Statutory Instruments, &c

  FARM AND CONSERVATION GRANT
  That the Farm and Conservation Grant (Variation) Scheme 1994 (S.I., 1994, No. 1302) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Question agreed to.
  Madam Speaker: Motion No. 2 is not moved. With permission, I shall put together motions Nos. 3 and 4.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  WILLS AND ADMINISTRATION (NORTHERN IRELAND)
  That the draft Wills and Administration Proceedings (Northern Ireland) Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

  LITTER (NORTHERN IRELAND)
  That the draft Litter (Northern Ireland) Order 1994 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
  Question agreed to.
  Madam Speaker: Motion No. 5 is not moved.

Television Licences (Reduction for Poor Reception)
5.2 pm
Mr. Charles Hendry: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give television licence holders a reduction in their licence fee when it is recognised that the household is unable to enjoy good television reception.
This is a modest, simple and fair Bill, although I had no idea when I tabled it that simply to do so would instil so much fear into the BBC that the whole organisation would go out on strike. I have decided that that is a matter of such importance to my constituents and to other constituents elsewhere in the country that I would brave the picket lines to come here and put my case to the House.
I have a number of constituents whose television reception is always poor, yet, under the current rules, they have to pay the full licence fee. That is patently unfair.
Today, the BBC is filming one of my constituents, who can obtain only what the BBC accepts is a substandard picture, but when that film is shown on television, he will be one of the small group of people in this country who will not be able to watch it at all. He lives not in a wild, remote area, but in a village less than 20 miles from the centre of Manchester, with half the country's population within an hour or so's drive away. We know that, because most of them seem to come and spend every Sunday in my constituency. Therefore, we are not speaking simply about the wildest, remote parts of the country, although the problem is predominantly rural.
Television reception is also a problem in areas such as Kent. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) supports the Bill, because there are pockets in his constituency in which people cannot receive the BBC, but only Dutch television. Unfortunately, Dutch is not one of the languages that are taught in the schools of Dover. Those people can only hope, as we do, that Dutch television will show as many BBC repeats as the BBC shows here. Nevertheless, they still have to pay the full licence fee to the BBC.
In Scotland, some people cannot receive any British television services, and can receive only television services that are broadcast by satellite, either by BSkyB or other satellite television stations, watching only programmes that have not been made by the BBC, yet they also have to pay the full licence fee to the BBC, even though they do not enjoy any of the services it provides.
The irony is that many of the people who are affected by that problem live in regions that have been made famous by programmes such as "It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet", "Last of the Summer Wine" and "Peak Practice", yet they are the very people who are unable to watch their regions being represented on television.
I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage in his place, listening to the debate. He will be aware, from his interest in cricket, that Buxton in my constituency does not always enjoy good weather because Buxton is probably the only town in this country where a cricket match has been snowed off in June. However, it is not fair that so many of the rest of my constituents should have to see snow every time they want to watch a cricket, tennis, rugby or football match on their television sets.
The Bill is not about whether programmes are worth watching, because some people would argue that they
210
should pay more if they are unable to watch "EastEnders" or "Casualty" or Ben Elton or party political broadcasts, or about what the BBC does with the money it receives. It is about the service that people receive. Under the principles of the citizens charter, people should not have to pay the full cost if they receive a substandard service.
The most peculiar aspect of the current law is that paying the licence fee does not entitle us to receive a television picture—it only obliges the BBC to transmit one. It is as though paying the council tax obliged the rubbish wagons to set off from the depot in the morning but not to collect any rubbish. It is like saying that by putting a stamp on the letter one can be certain that the letter will be taken out of the letter box, but one has no say about whether it will be put through someone else's letter box or dumped in the nearest hedgerow.
The licence fee simply relates to the ownership of equipment, which enables people to receive the signal, even if there is no signal that they can receive on that equipment. People feel understandably frustrated and annoyed about the current system, and there is wide agreement on both sides of the House that that is simply wrong.
There is a further serious issue, relating to those people who are hard of hearing and who rely on the teletext service to give subtitles to programmes. Teletext is one of the first services to break up in areas of poor reception, which can deprive those people who are hard of hearing of any benefit from their televisions. Nevertheless, they have to pay the same licence fee as everyone else. I am grateful to the Deaf Broadcasting Council for the support that it is giving my Bill.
Some people say that it will be difficult to know which regions are affected, but that is not so. The BBC has already identified many of the areas with populations of more than 200 that have substandard reception. In the case of Millers Dale in my constituency, the BBC has told me that 160 people are affected, so they also have significant information already on areas of smaller population. The Department of National Heritage has published lists of affected communities in different parts of the country.
Other people will say that it is difficult to assess whether people's reception is good or bad. I accept that. The degree of reception will always be a subjective issue. However,
the principle in the Bill is that it would apply to people who receive a consistently bad picture, so it does not refer to the household where reception is distorted by atmospheric conditions or by bad weather conditions.
It would relate to permanent geographical and geological features rather than vegetation or a building blocking the signal. It would not apply if one's neighbour had allowed his hedgerow to grow too high, blocking one's television picture. It would apply when signal strength was the root of the problem.
The BBC also says that it is hard to tell whether or not a picture is substandard. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) said on television this morning, it is like a camel: one cannot describe it, but one certainly recognises it when one sees it—or, in the case of a television picture, when one does not see it.
There should certainly be no concern about the amount of money involved, as the BBC estimates that 99.4 per cent. of the population receive a satisfactory picture. This year, the licence fee will raise £1.6 billion, so a full rebate for those unable to receive a good picture would cost under £10 million. If the rebate were set at half the licence fee, the

211
loss of revenue to the BBC would be just one day's income. No doubt all hon. Members could suggest good ways of making that up. In fact, we might be spared a programme like "El Dorado", as well as getting a better deal—a double benefit.
The principle would be that people should have taken the steps they could reasonably be expected to take to improve their picture—for example, the provision of a good-quality aerial or, if necessary, a booster. However, it does not seem right that they should be expected to spend more than £300 on a so-called self-help kit to get a proper picture.
The principle behind the Bill is based on the fact that there are people who, day in and day out, can get only substandard television reception. In many parts of the country, the BBC has already established where the people concerned live, and the corporation already has its own definition of what is and what is not satisfactory. In this age, it is simply not acceptable that people should have to pay for a service that they are not receiving.
I fully recognise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage is reviewing the whole future of the licence fee. However, that matter is not an issue under the Bill. It is bad enough to have to pay the BBC to be allowed to watch programmes broadcast by independent stations—like having to buy The Guardian in order to be able to read The Times—but it is not acceptable that people should have to pay the BBC even if they receive no satisfactory picture from anyone at all.
As I said at the outset, this is a simple Bill, with cross-party support. It would help a small number of people who, we all accept, get a raw deal at the moment. It is time to correct this anomaly.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Charles Hendry, Mr. Sebastian Coe, Mr. Jonathan Evans, Mr. George Foulkes, Mr. Phil Gallie, Sir Russell Johnston, Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones, Mr. Calum Macdonald, Mr. David Shaw and Mr. John Sykes.

Television Licences (Reduction for Poor Reception)
  TELEVISION LICENCES (REDUCTION FOR POOR RECEPTION)
  Mr. Charles Hendry accordingly presented a Bill to give television licence holders a reduction in their licence fee when it is recognised that the household is unable to enjoy good television reception: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 June, and to be printed. [Bill 121.]
Orders of the Day

  Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill
  Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified].
  5.12 pm
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
  It is almost exactly three years since I stood at the Dispatch Box and announced the Government's intention to move towards a system of all-purpose local authorities in Scotland. In those three years, the discussion has been lively and the interest has been great. But after three consultation papers on local government and on water and sewerage, a White Paper, a Second Reading debate, almost 180 hours of debate in the Standing Committee and a two-day Report stage, we are now on the home straight of this particular marathon. This seems the right moment at which to express a word of thanks to all those—hon. Members, local authority councillors and staff, interested organisations, the general public and Scottish Office officials—who have contributed to the Bill. It is the better for their contributions.
  I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) for so skilfully and patiently steering the Bill through its stages in the House, ably assisted by his fellow Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) and for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro). This also seems an appropriate moment—dare I say it?—to go back to basics: back to the basic principles underpinning the reform, because the arguments that led every political party in Scotland to propose single-tier local government for Scotland during the 1992 general election are as valid today as they were then and as valid as when Lord Wheatley's commission acknowledged them. The reform is about accountability and effectiveness in local government. The present two-tier structure lacks accountability in the most dramatic way. The "crisscrossing of responsibilities", which Lord Wheatley rightly identified as a fundamental problem in any multi-tier structure of local government, is an insurmountable barrier to real accountability.
  Mr. John Home Robertson: Will real accountability apply to the right hon. Gentleman's three new water super-quangos?
  Mr. Lang: I shall come to the water authorities later.
  Everyone, from the Labour party to polling organisations, has found that far too many Scots are unfamiliar with what tier of local government is responsible for what service. It is little wonder that people are confused. Currently both tiers of local government are involved in a huge range of functions—conservation areas; the countryside; development control; grants to voluntary bodies; industrial and economic development; leisure and recreation; listed buildings and ancient monuments; planning; nature conservation; tourism; and urban development. In the circumstances, it is quite impossible to have a properly accountable system of local government.

  213
  And if councils are not properly accountable they lack authority and credibility. For too long, these problems have afflicted local government in Scotland.
  Mr. James Wallace: Under the Bill's proposals, it will be possible in some areas to have a single-tier authority dealing with some functions, a joint board involving two authorities with other functions, and a joint board involving three authorities with yet others. That being so, does the right hon. Gentleman believe that members of the public will know where responsibility lies? Will not there be even more confusion?
  Mr. Lang: It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman is not aware of the distinction between joint boards and elected councils. People will look to the single-tier, all-purpose elected council and its members for all local services. How these are delivered—whether through joint boards, through committees or by means of other shared or customer-client arrangements—will be a matter for authorities to develop.
  Under the new structure of all-purpose councils, local people will know exactly who is responsible for local services in a way that is impossible in a multi-tier structure. The absence of confusion over responsibility will put local people in a far better position to encourage councils to be responsive. It will clear the lines of accountability, and it will be a shot in the arm for local democracy in Scotland.
  It will also yield for Scottish local government that other characteristic that has been denied it by the current two-tier structure—maximum effectiveness. Of course, the present regional and district councils do, by and large, discharge their functions competently, within the constraints of their structures. But they are hamstrung by being part of a two-tier system. The fact that the new councils will be responsible for all local services will ensure that those services are delivered more effectively. Bringing together, under one roof, services such as housing and social work or education and leisure and recreation will bring immense benefits to local service delivery. The positive benefits of greater co-operation between those responsible for securing services will be achieved, and the present friction between tiers of government, which is all too familiar, will disappear altogether.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: How will the service of strategic planning be delivered?
  Mr. Lang: Planning will be a matter for the single-tier local authorities, which will co-operate with one another in the case of planning on a broader scale.
  If the new local authorities are more accountable and more effective than their predecessors, they will be more powerful. In any case, each new council will have more powers than either of its predecessors. As the sole elected council for its area, each will speak with undoubted authority for the communities that it represents. And because it will be able to co-ordinate local service delivery to an unprecedented degree each new council will have an enormous ability to act as a force for good in the area that it represents.
  As a result of the Bill, these huge gains in local government are coming over the horizon for the people of Scotland. I am pleased that, thanks to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood and other hon. Members, as well as of local authorities and others, the boundaries of the new authorities should he so widely acceptable. From the start of this reform, we have made it clear that three
  214
  principles will apply to the determination of the boundaries of the new authorities. First, the new structure should not be based exclusively on either of the existing tiers of local government. Secondly, the new units need not be of uniform size but should reflect local circumstances. Thirdly, Parliament should have the final say over the boundaries of the new councils. That was the case under previous reforms, and is the case here. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary has met more than two dozen delegations from different parts of the country, led by hon. Members, and I have also met hon. Members and others. In total, the House has spent more than 22 hours debating the boundaries of the new authorities. Boundaries are a serious matter, and we have taken them seriously. Significantly, despite their at times offensive rhetoric, the Opposition divided the Committee only three times on the subject of boundaries.
  The result of the work that has been done over the past three years is a structure of 32 authorities. It may not be everyone's ideal structure, but it is a structure based on consent. Every one of the new authorities enjoys the support, either of existing local authorities directly affected or local Members of Parliament, or both.
  With the exception of minor boundary variations enjoying local support, the boundaries of the new authorities are those that emerged following the previous reform of local government. The overall total of 32 authorities represents the midway point between the range of options canvassed in the Government's second consultation paper. The House has sought to make far fewer changes to the scheme proposed for the present reform than the dramatic changes that it wrought on the Wheatley proposals of 20 years ago.
  Mr. George Robertson: I want to nail one canard immediately. The Secretary of State said in an article in Scotland on Sunday a couple of weeks ago that the boundaries were based on consent. He is now trying to make out that the fact that there were only a minimum number of Divisions in Committee on boundaries showed that there was popular support for the proposals. We are opposed root and branch to the redrawing of the Scottish council map on a party political basis, which is what the Government have done. However, to take up the time of the House and the Committee with hours and hours of voting on that map would not be productive. The Bill and the boundaries will die. The issues, not simply the Government's gerrymandered lines, must be brought to the attention of the Scottish public.
  Mr. Lang: We are seeing a change of policy from the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). He was happy to waste the time of the Committee by talking and voting on a range of other matters. The fact is that most Labour Members are content with the local boundaries for their areas—[Interruption.] Yes they are—perhaps they have not been saying to the hon. Member for Hamilton what they have been saying to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and me. If the Labour party were as opposed to the proposals as it pretends to be, it would have divided the Committee. [Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. There is now too much noise, to the point where I cannot hear what the Secretary of State is saying. Interventions are one thing, but repeated sedentary commentaries are another.
  Mr. Lang: The structure that we have is sensible, balanced and durable. It is the right structure for Scottish local government for the 21st century. Of course, there are those who do not support the structure or have complaints about particular parts of it—that is inevitable in such a complex exercise. But I believe that now is the time to draw the line under the consideration of boundaries. The Government believe that the structure that we have now is the right one and are not contemplating further changes to it.
  We also believe that the structure will yield continuing savings in the years ahead. We have made it clear throughout the reform that costs are only one part—admittedly an important part—of it. What matters most is obtaining the right structure of local government. It is therefore particularly pleasing that the reform will yield savings over the longer term. Of course, there will be transitional costs, but they will be a price worth paying for longer-term savings and a better, more durable structure of local government.
  The structure that we have settled on will comprise 32 authorities, compared with our original proposals for 28. All four additional authorities are the result of proposals made by Opposition Members and accepted by the Government. That will, of course, have implications for the costs of reform and for the savings. We now estimate that the short-term costs will be up to £5 million less than was estimated on Report, at a ceiling of about £190 million, while the consequential long-term savings will also be a little lower, at up to £52 million a year. That is still a saving of £1 million a week, and the savings will continue in the long term.
  It is on the subject of costs that the Opposition have got themselves into a terrible mess. In November, the Scottish Labour party published a briefing paper that stated that local government reorganisation would cost £200 million. Three weeks later, the hon. Member for Hamilton said that local government reform would cost at least £500 million. By March, the figure had risen to £720 million. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) said that his own Fife council tax payers would face huge increases in their bills to pay for local government reform. He said that a band D council tar( would rise from £621 to £1,061 in Dunfermline and from £664 to £1,094 in Kircaldy—and all that despite the fact that Labour-controlled Fife region, where I understand the hon. Gentleman learned what he knows about such matters, has stated that a single-tier Fife authority will produce savings of almost £5 million per annum.
  Mr. Dalyell: Will the Secretary of State make available to professionals such as David Chynoweth—not politicians, but the professionals who conducted the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities report—the background working and evidence on which his figures are based? Will the Scottish Office workings be made available to COSLA? Yes or no?
  Mr. Lang: Those figures have been considered extensively in Committee. The Touche Ross report has been published, discussed and revised in the light of input from COSLA and others. The combined estimates of all the local authorities—which have shown estimated savings for their own areas—added to the Touche Ross report and
  216
  the fact that we are halving the total number of authorities in Scotland, underline the probability that the figures are broadly accurate.
  Up and down the country, local authorities have done detailed work on how a single-tier structure will produce savings. From Highland region to Cunninghame district and from Dundee city to the Borders, local authorities have established clearly that a single-tier structure will produce savings. Of course, the final figures will depend on decisions to be taken by the new councils. But what is clear today is that the Opposition have been flying blind on the issue and indulging in plain old-fashioned scaremongering.
  Mr. Michael Connarty: Does the Secretary of State accept that he is making a fool of himself in trying to say that the figures of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy will not be properly challenged by the Government? The figures are being dismissed as though they have been done on the back of a cigarette packet. They have not been challenged by the Government, who have not refuted the figures in the Committee or in the House.
  Mr. Lang: As I have said already, of course the CIPFA figures are taken into account. But the figures have been gone over in great detail. We have used outside professional consultants and published the figures. Local authorities have commissioned studies by consultants that sustain the general trend of the figures. The Opposition will not accept the figures simply because they do not suit their case.
  A major part of the Bill involves the restructuring of water and sewerage services in Scotland. From the time of the first consultation paper in 1991, the Government have made no secret of the fact that they expected that the provision of water and sewerage services would best be handled by organisations separate from the new unitary authorities. The scare-a-day Labour party immediately claimed that we were hellbent on privatisation. We said that we were looking for a Scottish solution to a Scottish problem, and that we meant what we said. We considered a range of options, including privatisation, and rejected them. We settled finally on three new publicly owned water authorities. Water and sewerage services are being restructured within the public sector.
  The new structure will produce two key benefits. It will make maximum use of existing resources through economies of scale and it will deliver the necessary new resources for investment on the best terms possible. The result will be lower prices for consumers of water and sewerage services than would be possible if the present structure were retained.
  Mr. Alex Salmond: I want to explain to the Secretary of State why we doubt his commitment not to privatise. While the Secretary of State says that he is veering away from privatising water, the President of the Board of Trade apparently wants to privatise the Royal Mail. Does the Secretary of State believe that privatisation of the Royal Mail is any more popular than the attempt to steal Scotland's water?
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is tempting me away from the subject of the Bill. I shall resist the temptation to respond as I should be rapidly called to order if I tried to do so.

  217
  The new structure will also have within it a clear focus of accountability in the shape of the new customer councils. For the first time, consumers of water and sewerage services in Scotland will have a powerful watchdog working on their behalf, with the sole objective of ensuring that the new water and sewerage authorities are as consumer friendly as possible.
  It has taken us three years to arrive at the new structure for water and sewerage services in Scotland. It will be several years before the new authorities are fully up and running. They are the Government's solution to the problem; they are a long-term, durable solution and I hope that in future councillors will play their part in helping to secure the efficient delivery of water and sewerage services by serving on the new authorities and the watchdog consumer councils.
  The Bill has posed all sorts of difficulties—for the Labour party, of course. After all, the Opposition were in the vanguard of the calls for local government reform in Scotland—not that the hon. Member for Hamilton was aware of that when he embarked on his misplaced campaign of opposition to the Bill.
  The hon. Gentleman and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State addressed the same annual conference of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in March. My right hon. and learned Friend reminded the conference of the Labour party's commitment to single-tier local authorities; and to a radical vision of local government in Scotland spelt out in its policy document on the subject. He reminded the conference of Labour's vision
  of
  "much additional service development in the future taking place through partnership or contractual arrangements with other agencies. Local authorities should be able to develop their enabling role,"
  Labour claimed,
  "frequently acting as the commissioning agency rather than the direct provider of services."
  That and other commendable statements included in my
  right hon. and learned Friend's speech so confused the hon. Member for Hamilton that he set off on a desperate search to find the policy document in question, but his search was in vain.
  In desperation, he wrote to the Minister of State four weeks after the original speech to ask for the precise source of the quotations that he had used. Happily, to enable the hon. Gentleman to obtain a copy of the document, my right hon. and learned Friend suggested that he write to Mr. Jack McConnell at the Scottish Labour party, Keir Hardie house, 1 Lynedococh place, Glasgow: telephone number 041 332 8946; fax 041 331 2566. In case he has not had the time to so, I have a copy here which I shall willingly lend to the hon. Gentleman after the debate.
  Of course the hon. Member for Hamilton must be surprised that the Bill has got this far. After all, he took personal charge of the campaign to persuade Conservative Members to vote down the Government's proposals. It was a complete and total failure.
  If we are to believe the hon. Gentleman, the House's consideration of the Bill has been an uninterrupted succession of parliamentary triumphs for the Opposition. In the Municipal Journal of 29 April, he listed 13 concessions supposedly wrung from the Government by the Opposition—it might seem impressive, but on closer inspection the 13 so-called concessions are not what quite what they are said to be. Let me list some of them.
  First,
  218
  "denominational school catchment areas to be protected by the Secretary of State's veto"
  — they always were; nothing has changed.
  Secondly,
  "Scottish police boards to be made up solely of local councillors"
  — they always were; nothing has changed.
  Thirdly,
  "names of present fire brigades to be retained"
  — that is a devastating one, but it involved no change to the Bill. Perhaps it explains the headline in The Herald of 1 November:
  "Labour to set fire burning under Tory MPs".
  Fourthly,
  "Cash from property disposal to go to new councils and not to the Treasury"
  — it always did; nothing has changed.
  Concessions five and six:
  "Water disconnection ban in Scotland to be specifically in statute for the first time"
  and,
  "Water disconnections to be outlawed".
  In other words, two of the so-called concessions claimed by the hon. Gentleman are one and the same and were simply a statement of unchanged Government policy. Nothing has changed.
  As Marlowe might have put it:
  "Is it not passing grave to be a King,
  And ride in triumph through Persepolis? "
  It has been quite an odyssey since that June day three years ago when we first published proposals for single-tier local government in Scotland. It was to be the reform that never was. First, it was to be the reform that was Treasury driven; then it was the reform that the Treasury would veto. It was to be the reform that would be destroyed by rebel English MPs—the reform would be wrecked in Parliament. Here we are on Third reading, however, our plans firmly on time and on track. The reason why they are on track is that the arguments in favour of all-purpose authorities are compelling. The strength of the arguments was recognised by the Wheatley commission, by the Stodart committee and even by the Labour party.
  The case for single-tier local government was made before the last restructuring and has continued to be made since. The case for single-tier councils has proved so persistent and persuasive throughout the past two decades that reform has been inevitable. If there was a strong case for all-purpose authorities before—when, as one commentator put it—the
  "dominance of municipal provision was unquestioned",
  there is an overwhelming case now that local government has changed.
  Now the emphasis is on the strategic role of local authorities rather than on the role of providing services directly at their own hand. As the Labour party's own policy document urges and as the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) once put it,
  "To achieve the best and not just the basic public services, we must modernise and transform our social and economic fabric by creating new partnerships between public and private sectors."
  This reform of local government is far reaching.
  Mr. Dalyell: Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Mr. Lang: No. I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman.
  The reform is designed to make sure that our councils reflect the 21st century and not the 1960s. It is based on the simple but compelling premise that one local authority in

  219
  each area should be responsible for all local services. It is designed to restore diversity to the structure of local government and to restore vibrancy to our local councils.
  Under this reform, each local community in Scotland will be represented by a single strong council. Councils will be in harmony with their communities, not out of tune. There will be city councils for our cities and rural councils for rural areas—a new, stronger local democracy. That is what the people of Scotland want and in just 677 days from now, that is what they will have.
  5.36 pm
  Mr. George Robertson: I shall first refer to the regrettable and perfectly understandable absence of Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), whose wife died this weekend. On behalf of all my colleagues, I express the deepest sympathy for the hon. Gentleman in his bereavement.
  Let me make one first and obvious comment as we start the Third Reading debate. The Bill is not a reform. On the contrary, it represents a partisan dismembering of Scottish local government structures which have lasted, endured and served Scotland well for the past 20 years. It is not a rationalisation of the two tiers of local government for more efficient, effective local councils. Instead, it is a brutally cynical exercise, creating small, unviable councils leading, as night follows day, to the bulk of the decisions being taken by anonymous joint boards dominated by the fiat of the Secretary of State for Scotland.
  The Bill is not a means of saving public money by eliminating one level of local government. Instead, it is a messy, ill-thought-out, divisive and politically corrupt exercise which will be enormously expensive and which will deliver no savings to the taxpayer. It is not a reorganisation of Scotland's local democratic structures, which, if it had taken place in the right circumstances, might have enhanced the delivery of services and revitalised decision-making at a local level. Instead, it is a weaselly redrawing of the map of Scottish local government to the perceived advantage of the Tory party in future local and parliamentary elections.
  It is not a measure based on any independent study or on principles of what is good for Scotland. It is not based on consensus or review or genuine consultation. Instead, and sadly for Scotland, as for democracy itself and for the vitality and effectiveness of local government, it is rooted in chicanery built on malice, long-term Tory electoral failure in Scotland and constructed on a bed of obsessive centralisation. For all those reasons, it is doomed and it deserves to be doomed.
  Yesterday, in a bizarre theatrical event held at the Scottish exhibition centre in Glasgow, the Secretary of State launched the Tory Euro-campaign, complete with an audience that applauded the Secretary of State's every word. The Secretary of State implies that people just turned up—they just happened to the passing the SEC on a sunny Monday morning at 9.30, wandered in to hear an amazingly revitalising discussion and applauded every word from the Secretary of State for Scotland. That was quite an achievement, given the number of supporters that the Secretary of State still has in Scotland.
  220
  I was interested in one of the things that the Secretary of State said, which undoubtedly got applause from the hand-picked audience:
  "There has been a clear indication that the people of Scotland, like the people of the rest of Britain, are too worried about the centralisation process of Europe, about Europe playing too dominant a part in our lives."
  It would appear that the Secretary of State for Scotland, that born-again Euro-sceptic, is too worried about the centralisation process in Europe. The Bill centralises, in his own hands and those of the faceless joint boards and quangos, practically every service that is delivered by local government: education, social work, transport, police, fire, trading standards, regional chemists, regional analysts—even children's hearings reporters—and, most importantly, in three super-quangos directly responsible to him, Scotland's water. What worries and concerns the people of Scotland is not the ghouls and ghosties that the Secretary of State dreams about in Brussels, and which he proclaims in the empty halls of the Scottish exhibition centre in Glasgow, but his Edinburgh centralisation.
  Consideration of the Bill in the House of Commons is coming to an end, but it still has quite a long way to go before the Secretary of State's new model of emasculated, gerrymandered local government is in place in Scotland. The Government have lost the argument at every single stage. There is no more convincing, unavoidable evidence of that than the miserable 13.7 per cent. of the Scottish vote that the Conservative party got in the regional elections only three weeks ago. Who would have thought, a generation ago, when the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party had a majority of the Scottish electorate, that the Conservative party could sink so low as to come barely above the election campaign record of Screaming Lord Sutch? Fewer than 14 Scottish people in every 100 now support the party that pretends to have the power and control over Scotland today.
  The Government still have the trappings of power in Scotland—the cars, civil servants, glossy pamphlets, big launches and big offices and buildings—but with 86.3 per cent. of the people of Scotland against them, Ministers are left with all the vain credibility of the old eastern European apparatchiks. That is what they are. They are in office, but they have no authority. They strut around the stage of Scottish politics, but the emperor has no clothes. They still have the power, and they draw more and more of it to the centre and into their own hands as they chip away at local democracy, but, without public consent and support, they are corrupting that power, and the wise and intelligent people of Scotland will never forgive them for that.
  Of course, the Bill has not escaped undamaged. The Government were forced to abandon their clear, undoubted intention immediately and fully to privatise water in Scotland on the English model.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart)indicated dissent.
  Mr. Robertson: There is no doubt that that was the Government's intention, and some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), who, with theatrical affectation, shook his head at that point, wanted that. They are ideologically committed to it, but they were forced by the pressure of public opinion to back away from that.
  Mr. Stewart: Prove it.
  Mr. Robertson: The hon. Member for Eastwood, heckling from a sedentary position, says, "Prove it." Last week, I pointed to the fact that a mere handful of lines are used in the Government's consultative document to describe the option that they eventually chose, but 250 lines are devoted to describing the privatisation option and its attraction. That, combined with what they did in England and Wales, and what the Prime Minister blew the gaff on at the Dispatch Box, is as good a proof as the people of Scotland need. If the hon. Gentleman wants to question that, I refer him to the statistic that should haunt him and every other Conservative Member—13.7 per cent. of the people of Scotland support them and 86 per cent. are against them.
  Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman was in Committee and will be aware of my views on privatisation. I am bitterly disappointed, because I happen to believe my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench when they tell me that they are not going to privatise. I personally want privatisation.
  Mr. Robertson: At least the hon. Gentleman is honest in declaring his objective. Would that other people had the same honesty in declaring their private ambitions before the force of public opinion in Scotland turned them away from what we know was their intention.
  Mr. Phil Gallie: Surely this is old hat. Surely we have heard it all before in Committee. Is it not the case that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State went out to consultation, the people of Scotland came back and suggested that they did not want privatisation, and to his credit my right hon. Friend listened and acted?
  Mr. Robertson: If the Government were capable of listening to the people in the way in which the hon. Gentleman would have us believe, they would listen to the people of Scotland who say that they do not want the Bill and would take it away and rethink it, or better still abandon it completely.
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson: The hon. Gentleman has counted the lines in the consultation document on water and drawn a conclusion. In the Labour party manifesto of- 1992, there were 15 lines on law and order. Am I therefore entitled to draw the same conclusion about the Labour party's commitment to law and order?
  Mr. Robertson: The hon. Gentleman is vice-chairman of the Conservative and Unionist party in Scotland—a position that he has held for precisely the period that it has taken the support for the Conservative party to go down from 30 per cent. to 13 per cent. Having burnt his fingers in that spectacular way, he might at least have thought up some better lines than that. The comparison is between the 15 and the 200-odd lines, but the evidence is not in what I say. It is not based on what the hon. Gentleman would have us believe. It is in the figure of 86 per cent. of the Scottish people who voted against the Conservatives three weeks ago in the regional elections. That is the proof. They simply do not believe the Conservative party, and they have every right not to.
  In Committee, the Government were obliged—originally, they did not want to, and said that they did not have to and that it was superfluous—to put the illegality of water disconnections in Scotland on the face of the Bill. When that matter was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for
  222
  Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), the hon. Member for Dumfries said that it was absolutely unnecessary and that there was no need to put it in the Bill, because it was in the Water (Scotland) Act 1980.
  The reality is that the Government came back and put it in, because they needed to, in one further vain attempt to persuade the people of Scotland that their ambition, which they still harbour, was not to be realised immediately. They were forced to endure the record-breaking Committee, from which the Secretary of State for Scotland had scuttled away at the beginning, right up to the humiliation of the regional elections. That is one of the things that I said on Second Reading. The regional elections would provide a forum, a referendum, on the Government's proposals. If the Government are interested in the views of the Scottish people, let them learn the lesson of the elections. In Committee, they had to abandon the wildest gerrymandering proposals in the Bill—the amputation of Berwickshire from the Borders and the ludicrous Balerno corridor that they proposed between the Lothians—and, of course, their timetable for the unwanted reorganisation is now a complete shambles.
  The Bill simply cannot receive its Royal Assent until October or November of this year, which will leave only six months until the proposed shadow elections in April of next year. Of course, Ministers can ignore wholesale public hostility to the Bill and reorganisation. They can—they are daft enough, suicidal enough and idiotic enough—simply fly in the face of the electoral humiliation that they have just experienced and press on regardless.
  The Government can, if they want, use the draconian power conferred on the Secretary of State in schedule 2 —one of the many draconian powers contained in the Bill —to draw in secret, on the back of some used Tory party leaflets, the new ward boundaries on which the elections are likely to be fought. They can bring those proposals to the House of Commons for a one-and-a-half hour debate, although I promise that they will be given a rough ride if they try such tactics. They can do all that because they have the technical powers, even if they do not have the consent of the people of Scotland.
  If the Government are unwise and suicidal enough to do those things, however, they will deliver this reorganisation only at the expense of devastation of vital services for the most vulnerable people, and at huge cost in the disruption and uncertainty caused to business and commerce across Scotland.
  Yesterday, at a press conference, I sat beside the chairman of Glasgow chamber of commerce. In measured tones, he told the assembled press, "Glasgow chamber of commerce is still not persuaded that this reorganisation is necessary." Ministers should take careful note of that declaration: it was made in public by someone who is intimately connected with business in the west of Scotland and who represents the largest group of business people in that area.
  There will be disruption to special needs education, community care, transport and strategic planning. All that disruption is predictable: people with no political partisan interest have drawn it to the attention of the House. The timetable for the reorganisation is in ruins, not because of a lack of co-operation on the part of Scottish councils but as a result of the incompetence, slipperiness and arrogance of Scottish Office Ministers.

  223
  In The Guardian on 7 May, Mr. Martin Kettle—a distinguished journalist and an outsider viewing the Bill perhaps for the first time—had this to say:
  "the carving up of Scotland's local councils in the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill is one of the most disgraceful pieces of one-party political arrogance in modern times."
  He was spot on. We have spread the same message throughout Scotland, and the pitiful 13.7 per cent. of votes obtained by the party of government shows that we have succeeded in getting it through to the people.
  The Bill, like the reorganisation that it promises—indeed, threatens—is flawed at its very heart. The atomisation of Scotland's local government set-up into a patchwork of some large, very many tiny, all-purpose and in many instances unviable councils will be an extremely expensive, hugely unpopular and unsuccessful folly. If they notice it at all, the history books will call it Lang's folly. Perhaps it will be the Secretary of State's farewell shot as he takes off to lead the English Conservative party, as he is widely tipped to do. If he can do for it what he has done to the Tory party in Scotland, he will do a great service to the British people.
  Three hundred thousand employees of Scotland's councils are about to be thrown into an unemployment limbo, with only European law—the acquired rights directive—to help them. As that European legislation helps them, it will also make a mockery of the Government's figure for savings, which seems to derive entirely from the idea of sacking people from their jobs in local government. Today, the House has yet again been faced with brand-new figures—brand-new revisions of the previous totals, which we were told represented the actual savings and costs of local government. We are never given the background information and calculations and the Secretary of State repeatedly refuses to give detailed answers to the detailed points in letters sent to him.
  The services expertly delivered by people in local government will be thrown into the turmoil of a transition so ill-thought-out and lacking in popular support that every facet of Scottish life will be affected and damaged. It will be remembered that it was this Conservative Government who, in Scotland, invented and pursued the poll tax. Sensible people thought that the Government might have learnt from that profligate fiasco, but, as the Bill shows, they seem to learn very little from such expensive disasters.
  The Bill deserves only one fate: to be abandoned now. Privately—secretly—Ministers and Back Benchers would love to do that. It has no future; it will be swept away with the Labour victory that the local election results show to be inevitable now. If it is remembered at all, it will be remembered for one thing only—as one more spectacular stupidity that contributed to the demise of the Scottish Conservative party. In that one respect, it will have made its contribution to the good of Scotland. I urge my colleagues to vote against it.
  Mr. DalyellOn a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have given you and the Clerk notice of this point.
  I hope that I do not have a vindictive record in the House, but I feel that a matter of principle is involved in deciding whether those who are not fully fledged civil
  224
  servants—however considerable and malign their influence on the Bill may be—should sit in the Box. Will you raise with Madam Speaker the question of those who are not fully fledged civil servants in the Scottish Office sitting in the Box?
  Madam Deputy Speaker: I am not aware that the occupant of the Chair has ever recognised the existence of those who occupy what is usually called the Officials' Box. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me warning of his point of order; I shall certainly ensure that the matter is taken up with Madam Speaker, but I know from what he has said that he does not expect me to take it further at this stage.
  5.57 pm
  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson: I shall be brief, as I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.
  The day after the publication of the White Paper that started this whole process, The Press and Journal carried the banner headline "Aberdeen achieves goal". Following the conclusion of the Bill's Commons stages tonight, that goal will take an important step nearer to reality.
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State observed, as the Bill nears the end of its stages it is appropriate for us to look back. I think we can safely say that we have enjoyed—if that is the right word—an Opposition Supply day, a Grand Committee debate in Edinburgh, a debate on the Gracious Speech, a Second Reading debate and marathon Committee and Report stages before arriving at Third Reading. During all those hours of debate, Conservative Members have become used to hearing Opposition Members quote the words of various councillors and officials in an attempt to gain votes against my right hon. Friend's proposals from different parts of Scotland.
  In Committee—thanks to the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes)—we all became experts on what virtually all his constituents were thinking, and got to know them all virtually by name. We became very used to hearing from the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) about the various letters and phone calls that he had received from all over Scotland. Throughout his tour of the disgruntled of Scotland, however, we never arrived at Aberdeen. That town was never prayed in aid by Opposition Members as they searched for one-liners to quote, looked for scare stories to run and predicted doom, gloom, rebellion and chaos. It must irk the hon. Members for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) that their colleagues in Aberdeen never once gave them a sound bite during all those hours of debate.
  Why is that? Could it possibly be because every political group in Abderdeen district council, on the day of the White Paper's publication, fell over itself to support a single-tier Aberdeen? Could it possibly be because the Labour group, responding to the White Paper last year, said:
  "In short, local government in Aberdeen could be improved by re-establishing the City as a unitary authority. The Council argues that this would promote a more efficient, acountable, economical and responsive local administration and service delivery"?
  Before Opposition Members shout "All under a Scottish Assembly", I shall tell them that, in the council's entire response, the words "Scottish Assembly" do not appear at all.

  225
  Or could it possibly be that the Labour party in Aberdeen took to heart an editorial in The Press and Journal on 19 August last year? It said:
  "The clearest signal to the electorate today that Aberdeen Labour councillors have at least some regard for the welfare of their city would be a vote backing single-tierdom that they have sought for so long.
  Or would that require backbone, commonsense and independence of spirit that seem in desperately short supply in Labour local-government cliques?"
  Mr. Wallace: I seem to recall that, on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) was very much against the inclusion of Westhill in Aberdeenshire as opposed to Aberdeen. Is he now satisfied with the Aberdeen single-tier authority as presently constituted?
  Mr. Robertson: I am absolutely in favour of it: I voted for it in Committee. Or could it possibly be that everyone who cares about local democracy in Aberdeen all agreed with Labour's councillor, Jean McFadden, when she identified that the real threat to local government in Scotland would come in the form of a Scottish Assembly? Writing in the Glasgow Herald, she said:
  "I think we have to be very much on our guard here. There may well be a tendency for the Scottish parliament to suck up power from below."
  From whatever angle it is approached, the message from Aberdeen is clear. The people of Aberdeen, the politicians in Aberdeen and the business community in Aberdeen all want the Bill.
  It is an appropriate time to say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to other of my hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench that the challenge for us on this side of the House over the summer, into the autumn and on to the shadow authority elections is to ensure that, elsewhere in Scotland, the reforms and the plans are as clearly understood by the people of Scotland as they are in the granite city, because the message from Aberdeen—[Interruption.] The message from Aberdeen is that, when the proposals are understood, when the scares give way to facts, the people respond and they are enthusiastic.
  Mr. Connarty: Moving on from the boundaries, will the hon. Gentleman cite one example of a councillor in the city of Aberdeen, Labour or otherwise, who supports the proposals for water, for the police or for any of the other services?
  Mr. Robertson: In supporting the concept and supporting the plans that my right hon. Friend is clearly setting out, of course they support the plans in their entirety. They have not selected one aspect of the plan—as the hon. Gentleman has implied—and said that they support one thing but not anything else. They accept a single-tier Aberdeen as the best way to provide services for the people of Aberdeen and all that that entails.
  The hon. Member for Hamilton has made much of the local election results on 5 May. Indeed, many Opposition Members have done that. Again, interestingly, they have not mentioned the results in Aberdeen. Perhaps that is because in my constituency all Conservative regional councillors in the city—John Porter, Jack Dempsey, Joy Gordon and Tom Mason—campaigned hard for a single-tier local authority. They all put that at the centre of their appeal,and all won. Their election address made that very clear. They were all handsomely returned and, indeed, in one of the divisions in which the hon. Member for
  226
  Hamilton came to Aberdeen on a bank holiday and campaigned hard, we increased our vote and our majority. So I say to my hon. Friends, "Come the general election, invite the hon. Gentleman along: he will do wonders for your vote."
  I am not for a moment belittling or criticising the many fine Conservative councillors who lost on 5 May, or the many outstanding candidates who never made it. However, I am told constantly by Opposition Members to listen to the people and to learn a lesson from 5 May. The lesson that I take from my constituency is one from which my party and the whole of Scotland can learn: from now to the shadow authority elections in April, we must challenge head-on every scare, every misrepresentation, every half-truth and every untruth. In doing so, we shall have nothing to fear.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: The hon. Gentleman will find it difficult to challenge them because he spends all his time making them up himself.
  Mr. Robertson: One of Scotland's national newspapers said today that the debate marked the end. How wrong it is. The debate marks only the beginning of the end of round one. In round two, the debate will move away from this place, as we on this side take to the Scottish people my right hon. Friend's vision for local government in Scotland. It is a new era in the affairs of local government —strong, accountable, powerful unitary authorities—yet, at the same time, councils, by their very nature, will be sensitive to local needs and responsive to local requirements.
  In the run-up to April, we shall take every opportunity to remind our fellow Scots that that is in stark contrast to what is on offer from each of the Opposition parties. They offer an assembly in Edinburgh which would plunder the powers of local councils and take them to Edinburgh, thus denuding councils and town halls up and down Scotland of their rights and responsibilities and centralising them on Calton Hill. They offer to take decision-making away from the people rather than empowering the people through one councillor and one council.
  That is the choice facing the Scottish people in April. For us, the shadow authority elections start the day after the European campaign ends. We shall campaign hard for the measures in the Bill, for the councils that it will create and for the new partnership in local government that will result. I have no doubt that, when we do that and take our message to the Scottish people, they, in turn, will respond.
  6.6 pm
  Mr. Norman Hogg: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate.
  The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) will forgive me if I do not follow what he said about Aberdeen. I can only say as an Aberdonian that it is certainly not my conclusion that the people of Aberdeen are flocking in great numbers to support the Conservative party. If they are doing that, as recently as three weeks ago there was precious little evidence of it. There is precious little evidence, too, that there is any support for the Bill in Scotland. It has been universally condemned. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which the Secretary of State did not seem to like recognising, was opposed to the Bill. Individual local authorities were

  227
  opposed to it. Individual councillors, irrespective of their party, were opposed to it. But, most important, the people of Scotland were opposed to it.
  The Secretary of State said that he was going "back to basics" and he said that there were three basic principles on which the reform—he calls it reform—or the reorganisation was founded. He went on to tell us what those three principles were and it seemed that they were mechanisms only, designed to be convenient for the Conservative party and not for any other purpose. I shall give him three principles on which any reform ought to have been founded: first, to provide the best arrangements for representing the people and the communities, which they, not the Government, recognise; secondly, to provide the best arrangements for democratic control over the local bureaucracy; and, thirdly, to provide the best arrangements for cost-effective and efficient delivery of services.
  None of those principles is contained in the Bill, which, in fact, is a most unprincipled measure, reflecting an unprincipled Government who have devised and drafted it. What principle drove the Government to drafting the Bill? There is no principle at all. It was designed to facilitate a Conservative party that has all but passed out of Scottish political and public life.
  Of course, as they see it, there is a need for success, somewhere, anywhere, by creating unrepresentative councils out of places which often have nothing in common. All hon. Members would be able to tell the House of some eccentricity or madness in their area that has been dreamt up by the demented hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart). It is his fault that we have such a situation on our hands. It is his fault that it is happening. He is kowtowing to the chairman of the Conservative party in Scotland, Michael Hirst. [HON. MEMBERS: "Sir Michael Hirst".] Yes, Sir Michael Hirst. In fact, I am quite sure that it would be a good idea if the council at East Dunbartonshire was renamed Hirst. That would be an appropriate name. Sir Michael, unelectable and unelected, has determined what should happen in the reorganisation. Some of us find such an apparatchik an unacceptable influence, but altogether consistent with what is going on nowadays in the Conservative party in Scotland.
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: The last time the extraordinary exercise of local government reorganisation was undertaken, Fife regional council did not add one hen or chicken to its population or alter its responsibilities in any way. It nevertheless increased the membership of its police from 16,000 to 18,000 and that of all other services by three. A socialist organisation did that: will it do the same this time?
  Mr. Hogg: I agree that Fife regional council, like most in Scotland, is a socialist council.
  There is further evidence of gerrymandering in my area. There is no consent for the measure among the political parties—including the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Tory party and even Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Scottish National party—in so far as it has a view on anything—and certainly no consent among the ordinary people who have petitioned the Government, written letters, signed postcards of protest and voted against Tory candidates in local elections. However, it all adds up to nothing because this authoritarian Government are determined to push through
  228
  this measure. We have arrived at a new slogan for the Tory party. Nowadays, it is "Whitehall, not town hall", which is the very opposite of what Tories said once upon a time.
  Cumbernauld and Kilsyth has historical and administrative links with East Dunbartonshire with which it should be linked. However, that did not serve the ends of Sir Michael Hirst or those of the Tory party which is trying to create particular conditions for Bearsden and Strathkelvin. It is a serious charge—
  Mr. Gallie: I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. In view of his comments, and given his support for the notion of single tier authorities included in Labour's manifesto at the previous election, and given what I understand to be his "anti-feelings" for a Scottish Assembly, would he have been happy with the changes had he got his way over the boundaries that he wants for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth? If so, it is a pity that such an argument was not advanced in Committee.
  Mr. Hogg: The answer is that I hope that I can always see the bigger picture. I hope that I come to the House with a view on Scottish local government as a whole and am not driven by parochial considerations of the type that apparently motivate the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie). Even if the Minister agreed with what I wanted in respect of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, I would still be immensely unhappy with the Bill and would vote against it for the reasons already set out by my party's Front-Bench spokesmen on Second Reading, in Committee and again today. I hope that that clarifies the position for the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. George Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman has made some pretty strong accusations about how the boundaries were created. Unless I missed something in Committee, I did not hear the Labour party offer any proposals on boundaries, with the exception, I think, of Ayrshire.
  Mr. Hogg: In fact, the Opposition tabled amendments affecting Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and East Dunbartonshire and they were consistent with the view that I am advancing now. The hon. Gentleman is therefore wrong.
  It has become clear that the Government have tried to arrange things in my area in the hope that another part of Scotland will ultimately return a Conservative Member of Parliament and a Conservative-controlled local authority. There is no prospect of either likelihood being realised.
  If there were a case for local government reform, the Bill has certainly not met it. A body such as a royal commission should have been charged with reviewing existing arrangements; there should have been full public consultation; the Government should have sought a consensus on any proposals for change; and, above all, any proposals should have had the confidence of the Scottish people. The Bill fulfils none of those criteria.
  To use an old phrase, this is a wicked Tory Government. They are far removed from the principles on which the Tory party once thrived. This is not a matter of conviction politics; it is a product not of conviction politics but of expediency. There is no concept of one nation, just autocratic diktat. There is no belief in the people or the judgment of the people. The Government simply believe that they know what is best for us, that they are our betters, and that they can tell us how to behave and think.

  229
  The Scottish Office has no respect for the people or great institutions of local government in Scotland. The people have sensed that the Government have no respect for them, which is why the people have no respect for the Government and why 13.7 per cent. Tory support in recent elections stands as a condemnation of the Secretary of State and his Front-Bench team who have so clearly failed to take account of the view of the Scottish people.
  This is a squalid Bill. It is the most squalid measure that I have encountered in my 15 years in the House. I am ashamed that it will be passed. The fact that it has been brought before us does not increase the respect in which Parliament is held. The people of Scotland will have none of it and they will have nothing to do with the Conservative Government. The Conservatives will be swept away in whatever elections they put up candidates.
  6.16 pm
  Mr. George Kynoch: I listened to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with great interest and watched the reaction of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish). When my right hon. Friend referred to the confusion between the tiers of local government—confusion that I have encountered in my constituency—the hon. Member for Fife, Central shook his head and did not appear to accept that such confusion existed. I can only quote from a document published in February 1990 which stated:
  "The continuing widespread confusion about what tier carries out what functions undermines accountability."
  That document, entitled "The Future of Local Government in Scotland", was the Labour party's pre-election policy document. It has been universally accepted that there is confusion between the two existing tiers and, as was mentioned on Second Reading, all the Opposition parties have at some stage advocated single-tier unitary authorities.
  I also listened with interest to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), but I heard nothing new. Since I have been a Member of Parliament, and since the consultation documents were published, the hon. Gentleman has done nothing but scaremonger. He has spread scare stories about the setting up of a most cost-effective and efficient tier of local government, and about water and sewerage.
  As the hon. Member for Hamilton repeated something that he said on Report, I shall repeat something that I said. I heard him say on the BBC "Scottish Lobby" programme that the issue of water privatisation was a dead duck and that the Government had made it virtually impossible for Scottish water to be privatised because of the insertion of clause 79, which enforces current legislation preventing water supplies from being disconnected.
  The hon. Member for Hamilton clearly said that; have it on videotape, and if he cares to ask to see it I shall be more than happy to arrange for it to be played back to him again and again. He does the people of Scotland a grave disservice by continuing to peddle such scaremongering to people who are less able than he to argue the point, and who have been told clearly many times by the Secretary of State and his Ministers that Scottish Water will not be privatised. However, we need to do something about it; we need to make it a better organisation, and to take it forward in order to find the £5 billion in capital expenditure that will be needed over the next 10 to 15 years, and to cope with the new structure of local government.
  230
  I talked about confusion. One of the main areas of confusion—
  Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman will have heard his colleague from the north-east, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), express satisfaction with the Conservative party's results in the local elections. I found that confusing, so I checked in the edition of The Herald dated Saturday 7 May, which gives the local results by parliamentary constituency. It turns out that the Tory party is 8 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, South, 30 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, North, 26 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, Central, 47 per cent. behind in Banff and Buchan, 17 per cent. behind in Gordon, 30 per cent. behind in Moray and 16 per cent. behind in what would be the constituency of the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch)—Deeside and Howes. Is the hon. Gentleman as satisfied as his hon. Friend is with those results?
  Mr. Kynoch: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about the local election results, but what he does not take into account is the role of independents—[Laughter.] In my constituency the issues were significantly clouded—[Interruption.] However, I shall not embark on that argument, because I know that the hon. Gentleman is engaged in a battle with his Opposition colleagues in the Labour party over what the result of the Euro-election in the north-east of Scotland will be. However, I can tell him that his figures are totally wrong; if he considers the general election results he will realise that the Conservatives will win with a majority of 20,000.
  Before I am ordered to do so, I shall now return to the Bill. I was talking about confusion between the two tiers of local government, especially on planning. In my constituency, the picture for long-term and strategic planning is at present one of great confusion. There is talk in Grampian of a proposed new settlement. Kincardine and Deeside had already thrown out the idea at district level, but Grampian region initially decided to approve a new settlement in my constituency. Confusion existed while the proposal ping-ponged backwards and forwards between the region and the district. Finally, it was thrown out by the previous administration in the region, much to the annoyance of the Labour convenor.
  The issue will not go away. While we have a district council and a regional council that can take totally opposing views there will be total confusion, and that does not serve the best interests of the local community, nor the future of the area.
  As the Secretary of State said, we have had a long period of debate on the local government reform. I had forgotten that it was as many as three years ago that my right hon. Friend introduced his first consultation document. I remember that in the run-up to the general election a major part of my campaign was the fact that we regarded the reform as a key piece of legislation for the future, so that we could get rid of the two tiers and consolidate them into one, so that local government would be better and more effective.
  Throughout the consultation period, my right hon. Friend has listened effectively. I especially commend him and his Ministers for the amount of listening that they did in Committee. My right hon. Friend knows that some of us were concerned about various issues, whether those were minor details concerning boundaries or the need to look

  231
  after the interests of the rural communities with regard to water services. On all those issues my right hon. Friend has listened and has moved. He commended his ministerial team; may I add to that my commendation of the long-suffering Whip, the Lords Commissioner to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope).
  Having sat through 177½ hours of debate in Committee, listening to debates such as the one about the word "reasonably", which lasted three hours, at one time I questioned whether the Opposition were opposing or simply trying to obstruct. However, I know that they were in order because the Chairman kept them in order. I take my hat off to, and commend, both the management and the chairmanship of the Committee. Because the Committee stage was allowed to run for its full 177½ hours, the Opposition were left with no excuse for saying that their concerns and worries had not been fully aired.
  Yet the Opposition continue to peddle their lies about water—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] They continue to peddle their distortions about water. They are still arguing that the Government are intent on doing something that the Government do not intend to do. Typical of their behaviour throughout has been the fact that they cannot oppose in a constructive manner. I have not heard them make constructive proposals on any issue.
  Throughout our proceedings, the Opposition seemed intent on arguing the case for looking after local government employees' jobs. I commend them for that, because in any reorganisation, whether in business or in local government, one must ensure that the transition from one structure to another is made in an orderly fashion so as to safeguard the rights and the best interests of employees. Unfortunately, change is sometimes necessary. To obstruct on the sole basis that jobs will be lost is totally unconstructive in terms of looking after the interests of the people whom we are here to represent—the people of Scotland, the ratepayers and the taxpayers of Scotland.
  Mr. Connarty: Is the hon. Gentleman really trying to sell to this House a package saying that all the people who wrote in and whom the Opposition represented—all the lobbying organisations such as Enable and Relate, and all the people who wrote in about special education, about the destruction of children's panels, and about many other issues—were trying to be obstructive? Will he not give credit where credit is due? A case was put for many people in Scotland who do not want the Bill, yet the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends ignored them.
  Mr. Kynoch: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I recognise that the Opposition put forward cases on behalf of organisations such as Enable, on behalf of children, on behalf of children's panels, and so on. However, the Opposition have not accepted that within the Bill as drafted my right hon. Friend and his Ministers have allowed the flexibility for the new councils to provide the services in the best possible way for their constituents.
  The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) does not accept that what may be a good structure in the central belt is not necessarily the best structure in the north-east of Scotland. I commend my right hon. Friend's proposal for the north-east, which is now clear in the Bill. The Bill will
  232
  give us a single-tier authority big enough to provide the services in the area, and big enough to command the highly qualified staff that will be required to deliver those services, but one which will, at the same time, be able to decentralise to provide local services.
  Mr. Jimmy Wray: Will the hon. Gentleman retract his statement that the Opposition lied? We have made it clear that where water is concerned there are no ifs, no buts and no whats. We do not want privatisation; we do not want franchising; we do not want quangos.
  Mr. Kynoch: What I said about the Opposition's attitude to water relates clearly to the fact that the Secretary of State has said many times—as have the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State for Scotland, my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) in Committee—that water privatisation is not on the agenda. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood said that Scottish Water would not be privatised by the front door, by the back door or by any other door. That fact has been stated on innumerable occasions, yet the Opposition still distort it, and the people of Scotland do not know what to believe.
  I argued strongly—and the hon. Member for Hamilton has accepted the argument—that the provisions in clause 79 concerning disconnections have made it virtually impossible to privatise Scottish Water. The prospect is not on.
  Mr. George Robertson: I did not say that it was virtually impossible to privatise water simply because the Government had included a provision with regard to disconnections; I said that it would make privatisation much more difficult. But the Government have never been prevented by such difficulties in the past and they will not be prevented in the future either. During the election campaign, the Government promised that they would not extend the scope of value added tax, but they have now extended it to domestic fuel. Why should we believe their promises about water, any more than their promises about VAT?
  Mr. Kynoch: If the hon. Gentleman had been present earlier this afternoon, he would have got a response to that: it was never referred to.
  I shall draw my remarks to a close by saying that the Bill is nearing its completion in this House and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) said, going on to another phase in another place. It is important that we encourage local authorities which thus far have not co-operated with the Government during the passage of the Bill to co-operate now in the interests of the people of Scotland.
  In Grampian and the north-east of Scotland, the Association of District Councils in Grampian, under the current chairmanship of Councillor Doreen Ewing, convenor of Kincardine and Deeside district council, has already started talking in outline about the way forward under single-tier authorities, but it has been thwarted in taking the matter much further by the non-co-operation of Grampian regional council. I implore my right hon. Friend to do whatever he can to encourage the new administration in Grampian region to co-operate with his Department by providing the necessary information to enable it, in turn, to give the financial information back to the existing

  233
  councillors in the area, thus enabling them to plan the way forward. It is in the best interests of the people of Scotland that the Bill should go forward as smoothly and as quickly as possible.
  6.31 pm
  Mr. James Wallace: First, I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) in extending sympathy to the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), the Under-Secretary of State, on his recent sad bereavement and I am sure that I speak on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends in doing so.
  It seemed that the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) was unable to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Hamilton that the Government completely deceived the electorate about their intentions on value added tax and extending the VAT base. The hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside cannot now understand why the people of Scotland have difficulty believing what the Secretary of State said on water privatisation. The credibility of Tory Members and Ministers in Scotland is so low that if a Scottish Tory said that snow was white, most Scots would want to suspend judgment until next winter so as to check for themselves. That is the sort of loss of credibility that Tory Members have suffered, and they cannot complain if the people will not believe at first hand what they say.
  The Bill is a thoroughly bad Bill. It is unwanted, it is ill thought out and it is anti-democratic. It is true that during its passage in Committee and on Report a number of boundary changes were made which my hon. Friends and I wished to see. We wished to see the restoration of Westhill to Aberdeenshire—we welcome the conversion of the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) to that move—the restoration of Berwickshire to its proper place in the Borders, the establishment of a separate council for Inverclyde, and the restoration of Ralston to Renfrewshire. Those changes are eloquent testimony to the power of Liberal Democrat success at the ballot box.
  On this Bench, however, the test never was and never would be the niceties of boundary lines. Placing Westhill in Aberdeen city or in Aberdeenshire matters little if neither authority has power to deal effectively with local issues affecting the area. The real test is whether the Bill will strengthen and improve the quality of local democracy and by that test it fails miserably.
  The Bill is unwanted because there is no real democratic mandate for it. On occasions when Tory Members have quoted—as they have done today—from the manifestos of the Scottish Opposition parties citing support for single-tier local government throughout Scotland, they have conveniently ignored the context of a home rule Parliament in which those commitments were made. Indeed, the exclusively Scottish issue of Scottish local government should be determined in a Scottish Parliament.
  Nor can the results of the local elections on 5 May be taken as an endorsement of the provisions of the Bill. Even in Aberdeen, the Tory party came in fourth place with only 16.4 per cent. of the vote. If that is the kind of result that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South regards as a ringing endorsement of the Government's proposals, I hope that it will be repeated at the next general election.
  Mr. Kynoch: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. Perhaps he will point out to his friends on the Labour Benches that the Labour party actually lost four seats in Aberdeen city.
  Mr. Wallace: I am happy to take the opportunity to say that the Liberal Democrats did well in Aberdeen city. Among the issues on which our campaign was based were the Government's proposals for local government and for the future of water and sewerage services, so the Conservative failure at the ballot box shows what the people really think of the proposals.
  In Grampian region, the number of Tory councillors is now down to single figures in a region which their party controlled for eight years, and there is not one Tory councillor left in Fife, where the Tory party is even in a worse position than the Communist party even though it got 10 per cent. of the vote. Perhaps if Tory Members want to join us in campaigning for proportional representation —that is not a feature of the Bill, which shows once again that the Bill is undemocratic—we would certainly welcome their conversion.
  The water and sewerage provisions in the Bill are unwanted. People know that the issue is about quangos. Certainly, my experience during the local elections in different parts of Scotland showed that the people clearly understood what the issue was about—it was about taking responsibility out of the hands of elected councillors and putting it into the hands of placemen and placewomen. A vital service which has been in municipal hands for many years is disappearing out of the hands of those with elected responsibility. Having travelled throughout Scotland, I cannot claim to have been deafened by any clamour to pass the Bill today.
  The Bill is also ill thought out. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) served diligently on the Committee on behalf of my party's interests. On many occasions, I found him in his office suffering from frustration and disbelief at how ill equipped Ministers had been to respond to detailed probing on various aspects of the Bill, not only in response to partisan points that were being made, but on matters of substance relating to the delivery of important services. I recall one evening going to watch the proceedings of the Committee from the public benches and seeing the Under-Secretary of State stand up and, in response to a question or an intervention from the hon. Member for Hamilton, contradict a Government amendment that he had just moved. I accept that one can make mistakes late at night, but the thing that really worried me was that the Under-Secretary of State did not realise that there was a contradiction, which shows how little understanding Ministers have of what they are trying to do in the Bill.
  Today, we heard the Secretary of State say that joint boards would not confuse the electorate—we would all know that it was a responsibility of the councils. It is not so many years ago—it must be a number of years because the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was the Member for Edinburgh, South and a Scottish Office Minister at the time—that I went to see the hon. Gentleman about a joint board for the police in the northern constabulary where, clearly, most of the members who came from Highland region were trying to make decisions which would adversely affect the Islands interests and

  235
  where the locally elected councillors for the Islands had only limited powers. Joint boards will cause confusion—that has been underestimated by the Secretary of State.
  Hon. Members who were in the House last Tuesday will recall the hon. Members for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke) and for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) asking about the consequences of water no longer being pumped from disused mines. Not only did the Secretary of State seem to have difficulty answering the question; he appeared unaware that it was even a problem. There are a number of such issues on which I am sure that there will be problems when the Bill is enacted.
  In the same debate, the Secretary of State was asked why there were only three authorities instead of four or five. We are still waiting for an answer. All that we get is a bold assertion that that is what it says in the Minister's brief. Unlike previous restructuring, this reform or restructuring of local government has not been preceded by an independent commission or detailed analysis; nor does it proceed on a generally consensual basis. That does not bode well for the Bill's implementation, because even with good will it is likely to drive down morale, especially among staff whose future employment and conditions are still in doubt.
  Mr. Dalyell: It has done already.
  Mr. Wallace: As the hon. Member for Linlithgow says, it has done so already.
  Perhaps most important, the Bill is anti-democratic. The transfer of water and sewerage services from elected to non-elected hands is, beyond doubt, an undemocratic reform. To pile more than 180 measures on top of the 160 measures that have already been introduced by the Government to transfer power and responsibility from local to central Government is in itself fundamentally anti-democratic.
  Conservative Members ought to be aware that the powers given to the Secretary of State by order could be used by a Secretary of State from another party. If an incoming Secretary of State for Scotland chose to use them to clear the placemen and placewomen out of the water authorities and replace them with elected councillors, he or she would have my full support.
  Above all else, the Government have abused the language by saying that the Bill will be a shot in the arm for local democracy. It is an abuse of the English language because they are doing one thing and claiming that it is the opposite. Most important, they have not listened, learnt or changed, especially in the light of the Strathclyde referendum.
  In a letter to the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on 22 December, the Prime Minister said of the measure, with particular reference to water:
  "The Bill will shortly begin its parliamentary scrutiny. That will provide the opportunity for both principle and detail to be publicly debated and at the end of the day Parliament will decide what is to become law. That is the right approach and one which allows Scottish opinion to be given expression through Members of Parliament."
  It is evident that Scottish opinion has not been given such expression.
  The most significant contribution to our discussions last week came from the hon. Member for Linlithgow, who said during our debate on water:
  236
  "The issue will become the attitude of people in Scotland towards the Union. Because of political history I, of all people, am empowered to tell him"—
  the Secretary of State—
  "that if he goes ahead he must not start lamenting when the Union turns sour."—[Official Report, 17 May 1994; Vol.243, c. 725.]
  Neither I nor my party want Scotland to go down a costly road to independence, but we should reflect on the fact that the threat to the Union in this century did not come from the parties of home rule but from intransigent Unionists—and that is still the case today. When the then Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, moved the Government of Ireland Bill in 1912, he said:
  "We are content to delegate local matters to the different constituent units. However well we may transact … our common and Imperial affairs, we must perpetually bungle and mismanage the affairs of each unit. That, Sir, is what Home Rule, as we understand it, and federation as we are going to pursue it, means for the people of this country."—[Official Report, 9 May 1912; Vol.38, c. 700.]
  This Bill is today's monument to Westminster's continuing bungled and mismanaged government of Scotland.
  6.41 pm
  Mr. Bill Walker: I shall not speak at great length, but that does not mean that I do not have strong views on a number of matters.
  First, we should recognise that much consultation has taken place. In Committee, many hours were spent reviewing the Bill and considering its detail, so no one can say that the House did not give it adequate consideration.
  I am concerned because the Bill is important and has massive constitutional implications. The attitude that the Labour party demonstrated throughout the Committee stage can only be described as humbug. Labour Members want to establish a Scottish Parliament, or whatever it is to be called; I should have thought that they would agree that the measures contained in the Bill would make it easier for an incoming Government to do just that. That is certainly true of all the powers given to non-elected bodies, which could easily be transferred to an incoming Scottish Parliament.
  I was concerned from the outset, but not because I am opposed to the principle, as I support single-tier unitary authorities. I know that in Tayside, Perth and Kinross, Angus and also Dundee people are happy to have such authorities. I shall not speak for other areas, but I can speak about those with some authority. We were also satisfied that the arguments on boundaries were listened to and acted upon. There is therefore no doubt that anyone who is genuinely interested in the well-being or future good government of Scotland would recognise that the principle of single-tier unitary authorities was accepted by all. One runs into problems over matters that have to be dealt with outside the smaller, new unitary authorities. They quite properly caused considerable debate. There is no doubt that some of the debate was motivated by concern about job preservation, but much was motivated by concern about the provision of services and the Committee had to deal with that.
  Because of the circumstances in which the Bill came about and the pledges given before the general election, I believed that the Government would produce a Bill which —one hopes—will become an Act and establish unitary authorities. The Government will have delivered their pledge.

  237
  I hope that when we reach saner times we shall reconsider how we deliver services and make the people delivering them accountable. If we do not do so, we shall provide the very set-up that an incoming Labour Administration would welcome, if Labour ever get elected —I am not one of those who think that the next general election is lost—
  Mr. Jimmy Hood: Or won.
  Mr. Walker: Or won, but I am concerned with losing it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that.
  The recent election results were serious and ought not to be ignored. Anyone who thinks that they can take a flippant view of the results is not being realistic. I remind Opposition Members, however, that I have listened for many years to them telling me that an incoming Labour Government would do such and such, but such a Government never came to pass. I have also listened to the views of separatists, but their predictions have not come to pass either.
  One thing that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and I probably agree on is that the structures created by the Bill have constitutional implications. My party should consider that and deal with those implications before it is too late.
  6.46 pm
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) seemed to believe that the Bill, if it is enacted, would make it easier to create a Scottish Parliament. Whether that is true or not, it is no excuse for dismantling Scottish local government services and every system in such a desultory and unsatisfactory way.
  It is inevitable that, after all the talk today, the Government will produce their majority and the Bill will be hammered through, as it was hammered through in Committee with 102 defeats for Scotland. It will pass into law against the wishes of the Scottish people. There is no wish for this change in Scotland. There is a wish for a consensus view and a well-thought-out change in local government that will last well into the 21st century and not merely 20 years, as the last change has done. The Government have not produced such a change, and we are witnessing a wasted opportunity.
  The Bill has no consensus, except perhaps against it —it is not even perhaps; it has a consensus against it. Because of that and its relationship with the Tory party it will not last.
  Mr. Stewart: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that his district council, which is SNP-controlled, is against the proposal for a single-tier Angus?
  Mr. Welsh: Had there been proper consultation, or consultation similar to that undertaken by Wheatley—or an ounce of the thought that he and his commission put into the matter—we would have had a chance of a proper local government system that would be agreed.
  The Minister mentioned Angus district council. The district is a good size and will make an excellent council. One hopes that it will continue to be controlled by the Scottish National party and to be one of the best run in the country. That is no excuse, however, for destroying the system in the way that the Government have done, without
  238
  consulting the people. It is certainly no excuse for stealing Scotland's water assets, which is totally against the wishes of the people in the way that they have done.
  After all the talk in Committee and on Report, the Bill is basically unchanged, apart from some boundary changes. It is as the Government always wanted it to be, but as the Scottish people did not. Concessions such as retaining the title of firemaster are no consolation for the loss of services and the attack on Scottish local government contained in this atrocious and unacceptable Bill.
  These are Tory changes which are inextricably linked with the Conservative party. They have been made by and for the political convenience of the Conservative party. It is a Tory measure from start to finish, and it will be seen as such. It simply will not stand the test of the future.
  There is no popular support for moving from a service-providing local government system to that of mere enabling authorities. The opposite is true. The Scottish people have already shown that they wish water services to remain as a service provision by local authorities. There has been no real consultation, and it is ludicrous for the Secretary of State to pretend that there has. There has not, and the whole of Scotland knows it.
  There has been no commission in Scotland to take a proper look at the situation. All we have had is the imposition of the Government's own views. Certainly there has been no consensus, except in creating outright opposition both at local elections and general elections against the Government and the proposals. The Bill is basically an ill-thought-out botch-up. The boundaries it proposes defy analysis. They are not based on Wheatley's city regions, and they are not based on the old counties.
  Can the Minister explain how it happened? We certainly did not hear any rational analysis from the Secretary of State of the basis on which the Government approached the boundary changes. They vary in size from the Highlands—geographically the same size as Wales—to tiny Clackmannan. There is apparently no rhyme or reason to the decisions.
  The Government are simply tacking and changing for short-term gain without any overall principle apart from their own party political self-interest. The end product has been not a simplified unitary system at all, but a more complex multi-tiered, various-sized, central-Government-dominated set-up. The Government cannot hide from their responsibility for creating this mess of a Bill.
  The rushed timetable was self-inflicted; the Government chose to rush the measure through—nobody else. The motivation of the Treasury rules was also self-inflicted, as was the massive fiscal deficit which overshadows everything else, and the previous lack of investment in water and sewerage services. On all counts, Scottish local government is being made to pay for the Government's past policy mistakes.
  The Government—and no one else—are to blame for the failure to provide statutory directors of education and social work committees.
  Mr. Gallie: The hon. Gentleman has just blamed the Government for the failure to maintain and provide reasonable water and sewerage systems in Scotland. Have not water and sewerage been under the control of local authorities since the turn of the century? Surely theirs is the failure, and the Government are trying to address that.
  Mr. Welsh: The hon. Member clearly does not know anything about capital consents. Local government has a superb record of supplying quality services at low cost to the Scottish people. They understand that, and have asked the local authorities to continue. The hon. Gentleman is throwing democracy to one side and denying the 1.2 million people in Strathclyde who have said no to the changes which his Government are forcing, through thanks to the nature of this Parliament and the Union. We will see that tonight when the votes are counted.
  The refusal to have statutory directors of education and social work, statutory social work committees and directors of social work is simply a continued attack on the poor and vulnerable in Scotland, and that should not be happening.
  I must say also that the people who brought us the poll tax and who are taking water services out of Scotland have rejected seat belts in school buses. I have never heard before of somebody writing a third suicide note, but the Government have just done so.
  The Bill would allow the barbarity of warrant sales to be inflicted for water debts, and advocates three-year, short-term electoral cycles.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): Any council in Scotland can impose within its contracts with school buses conditions and stipulations which make it absolutely clear that seat belts can be made mandatory. The hon. Gentleman is totally misleading the House on that point.
  Mr. Welsh: I do not think I am. Any council can do that, and Tayside has just done it under the Scottish National party. The point is that the Government could have made sure that every council had those powers, by putting the matter on the face of the Bill. The Minister has abdicated his responsibility. He could have put the matter on the face of the Bill.
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: A council does have powers to put that in its contracts and, if it wishes, it is strongly encouraged to do so. We acknowledge that there has been public pressure for councils to do just that.
  Mr. Welsh: When the Government want to make sure of something, they put powers into the Bill, and this Bill is full of Secretary of State's powers. Why did not the Government make sure in this case? They would have had popular support, and support from both sides of the House. When the Government want to abdicate their responsibilities, they run the other way. There can be no excuses. The Government turned down an amendment that would have made sure that seat belts were installed in school buses. The Government made a mistake in not doing so.
  The Bill reduces Scotland's elected representatives to the lowest proportion per head in the whole of western Europe, and replaces them with more placemen and women, hand-picked by the Tories in quangos such as the three giant water boards. So much for decentralisation. The Government create three unelected and unaccountable giant quangos and destroy elected, democratic and accountable local authorities.
  The Bill multiplies centralised power and, while the Government talk about subsidiarity at a European level, they centralise power from local government in Scotland. The water services proposals are plainly wrong, unfair and undemocratic. There has been no attempt whatsoever to
  240
  tackle the problems involved. Debt interest payments will continue to cost more each year than water service provision.
  There is no green dowry in sight, so what was good enough for England will not be good enough for Scotland. Scottish taxpayers who have found that their money has been used to sweeten privatisation in England will not find a similar deal in Scotland from the Government.
  Mr. Kynoch: The hon. Gentleman is talking as if water is being privatised. There is nothing to give a dowry on, as water is still in the public sector.
  Mr. Welsh: I know that hon. Members want to speak, so I shall be as fast as I can. The hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) and his Front-Bench Members have repeated promises tonight. I remind him that, in 1984, Neil Macfarlane, then Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, said:
  "We have absolutely no intention of privatising the water industry. The Government have no plans to urge that upon the water authorities. There has been some press speculation about it in the past, but there is no intention to do so."—[Official Report, 19 December 1984; Vol. 70, c. 457.]
  Two years later, another Minister—the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) the then Secretary of State for the Environment, said:
  "In the last six years we have made the water authorities fit and ready to join the private sector …
  Privatisation is the next logical step."—[Official Report, 5 February 1986; Vol. 91, c. 288.]
  We have heard all those promises before, and they were broken. Why should we trust the Government any more now than when they made the promises in the past?
  The only rational conclusion must be that any future investments in water services will be paid for by vastly higher water charges imposed by the three unelected, unaccountable quangos, which will meet in private.
  The Bill is a charter for the Government to steal Scotland's massive water resources prior to privatisation. The Secretary of State for Scotland is our very own Ceaucescu. When 97 per cent. of voters do not want the changes, he just ignores them. No doubt he would equally ignore them if 100 per cent. of Scots were opposed to the plans.
  The right hon. Gentleman takes a sort of President Marcos approach to democracy—consult, then ignore. His own party has twigged what is going on. If the Secretary of State does not have the Scottish people on his side, at least he has England and the Union. We will find that out tonight when English Members who have not been present turn out and vote the measure through, against the clear wishes of the Scottish people.
  The Tories cannot hide for ever,and they will eventually have to face the electorate again. This has been a shameful process in which an unwanted, unnecessary and ill-thought-out affront to Scotland is being forced upon our people. An opportunity to provide real democratic local government—the services which the Scottish people really want—has been thrown to one side by this dogmatic Government. They have a great deal to answer for, and answer they will.
  6.59 pm
  Mr. Phil Gaulle: It is a great pleasure to speak at the final stage of the Bill, before it goes to another place. I look forward to discussing it again once it returns, and hope that it will be a fairly swift return.

  241
  Having listened carefully to the words of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I think that it is a great pity that he could not find a place on the Committee. It was dastardly of Opposition Members, recognising the requirement of the Secretary of State to represent Scotland's views at Cabinet level, deliberately to keep my right hon. Friend off the Committee. However, having seen how my right hon. Friend destroyed the arguments of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) before he rose to speak, I well understand why the Labour party did not want my right hon. Friend on the Committee.
  We had many long and full debates in Committee. What emerged was that the Government had no intention of gerrymandering boundaries. It was up to individual Members to represent local views. Sadly, Opposition Members hung back on that and did not fight their corner, with the exception of the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), who fought the battle for the Borders and won. He presented his arguments well, and persuaded the Minister to listen to sound and sustained argument. It is just a shame that Labour Members did not follow suit.
  I have two reservations about the present boundaries. The first is in the Fife area. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) used the word "crazy" in virtually every contribution he made. He defended the requirement for Fife to have a single-tier authority based on the region. I wonder at the wisdom of the Government in accepting that option. I hope that we do not live to regret making that decision.
  The second issue on which I have slight regrets is the sound arguments by Clydesdale district for a single-tier authority based in that area. I am saddened that the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood), perhaps bludgeoned into submission by Opposition Front-Bench Members, did not defend the right of those in Clydesdale to achieve a single-tier local authority that would have been larger than the Clackmannan authority that has since been established.
  There has been wide debate on a number of issues, including school transport. We heard about the concerns of parents throughout Scotland, and of the Catholic Church. Measures were taken to recognise the problems that would arise. The hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) suggested that the -Government should have legislated to make local authorities fit seat belts in school buses. That is centralisation. Throughout the Bill's Committee stage, Opposition Members argued against centralisation. Are they now saying that, if the Government do not legislate, local authorities will not achieve? Surely the Government are right to give local authorities the responsibilities and powers, and let them get on with the job.
  Mr. Welsh: Hon. Members on both sides of the House want seat belts fitted on minibuses. The Government defeated an amendment that would have ensured that seat belts were fitted on school buses. When the Government want something, they are quick to use that power, but they have not been willing to do so in this case. Individual local authorities have that power, and the SNP-controlled authority in Tayside has introduced seat belts. As in ordinary automobiles, one way to ensure that seat belts are fitted is to pass such an amendment.
  Mr. Gallie: The amendment was illogical, as it concentrated on school buses. Local authorities use coaches for a range of options. The amendment dealt with
  242
  school buses only in Scotland, whereas we should look at the position UK and Europewide. That is currently happening and, before long, legislation will probably be introduced to meet that requirement.
  We heard many stories about children's panels, but little about the downside. I have attended the hearings of children's panels in my area and am acquainted with some of their requirements and problems. Much of the resentment arose from the fact that too great a clamp was put on them by social work directors.
  Mr. Henry McLeish: Rubbish.
  Mr. Gallie: It is certainly not rubbish in Ayrshire; it is up to the hon. Gentleman to say whether it is rubbish in Fife. But that viewpoint came across to me when I attended the panels' area council in my constituency.
  Water has been key area of controversy throughout our debates. I know that my hon. Friends were aware of Strathclyde's referendum, but were they aware of a report on water commissioned by Strathclyde regional council?
  Sir William Halcrow was asked to examine the management of water structures and provision within Strathclyde. What have we heard about that? What were the findings? The report found that, if water was to remain in the public sector, it needed to mimic the commercial organisation of other management structures. For that matter, it needed to mimic the management structures of working arrangements set up in the privatised industries in England and Wales.
  The electorate of Strathclyde heard not a dicky bird about that. The council went ahead with the referendum—
  Mr. George Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Gallie: No, not for the moment. I am under some pressure to continue, because the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) wants to speak.
  Strathclyde council held back the report from the electorate. Opposition Members shout about open government, but, when it comes to doing something practical about it when they are in government and have an opportunity to do so, they hide their findings because they do not suit their purpose.
  Mr. George Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Gallie: No, I shall not give way.
  Strathclyde council distorted the facts. It maintained the belief that water would be privatised, and got the result it wanted in the referendum.
  Mr. George Robertson: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to make assertions to the House that an elected local authority hid from its public the conclusions of a report, whereas that local authority had a press conference on that report? Is not the hon. Gentleman in danger of getting precious close to misleading the House?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Hon. Members are entirely responsible for what they say in the Chamber. It has nothing to do with the Chair, so long as their remarks do not impugn other hon. Members.
  Mr. Gallie: I was quoting from the Scottish Sunday press. As Opposition Members always seem to believe

  243
  everything they read in the newspapers, I may have been marginally gullible—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Hamilton is right.
  At the weekend, I checked how many of the people who responded to the referendum had heard about the Halcrow report, and not one knew what I was talking about. The news of the report came as a complete surprise. Why did not Strathclyde council issue the information with the referendum? Why did it not give the facts? Opposition Members know the answer as well as I do—it was because it did not suit its purpose.
  Mr. George Robertson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for finally giving way. Will he tell the House that the Halcrow report said that the water industry was suffering from under-investment but that that was directly caused because capital consents to do so had not been given by central Government? If, as I have said, the Halcrow report was released and there was a press conference, what does it have to say about the assertions that the hon. Gentleman has just made?
  Mr. Gallie: I recognise full well that central Government makes a lot of demands upon the national borrowing requirement. This country is already deep in debt. Public sector borrowing is excessive at the present time. It is better that cash is found from other sources. That is the intention of the Bill as far as water is concerned. I approve of that.
  Drawing to a close—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Perhaps I will continue for a wee while longer. I refer to the words of the hon. Member for Hamilton a few minutes ago. He suggested that the Government were vandalising local government and tearing apart structures which had served Scotland well for 20 years. That is open to question. In my view, Strathclyde regional council never gelled or registered with a large part of the constituency.
  If the hon. Member's view is to stand, I wonder how he will reflect upon this fact. As I understand it, Opposition Members opposed tooth and nail the setting up of the structures of which he now supposedly regrets the demise. I suggest to hon. Members that, in 50 years' time, people will look back and feel happy about their accountable and responsible local government units. They will be grateful to the Conservative party for insisting upon the reforms that it introduced in 1994.
  7.11 pm
  Mr. Jimmy Hood: Obviously the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) had a preview of the speech by the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie). When he referred to humbug, he was obviously referring to the speech to come rather than those which had been made previously.
  I heard a comment about the abuse of language. We have heard abuse of language by Government Members tonight when they have talked about democracy and accountability. The Bill will leave Scotland with 1,200 elected councillors and 5,000 people on quangos—and they talk about democracy and accountability! That is certainly an abuse of language.
  The hon. Member for Ayr briefly mentioned the boundary question. I think it is a bit of a nonsense, and that is where the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) did
  244
  himself and the country a great disservice. Quite frankly, the Bill cannot be taken seriously by anyone who knows anything about local government. It is all about politics and gerrymandering. From day one it was about politics and gerrymandering, as it has been throughout all its stages. When it finally becomes an Act, it will be the most political, gerrymandered Act ever to go through this place. That is a fact.
  I know that we are pressed for time in the debate and I have one or two other comments to make, but I have to mention the hon. Gentleman's comments about seat belts in school buses. I did not intervene in the speech of the hon. Member for Ayr because I thought that he was taking too much time and I did not want to give him another opportunity to speak more humbug about the problem.
  The hon. Gentleman obviously does not understand the problem. I listened to the Minister's intervention as well and, if that was the sum total of his assumptions about the problem, he does not have a clue. I was not of that view until I heard the interventions in the speech of the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh).
  The hon. Member for Ayr referred to allowing local authorities to spend money and agree to it in a contract. But the issue is about protecting every child in Scotland when he or she is travelling to and from school. It is not about leaving it to discretion. That is the argument.
  I deliberately tabled an amendment to an education clause in the Bill because it is not a transport question which is separate from the real problem. I wanted to address the problem of getting our children to and from school safely. To do that, one has to accept that it is a problem for education.
  When I moved my amendment I said that, as we make it a legal obligation under education law for parents to send their children to school, why can we not protect those children in transporting them to and from school? When it comes to a question of safety and making seat belts compulsory, the Government run behind the Commission and say that they cannot do anything because of European Community law. When I moved my amendment, I quoted the Commissioner who said that, as a member state of the European Union, we have powers within our own sovereignty—we have heard quite a lot about that—to protect our children with seat belts in school buses. That is why I moved the amendment.
  It is no good Conservative Members, who trooped through the lobbies last week to vote down the amendment, looking for excuses. It was a disgrace. It was an opportunity for us to take a lead in this area. I cannot accept what the Minister said from the Dispatch Box last week about it being a United Kingdom problem. It was not a UK problem when Scotland got the poll tax a year before England and Wales. It was not a UK problem when the Government, thankfully, conceded and made it illegal to cut off water supplies. That was different from what happened in England as well.
  We had an opportunity—and the Minister knows it—to pass an amendment to the Bill which would have made it compulsory to protect children while they were travelling to and from school. Tragically, the Minister ran away from it. When the Department of Transport releases its report, we will see that it is full of excuses to do nothing. That is all we will hear. The Minister can intervene if I have said anything that he wants to correct, but I am sure that he does not want to do so.

  245
  On the question of tourism, the Government have taken a nonsensical decision to amalgamate the Clyde Valley tourist board with the City of Glasgow. How can the Government say seriously that it is in the best interests of tourism to amalgamate a city culture with a rural culture and try to address the problems of both? They are different cultures with their own Interests to serve. Amalgamating the two will create great problems.
  Government Members have done their party no favours, but I am not here to advise them about how to represent their party better. The hon. Member for Ayr said that the Conservatives in Scotland have listened to the people. What about the 86 per cent. who voted against the privatisation of water? That is why we put down our amendments: to stop privatisation. We are the listening party. If the Government can be admired for anything—I cannot think of anything off the top of my head to admire them for—it is for their gall. If that is not gall, I do not know what is.
  If this is a new listening party, it should accept that more than 80 per cent. of people are against the privatisation of water—and I suggest that the figure is higher than that. I also remind it that more than 90 per cent. of the people want a Scottish Parliament. It has not listened to that for the past eight or nine years. These questions must be addressed.
  The hon. Gentleman should not try to kid us by saying that the Government are listening. They are not listening. They are not considering in any way the true interests of the Scottish people, and they will have to account for it at the ballot box.
  7.18 pm
  Mr. Ian Davidson: I note with some regret that the hon. Members for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson), for Stroud (Mr. Knapman) and for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) have not deigned to grace us with their presence during the debate. They formed the Government's majority in Committee. Without them, the Government would not have put through the vast majority of the motions that they carried in Committee. Their interest in Scottish local government is so considerable that they have not bothered to turn up for the debate today. That illustrates the way in which the Government have proceeded on the Bill. They have not bothered to listen to the views of the Scottish people or of the majority of their elected representatives. They have been prepared ruthlessly to use a majority to ram through policies that were ill considered, badly thought out and designed simply to promote partisan advantage.
  I wish to mention one aspect of local government that was inadequately touched on earlier.
  Mr. Salmond rose—
  Mr. Davidson: I want to proceed because I know that a number of other hon. Members want to speak.
  At present, local authority councillors are overworked and grossly underpaid for the valuable work that they undertake on behalf of the community. The position will worsen as a result of the changes that the Government are introducing, because they intend to reduce the total number of councillors in Scotland.
  It is not enough to say that everyone who does the job of a councillor is a volunteer. Those men and women take on an important social role on behalf of their communities.
  246
  They suffer mightily as a result, in financial and in family terms, and they are inadequately resourced for it. I believe that the Government should take the opportunity to announce that they intend adequately to resource the payment to elected councillors as part of the introduction of any new local government system.
  The burden that councillors will have to bear in the new authorities will be greater because, not only will they have to make policy decisions as they did in the past, but they will be in the front line when they are confronted by the public to explain why services are being reduced at a time of increased need and decreased provision. They will have to carry the burden of the decisions which we make here, and which, from the Scottish side, the vast majority are forced to make against their will.
  The present local government finance system results in councillors who are unemployed being virtually unem-ployable, those who are in employment losing the opportunities for promotion and those who are in work losing money as a result of broken time payments and losing pension payments for the future. None of that is adequately taken into account. The Government should make adequate recompense to councillors. No one becomes a local councillor for the money, but that is no reason why councillors should be penalised financially in the way that they are.
  I enjoyed the Secretary of State's well-presented, witty speech. It was the House of Commons as vaudeville—as theatre. However, we should not allow the style of the Secretary of State's delivery to mask the content. The content was every bit as ruthless as that of any speech from the Government throughout the discussion of Scottish local government. It is a clear attempt to gerrymander the local government map. It is a corrupt and dishonest set of proposals, deliberately designed for partisan advantage.
  My colleagues and I have a responsibility to the Scottish public to continue to repeat that not only were the measures drawn up in a fundamentally flawed way, but their motivation is alien to the public spirit that has operated throughout Scotland for many years. Although we have had disagreements in the past, I do not believe that such a nakedly corrupt set of measures has ever issued from a Government. The measures are motivated by malice against local government by the Government, deliberately designed to destroy what they have found it impossible to control. As they cannot win elections, they have decided that they want to emasculate local government. They want to give the powers and responsibilities to their appointees —their chums, their golf partners, their acquaintances, their relations—in a way that the vast majority of the Scottish public reject.
  We on the Opposition Benches are united in opposition. Although there are nuances of difference between the Liberals, the nationalists and Labour Members, we have been united on the major issues. It is important to recognise that, with Scottish public opinion behind us, we stopped the privatisation of water and ensured that the Government introduced a measure to stop water disconnections. Nevertheless, I believe, and the majority of Scottish people believe, that, given a chance, the Government will privatise water at the earliest opportunity. It will be the responsibility of elected representatives in the House and in Scotland to ensure that the pressure is kept on the Government; to ensure that they are not allowed to go down the franchising route, which is a step on the road to privatisation. The Scottish people do not believe the

  247
  Government when they say that they have no intention now to privatise. They think that, given half a chance, the Government would do it in a flash.
  I regret that we did not stop more of the Government's proposals. The costs of reorganisation will come out of services. That will result in worse provision for the people in need of those services. It will result in job losses. I do not simply mourn those job losses because of the disruption to the people involved; I regret them because they will result in dereliction of the duty of local government to provide first-class services. We are having dislocation and disruption which is unwanted and entirely unnecessary. The Government will pay a price for their naked exercise of power—as they have paid a price for it —in the ballot box.
  The Secretary of State's speech was not an effort to persuade; it was simply a reiteration of Government policy, delivered tongue in cheek on many occasions with a wee joke and a smile, as if to say that he knew that he would win the vote at the end of the day and did not need to bother taking seriously anything that was said by anyone else.
  The dive in the Conservatives' share of the vote in the regional elections to less than 14 per cent. causes us to worry for the future of democracy in Scotland. I was on Strathclyde regional council for several years. I notice, with some regret, that the Conservatives are now down to three out of 103 elected representatives on that council. When I joined, the Conservatives had about two dozen. In such circumstances, a real political debate is possible. I recognise that the Conservatives represent a political current in Scotland and that their views need to be adequately discussed and expressed. However, the viciousness and the extremities of dogma that they are pursuing have driven the Conservatives' vote down.
  We ought to consider what has happened in previous Euro-elections, as similar elections are about to take place. In 1979, the Conservatives won five of the eight seats in Scotland. In 1984, they went down to two. In 1989, they went down to none at all and now no one seriously believes that the Conservatives have any prospect of winning a seat in Scotland at the coming elections. I do not believe that, if the Tories thought that they had any prospect of winning Euro-seats in Scotland, they would have proceeded with the local government reorganisation. They have given up, and the way in which they are prepared ruthlessly to use an English majority to ride roughshod over the views of the people of Scotland bodes ill for Scottish democracy.
  I hope that the Bill continues to be fought in Scotland. I hope that it is fought in the Lords, even though I want that place to be abolished. The Government should suffer for what they are doing to Scotland tonight.
  7.27 pm
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: I shall ask four succinct questions.
  First, on a relatively minor matter, what will be said in the Lords as to whether South Queensferry is to be in West Lothian or in Edinburgh? Will there be a Government amendment?
  Secondly, will the Government place in the Library of the House of Lords their view on the background to the figures with which they challenged the Convention of
  248
  Scottish Local Authorities? They owe it to COSLA, to David Chynoweth, to Albert Tait and to many other people who are non-political but extremely professionally capable, to show where, according to the Government, they have gone wrong in the COSLA calculations. That information ought to be put into the Lords Library; it is the honourable thing to do.
  Thirdly, will the Government place in the Library of the House of Lords a statement of their thinking on the very real problem of strategic planning? This matter is central to areas such as West Lothian, where there is overlapping development. Surely some thought has gone into that.
  Fourthly, the Government owe it to us to deposit in the Library of the House of Lords a statement of their thinking on the future of specialist services, especially in relation to social work. For example, as we learned time and again in Committee, many services for the vulnerable can be provided only on a very large scale. If the Bill reaches the statute book, people will very soon be asking where Lothian and Strathclyde are. Much of the help provided by specialist authorities has been taken for granted.
  It is the poll tax all over again. We shall see what happens next year, when, I understand from the Government Chief Whip, there will be endless orders—orders on Norfolk, on Somerset, and so on. We shall have all the problems of the English local authorities. It seems to me that once again we in Scotland are the guinea pigs. I think of the memorable words of Enoch Powell: this arrangement has the smell of death about it.
  Although I do not want to repeat a point that was made by the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker), I must say to the Secretary of State that I do not believe that it was his intention, by dismantling the structures in Strathclyde and Lothian in particular, to produce solutions very different from those that he might favour for the future of Scotland. But when that happens, let it be on his own head.
  7.31 pm
  Mr. Thomas Graham: As many other hon. Members want to take part in the debate, I do not intend to take up much time. I want to concentrate on a number of issues that the Bill does not address at all.
  What is to happen to consumer and trading standards in Strathclyde? We have one of the best consumer groups in the country. Strathclyde's consumer and trading standards department is one of the country's largest and most effective. Last year alone, it dealt with more than 250,000 inquiries. How will the new authorities maintain this capability? The size of the Strathclyde region provides economies of scale that give the consumer and trading standards department unparalleled clout as a consumer watchdog. Without the benefits of size and the corresponding strategic role, it is unlikely that the department's success will be maintained by 12 smaller authorities. Last year, the department helped consumers to recover almost £2 million from unscrupulous traders.
  There are 15 money advice centres throughout the region. These provide advice and support for people struggling with debt. The department deals with £1 million of consumer debt each year. Its specialist car fraud unit is unique. That unit is currently investigating 1,300 cases involving alleged car clockers, thereby ensuring value for car buyers, as well as protection for legitimate second-hand

  249
  car dealers. It is estimated that such fraud costs Strathclyde consumers more than £10 million a year. What is to happen in that area?
  Blindcraft—the largest sheltered workshop in Europe —employs 134 blind and disabled people, as well as 87 support staff, and has an annual turnover approaching £4 million. Let us bear in mind what was done to the disabled last week. Once again, that lot opposite will bin them right on to the dole. Strathclyde region gives Blindcraft a subsidy of £1.8 million a year, without which the factory could not survive. In addition, the region is the biggest purchaser of Blindcraft merchandise, buying £2.6 million-worth—more than 50 per cent. of the factory's products—every year. How will Blindcraft survive if Strathclyde goes?
  Another vital area that the Bill ignores—one about which I am concerned—is the work of the regional chemist, who is responsible for analysing food, water, consumer products, sewage and industrial waste and for examining other environmental situations. It would be very difficult to split the regional chemist's functions into 12 parts. The specialist equipment and experience could not be supported by smaller authorities. Strathclyde's laboratory—purpose-built recently at a cost of £4 million —is one of only four such laboratories in Scotland, and it is twice as large as all the others combined. On average, the department tests 75,000 samples a year. Apart from the analytical work, a team of trained scientists is on standby to deal with chemical and related emergency incidents. It is estimated that it would cost the 12 smaller authorities an extra £8 million to maintain the current level of service.
  Like almost all other Opposition Members, I believe that the Government have got it wrong. What is being done is vindictive. It is disgraceful to dismantle a system that has been working. I am convinced that the smaller authorities will not be able to deliver services of the excellence that has been known in Scotland. It is a disgrace that one of the most successful authorities ever seen in Britain—the one in Strathclyde—is being dismantled. Other hon. Members will be able to speak with authority about the areas that they represent. The one about which I am most concerned is Strathclyde, on whose authority I served with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson). There, I was aware of the provision of excellent services and of the commitment not just of councillors but of officers.
  What the Government are doing will be of no help to the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled or industrial concerns. How do they think it will help the people of Scotland? Why do they think we need it? I do not know, and I do not believe that the Government have the answer. Perhaps the number of Tory supporters in work will be increased. Quangos will be stuffed with Tory failed business men making a few bucks at the expense of the many people thrown on to the dole. It is quite clear that, as a result of this measure, many local authority workers will lose their jobs, even though the services that they have been providing will continue to be needed.
  We have heard a great deal about water. In this respect, the people of Scotland overwhelmingly reject what the Government are doing. There is no question about that. The Strathclyde referendum should have been a warning to the Government to stop, listen to the people, think and review. They have not done that. They are still blundering along the road. They are still talking about quangos and about appointing placemen to try to run the water
  250
  authorities. Scotland needs investment in sewerage and in water supplies. The cash should come from central Government. This is what we pay taxes for. People expect to be able to drink clear, fresh water, and they expect sewage to be treated. They do not expect rubbish to be dumped along the road, as is happening in Britain at present.
  I want to make a lighthearted but none the less sincere comment. The Secretary of State and his cohorts are the Jack and Jill of Scottish politics, especially when it comes to water:

  "Jack and Jill went up the hill

  To fetch a pail of water;

  Jack fell down and broke his crown,

  And Jill came tumbling after."

  Ministers should consider what they are giving to the people of Scotland—a crass and empty bucket. They are not providing anything to improve the quality of life or of water in Scotland. They are doing nothing to secure the delivery of services to the elderly and others badly in need or to youngsters at school. Tonight, we should be debating improvements for the people of Scotland, rather than something that will damage them.
  7.38 pm
  Mr. Michael Connarty: When my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) mentioned English Members we were joined by a few. I thought that they were taking an interest in local government, but it is obvious from their chatter that the Tea Room is full and that they cannot find anywhere else to carry on their conversations. If the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) were to listen, he might find out something about the idiocy that the Government are trying to perpetrate in Scotland and might bring it to the attention of people in the Lancashire constituency that he currently represents.
  I should like to make one positive comment before dealing with the substance of the Bill. It is gratifying that the Secretary of State amended schedule 13 to include the provisions of section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976 to cover the quangos and other bodies that are being set up. It seems that people of all races in Scotland are to be equally abused by the Bill, without discrimination.
  I do not mind ideology. But I have heard some distasteful Tory speeches tonight based on distortion. Those distortions will not sit well with the people of Scotland, who know that they are distortions. The Bill's main problem is that it is like an idiot's plan for local government. If one gave a child with no learning ability a set of building blocks on local government and asked him to put it together he might come up with something similar to what the Government have come up with. The Bill is a dislocated series of errors based on prejudices and boundary readjustments to suit the Tory party. It is a dog's breakfast—to use a good Scots phrase—but no dog would swallow it and nor will the people of Scotland.
  We were told by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) that political advisers were involved in putting the Bill together. The Government should check whether those advisers were on their side, because the Bill is one of the most disastrous pieces of legislation for the Conservative party. The regional elections were only the beginning of the demise of the Tory party based on that piece of Government stupidity.

  251
  The Bill is like a jigsaw puzzle that someone buys at a car boot sale, only to find, on opening the box, that half the pieces are missing. We do not know what is to happen to special education or the concessionary fares system. We do not know where the water boards will get their money. We have heard hints that the £3 billion allocated over 15 years from the public sector borrowing requirement may be withdrawn. That should worry people as they do not know how much in water and sewerage charges will have to be paid by the consumer for capital works. We do not know how the joint boards and the loyalties of those who sit on them will work out. We do not know whether people will receive fair allocations across all parts of the joint board areas. Half the pieces of the jigsaw are missing, just as half the Ministers' logic was missing during every debate of our 179 hours of Committee.
  Perhaps we should be thankful. In my first speech on the Bill, I said to the Government that if I wanted to be partisan I would encourage them to go ahead with the proposals, which would be disastrous for them. If the Government do not think that the regional council elections showed that I and other hon. Members who said similar things were correct, they must be living in a different political world from mine. Perhaps we should thank the Government for sacrificing their majority on the altar of their ideology. If the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) were a symbol of what the Government meant, he would symbolise a Spartan end, with Conservative Members standing until they were slaughtered one by one. We know that the Secretary of State will not be a Spartan; he will sneak off down south to join his friends in the Conservative party in England whom he is currently serving. I remember the glory days when he said what he would do for the revival of the Conservative party in Scotland. All I say to him is, "Keep it up Ian, keep it up."
  The problem is that the people of Scotland will suffer because of the Government's ideology. They will suffer because the weak will not be cared for as local authorities care for them at present. The authorities will have to try to make up the resources as they will have lost between £365 million and £720 million because of this stupid exercise. The Secretary of State, Ministers and advisers were unable to answer the accusation of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy about the cost of this stupid Bill.
  The most needy people—those in community care who are already suffering—will be cast out of national health service hospitals into private hospitals and nursing homes. Only the local authorities will stand between them and dire poverty. They will suffer, as will those young people who had a quality future ahead of them, which had been worked for by the regional authorities. They will find themselves in small authorities without resources. The quality of the future of those young people will be much reduced.
  The people of Scotland will make the Conservative party pay dearly for the proposals—not the Conservative party in England. I do not mind the fact that the hon. Members for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson) and for Stroud (Mr. Knapman) are not present now, as they were in Committee. It was not the Conservatives from England who kept the Government's majority. As the majority of the Committee was reduced to one, it would have taken only one hon. Member—the hon. Member for Tayside,
  252
  North (Mr. Walker)—to be honest with his conscience and stand with the people of Scotland instead of the Government. It would have taken the hon. Members for Ayr (Mr. Gallie), for Aberdeen, South or for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch)—just one of those Conservative Scottish Members—to cross the Floor. I do not believe the blandishments of the Scottish National party that it was the English who kept the majority—
  Mr. Salmond: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Connarty: No, I shall not give way.
  If just one of the Conservative Scottish Members had crossed the Floor, it would have given the people of Scotland the chance to break this poisoned chalice. Instead, those hon. Members forced the people of Scotland to drink from it. As a result, those hon. Members will lose their seats.
  7.45 pm
  Mr. John McAllion: I shall be brief —I have to be as there are just five minutes remaining before the Front-Bench spokesmen start their speeches. In the short time available, I want to congratulate the Secretary of State for Scotland, not on anything that he has said today or done in relation to the Bill but on the fact that last Saturday he had the rare privilege of presenting the Scottish cup to Dundee United when the club won it for the first time in its history, in a magnificent victory over Glasgow Rangers.When the official party was presented to the teams before the kick-off, the Secretary of State had the rare distinction of being booed more loudly by the crowd than Mr. Jim Farry of the Scottish Football Association. Anyone who is booed by a Hampden crown more loudly than Jim Farry is in serious trouble. Hampden had not seen anything like it since Baroness Thatcher came to present the cup at the height of the poll tax fiasco.
  The Government should take on board the fact that the argument does not just take place inside the Chamber: it rages back in Scotland. The arrogance that they have shown to the Scottish people time and again results in booing and in the sort of treatment that they receive every time they show their face north of the border. The message for the Conservative Members is that Scotland does not want them—people in Scotland have had enough of them over the past 15 to 16 years. Everyone in Scotland looks forward to the day when we can have a Tory-free Scotland, with a Scottish Parliament and self-determination for our own country.
  The Secretary of State's speech was amusing in those parts where he did not intend it to be. One of his funniest lines was when he said that the Bill had caused many problems—of course, it has. First, it caused the collapse of Tory support in the opinion polls in Scotland once Scottish people realised what the Bill was about. The Strathclyde water referendum created problems for the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie) and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), who found that 90 per cent. of their own constituents were opposed to what the Tory party was proposing in the Bill.
  In the local government elections on 5 May, the Tories were pushed not into fourth place in Scottish politics but into fifth place—behind the independents mentioned by the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch). They were beaten by the Communists in Fife. Communist

  253
  candidates have a better chance of being elected in Scotland than Tory candidates. I have been a great supporter of the tradition in Fife of electing Communist councillors as I think that they have done a marvellous job on Fife regional council.
  The Secretary of State said that he had started out three years ago on a quest to achieve what he called all-purpose local authorities. Who on earth can believe the nonsense that what are being created north of the border are all-purpose authorities? Water and sewerage—one of the main services for which local government is responsible —is being taken away from local authorities in Scotland. No single-tier authority anywhere in Scotland will control the police and fire services—the joint boards will do that. Dundee will not be able to determine the level of policing in Dundee because it will be determined by the majority in Perth, Kinross and Angus, who will decide where the resources are to go within the joint board in Tayside. The same is true for all the social and education services, which will have to be provided by joint committees. The Bill is not creating all-purpose local authorities; the purpose of the Bill is to strip local authorities of their current powers. Everyone in Scotland understands that only too well.
  The Minister said that a number of principles underlined the national boundary decisions and the shape of the new single-tier councils in Scotland. The principle that underlined the new boundaries was gerrymandering, which we have seen in other parts of the United Kingdom. In Westminster council—in this very district—the Tory council drove out council tenants and the homeless in order to make way for the well-heeled and better-off Tory voters to take over their accommodation in Westminster. The strategy was targeted at the marginal areas to ensure that the Tories hung on to power in Westminster—the same is happening in Scotland.
  I joined Tayside regional council in 1984 when it was the jewel in the Tory crown in Scotland, and 28 of the 46 seats were safely in Tory hands. It was unthinkable that Tayside region should ever drop out of control of the Tory party. I spoke only two weeks ago to John Riddle-Webster, an ex-councillor from Tayside, who first stood for election in 1986. He said that the Tories in Tayside were discussing the forthcoming local election and it never entered their heads that they could possibly lose control of Tayside. He said that they were deciding who would deal with what convenorship once the election was safely out of the way. A Labour administration was elected to Tayside regional council in 1986 and again in 1990. More recently, it elected an SNP administration. The Tories have been reduced to just four seats on what was once the best Tory council in Scotland.
  Will the Conservative party realise for once that what the Opposition say about the iniquities in the Bill is not just rhetoric. Nobody in Scotland wants the Bill—not even the Tory party in Scotland; the Westminster party does not represent its friends north of the border. The real Tories in Scotland do not want this nonsense; nobody in Scotland wants it and that is why everyone in the House should vote against it.
  7.50 pm
  Mr. Henry McLeish: Some interesting parallels can be drawn from the debate. On the Government Benches we see a party heading for defeat, oblivion and opposition. My colleagues are quite buoyed
  254
  by the experiences of Committee, Report and Third Reading. The Bill simply will not survive in any particular form in the months and years that lie ahead. We look forward with enthusiasm when we come into Government to dealing with the residual effects of this particularly nasty measure.
  It is important to nail some of the smears and distortions thrown around tonight about Strathclyde by the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie). It is unforgivable that when the Prime Minister, in that half-baked speech at conference described Strathclyde as a monstrosity, he gave a lead to all Conservatives, whether in the House or in Scotland, to decry that public authority on every occasion.
  Mention has been made of the Halcrow report on Strathclyde water. The report was favourable to Strathclyde and stated that Strathclyde could stand examination with any water authority in England or Wales and, more to the point, supply water at half the cost.
  Let us also nail another smear tonight—that Strathclyde tried to suppress the report. It was quite disgraceful that on the radio this morning the Under-Secretary should make the same smear. It is simply not true that Strathclyde suppressed the report. There was a press conference and it was available to all concerned. We should have some humility from the hon. Member for Ayr, who made that bitter and ill-informed remark.
  Mr. Gallie: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. McLeish: No. The hon. Gentleman had enough time to smear Strathclyde and does not deserve the opportunity to speak again.
  It is also interesting that the Secretary of State for Scotland has now divorced himself completely from the reality of Scottish politics. We can debate whether that is because he is preparing to move to a more lucrative position in the Tory party down south, but it is clear that the Secretary of State distanced himself from the Committee and then wanted very little to do with the Bill when it was being debated in Scotland. It is quite clear to us all that the Secretary of State has run out of enthusiasm for this particularly pernicious piece of legislation.
  It is also important to say that the Secretary of State has tried to pretend to the Scottish people that the Bill is all about all-purpose authorities. When we heard that Clackmannan district council, with 47,000 people, is to become one of the new unitary authorities it became clear that the Bill had moved from all-purpose to no-purpose authorities. It is simply disgraceful to ask a council with so few people to do so much on behalf of the electors it wishes to serve. That underlines the fact that the Opposition have always been right to say that the Bill is about gerrymandering and boundaries with no regard whatsoever to the services that are being provided.
  There are also some other considerations worth repeating as the Bill ends its Third Reading. There remains no consensus for the measure. The Government may argue that there is, but in Scotland there is not. There has been no commission. The Government have been unwilling to appoint one because they lack the guts to test their crazy policies against any objective criteria. We have had no constitutional change. We shall deliver a Scottish Parliament. That will be the context within which we shall seriously examine services in Scotland and the people who deliver them.

  255
  Of course we have no assessment of costs. It is a ludicrous position. Hundreds of millions of pounds could still be spent on policies that nobody wants from a Government who will not provide high investment to services that are badly needed, such as community care and fighting crime. It is an act of monumental irresponsibility and it lies fairly and squarely with the Secretary of State for Scotland who took on this madcap proposal and is willing to see it through, even to the destruction of the Conservative party which will surely follow as a result of the process being completed in the House and then moving to another place.
  The Government cannot stomach the fact that there is no commitment from the Scottish people. We have heard so much drivel about people in Scotland wanting this reorganisation. We have heard about councillors clamouring at the Minister's door to fix their own areas, but a reorganisation that does not have the support of the people does not deserve to survive, and this one will not survive.
  The Opposition are concerned that the Bill has ignored services completely. Life and death services have never figured in the minds of Government Ministers or Tory Back Benchers. It is all about beating a path to the Secretary of State's door saying, "We will slavishly accept the wisdom of this gerrymandering political exercise with no regard to the high-quality services which are being delivered in many areas."
  Some 300,000 employees will now find that, as Government did not have the guts to transfer them on the face of the Bill, they may end up in court to determine their future because the Government have also ignored European legislation. The Bill is disgraceful on two points: there is no transfer and no simple adherence to European directives.
  The hallmark of the mess has been the Government's commitment to butcher the delivery of water and sewerage services in Scotland. We have heard many words spoken in the House and elsewhere about water. They were given the opportunity after they heard the opinion polls, the Strathclyde referendum and the results of the local government elections, but the Government are so removed from reality that they will take no opportunity to secure their own political future and instead treat the people of Scotland with bitter contempt on those important issues.
  We can tell the Government this evening that Scots do not want three super-quangos. We want no halfway house. Despite the bleatings of Tory Back Benchers, they know that water is an albatross round their necks. We shall ensure that it will remain an albatross until and during the next election. They can bleat all they wish, but we shall not let them forget it.
  The Bill has also been a root and branch attack on democracy. My hon. Friends have talked about quangos. Scotland will be represented by 1,200 elected people, but 5,000 quango members, meeting in private to do the dirty work of the Secretary of State, will deal with £7 billion worth of expenditure in Scotland.
  It is an insult to the House. We pride ourselves on being elected to Westminster to enact legislation that is in the interests of the people. The Government are now hell-bent on ensuring that what they cannot win by the ballot box they will win by the appointment of quangos to every organisation throughout the length and breadth of
  256
  Scotland. On behalf of the Scottish people, we shall have none of it. The Government stand condemned and isolated on the Bill and have shown no remorse whatever. They are adding insult to injury by dismantling local government and passing services over to the friends and supporters of their party.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) highlighted another fact. Last week, on Report, we gave the Government the opportunity to put the record straight on seat belts, but what did they do? They brought 250 Tories Members into the House to vote against improving the safety of vulnerable children travelling in minibuses and coaches in Scotland. That can be with their conscience, but my hon. Friend is also right to suggest that we will push until the measure is implemented and Scots can travel safely throughout the country.
  The Tories are in a mess in Scotland, but are unconcerned. The Bill is a mess, but the Tories are unconcerned. What they should be concerned about is that the timetable for this ludicrous proposal is also in crisis. In another place, the Bill will be delayed. The prospect of having elections less than a year from now is simply outrageous by any standard of democratic traditions. Let us warn the Government, before the Minister replies, that the story does not end in the House this evening. We shall step up the campaign vigorously throughout Scotland. We expect local authorities not to have anything to do with this legislation.
  The Government should remember that, until they get this bad Bill and all the required regulations that go with it through in November, Scotland will have nothing to do with it. That is absolutely right. Parliament and the people should now combine to delay, derail and, ultimately, destroy the Bill. It is not in the interests of Scotland, services or local government. That is why my hon. Friends will vote against its Third Reading tonight.
  8 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart): May I first say to the hon. Members for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) that I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) will be grateful for the sympathy that they expressed?
  A number of genuine points were made during the debate, amid a certain amount of the usual ranting and raving from the Opposition Front Bench. The hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham) rightly raised the point about Blindcraft. I can assure him that I have met representatives from Blindcraft, with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin). I hope that any difficulties will be resolved. The hon. Gentleman asked about the future of the Strathclyde regional chemist laboratories, but the point is that there are only four such laboratories in Scotland, serving all 65 councils in Scotland. That is an excellent example of a joint arrangement that works. There is nothing new or radical in suggesting, as we are, that, under the new structure, local authorities must co-operate in joint arrangements. That happens now.
  Following the speech of the hon. Member for Hamilton, there were four excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch), for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) and for Ayr (Mr. Gallie). A general theme

  257
  underlined those speeches. The House spent an immense amount of time, rightly and properly, on the Bill. Some 177 hours were spent in Committee and that, as my hon. Friends pointed out, meant that many of the amendments that were tabled were accepted by the Government. The changes that were made to the boundaries in Committee all resulted from approaches to the Government, which were on either an all-party or a non-party basis.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North rightly referred to the need to look carefully at the most cost-effective way of delivering services in future.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr and the hon. Members for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) and for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) referred to boundary questions in relation to the proposals for Lanarkshire. I was rather surprised that the hon. Member for Clydesdale attacked the proposals as gerrymandering, because he came to see me, as part of a delegation, to express the hope that the Government would not change the proposals for South Lanarkshire. I was extremely glad to confirm that we were persuaded by the strength of the arguments made by the hon. Gentleman—
  Mr. Hood: I am sure that the Minister would not like to mislead the House. Does he agree that the hon. Member for Clydesdale facilitated the meeting for his local authority to come down and put its case, and that there is a marked difference between that and what the Minister said?
  Mr. Stewart: There were two meetings.
  Mr. Hood indicated dissent.
  Mr. Stewart: The hon. Gentleman, as I recall, came along with his hon. Friends to a second meeting, in which he agreed with the case that the Government were making for South Lanarkshire. If I have misinterpreted the hon. Gentleman, of course I shall withdraw that, but it was certainly the case that a number of his hon. Friends clearly supported the case for South Lanarkshire.
  Mr. Salmond: May I examine the Minister's credentials, as he is one of the contenders for the crown of thorns in the Scottish Office? Has he ever personally believed in water privatisation? If so, when did he stop?
  Mr. Stewart: I am glad to respond to that point. I was going to come to it in a moment or two, because I thought that the hon. Member for Hamilton alleged that I had publicly supported the privatisation of water and sewerage in Scotland. I have never publicly supported—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] I have never supported the privatisation of water and sewerage in Scotland. The hon. Member for Hamilton made great play of the fact that the privatisation option for water and sewerage used rather more lines in the consultation paper than the option that was eventually adopted by the Government. That proves nothing. The ten commandments were pretty short, but nevertheless they are a great deal more important than many other passages of literature.
  Mr. McAllion: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Stewart: No. I have only a limited amount of time available.
  Opposition Members talked about gerrymandering and the cost-effectiveness of the new councils. I have quotation after quotation from individual Labour-led councils in Scotland, not universally but across the central belt and
  258
  elsewhere. The hon. Member for Hamilton and others referred to Clackmannan. I do not know how much of the Clackmannan case he wishes me to read out, but it is a Labour-led district council, which made a very clear case for its authority to be a unitary authority.
  I find it astonishing that the Labour party should have so little confidence in Labour councillors and Labour councils up and down the length and breadth of Scotland that it derides the cases made by Clackmannan, Falkirk, West Lothian—the authority of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)—and East Lothian. We responded to the cases that were made by Labour council after Labour council.
  Mr. Dalyell: West Lothian is not a Labour authority, but will the Minister answer the substantial question of whether there will be a Lords amendment on Queensferry?
  Mr. Stewart: That, of course, is entirely a matter for individual Members of the other place.
  The key charge of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) was that the timetable has slipped. I am sorry to disappoint him. That is wishful thinking on his part. I assure the House that the timetable for local government reorganisation under the Bill remains as planned. The hon. Gentleman is whistling in the wind—
  Mr. McLeish: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Stewart: No, I really do not have time.
  The hon. Gentleman is whistling in the wind if he dares to suggest otherwise. The Bill is on track and on time; nor will it be moved by the programme of non-co-operation to which the hon. Member for Fife, Central referred positively, but which the hon. Member for Hamilton rightly suggested had not delayed the Bill's passage or the reorganisation programme.
  As I have said, the case for the Bill has been advanced over an extremely long period, and it has been presented powerfully and effectively by my hon. Friends tonight. Opposition Members do not know what their policy is, but it is to hand over local government to some other body. That is the policy of the hon. Member for Hamilton: he will stand at this Dispatch Box and have no responsibility whatever for local government policy. The Opposition have no policy to put before the House, as they had no policy to put before the Standing Committee that considered the Bill in such detail.
  I commend the Bill whole-heartedly to the House as a blueprint for effective, accountable, stable local government in Scotland—not just for the next two years, but into the next century.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 289, Noes 253.

  Division No. 257]

  [8.12 pm

  AYES

  Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Alexander, Richard

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

  Batiste, Spencer

  Amess, David

  Bellingham, Henry

  Ancram, Michael

  Bendall, Vivian

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Ashby, David

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Body, Sir Richard

  Atkins, Robert

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  259

  Booth, Hartley

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Boswell, Tim

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Gorst, John

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

  Grant, Sir A. (Cambs SW)

  Bowden, Andrew

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Bowis, John

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Grylls, Sir Michael

  Brazier, Julian

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Bright, Graham

  Hague, William

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Hannam, Sir John

  Burns, Simon

  Hargreaves, Andrew

  Burt, Alistair

  Harris, David

  Butler, Peter

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Butterfill, John

  Hawkins, Nick

  Carlisle, John (Luton North)

  Hawksley, Warren

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hayes, Jerry

  Carrington, Matthew

  Heald, Oliver

  Carttiss, Michael

  Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

  Cash, William

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hendry, Charles

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Churchill, Mr

  Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

  Clappison, James

  Horam, John

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Coe, Sebastian

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

  Colvin, Michael

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Congdon, David

  Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Conway, Derek

  Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Hunter, Andrew

  Couchman, James

  Jack, Michael

  Cran, James

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Jessel, Toby

  Day, Stephen

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Deva, Nirj Joseph

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Devlin, Tim

  Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Dicks, Terry

  Key, Robert

  Dorrell, Stephen

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Knapman, Roger

  Dover, Den

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Duncan, Alan

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Duncan-Smith, Iain

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

  Dunn, Bob

  Knox, Sir David

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Dykes, Hugh

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Elletson, Harold

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Legg, Barry

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Leigh, Edward

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Lennox-Boyd, Mark

  Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Evennett, David

  Lidington, David

  Faber, David

  Lightbown, David

  Fabricant, Michael

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Peter (Fareham)

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Lord, Michael

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Luff, Peter

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Forman, Nigel

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  MacKay, Andrew

  Forth, Eric

  Maclean, David

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  French, Douglas

  Madel, Sir David

  Fry, Sir Peter

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Gallie, Phil

  Malone, Gerald

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Mans, Keith

  Garnier, Edward

  Marland, Paul

  Gill, Christopher

  Marlow, Tony

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  260

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Spring, Richard

  Mates, Michael

  Sproat, Iain

  Mawhinney, Rt Hon Dr Brian

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Steen, Anthony

  Merchant, Piers

  Stephen, Michael

  Mills, Iain

  Stern, Michael

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Stewart, Allan

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

  Streeter, Gary

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Sumberg, David

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Sweeney, Walter

  Moss, Malcolm

  Sykes, John

  Nelson, Anthony

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Taylor, John M. (Solihull)

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Thomason, Roy

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

  Norris, Steve

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Thurnham, Peter

  Ottaway, Richard

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Page, Richard

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

  Paice, James

  Tracey, Richard

  Patnick, Irvine

  Tredinnick, David

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Trend, Michael

  Pawsey, James

  Trotter, Neville

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Viggers, Peter

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Walden, George

  Richards, Rod

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Riddick, Graham

  Waller, Gary

  Robathan, Andrew

  Ward, John

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

  Waterson, Nigel

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Wells, Bowen

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

  Whitney, Ray

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

  Whittingdale, John

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Sackville, Tom

  Wiggin, Sir Jerry

  Sainsbury, Rt Hon Tim

  Wilkinson, John

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Wilshire, David

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'f'ld)

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Wolfson, Mark

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Wood, Timothy

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Yeo, Tim

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Soames, Nicholas

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  Mr. Timothy Kirkhope and

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Mr. James Arbuthnot.

  Spink, Dr Robert

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Betts, Clive

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Blair, Tony

  Ainger, Nick

  Blunkett, David

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Boateng, Paul

  Allen, Graham

  Boyes, Roland

  Alton, David

  Bradley, Keith

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Ashton, Joe

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

  Austin-Walker, John

  Burden, Richard

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Byers, Stephen

  Barnes, Harry

  Caborn, Richard

  Barron, Kevin

  Callaghan, Jim

  Battle, John

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Bayley, Hugh

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Beggs, Roy

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Bell, Stuart

  Canavan, Dennis

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Cann, Jamie

  Bennett, Andrew F.

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  Benton, Joe

  Clapham, Michael

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

  Berry, Roger

  Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

  261

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Hanson, David

  Clelland, David

  Hardy, Peter

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Henderson, Doug

  Coffey, Ann

  Hendron, Dr Joe

  Cohen, Harry

  Heppell, John

  Connarty, Michael

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Hinchliffe, David

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

  Corbett, Robin

  Home Robertson, John

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hood, Jimmy

  Corston, Ms Jean

  Hoon, Geoffrey

  Cousins, Jim

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Hoyle, Doug

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Darling, Alistair

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Davidson, Ian

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  Hutton, John

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

  Ingram, Adam

  Dewar, Donald

  Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

  Dixon, Don

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Janner, Greville

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Johnston, Sir Russell

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

  Enright, Derek

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Etherington, Bill

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret

  Jowell, Tessa

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Fisher, Mark

  Keen, Alan

  Flynn, Paul

  Kennedy, Charles (Ross,C&S)

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Khabra, Piara S.

  Foulkes, George

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Fraser, John

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Galbraith, Sam

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Galloway, George

  Lewis, Terry

  Gapes, Mike

  Litherland, Robert

  Garrett, John

  Livingstone, Ken

  George, Bruce

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Loyden, Eddie

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  Godsiff, Roger

  McAllion, John

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Gordon, Mildred

  McCartney, Ian

  Graham, Thomas

  McCrea, Rev William

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Macdonald, Calum

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  McFall, John

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  McKelvey, William

  Grocott, Bruce

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Gunnell, John

  McLeish, Henry

  Hall, Mike

  McMaster, Gordon

  262

  McNamara, Kevin

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

  McWilliam, John

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Madden, Max

  Roche, Mrs. Barbara

  Maddock, Mrs Diana

  Rooker, Jeff

  Mahon, Alice

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Mallon, Seamus

  Rowlands, Ted

  Mandelson, Peter

  Ruddock, Joan

  Marek, Dr John

  Salmond, Alex

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Martlew, Eric

  Sheerman, Barry

  Maxton, John

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Meacher, Michael

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Meale, Alan

  Simpson, Alan

  Michael, Alun

  Skinner, Dennis

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Milburn, Alan

  Snape, Peter

  Miller, Andrew

  Soley, Clive

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Spellar, John

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

  Morley, Elliot

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (Wy'nshawe)

  Stevenson, George

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Stott, Roger

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Mudie, George

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Mullin, Chris

  Taylor, Rt Hon John D. (Strgfd)

  Murphy, Paul

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Turner, Dennis

  O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

  Tyler, Paul

  O'Brien, William (Normanton)

  Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

  O'Hara, Edward

  Wallace, James

  Olner, William

  Walley, Joan

  O'Neill, Martin

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Wareing, Robert N

  Parry, Robert

  Watson, Mike

  Patchett, Terry

  Welsh, Andrew

  Pickthall, Colin

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Pike, Peter L.

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Pope, Greg

  Wilson, Brian

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Winnick, David

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

  Wise, Audrey

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Worthington, Tony

  Prescott, John

  Wray, Jimmy

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Wright, Dr Tony

  Purchase, Ken

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Radice, Giles

  Randall, Stuart

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Raynsford, Nick

  Mr. Jim Dowd and

  Rendel, David

  Mr. Eric Illsley.

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read the Third time, and passed.

  Prevention of Terrorism (Northern Ireland)
  8.28 pm
  The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I beg to move,
  That the draft Northern Ireland (Emergency and Prevention of Terrorism Provisions) (Continuance) Order 1994, which was laid before this House on 20th April, be approved.
  The House has become too familiar with the need, year after year, to renew the temporary provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1991 and its predecessor. The Act has a five-year lifespan. Therefore, unless it is wholly re-enacted before August 1996, its provisions will cease to have effect completely. By then, I shall have published a report from Mr. John Rowe, Queen's counsel, following a fundamental review of the Act's provisions and their operation, which I have already commissioned and which is due to begin next month. We need immediately, however, to note that the Act's temporary provisions—as defined in section 69—lapse on 15 June unless the order is approved. Regretfully, I must advise the House that their renewal is certainly required.
  I intend to leave as much time as possible for hon. and right hon. Members to speak. Therefore, some points on which I do not touch, as well as those raised in this debate, may fall to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State to deal with when he replies or in correspondence.
  We already have to assist us Mr. Rowe's first report, published on 16 May. I am most grateful to him for taking on this responsibility, in succession to Lord Colville QC. In endorsing his conclusion that the powers conferred by the Act remain necessary for a further year, it is right that I should express the Government's regret that this should be so. Yet in asking the security forces to uphold the rule of law, it is our duty to see to it that the law itself is sensibly adapted in response to the challenge thrown down by the terrorists.
  This is a matter of great importance to the Government and, accordingly, we very carefully keep the law under review. Against the need to meet that challenge, we have to balance the need to maintain the essential fairness of the law recognising, among other considerations, that unfair law, perceived to be oppressive, does not gain public acceptance and soon becomes law that works against its purpose.
  I deal now with some of the recent atrocities of those who bear the responsibility for the continuing need for these provisions. Since the last renewal of the Act, 84 people have died as a result of terrorist violence in Northern Ireland. Eleven were members of the security forces, and 32 of those killed have been murdered this year alone. The memory of atrocities such as the Shankill road bombing and the Greysteel murders in October last year remain etched vividly on all our minds. However, every bit as evil, although less widely recalled, are the individual murders which leave their indelible imprint on shattered families and fearful communities.
  The past few weeks, and indeed the past few days, have seen hideous examples: the young soldier killed in Keady, County Armagh on his first tour of duty; the elderly woman shot dead near Dungannon and the young students murdered in Armagh; the Northern Ireland Electricity cleaner shot dead in front of his wife on his way to work,
  264
  and the police station cleaner killed by a car bomb that injured his wife and son and placed his three-year old daughter's life in the balance; the abduction, so-called interrogation, and cold-blooded murder of a young Royal Irish soldier, and the killing of a 19-year-old security guard in Belfast. The callousness of those who carry out these and similar acts beggars description. It induces a cold determination in us all to eliminate such evil rather than waste time with the vocabulary of condemnation.
  It is to meet the challenge presented by such crimes that we need to renew the temporary provisions of the Act. The Act provides modifications to the criminal justice system, including the mode of trial for terrorist-type offences; arrest, search and seizure powers for the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Army; and covers certain specific offences such as belonging to a proscribed organisation. It also provides valuable powers directed against terrorist finances. It contains significant safeguards for those who may be affected by the special provisions.
  It is also right, I think, to refer to the power to order executive detention. This power, although not currently in force, is retained in the Act. There is, the Government firmly believe, a need to retain it in the Act. If the extremity of circumstances should warrant it, we shall not shrink from activating it. To abandon it, as the Labour party has in the past so regrettably proposed, would be, in our view, an act of high irresponsibility. To vote against previous renewal orders for that purpose was always bad logic as well as bad judgment. The power to order detention can be removed only by primary legislation.
  Legal provisions of this character are of themselves of course not enough to secure the Government's primary objective in Northern Ireland, which is the defeat and elimination of terrorism. However, they are shown by experience to give the RUC and the Army the capability to prevent and disrupt a great many attacks that would otherwise have occurred and to bring to justice, week in, week out, many of those responsible for terrorist crime.
  I now give some examples of such operations, all drawn from the Belfast area. They are of a character replicated elsewhere in Northern Ireland. In February, a group of people was intercepted in east Belfast: two AKM rifles, a hand-gun and a MK15 coffee jar grenade were recovered and six people were subsequently charged with terrorist-related offences. The following day, a mortar was recovered from a house in north Belfast, preventing an attack on a nearby RUC station, and three men were charged in connection with the incident. More recently, the police searched a house in west Belfast and recovered weapons, sledge hammers and other terrorist equipment and made four arrests. Only last week, a man appeared in court charged under section 27 of the Act with directing a terrorist organisation. All these cases are, of course, now sub judice.
  There has been, and will be, no relaxation in the security forces' efforts of this character.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Sir Patrick Mayhew: I had hoped to leave time for hon. Members to speak. I shall give way, but it reduces the time available.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: I appreciate the Secretary of State's giving way. I also appreciate and welcome those

  265
  illustrations of success, but is it possible to be told the number of occasions on which legislation against terrorist financing and the organising of terror has been used?
  Sir Patrick Mayhew: It is used all the time. It is used to secure very considerable disruption of terrorist financing and of the vehicles by which it is sought to conceal the financing operations on which terrorism depends so heavily. There have been few prosecutions, and I think that that is the point that the hon. Gentleman seeks to make. These cases take a very long time to prepare. If they were insufficiently prepared, the hon. Gentleman and others would be rightly critical of the failure that would result.
  The scale of the remorseless erosion by the RUC of the paramilitary forces on both sides is not always recognised. Last year, 372 people were charged with terrorist offences. This year alone, 171 people have been charged, including more than 100 loyalists and 57 republicans. Persons who, after due process of law, may ultimately be convicted of terrorist offences are not some kind of political prisoner, of which we have none in our country. Their conduct is made criminal by the statute book or by the common law. The sentences that their conduct attracts will usually ensure that they stay in prison for many a long year. They are heavy sentences indeed.
  Noting the scale of those highly significant and valuable successes, I therefore take this opportunity to pay tribute to the dedicated work of the security forces. They face cruel and callous criminals who stop at nothing, including torture. They face them willingly, always acknowledging that they themselves must operate within the law. They know that, as the rule of law requires, their own actions will be carefully and impartially scrutinised by authorities that are independent of the Government. Immense discipline and restraint, as well as courage, are called for from the security forces—police and military—as well as from the prison service. For the very high standards that they achieve, I believe that they deserve our warm gratitude and admiration.
  I refer now to the co-operation that the security forces receive from across the border. It is sometimes suggested that the quality of security co-operation with the Republic could be enhanced. Achieving the most effective security co-operation possible is vital to our joint opposition to terrorism. I am therefore glad to report to the House that the quality of the co-operation that we receive from the Republic is, in the words of our Chief Constable, "at an all-time high".
  Throughout this year, the Garda Siochana on the ground has continued to make very significant finds of arms and munitions, has taken part in a number of co-ordinated operations and made arrests. This work is greatly appreciated. Both Governments, however, constantly strive to find ways of improving the effectiveness of security measures, through the mechanisms of the intergovernmental conference and elsewhere. As recent events have shown, the terrorist threat is not confined to the north, and the co-operation between the two police forces will continue to be two-way traffic.
  I return to the legislation itself and to the general reports on facets of its operation that I have commissioned and already published. First, I refer to the holding centres and the question whether interviews with terrorist suspects should be recorded. The holding centres, or police offices, play a central part in bringing terrorists to justice; perhaps that is why they have attracted controversy in the past. We
  266
  want them to be demythologised. Accordingly, on 1 January this year, codes of practice concerning the detention and questioning of suspects came into effect under section 61 of the Act.
  At the end of 1992, I appointed Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC as independent commissioner for the holding centres, which was a new post. I am most grateful to him for his diligent and inquiring work since then, as I am also to his deputy, Dr. Bill Norris. Sir Louis' first annual report to me, now published, is characteristically thoughtful and I am grateful for it. All should be pleased to note that he
  "found absolutely nothing that might give anyone the slightest cause for concern about the care and treatment of detainees held in the custody of uniformed officers of the RUC".
  I shall now touch on some of the issues that Sir Louis raises. He advocates, as does Mr. Rowe, some form of audio or video recording of interviews. I readily acknowledge the strong arguments in favour of either video or audio recording. They have powerful judicial support, and hold out the prospects of some obvious and valuable advantages, not least in shortening or eliminating at trial challenges made to the authenticity of alleged confessions.
  However, one of the key tests is whether it could be absolutely guaranteed that such a recording could not later come to be seen or heard by someone who had a punitive motive. I myself am not sure that such guarantee would be regarded by suspects as reliable. It is the strong view of Sir Hugh Annesley, who, as Chief Constable, is my principal security adviser, that in the circumstances of Northern Ireland any electronic recording of interviews would inhibit still further the chances of lawfully obtaining information that would lead to the conviction of terrorists or to the saving of other people's lives. I have discussed the matter with him at length, and I am not prepared to take a serious risk of that character. I am bound to attach special weight to the opinion of Sir Hugh Annesley, who leads the RUC with such distinction, and I am not currently persuaded to accept the proposal.
  Sir Louis also made other recommendations. We are happy to accept his proposal to reorganise the medical services in the police offices. The proposal for a legal advice unit is also attractive, but that is not entirely ours to dispose. We have asked the Law Society of Northern Ireland, whose co-operation would be vital, for its views. I understand from Sir Louis that he wishes to progress his work on this issue still further. He intends, I believe, to produce a separate interim report on the proposal in the autumn; I look forward to that.
  Sir Louis also criticises the physical conditions in Castlereagh. I have to agree that they are unsatisfactory, and I am aware that the Police Authority for Northern Ireland is actively pursuing a solution to the problem.
  I now return to Mr. Rowe's report, and to complaints against the police and armed forces. Police officers and soldiers move and work in the community, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. It would be remarkable if there were not what Mr. Rowe describes as abrasive incidents. The security forces are trained to avoid them, but everyone is human and it is important that there should be sound mechanisms to deal with any complaint when one occurs.
  For the police, there is the Independent Commission for Police Complaints, whose sixth annual report was published last week. The commission is a fully independent body, with wide-ranging powers, and is

  267
  acknowledged as a world leader. Its chairman, Mr. James Grew, is currently chairman of the international association of such organisations. That is a tribute not only to him but to the body over which he presides.
  The Army, too, maintains extensive and sophisticated complaints procedures. At the end of 1992, I appointed, under section 60 of the Act, Mr. David Hewitt, an experienced and respected Belfast solicitor, to be independent assessor of military complaints procedures—another new post. His first annual report to me was published last month. I believe that now, for the first time, a thorough and impartial account of those mechanisms is in the public domain. With it came recommendations for improvement. The GOC, Sir Roger Wheeler, has said that he is examining these very carefully with a view to their implementation, and I look forward to having further discussions with him.
  Mr. Rowe also draws attention to conflicting views on the law as it affects soldiers or police officers who have killed terrorists, or people believed to be terrorists. I know that many people, including some in eminent positions, regard the present law as unsatisfactory.
  The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland has lent his support to a change in the law in a recent judgment upholding the conviction of a soldier for murder. Sir Brian Hutton, whose view naturally commands the highest respect, stated his belief that the law would be fairer if a conviction for manslaughter rather than murder were possible where a soldier or police officer had killed a person, not from an evil motive, but because, his duties having placed him on the scene armed with a weapon, he had reacted wrongly to a situation that suddenly confronted him.
  Police officers and soldiers are required to operate in areas in Northern Ireland where there is a grave threat against them. They do that in order to uphold law and order and to protect the community. The fact that almost 1,000 members of the security forces have been killed during the current terrorist campaign is evidence enough of the risks that they face.
  They are, in certain circumstances, under a duty to use their weapons for the protection of themselves or of others. They must make up their minds in a trice. In so doing, they are offered no more and no less protection under the law than that available to any citizen.
  However, I think that such a change in the law would soon be criticised. It would be said that the Government were intent on protecting members of the security forces from facing the charge that they allegedly ought to face—that of murder. "One law for the security forces and another for the rest," would be the criticism. Yet it has always been the policy of successive Governments that members of the security forces should be bound by the ordinary criminal law. I believe that that is a sound principle, and one which attracts public confidence. After the most careful consideration, I do not find myself persuaded that the overall interests of justice would be served by a change of that character.
  The Act needs to achieve a balance between safeguarding the rights of the individual and providing condign measures against terrorists and the organisations that sustain them. So, in the context of the debate, it is relevant to recall that the Chief Constable of the RUC has
  268
  put to me certain proposals for law reform. I have considered those most carefully, in consultation with the RUC and according to the criteria that I have mentioned. Naturally, I have also taken into account judicial opinion in Northern Ireland. I shall deal with those proposals briefly now.
  I agree that we should make it easier for the police to obtain from suspects samples for forensic analysis. It is vital to be able to undertake DNA analysis, and by means of a Government amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, currently in another place, plucked hair will be classified beyond doubt as a non-intimate sample for the purposes of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. More work on forensic analysis generally is being undertaken in the context of the report of the Royal Commission on criminal justice.
  The Chief Constable believes that if means could be found of admitting in evidence the product of warranted interception of communications, obtained under the Interception of Communications Act 1985, that would valuably help to secure the conviction of some terrorists who might well otherwise go free. I have much sympathy with that idea. It is a serious and weighty argument, and one to which I and others need to give full and careful consideration. I am mindful also of the considerable success which has attended the use, notably in the United States, of wire-tap material.
  However, the provisions of the 1985 Act were intended to maintain the complete secrecy of the system of organised interception. It was considered then that the system could be irrevocably damaged, both as a method of protecting national security and of dealing with serious crime. For example, in some circumstances, even to allow someone to discover that he was the subject of interception might make it impossible to pursue an investigation. Anything that disclosed the pattern of use of interception could also be damaging.
  Accordingly, although the Government are not as yet persuaded that the case for change has been made out, we are continuing to examine most carefully both the way in which cases develop, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage in any changes, in the uniquely difficult circumstances of Northern Ireland.
  Sir Hugh Annesley has further suggested that a suspect's so-called right to silence be amended by the adaptation and extension to all terrorist crime of the provisions concerning authorised investigators contained in the recently introduced section 57 and schedule 5 of the Act. That would make it a criminal offence for a suspect to refuse to answer questions in certain circumstances. The powers in question derive from provisions designed for use against fraud. They enable the RUC to obtain the expertise of particular individuals for the skilled questioning of suspects in complex fraud cases, with criminal sanctions for unreasonably refusing to answer. After careful consultation about the proposal to extend them, I do not believe that so important a change in a basic principle of our criminal justice system should be commended to Parliament.
  A further proposal would significantly narrow a court's discretion to acquit in cases of possession. That would involve amending the Act to require the court to make the necessary assumption of knowledge in such cases unless it were shown to be incorrect or the court were satisfied that there would be a serious risk of injustice. I am, however, not convinced that it would achieve the desired effect, and

  269
  I am concerned that it might also increase the risk of miscarriages of justice. I therefore believe that the potential benefit would be outweighed by the practical and theoretical drawbacks.
  The people of Northern Ireland continue to face, with great steadfastness and resolution, evil campaigns of violence that are pursued with political motivation. They not only need to have confidence in the resolution, fairness, impartiality, courage and sensitivity of our security forces and those qualities in our security policy; they also need to have confidence in the effectiveness of the law with which the security forces are called on to counter the men of violence. As Mr. Rowe says in his report, the community's right to be free from terrorism is as important as any individual's rights, and that well describes the competing interests which the House must bring into judicious balance.
  I greatly hope that the Opposition will nerve themselves in the interests of Northern Ireland not to vote against the order. The iniquitous crimes of terrorists continue to necessitate the renewal of the Act's temporary provisions, and I commend the order to the House.
  8.50 pm
  Mr. Kevin McNamara: The renewal of the emergency powers has, sadly, become an annual ritual in the House. What were originally intended as temporary measures have now been in existence for 21 years. Powers that can be justified in an emergency cannot be justified as a permanent feature of the criminal justice system in a liberal democratic society, and that is why we examine them each year.
  This debate provides an opportunity for the House to assess the security situation in Northern Ireland and the Government's new initiatives. It also provides an opportunity to comment on some of the interesting statements made by the Secretary of State about some of the Chief Constable's requests for additional powers.
  Despite the joint declaration and the strong momentum behind the peace process, the level of violence has escalated recently. The rate of killings in Northern Ireland this year is as depressingly high as it was in 1993. No community in Northern Ireland has escaped the impact of paramilitary activities.
  There can be no excuse for such callous disregard for human life. It should not be forgotten that we would not be here debating this renewal order if all the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland brought the killings to an end, with the permanent cessation of violence. We regret that the call of the leader of the Ulster Unionist party for the loyalist paramilitaries to end their campaign has not received an immediate and positive response.
  In response to Sinn Fein's questions on the joint declaration, the Government made four important points. First, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 can be on the negotiating table; secondly, no party has a veto over Government policy; thirdly, there is no need for Sinn Fein to accept the joint declaration, only to renounce the use of violence for political ends; and, fourthly, there is recognition of Sinn Fein's electoral mandate. Given that response by the Government, there can be no justification, if ever there was—which I deny—for continued IRA violence. They should lay down their arms and come to the conference table.
  270
  Like the Secretary of State, we express our support and admiration for the work done by the security forces, the prison service and the judiciary, as they seek impartially to uphold the rule of law. Those men and women deserve acknowledgement for coping with the continuing stress and danger associated with their work—and, indeed, sadly, after they have ceased their full-time service. We also welcome the continuing high level of co-operation between the RUC and the Garda Siochana.
  In its present form, the emergency provisions Act confers on the security forces wide-ranging powers which represent a marked departure from the usually accepted standards in a democracy. The Labour party recognises the justification for some emergency powers to counter the terrorist threat in Northern Ireland. However, we cannot support this order while the power of internment remains on the statute book and the Government still refuse to implement measures recommended by their own advisers and bodies, such as the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights.
  The power of internment is an infringement of fundamental human rights. It is totally unacceptable. The power of the Executive to imprison without charge, let alone trial, undermines the founding principles of any democratic country. The legitimacy of the state is based on the rule of law. The power of internment grants the Executive the right to suspend the rule of law. Such a right weakens the integrity of the state, and thereby strengthens the terrorists.
  Mr. Julian Brazier: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. McNamara: Not at the moment.
  Speculation after every terrorist atrocity over the possibility of the reintroduction of internment only fuels paramilitary violence and suggests that somehow there is a quick fix—an immediate solution to a continuing problem. Further, because of the history of internment, it heightens the levels of alienation and distrust, which again plays into the hands of the paramilitaries. The Government should take heed of Sir George Baker, the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights and Lord Colville, and repeal the power.
  This debate takes place against the background of four major reports—two by John Rowe QC on the emergency provisions Act and the prevention of terrorism Act, and the annual reports of Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, the independent commissioner for the holding centres, and David Hewitt, the independent assessor of military complaints procedures.
  Fears concerning possible abuses at the holding centres have contributed to disillusionment with the process of justice in Northern Ireland. We welcome the fact that, in his report, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper recognises the need for proper safeguards to be introduced in order to build confidence in the security forces and to provide police officers with protection against false allegations of physical and verbal harassment.
  Yesterday, I visited the Castlereagh holding centre. I am indebted to the RUC officers for their the courtesy and help in explaining their procedures and practices to me. I looked at the battery of small television screens monitoring the interview rooms. I think that there were only eight

  271
  interviews taking place in this instance with 16 screens to be monitored. I therefore concur with Sir Louis Blom-Cooper's assessment:
  "If there is, at any one time, more than a handful of interviews taking place—and frequently there are as many as eight to a dozen in action—it is difficult to understand how any inspector of police, however vigilant and undistracted by other duties … can be alerted to an untoward incident which might take place in the interview room."
  Sir Loius Blom-Cooper argues that, as a result,
  "it is well nigh impossible to monitor the screens effectively".
  He therefore concludes that a system should be introduced whereby
  "every interview would be tape-recorded, both audio and visual, but particularly the former".
  I listened with care to what the Secretary of State said about the views of the Chief Constable. He must keep those views very much in mind. Sometimes, chief constables must be overruled, and this is one of those occasions when that is necessary, both in the interests of apparent justice and in the interests of defeating terrorism.
  Sir Louis Blom-Cooper joins a wide body of opinion in favour of some method of recording interviews at holding centres. For example, John Rowe states:
  "I hold the firm view that interviews with terrorist suspects should be recorded by audio tape."
  He also accepts that video recording is "desirable" in certain circumstances.
  The Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights has already supported the introduction of silent video recording, and is considering the call for audio recording. Lord Colville also called for the introduction of video recording.
  Sir Louis Blom-Cooper outlined a system to protect tape recordings of interviews. His proposal that the disclosure of tapes should be a judicial decision is in line with what Labour has argued. If such a procedure is felt to be undesirable, however, it should still be possible for the Government—despite the Chief Constable—to accept in principle the introduction of audio and video recording and to establish a small working party representing the Bar, the RUC, the Law Society and the judiciary, to propose a system that would be satisfactory.
  I accept what Sir Hugh Annesley said about guaranteeing security, but nothing is secure in that system, and audio recording of terrorist interrogations takes place in Britain, where we do not find that too strong an argument against it. We also know that procedures are being considered in Britain, in principle, for the introduction of video safeguards again for the interrogation of terrorists; therefore, guaranteeing security does not seem to be a powerful argument in Britain.
  In Paddington Green police station, all interviews of terrorist suspects are audio-taped and soon will be video-taped. If it is possible to ensure reasonable safety in Great Britain, I fail to see why it cannot be done in Northern Ireland.
  There has been a change in the RUC's argument, as the Secretary of State reported. Its earlier argument would have been that, if the tapes fell into the wrong hands, people could find out sources and hints of intelligence, or that sources of information might dry up. In fact, the RUC defeats that argument by saying, in answer to criticisms on other matters, that, once a detainee is released into an ordinary prison, he or she is debriefed.
  272
  Two other main points arise from Sir Louis Blom-Cooper's argument. First, as the Secretary of State said, his proposal for a permanent, full-time legal advice unit for detainees in holding centres deserves further consideration, and I am glad to hear that Sir Louis will give it. It is clear, however, that whatever unit is established would have to be run independently by the Law Society and be seen to be independent of the Government.
  Membership of such a unit would in no sense have to be restricted to exclude certain solicitors. It would have one advantage, in that, if it were adopted, it would be right to expect an end to the use of 48-hour deferrals of access to a solicitor. That represents a severe curtailment of the fundamental right of access to legal advice. If such a unit were established, although solicitors would go into the compound to interview, their permanent office should be outside, as a symbol of the fact that they are independent of Government.
  I am also concerned about persistent rumours of unsubstantiated allegations that certain solicitors pass on information that they receive from their clients to paramilitary organisations. Those insinuations may bring the authorities into conflict with United Nations basic principles on the role of lawyers, which state among other things:
  "Lawyers shall not be identified with their clients or their clients' causes as a result of discharging their functions."
  If such actions are taking place, evidence should be supplied to the Director of Public Prosecutions, as it would be a criminal offence, or to the professional conduct committee of the Law Society, as it would also be a professional offence. If there is no evidence, however, the allegations should stop. Unsubstantiated attacks on the reputations of solicitors attending clients at holding centres cannot be allowed to continue. Such attacks represent a serious breach of the principle that every individual has a right to a proper defence by a lawyer of his or her choice.
  Video and audio taping would have one slight advantage, in that they help to prevent the allegations made by some detainees that their solicitors' connections with paramilitary organisations are said to prove their guilt.
  Secondly, I have witnessed the extremely poor conditions within the Castlereagh holding centre to which Sir Louis referred in his report. He asserts:
  "the whole centre is not conducive to the civilised administration of a process of holding persons in police custody for the purpose of interrogation".
  I agree. He also states:
  "The absence of any realistic space for exercise in the open air … and the absence of any clock or watch and the denial of reading and writing matter are serious deprivations".
  I understand that exercise in the open air would be difficult, but the others could be complied with immediately.
  Furthermore, RUC officers stationed at Castlereagh are also forced to endure appalling working conditions. We support the proposal that the police authority should urgently get on with finding other premises.
  Northern Ireland is a deeply divided society, and a significant section of the population refuse to accept the legitimacy of the forces of law and order. In such circumstances, the impartial upholding of the law is crucial, and the lack of confidence in the security forces which exists among some groups cannot be ignored.
  While the majority of the security forces in Northern Ireland maintain, and have maintained, the high standards expected of them, often in the face of tremendous abuse and the temptation to retaliate, it nevertheless must be

  273
  recognised that there are occasional abuses of power. This further damages confidence in the community, and reinforces the sense of alienation. Even with safeguards to protect citizens, abuses of power are still almost inevitable.
  John Rowe reports that the number of complaints against the police in 1993 was 2,956, yet only 1 per cent. of those were substantiated. Rowe asserts:
  "the small number of complaints substantiated causes resentment in the community".
  Such a low level of success damages the credibility of the independent commission. I support the commission's call for a change in the legislation to enable it to call in cases for investigate without the need for a complaint or referral by the Secretary of State, the Chief Constable or the police authority.
  The Secretary of State said that he would not accept what the Lord Chief Justice said about a new, or lesser, crime to be indicted against members of the security forces who kill somebody in doubtful situations when they are on duty. I confess that I believe that there is still a lot to be debated in this area. One can see the problem facing the serving soldier.
  I was under the impression that, at the intergovernmental conference over a year ago, the matter was referred to civil servants from both sides for discussion. I had expected that there might have been an outcome to the deliberations. Certainly I believe that there is wide scope for debate. I do not think that we can casually, in a few moments, throw over what the Lord Chief Justice has said—as the Secretary of State has done in the debate—without examining it more carefully.
  The Labour party warmly welcomes the impressively detailed first annual report of Mr. David Hewitt. While we maintain that the assessor should have powers to investigate the merits of particular cases, and while we regret that the powers relate only to procedure, David Hewitt's research and recommendations deserve careful consideration by the Government.
  I was pleased to hear that the commanding officer is looking at the matters carefully—and, I hope, sympathetically—because much of what Hewitt suggested is powerful, and could go a long way towards easing many troubles. The low number of successful complaints, as he has pointed out, remains a matter of concern, because it calls into question the accountability of the armed force, and reinforces the perception that they are above the law, which we all know and believe they are not.
  In 1993, only 16 formal non-criminal complaints—7.6
  per cent. of the total—were upheld. Hewitt concludes:
  "perhaps as many as 50 per cent. of the 'denied' and 'not substantiated nor disproven' cases may have been from individuals genuinely and understandably aggrieved by Army behaviour, at least on the balance of probability, if not beyond reasonable doubt."
  Hewitt concludes that the low level of successful complaints leads to "widespread dissatisfaction", which he considers to be justified. That is a damning indictment of the present procedures.
  Mr. Brazier: As the hon. Gentleman works through his long laundry list of the existing powers with which he agrees and disagrees, would he like to make it clear whether there are any extra powers that he thinks the security forces should enjoy in Ulster to defeat the very real threat from terrorism?
  Mr. McNamara: I believe that a careful balance must be struck between those powers that are necessary and
  274
  which will not alienate the community, and those that, if used, would alienate the community and therefore would be self-defeating. For example, there are powers relating to the laundering of money and matters of that nature which are a very proper part of the ordinary law of the land and of the emergency provisions.
  I regret that we have to have trials without juries, but I would rather have contracting in than certifying out. There are others, which I could go through. The principal one which I have stated I do not believe should remain is the power of internment. The Government should also accept the other recommendations that have followed.
  No one can quarrel with David Hewitt's assertion that the overwhelming aim of the complaints procedure is to give reasonable satisfaction to a genuine complainant. In cases where it is simply the soldier's word against that of the complainant, Hewitt recommends that the complainant should more often be given the benefit of the doubt and an apology should be dispatched on a "without prejudice" basis. I support that proposal.
  Also of concern are cases highlighted by Hewitt which fall outside the Army's non-criminal investigation procedure because they have been deemed criminal by the RUC, but where the Director of Public Prosecutions decides not to prosecute. In those cases, no further action or prosecution is undertaken by the Army. Again, I support Hewitt's call for all criminal incidents that are not prosecuted to be made automatically the subject of Army investigation, and a reply made in the same way as with non-criminal formal complaints. That has the added advantage of ensuring that the Army is seen to take an interest, and increases the possibility of disciplinary action if the complaint is upheld.
  John Rowe also discussed the need to implement as soon as possible a code for stop-and-search guidelines. Such a code would provide an indication to the police, armed forces and ordinary citizens of what is acceptable in practice. It would prove a useful yardstick against which to measure behaviour when a complaint is lodged, and the reasonableness of a complaint. That should also be supported.
  The Secretary of State mentioned a number of matters on which he had had discussions, following the list produced by the Chief Constable. On the question of the plucked hair, I presume that the hair would be plucked from the scalp. The power already exists to take a swab from the mouth for DNA purposes. Plucking a hair or taking a swab from the mouth would still be seen as an assault, but plucking a hair would probably be easier than taking a swab from the mouth. I presume that the intention is that the hair would be plucked from the scalp. The circumstances under which that was done would have to be considered carefully, but I regard that as a reasonable matter to go ahead.
  I also understand the Secretary of State's difficulty about the intercepting of telecommunications, which could make available evidence that would lead to more successful prosecutions. The problem is, under what circumstances, controls and patterns would such evidence be taken; how could it be rendered credible; and what would the protections be? Would it be done by judicial warrant or the fiat of the Secretary of State? A political decision in such circumstances would not be acceptable. Equally, however, I understand why the Secretary of State is reluctant to see the prerogative powers cut back.

  275
  Although I would have to refer the matter to my hon. Friends, I believe that the attaining of evidence in that manner, subject to proper judicial control, would lead to successful prosecutions, as we have seen against the Mafia in the United States. I would not lose much sleep about it, but I want proper controls over it. It should not be left to political decisions by the Secretary of State. Just cause for curtailing such evidence would have to be given before a judicial officer.
  On the right to silence and the possession and assumption of knowledge, the Secretary of State has taken the right decisions.
  The Government must recognise that we cannot continue to maintain the same policing methods in a divided society which, every year, grows even more geographically segregated. We understand the difficulties in recruiting greater numbers of the minority community to the RUC. However, more than 90 per cent. of the membership of the police force is drawn from one community. That serious imbalance cannot be ignored.
  The Government's recent discussion paper, "Policing in the Community", does not tackle the problems of community acceptability and recruitment. Instead of examining alternative structures, it merely proposes the further centralisation of power. The discussion paper seeks to maintain the fiction that community policy and security policing are separate.
  Northern Ireland needs the whole community to feel that the police force belongs to all of them. While we understand that this objective is intrinsically linked to the political situation and to the question of a political settlement, it should nevertheless still be the immediate aim of the Government to consider ways in which to improve the general acceptability of the police force.
  The Labour party recognises the need for an effective anti-terrorist policy. We ourselves have instituted a major independent research project to re-evaluate current anti-terrorist methods, to develop alternative proposals and to look also at European experience. The failure to develop a comprehensive and successful counter-subversion policy has led to a steady erosion of civil liberties, and meanwhile has left the citizens of this country exposed to terrorist attack.
  The terrorist denies the most basic of human rights: the citizen's right to life. But that does not free the Government of their responsibility to maintain certain democratic principles, objectives and rights.
  We will vote against the order tonight, because it has failed to be an effective mechanism to defeat the paramilitary; because the power of internment remains on the statute books; and because of the Government's constant failure to accept the recommendations of their own advisers to improve the protection of the citizen and remove propaganda material from the mouths of terrorists. Until the Government repeal the power of internment and introduce reforms and safeguards recommended by their own hand-picked advisers, the Labour party is unable to support the renewal of the order.
  9.15 pm
  Mr. Andrew Hunter: It is therapeutic to listen to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) because whatever inner doubts one might have about one's own position are instantly dispelled by his tortuous and fallacious reasoning.
  I shall be brief. The substantive arguments relating to the emergency provisions have been well rehearsed over the years. Many of us who hope to catch your eye in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will speak from well-entrenched and well-defined positions. I am no exception to that rule. I strongly support the renewal of the emergency provisions.
  The underlying issue—the key to the debate—is of course the tension which exists between, on the one hand, championing civil liberties and, on the other hand, taking effective measures in the fight against terrorism. I do not deny for one moment that both the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 and the emergency provisions do curtail civil rights, but I believe that the greatest threat to civil liberties actually comes from terrorism and not from these measures. Those who seek to undermine or change the decision of the ballot box by bullet or bomb are themselves committing a greater offence against civil liberties than are these measures.
  It is a paradox that unless we take appropriate measures against terrorism we are ourselves undermining cherished civil liberties. In the context of terrorism, we have to requalify civil liberties. Nor should we overlook the fact that the emergency provisions go hand in hand with the search for a political settlement, and we undermine the chances of achieving a political settlement if we do not take effective measures against terrorism.
  I shall discipline myself and select just three points from Mr. Rowe's report. Many others can be made and other hon. Members will no doubt make them. The first takes up a substantial part of the speech by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North. I welcome the retention of the detention orders in part IV, section 34—I refer particularly to page 30, chapter 7 of the report. This is, we know, an emotive and divisive issue. My personal views have not changed, and I do not apologise for holding them. I believe that there are circumstances—select, special circumstances—in which detention is justified and should be used. I therefore welcome Mr. Rowe's conclusion.
  Mr. Seamus Mallon: I thank the hon. Member for giving way. Will he share with us at least one, perhaps two, of the select circumstances in which he would favour detention?
  Mr. Hunter: The hon. Gentleman is excessively enthusiastic. Had he borne with me for a moment or so, I would have discussed that point.
  Before I gave way a little prematurely, I was saying that I therefore welcome the conclusion drawn by Mr. Rowe that the detention powers should remain part of the Act. I acknowledge that internment is an infringement of civil liberties. I acknowledge that when it was practised in the 1970s probably some people were unjustly detained. I acknowledge that in the 1970s it was a boost to terrorism, but I believe that that was yesterday's argument and that the times have significantly changed.
  Internment today would be regarded as fairer than was the case in the 1970s, for the simple reason that it would strike across the community divide. That is a substantial

  277
  difference from the practice of internment 20 years or so ago. Both the political climate and public thinking have substantially changed. Whereas then we were dealing with an immediate backlog of an abuse of civil liberties, that is hardly the case today. Public thinking has changed, and so has the quality of intelligence. For those reasons, I am suspicious of the familiar arguments against internment.
  In answer to the question that the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) asked me, I believe that the most justifiable circumstances for the use of internment are when heightened terrorist activity is a reality or is anticipated on strong intelligence grounds. Selective internment at that point, aimed at key people known in the terrorist movements, can totally undermine and destroy terrorist cells' command and communication structures and incapacitate terrorist activity. In those circumstances, used selectively and sensitively, I believe that internment can work.
  Mr. Brazier: Does my hon. Friend agree that powers of that type, although they are not called internment powers, already exist in almost every other country in Europe and have been used successfully—holding people for months on end—in dealing with organisations such as the Red Brigade?
  Mr. Hunter: I do not have the intimate knowledge that my hon. Friend has. From my reading about the ways in which other countries have tackled terrorist problems, I know that there has never been a success without the legal powers to detain the leading players in the game of terrorism.
  I shall accelerate to the second theme that I want to take up from Mr. Rowe's report. I am prompted to that by a statement on page 19, paragraph 3, under the heading,
  "General remarks on Part I of the Act",
  where Mr. Rowe writes:
  "It was said to me that there should be … no further use of hearsay against the defendant on material points or substantial and contentious matters."
  Leading questions always need to be asked about our battle against Irish terrorism. Are the resources available? Are the legal powers that we need there? Is our intelligence gathering all that it should be? Is the co-operation with the Republic all that it should be? The question of legal powers is pertinent to the emergency powers that we are discussing.
  I listened with great interest to the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. I must confess that I followed closely the arguments that emanated especially from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and which were reflected in the amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble). Those amendments and the surrounding debate concentrated on whether hearsay and electronically gathered evidence should be admitted. There was the question whether the right to silence should be redefined. There was the question of providing greater protection for witnesses and the emotive issue of encouraging super-grass evidence. I do not think that the debate is closed. Many more people will give their ideas in the next few months and I know that my hon. Friends share the thought that perhaps those should be considered closely before we come to a conclusion.
  There is to be a major review of the emergency provisions next year. I hope that those will be among the many issues to be considered in that review. If the feeling
  278
  of the RUC is that these additional powers should be enshrined in law, we as politicians would have to have very good reasons for failing to go along with the proposal. The RUC is, after all, in the front line of the fight against Irish terrorism.
  My last point refers to paragraph 3 on page 35 of Mr. Rowe's report. This concerns the conclusion that interviews should be recorded on audio tape. I remain cynical about that conclusion. I have listened carefully to the arguments put forward by the RUC. Mr. Rowe summarises at great length the case that he encountered. What interests me about his thesis is that his counter-argument singularly fails to convince. Mr. Rowe quarrels with the fact that all that the RUC feared would happen if tape recording were introduced is the current reality. Surely that fact is an argument for looking at existing practices rather than for jumping to the conclusion that what is needed is the recording of interviews.
  The emergency provisions have an essential and integral part to play in the battle against terrorism. They therefore supplement the search for political agreement. The annual report unequivocally recommends their renewal, and that is precisely what we should do today.
  9.26 pm
  Mr. Seamus Mallon: I find it very difficult to take part in this debate. In the past seven days, there have been four murders in my constituency. Two of those murdered were neighbours of mine—young students shot in a taxi station in Armagh—one was a young soldier in the town of Keady, and the fourth was a young soldier in the city of Armagh. Having experienced such a thing so recently, and having known it so often over the past 25 years, one is torn emotionally, intellectually and, indeed, politically when one addresses these issues. It would be very difficult for people like me to adopt the decided views that can be taken by people living in England, Scotland or Wales.
  In these circumstances, it is all the more essential that we examine, scrutinise and, indeed, criticise the legislation. The more terrorism strikes at the heart of a community, the more that community's legislators should defend those things in the system of law and in society that we all hold dear. The last thing we should be doing is facilitating terrorists by allowing them to create a legal wasteland, to force us to bend the law as is done in this legislation and to produce in us knee-jerk reactions that often have more to do with personal prejudices than with the defeat of terrorism.
  That is why it is absolutely essential that the House of Commons should ensure that it does not approach the matter as being, in the words of the Evening Standard of 10 March 1993,
  "a litmus test for sound anti-terrorist credentials."
  I do not for one moment believe that there is an hon. Member in the House who does not have sound anti-terrorist credentials. Whatever our views, they should be treated on that basis.
  Our views should also be treated in a wider way because we are at a crucial time in the life of the north of Ireland. Put simply, is it possible that we can persuade the terrorist groups to stop their violence, become part of the political process and create peace or is it not? The answer to that question very much determines views on what may or may not be contained in this legislation or any future legislation.

  279
  For that reason, it is essential that we examine, scrutinise, and, with courage, question that which we feel should be questioned.
  There is no point in our participating in a three-hour debate once a year, to be ritualistic, say safe things and make comments that might please other people. We should put the spotlight on the subject: where there is a deviation and derogation from the normal law, we must always shine the spotlight. For that reason, I would not regard today's debate as ritualistic, although it may sometimes sound ritualistic, but as an essential part of the process.
  We should ask broad general questions. We may not be able to answer some of them and we may have divided views on some of them. The first question that I would ask is this: can the implementation of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973 and the prevention of terrorism Act be fully and properly accommodated within a civilised society without doing irreparable damage? Secondly, is damage done to the process of law that has been seen in this country to have resulted in unsound and unsatisfactory convictions—of which I think there have been six over this period?
  On the subject of damage to the process of justice itself, are the highest standards and integrity of law and the process of justice being eroded in any way by the implementation of the legislation? We have only to look at some of the events that have taken place over the years in what are now called holding centres and what used to be called interrogation centres, at some of the incidents that have happened on the streets and at the incidents that involve loss of life. If we consider the issue in those terms, we must say that there is a danger that damage is done to the process of justice.
  Is damage done to the body politic itself? Is there an erosion of the proper conviction that the law, the courts, the police and the legislators are there to protect every person's right as well as to punish him or her when he or she transgresses? Is the legislation there to protect, rather than diminish, those rights? After all, legislation exists to defend the innocent, not to make him or her subject to detention for the purpose of intelligence gathering, as has happened in the past—a subject to which I shall refer later. Is damage done to society as a whole? Are the highest standards, which we should all cherish, being damaged in the process of trying to arrive at a political solution through the legal process?
  We should ask those questions and we should keep asking them, because what is at stake is not just the future elimination or defeat of terrorism in Northern Ireland or what happens to the Provisional IRA or the so-called loyalist paramilitary groups. At stake are the principles and the highest standards that have been built up painstakingly over centuries. Once those are diminished, it is difficult to re-establish and reinstate them. Every time the law is diminished, society is diminished, and every time society is diminished, so is every person within it. Against that background, no matter whom it might hurt, we should examine the legislation and the laws within it very carefully indeed.
  I shall concentrate on about four issues and intend to speak briefly. The first issue concerns the delays in remand. I quote the Secretary of State in a previous debate on 8 June 1993:
  280
  "We set demanding targets of 38 weeks from first remand to committal, and 14 weeks from committal to arraignment. The scheme began on 1 July 1992. The agencies involved in the prosecution process have embarked on the operation with great vigour."
  We should examine that vigour and commitment. Mr. Rowe told us in his report that the average time for remand in 1992 was 57 weeks. Notwithstanding the Secretary of State's statement about the vigour that would operate in relation to remand, the average time of remand went up to 65 weeks in 1993. That is not great evidence of the vigour that I should like to see exercised by those agencies of the law that have responsibility for remand.
  Let us remind ourselves that remand involves taking away a person's freedom before that person is found guilty. Let us have more vigour. Let us subject the Secretary of State's statement to scrutiny and ask the Secretary of State to ask the agencies why that vigour has not in effect shown the results that he anticipated in the time limits to which he referred.
  Mr. Peter Robinson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I strongly support his view that there have been undue delays in bringing cases to court. Many people wait more than two years before they get their day in court and some never get to court as their cases are dropped before they get that far. Nobody could approve of that. Has the hon. Gentleman considered the two possibilities in the Rowe report—that in one set of circumstances the accused would be allowed bail after a given period or, alternatively, that the case would fall altogether? Which of those two does the hon. Gentleman support?
  Mr. Mallon: I have to be honest and say neither. If I wanted to make a debating point, I would have chosen one of them, but the Secretary of State committed himself one year ago when he said:
  "A more satisfactory assessment will be possible in the light of a full year's operation of the scheme. Then we shall able to address Lord Colville's proposal for a new scheme of time limits, statutory or otherwise, to cover all those on remand and custody for the indictable offences. That is an important factor."
  I agree. Surely the only satisfactory solution is not to have a statutory time limit—which I believe applies in Scotland—or an arbitrary limit whereby after a given period the person is released irrespective of what evidence may have been accumulated, but an arrangement whereby the agencies adhere to the time limit set down by the Secretary of State, which was 38 weeks plus 14.
  My second question relates to recording interviews. Lord Colville recommended video recording. Mr. Rowe recommends audio recording; he says that he has no view on video recording. I trust that he will develop a view before the substantive report is made for the five-year review. The Chief Constable opposes it. He seems to be fairly lonely on that issue, because I have not met anyone in the system who does not see the merits of it.
  In his report, Mr. Rowe refers to the amount of compensation for allegations of ill treatment and so on in interrogation centres. He makes the point that some of it may be finding its way into the coffers of paramilitary groups. But surely one of the sound ways of preventing that is to have the type of video recording about which he has no view. It is there as a protection not just for the individual but for the police themselves against allegations that might be unfounded and is worth serious consideration.

  281
  The Law Reform Commission of Canada, when studying that point in 1985–87, said:
  "Aside from providing a new tool for the investigative process, the Police, Crown Counsel and defence lawyers viewed the introduction of this technology as an improvement of the administration of justice. An accurate video tape record of police interviews largely eliminates court room conflicts over what was said and how an accused was treated. The new technology, therefore, helps police in gathering evidence at the same time as it adds protection to the rights of the accused."
  I think that that opinion, substantiated by Lord Colville and supported by Mr. Rowe, is one which the Secretary of State should look at again. We must question Sir Hugh Annesley's view on that, because it is not enough to say that he is head of the police and that he is the person ultimately responsible. His views must be challenged as well. If we are to get to the root of much of the apprehension that exists about holding centres, that surely is one of the ways to do it. That is the way in which to protect the police as well as the person in custody.
  I refer now to the intimidation of lawyers which is cropping up. Some instances have been referred to me in my work. I cite the case of a law firm in Newry called Fitzsimons, Mallon and—I have forgotten the other name. The Mallon is no relation. I shall supply the rest of the name to the Secretary of State. Some of the most scurrilous allegations are alleged to have been made by interrogating police officers to clients of that firm. It has made its complaint to the police. I ask the Secretary of State to ensure that that does not happen within the legal process, because if such allegations are continually made, there is something in the air, and responsible solicitors will not contact my office or anybody else's unless they are fairly sure of their ground—fairly sure that the allegation is not a concoction, and has, indeed, been made.
  My third point is about compensation for those whose businesses or homes might be affected by the security forces. A year ago, the Secretary of State gave a commitment:
  "I shall see whether it is possible to devise and implement a fair and practicable scheme which would help them, but that cannot be done quickly."—[Official Report, 8 June 1993; Vol. 226, c. 155–60.]
  A year has elapsed since the Secretary of State gave that commitment. It is right and proper that we should ask him whether he has been able to do so, and in a way that will show results.
  There is a bakery in my constituency which goes back to 1903 and which is now surrounded by a police base. It needs to expand but cannot, for the simple reason that the police have taken the land that it would need to do so for use as a heliport. Its entrance is now guarded by the Army, and its lorries must go through it as though they were going into a police state. That bakery has been offered no compensation for the fact that it cannot run its business properly. In the light of the commitment that he made last year, I ask the Secretary of State to examine that case; indeed, there are many cases throughout the north of Ireland in which compensation is justified.
  My final point relates to detention for up to seven days. I have considerable reservations about that, mainly because of something that was said in the House of Commons in October 1983 by the then Home Secretary. Leon Brittan said that the power of detention had acted
  "first, as a deterrent to persons other than the people who have been detained".
  A Home Secretary was telling us that it was right that
  282
  people should be detained in order to deter others, through a process which is a derogation from the European convention on human rights. Secondly, the power had
  "enabled information to be obtained that was of direct value in the battle against terrorism, even though it did not lead to action against the people concerned."—[Official Report, 24 October 1983; Vol. 47, c. 55–6.]
  That is what a Home Secretary said, on the Floor of the House of Commons, about the use of powers of detention under the PTA and the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991.
  Surely we have a right to be concerned when such a motivation is put on record on the Floor of the House as a justifiable reason—two justifiable reasons—for the use of seven-day detention powers. In the cases that were specified, the detentions did not result from the activities of the people involved but were intended to act as a deterrent or to trawl for information.
  I do not know whether that is still happening, but I am concerned about the figures. In 1993, 1,641 people were detained in Northern Ireland under the PTA; 379 were charged and 1,262 were released without charge. I know the difficulties faced by the police: I know that those involved in terrorism sometimes cannot be broken down, and may leave the police station after the relevant period with a smirk on their faces, knowing that they have avoided charges. I recognise the problem of a police officer who knows that the person sitting across the table either organised or carried out the most heinous crimes, and also knows that he must release that person after seven days.
  Nevertheless, there is something wrong in those figures —something questionable. I do not know what it is, but I ask the Secretary of State—in the spirit in which I began—to subject them to as much scrutiny as possible. It would be intolerable if the legislation were used for the reasons given by the then Home Secretary.
  I welcome this opportunity to deal with some of the points raised by the motion. I think that we should do this, and do it as honestly as we can. There is something that will survive IRA and so-called loyalist terrorism—the high standard that we have set ourselves in this country and in Ireland, which is worth protecting.
  9.48 pm
  Rev. William McCrea: Once again, we gather for what some consider a ritual debate on the Northern Ireland (Emergency and Prevention of Terrorism Provisions) (Continuance) Order. Since our last debate, violence and murder have not only continued unabated but increased dramatically. Therefore, it is appropriate for elected representatives in the House from both Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom to question why there is such a deplorable and deadly situation.
  I read the morning view in a local newspaper, which said:
  "Evil forces are at work in our community who have got to be confronted head on by the Government and by those tasked with law and order in our Province.
  Innocent people must be protected as they go about their normal business. The RUC and the army have got to switch the emphasis to providing proactive rather than reactive security … The troubles have plagued the people of Northern Ireland for 25 long years. There can never be an acceptable level of violence and even one more day of terror is a day too much for a people who have endured more than their share of suffering."
  I concur with those remarks. When one reads that, after 25 years of terrorism in our Province and in the United Kingdom, one fact is clear. It is beyond dispute that the

  283
  so-called and much-heralded peace policy purported to be the real answer to our ills has failed abysmally. The debate and the renewal of the Act are proof of that stubborn fact.
  On 9 November, my hon. Friends presented proposals to the Prime Minister. During that meeting, the Prime Minister said that he was not rejecting those proposals, as many of them were in accordance with his own views. However, he said that he had a quicker and a more certain way in which to produce peace and a quicker way in which to bring an end to terrorism. That process was the one on which he had embarked with the Dublin Government. It was promised that the London-Dublin discussions would produce the peace prize for which every sane person yearned—and yearns. We were all assured by the Dublin Government that we would have peace by Christmas. The SDLP said that we would have peace within a week, then by Christmas, then by Easter, then after Easter. Now it is a prize well worth waiting for.
  Of course, we must not forget that, in our constituencies—certainly in mine, for yesterday I again stood at the graveside of a young, gallant member of the security forces—the murder, the slaughter, the carnage and the torture of innocent people continues. In reality, the so-called peace process, in which many are engaged, is in my opinion and in the opinion of many in the Province nothing more or less than bogus and a deceit. The overtures to the IRA-Sinn Fein murderers have continued, while Northern Ireland has been savaged by terrorism.
  Yesterday's murder of a young Shankill road man in the centre of the city of Belfast brings the total of murders this year to 32—three more than last year. Yet we are supposed to be in the midst of the peace process. We are supposed to be in a time of expressions of peace from the IRA-Sinn Fein. The galling fact is that, while innocent victims lie on the street, the media parade animals on our television screens talking about their efforts for peace. Yesterday, I stood once again in my constituency at the open grave of a young soldier, one who was 19 years of age. My eldest is 21. That soldier was only a boy, who was walking the streets of Armagh. That boy was taken and was not only done to death—not quickly because, even for them, that would have been too little—but was tortured in the most despicable way.
  Can anyone here understand the pain of a mother or father whose son is murdered? Can anyone really understand the anguish in the heart of a mother when she realises that her son was taken and, while she was lying in her bed, was tortured and parts of his body rent asunder while the very people who parade on our television screens are, we are told, involved in a peace process? The Secretary of State tells us that, in a short while, if they lay down their weapons, we shall draw a line in the sand. Can anyone imagine what that does to a mother?
  Let us bear in mind that, a year ago, the young boy of 19 walked down the same road that we walked along yesterday, carrying his brother in a coffin. His brother had been murdered by the same scum that murdered him. That is not all. Thirteen years ago, that boy's granny—an old woman—was blown to bits by the IRA so that family, who are my constituents, have lost a granny, a grandson of 22 and a boy of 19.
  What was that young boy's crime? His crime was to put on the Queen's uniform. He wanted to protect the
  284
  law-abiding citizens of our community, Protestant and Roman Catholic. He wanted to provide a better life for them and believed that he had a duty to do something to ensure the safety of the people of the Province. It is a duty that some people criticise from their armchairs, but they themselves would never do anything to provide that protection for the community.
  The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) said that the security forces were in fact representative of only one community in Northern Ireland. In all the years that he has been shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, he would have done well to have called, at the Dispatch Box, on members of the other community to join the security forces and protect the people, instead of using every opportunity to gut and cut asunder the efforts of brave and courageous young men and women who have joined the security forces and defended the right to life. I salute all members of our security forces for their bravery and courage.
  It is all very well for hon. Members to sit here in these beautiful surroundings, on the green Benches of Westminster, but let me tell them where some of the boys whom I represent are. They are lying behind a ditch or walking the roads while the snow is on the ground, the hail beats down on them or the rain soaks them. They are certainly not doing it for the money because no one could say that ordinary soldier boys are overpaid. Those young lads operate not in the comfort of the House but along the border. They are in areas where to put on the uniform means danger, but not to put on the uniform means the surrender of law and order to the terrorists.
  Dr. Joe Hendron: The hon. Gentleman used the word "scum". I totally agree with that description of the people who tortured the young soldier from Cookstown and brutally murdered him, and with the other strong language that the hon. Gentleman used. But would he also use the word "scum", as I certainly would, to described the so-called loyalist paramilitaries, who have also taken young people out and brutally tortured and murdered them?
  Rev. William McCrea: I know exactly what it is not to sit away from terrorism, but to feel terrorism. No terrorism has any glory in it. There is nothing delightful about any terrorist and nothing courageous about terrorism. I know, because in our family we have experienced the reality of terrorism not once, not twice, not three times, but more often. I know what the reality and the curse of terrorism is.
  Because I know what terrorism does, and I know about the blight of terrorism in the community, I believe that we need to take the actions that will destroy terrorists. We should not parade them on our television screens, as if in a matter of three months of decontamination they could be looked upon as something other than the terrorists that they are. I do not buy that argument when I think about Reggie and Nigel McCollum and the lady in Dungannon. I do not buy it when I think about young Fred Anthony, or about little Emma, who is fighting for her life at this moment.
  After standing at the graveside yesterday I went to the home of Emma Anthony and sat with the family there. Does the House really know what that is like? She is a little girl of three. If the look or the picture of a wee three-year-old child does not touch the heart of the terrorists, does anybody think that, because of a few

  285
  appeals to them, a few pats on the back, the idea that they will become gentlemen if they just lay down their weapons, they will turn from their vile and evil deeds?
  I believe that if the people in IRA-Sinn Fein are thinking anything at the present moment it is how they can advance their position politically. It is not that they are sick of terrorism, or of the vile deeds that they have done. It is not that they are ready to repent for what they have done within the community. No, they are behaving in a certain way because they believe that they have a better chance than ever before, and that they will get rewards for their deeds—because they have been able to bomb their way to a place at the table.
  Like every other Member of the House from Northern Ireland, I entered the House not through the bomb or the bullet but through the ballot box, and through honouring the ballot box. Yet what have we seen? We have seen the sickening appearance of the Government dealing through the back door, in my opinion contemptibly and disgracefully, in betrayal of the gallant men and women who down through the years have made the ultimate sacrifice in the battle against terrorism.
  What do we find? We find that Government agencies and Government people are negotiating with, talking to, and in cahoots with, the terrorists behind the scenes. On 29 November, after many months and years, our Government were found to be involved in that process, through certain contacts with the IRA. The revelations came shortly after our Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box that his stomach would turn at the thought of negotiating with the IRA-Sinn Fein.
  To find out that those contacts were already taking place on the very day on which that statement was made, proved to the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland the utter duplicity of British Government policy towards the Province. The declaration is a declaration addressed to the IRA-Sinn Fein. No consideration was given to the long-suffering, heartbroken majority of our Province.
  The other day, I heard some folks say that the same offer is on the table for the loyalist terrorists. I must challenge that because I remember a meeting that I held with the Prime Minister and my colleagues, the leader and the deputy leader of my party. At that meeting, I asked the Prime Minister why the Secretary of State, in the speeches that he was making throughout the Province, said that if the IRA-Sinn Fein turned its back or put down its weapons, there would be a place at the table for it. Why did he not mention the UVF, the UFF, the UDA and the Red Hand commandos? I found the answer interesting. The Prime Minister said that in discussions he had had with others, it was evident that the UVF, the UFF, the UDA and the Red Hand commandos would not have a mandate from the electorate but that Sinn Fein did, so it could not be treated in the same way.
  The Prime Minister also said that loyalist violence was only reactive, not proactive, and therefore it was believed and perceived that the Government had only to address the IRA terrorism and all other terrorism would cease. In other words, the Government had only to buy off the IRA—there was no need to buy off anyone else because the violence would automatically stop.
  No credence is given to the concerns and alienation of the loyalist people until the statistics change. That is what is so sickening about it all. The only time that one is recognised and one is told that one can get the same treatment is if one starts to murder—if one starts to put up
  286
  one's statistics and beats the other boys at the same game. In other words, the only thing that one needs is proof—the only time that people will listen is when one murders. That is the law of the jungle, but it is not the law of the United Kingdom and it is not the law of democracy. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) should not be laughing.
  Mr. Mallon: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I do not find it funny at all; I find it terribly pathetic.
  Rev. William McCrea: I would wipe the sneer off the hon. Gentleman's face. I can assure the House that while the murder was in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, he was not standing with me yesterday in Sandholes; nor did he visit the family of the young boy who was brutally done to death.
  It is evident from the fact that, after all these years, we are still talking about emergency and prevention of terrorism provisions that we are in an unholy mess and tragedy. The price that the IRA demands may be offered by the Government, but that will not decide the matter because they are not in a position to make the offer. The people of Northern Ireland will have the final say. The feeling of frustration and alienation within the majority community has been dismissed by many as rabble rousing, yet I wonder what it will take before the truth of the situation is faced.
  The other day, Mr. Adair was lifted in the Shankill road. I shall not enter into his case because it is sub judice. We were told that that was the first time that such legislation had been used and the essence of the charge is that he is supposed to have been directing terrorism. What about Mr. Martin McGuinness from Londonderry? What about the mountain of evidence produced on two television programmes against him for directing terrorism? He has not been lifted under the legislation—oh no, that will do for the Protestants and the loyalists—but we know why. I asked in the House why Mr. McGuinness was not lifted immediately after Roger Cook's two television programmes. Let us remember that Mr. Cook was very courageous even to put them together. The Government could not let Mr. McGuinness be lifted because he was fronting their IRA-Sinn Fein connection and doing deals in back rooms, so they could not touch him. Is that fair execution of justice? It seems rather strange.
  The Government introduced legislation on incitement to hatred. It is interesting that it was used only against another loyalist. Would anyone suggest that many speeches by IRA members—whether wearing hoods in Carrickmore or standing on a stage to be photographed—were an incitement to hatred although the legislation was not used? There is a feeling of alienation within the community. The position of democratically elected politicians, especially in the Unionist community, is being undermined and demeaned and murderers are being elevated.
  I trust that the House will pass this legislation. It is a sad reality that we need it after all these years because we ought to have defeated the enemy. Unfortunately, if one talks to such people in back rooms, behind doors, one cannot be expected to defeat them. I and my colleagues will join hon. Members who support the legislation in the Lobby, but I must say that I long for peace with all my heart. My constituency, like others, has been ravaged by terrorism, but there is still a belief that one can buy off terrorists.
  Sir Patrick Mayhew: I have been reflecting on what the hon. Gentleman said about prosecution and the lack of it. Will he tell the House openly whether he is asserting that the Chief Constable of the RUC and the Director of Public Prosecutions are politically motivated in the exercise of their functions and are other than independent?
  Rev. William McCrea: Can I say to the Secretary of State in reply—
  Sir Patrick Mayhew: Just answer the question for once.
  Rev. William McCrea: With the greatest respect, Madam Speaker, I suggest that you are in command of this debate, not the Secretary of State.
  As far as prosecutions are concerned, the question is still unanswered. Who is guilty? I do not have the information. Will the Secretary of State tell the House why Martin McGuinness is not behind bars tonight? Will the Secretary of State tell the House why Martin McGuinness could not be arrested after two damning—I use the word properly—programmes with a wealth of evidence? Why was he not before a court? I had a constituent from Mid-Ulster—a loyalist—and Roger Cook did one programme in which he was involved. My constituent was lifted the morning after the programme, interviewed and sentenced to imprisonment in Magilligan prison.
  If it was right—the Secretary of State will be able to answer the question far better than I—that there has been hokery-pokery, no one in the Province will believe the Secretary of State. No one believes that Martin McGuinness should not at least have been arrested after such evidence was gathered. After talking to members of his own Northern Ireland Office, I can tell the Secretary of State that that is believed there as well.
  I suppose that it is difficult to say that because there might be a rampage to find out who speaks to me from either the Secretary of State's private office or the Northern Ireland Office. The Government would more concerned about that than they would be about finding out whether McGuinness was responsible for murders and for directing terrorism in the Province.
  Mr. Ken Maginnis: Is not the point which the hon. Gentleman is making not so much whether we should question the competence of the Chief Constable or of the Director of Public Prosecutions, but whether McGuinness should not at least have been arrested and questioned after the two programmes? Should not questions have come from the Northern Ireland Office as to why McGuinness, with a wealth of evidence against him, was not arrested and questioned?
  Rev. William McCrea: I accept whole-heartedly what the hon. Gentleman said. I raised the question in the House during an earlier debate and I am still waiting for a reply—it may be lost in the post. Perhaps I can look forward to the Secretary of State telling me why, after two major programmes which went out across the airwaves, Martin McGuinness has not been questioned. If one considered the question, one would have to say, "How could he have been questioned when he was the front man for the terrorists in their negotiations through the back door with the Government?"
  Mr. Peter Robinson: Is not it the case that, arising from the programmes, Roger Cook's team presented the security
  288
  forces with the evidence, including sworn affidavits from people who were witnesses to Martin McGuinness's involvement in terrorism? The security forces therefore had the evidence in their possession and, at the very least, should have brought him in to question him.
  Rev. William McCrea: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, with which I whole-heartedly concur. I know that the Secretary of State has also heard my hon. Friend's remarks and the evidence that he has presented to the House and that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will keep that in his thoughts when he is replying to specific questions. I can assure the House that the Province waits with interest to find out what the Secretary of State's response is.
  I conclude my remarks by saying that, for the people I represent, the violence, murders and destruction go on. Can anyone understand what it is to visit their homes? They ask, "When will it end?" Unfortunately, under the present policy of the Government, the end is certainly not in sight.
  10.19 pm
  Mr. Menzies Campbell: Few hon. Members can match the passion or direct experience of the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Rev. William McCrea) and I do not intend to try. However, even if one does not bring to these matters that same passion and experience, that does not excuse the House from considering carefully the terms of the proposal before us and, in a responsible way, reaching a proper conclusion on whether the provisions should be renewed yet again for 12 months.
  If there is a Division, I shall advise my right hon and hon. Friends to vote for the order. We shall not do so with great enthusiasm but rather because we regard it as a regrettable necessity. Indeed, we shall vote for the order with considerable reservations because we profoundly believe that the rights, protections and civil liberties of all United Kingdom citizens should be the same wherever they live and that only in the most unusual circumstances can a departure from those principles be justified.
  On the evidence that we have heard in the debate so far, quite apart from our own knowledge, I must conclude that the circumstances still obtaining in Northern Ireland justify renewing the order once again. Indeed, they justify powers that, in other circumstances, might be regarded as draconian. Those powers should not be maintained for an instant longer than is necessary. They should be grudgingly tolerated and we should work, with all the power available to us, to withdraw them at the earliest possible date, for they represent a serious incursion into the rights that citizens throughout the United Kingdom are entitled to expect.
  The powers continue to be justified only because the cancer of terrorism still lies at the heart of life in Northern Ireland. They will not eliminate that cancer; at best, they may contain it. Unless and until a political settlement that commands the support of the whole community of Northern Ireland is achieved, we are likely to continue to face the kind of terrorist outrages that so affect our judgment of these issues.
  As always, I listened with interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). I was sorry to hear him say yet again that, because of the existence of the power of internment and certain defects in the legislation, he and his party are not disposed to support the order. I am surprised because I

  289
  should have thought that, at a time when the joint declaration has been published and the clarification sought has been provided, a unilateral act by the British Parliament to withdraw those powers would appear singularly inappropriate.
  I assume that, in pressing the motion to a Division, the hon. Gentleman hopes—perhaps even expects—that the Government will be defeated. The logic of that position is that, were he to win the vote, those parts of the order that he supports and acknowledges are necessary for the security forces would be denied to the security forces after 16 June this year. I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, but it is an unusual position to adopt in the light of the present circumstances and the logical consequences of his position.
  Mr. McNamara: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman believe that internment and detention without due process of law undermine the legitimacy of the state in whose name they are perpetrated?
  Mr. Campbell: Certainly, were it to be in use. The point to which the hon. Gentleman fails to give sufficient weight is that, although the power exists, it is not being implemented. Were the power to be implemented, my judgment is that its use would be counter-productive. It might give rise to the kind of response from certain parts of the community in Northern Ireland that the hon. Gentleman predicts.
  I return to the question of logic. When the Division is called, if the hon. Gentleman succeeds in what he sets out to do he will deny to the security forces those powers that he says they are entitled to have. That seems to me to be quite a difficult position to sustain, particularly at this time.
  I make a number of criticisms of the existing arrangements. In relation to Diplock courts, I believe that there is a compelling argument to have not a single judge, but three judges. I believe that insufficient use has been made of section 27—the charge of directing terrorism—to which some reference has been made already. I think that efforts should be made to ensure that the power is utilised impartially and more effectively.
  With regard to the confiscation of the proceeds of terrorist-related funding, it seems to me that the House might well be entitled to ask the Secretary of State what has happened in the past 12 months and whether he is satisfied that the existing powers are adequate to deal with the problem.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: If there are all these reservations about the order, how will we amend it? We have an order on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. If it is offensive in some way, we could reject it and ask the Government to produce a fresh order before the date that it is required.
  Mr. Campbell: I doubt whether the last part of the hon. Gentleman's suggestion is feasible in the time scale available. He is quite right to say that it is an unamendable order. If his argument is that we should legislate for Northern Ireland in a different manner, he will find ready support from me.
  I return to the point I made earlier. At this time, is it to be seriously argued in the Chamber that the House should say to the security forces that they cannot have powers that it is unanimously accepted on both sides of the House are powers they ought to have?
  290
  My view is rather different from the Secretary of State's on the question of taping interviews. This is not a matter upon which one ranges one individual against another and says, "Take your pick". Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, Lord Colville and Mr. Rowe have taken a different view on the question whether interviews should be either audio or video taped. Clearly, the Chief Constable's view carries great weight, but sometimes those who stand back and who are not directly in the front line of these matters are in a position to have a more objective and informed view.
  There are a number of other aspects on which, if time permitted, I might express criticisms of the legislation. However, I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House—some with more direct knowledge of these matters than I—wish to speak. At the outset of my remarks I described the order as a regrettable necessity. On that footing, I believe that it is entitled to the support of the House.
  10.27 pm
  Mr. David Trimble: As some hon. Members have said, this is a rather ritual occasion which does not really provide an adequate substitute for proper scrutiny by the House of the operation of the legislation. I still believe that at some point we shall have to consider how to scrutinise the legislation in a better way.
  While it is a ritual occasion, it still has its surprises. I must record that I had at least one surprise this evening when—if I heard correctly, and I hope that I did—the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) suddenly said something at the end of his speech with which I profoundly agreed, and something that I had never heard from him before in any debate. He seemed to announce that his party had commissioned a study of the effectiveness of the legislation, apparently with a view to ensuring that it is more effective. He said that, in so doing, particular regard would be given to the experience in Europe. I am delighted to hear that the Labour party is to undertake a serious study to find out how we can have effective anti-terrorist legislation, with the emphasis on the word "effective". I especially commend the study of the experience in Europe because the Government have much to learn about the reasons for success in Europe in contrast with their own comparative failure.
  I wish to discuss some of those reforms, drawing partly on the European experience, which ought to be considered. I shall not refer to the matter at length as I have had occasion to refer to those reforms before, but I shall briefly mention some of them.
  The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) referred to proposals about hearsay. An excellent speech on the general subject of evidence was made in the other place by Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor and I believe that he said all that has to be said. I should especially like the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), to read that speech in view of his reply to me the last time we debated that subject.
  On the suggestion made by the Chief Constable to extend the powers of authorised investigators, the Secretary of State said that he was reluctant to make—indeed, would not make—so important a change in our criminal justice system. I think that I quote him correctly. But the change has already been made: the right to silence has been abrogated with regard to certain offences. If that

  291
  is too important a change to make, does the Secretary of State propose to repeal the provision already in the Act that we are discussing today?
  The Act abrogates the right to silence in relation to certain offences. We are suggesting that we extend the abrogation not to less serious offences, but to more serious ones. If it is not right to extend it to the more serious offence of directing a terrorist organisation, why do we have it in relation to the financing of terrorism? The exception has already been made, the precedent has been established and there is no logic in the Secretary of State's refusal to follow that precedent.
  On the other hand, I commend the Secretary of State for keeping a sympathetic mind with regard to "wire-tap evidence", as we have used that phrase. The issue is more than simply that of intercepted telephone communication; it relates to electronic surveillance generally. I noticed that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North had a generally favourable approach to it. Electronic surveillance —eavesdropping—is being used and the resulting evidence is being brought before the court. Indeed, that was one of the major sources of the evidence presented to the court to enable the remand to take place in the one case of directing terrorist organisations under section 27 that was heard by the courts in Northern Ireland as recently as last week. Apparently, some of the evidence is of conversations tape-recorded unbeknown to the suspect, the tape recordings being made by the police officers to whom he was speaking, by means of microphones concealed about their person. Electronic surveillance is therefore admissible without the battery of safeguards that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North suggested. We need to reconsider that more seriously.
  A general welcome has been given to the report of Mr. Rowe. Especially as I was critical of his report on the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989, it is only right that I should welcome his report and say that those of my colleagues who have had the opportunity to study it in the short time in which it has been available were impressed by it. I disagree, however, with Mr. Rowe's proposals on the audiotaping of police interviews.
  I acknowledge that there is a potential saving here and the potential saving is significant with regard to obviating the need for the voire dire, which is a substantial argument, but Mr. Rowe misses the point. He says that under the present system it is possible for terrorist organisations to ascertain what has been said in an interview. As he points out, that could happen because the interviewee co-operates with the terrorist organisation during a debriefing and also because a copy of the formal record of the interview can be obtained. That is correct. If the interviewee co-operates with the terrorist organisation, a certain amount of information can be obtained.
  One of the grounds for police worry is that apparently the police regularly obtain information from suspects who are anxious to conceal that co-operation with the police from the terrorist organisation. I understand that such information is regularly given on the basis that it is not written down and not incorporated in the formal record of the interview. The minute one brings audiotaping into the picture, one loses that co-operation. The police say—and I have no reason to disbelieve them—that this is an important source of intelligence information. It must
  292
  therefore be given considerable weight. I find more sympathy for the view expressed by Lord Colville in earlier reports on the question of having video but not audio taping. As I have said on previous occasions, I would be prepared to look in that direction if I had to make a choice for an experiment.
  Section 27 of the Act deals with the offence of directing terrorist organisations. This was a major innovation of the Act of 1991. Since then, we have complained about the failure to use the provision. As has been said, one charge has at last been brought. I shall not comment on the particular case, which is now a matter for the courts, save to say that we have no complaint about the bringing of the charge.What we do complain about, and what other hon. Members have complained about during the debate, is the apparent immunity enjoyed by the godfathers of republican terrorism.
  I do not intend to cover again ground that was covered by the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Rev. William McCrea), but essentially the hon. Gentleman is right. Regrettably, the Secretary of State, in his intervention during the hon. Gentleman's speech, did nothing to allay people's suspicions, particularly with regard to Mr. Martin McGuinness. It is ironic that only about 10 days ago—the right hon. and learned Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—the Secretary of State himself, in a speech in Dublin, described Mr. McGuinness as a leading member of the IRA. In this context, the real question is: why has there been no follow-up, no inquiry? If this man is a leading member of the IRA, as the Secretary of State himself says, he is guilty not only of membership but of directing a terrorist organisation. I do not know anybody who doubts that. The only possible legitimate reason for failing to bring a case against McGuinness is lack of evidence, but why should there be no questioning? Why should there be no attempt to find out and to follow up the material to which the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster has referred?
  Then there is Mr. McGuinness's close colleague—Mr. Adams himself. The Sunday Times story last week shows clearly that Mr. Adams's close associates in his advice centres in west Belfast were key elements in the recent wave of so-called punishment shootings against people allegedly involved in drugs. One of the persons injured on that occasion said that Mr. Adams's bodyguard was the man who decided whether or not someone would be shot. Has there been any follow-up on that?
  In an intervention, the Secretary of State asked the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster whether he was suggesting that the Chief Constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions are not impartial in respect of these matters. I am disturbed by a Northern Ireland press report from what I regard as an authoritative source. This report said that, following the "Cook Report", the RUC in Londonderry wanted to interview Mr. McGuinness, but that instructions came, through special branch, from higher places—the implication was that the source was political and not the Chief Constable—that he was not to be touched. That is a matter on which I should dearly love to hear the Secretary of State speak frankly.
  Then there are the godfathers in Belfast, who are all well known to journalists, to the police and to members of the public. There is the commander of the IRA in Belfast, Mr. Brian Gillen; there is the IRA's Belfast intelligence officer, one of the Finnucane brothers; there is the gentleman who probably planned the Shankill road bomb, one Eddie Copeland. Why have there been no inquiries into those

  293
  people? Why have they not been questioned? Who grants such immunity? A national newspaper suggested recently that the Minister of State has told the RUC to concentrate on preventing specific incidents and to give lower priority to the targeting of IRA godfathers. Will the Minister of State comment on that in his reply?
  The comparative failure to charge under section 27 reminds one of the comparative failure with regard to terrorist finances—a matter mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth). There have been no cases. Have any accounts been seized? Has any money been recovered? The authorities have claimed that terrorist financing has been disrupted. Here I am reminded of words used in another context: where is the beef? Where is the money? Where are the proceeds? What has been seized? We need some information about that.
  There is a matter that touches on the criticism in Her Majesty's inspectorate's report on the RUC. I refer to the suggestion that there was an absence of policing strategy aimed at putting terrorist criminals behind bars. Too much of the present activity appears to be intelligence oriented—aimed at spoiling terrorist operations rather than eliminating or, as the present Home Secretary said, extirpating the terrorist organisations. The reluctance to charge with regard to funding and the reluctance to use intelligence information in court points in that direction—if so, it is wrong and should be changed.
  As well as being even handed in the pursuit of terrorists, the so-called "peace process"—I hope that that appears in inverted commas—must also be even handed. Many of us regard that process as being essentially bogus, for it involves making political concessions to terrorism. Not only would that be morally reprehensible; it would not be successful, for to reward terrorism would only encourage more terrorism. It would be even worse to appear to reward one terrorist faction while ignoring its rivals.
  The Downing street declaration focuses essentially on the interests of one section of the community and deals only with the interests of the greater number of the community incidentally and by implication. As a consequence, it has presented itself in a lopsided manner to the public in Northern Ireland. That has accelerated what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) described in a statement on Friday as the race to achieve a balance of terror.
  In that statement, my right hon. Friend said that interpretations of the declaration had missed a significant point in paragraph 10, which explains the consequences that would follow a cessation of terrorism. It draws no distinction between republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations: once a commitment to a permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence is established and verified, any such organisation becomes eligible to enter exploratory discussions on how it can, in due course, be considered for participation in the democratic process.
  It was on the basis of that reading of the declaration that my right hon. Friend felt entitled to demand an immediate halt to the race to achieve a balance of terror. I would appreciate it if the Minister, in his reply, would comment specifically on that matter, and on the construction advanced by my right hon. Friend. Failure to do so will be seen as endorsing the one-sided interpretation of the declaration and all that that entails. I would hope that the two Governments who set their hands to the declaration have thought the matter through. They have not said how
  294
  they would expect a one-sided approach to terrorism to work. Have they taken account of the possibility that one reason why republicans have not responded may be fear for their personal survival? I say that to emphasise the need for consistency.
  In my view, those terrorists have not and will not respond positively. I say that because the declaration and the recent Northern Ireland Office statement stress that there will be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. That means that, whatever might be discussed, there will be no change in the fundamental constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.
  By acknowledging the principle of consent, the Irish Government have accepted that the views of the people of Northern Ireland are paramount, but there is still work to be done. The Irish Government have not yet put that principle into practice—that means publicly respecting the oft-repeated expression of the views of the people in favour of the Union. One cannot say that one respects people's views and, at the same time, advance proposals that run contrary to those expressed views. If one says that one accepts and respects those views, one must do so and carry that into practice. It is possible that one reason for the failure, so far, by the Irish Government to put that principle into practice is that Her Majesty's Government's endorsement of the Union has been so muted; that, too, must change.
  There was one significant event in the corresponding debate last year—the contribution of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath). He made a powerful speech in which he called for a unified drive against terrorism throughout the United Kingdom, under the control of a single Cabinet Minister directly responsible to the Prime Minister. That view found considerable echo on these Benches. I am sorry to say that, so far, there has been no action and the anti-terrorist drive in the past year has had the same lack of success as in previous years. We should return to that suggestion.
  The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup also said that the politics and the use of military force must go together—in other words, they must pull in the same direction. Currently, they lack coherence. The root cause of terrorism is the hope and fear that it can achieve change. Force exercised by authority, designed to defeat that by showing it, will not achieve change. Anti-terrorist force cannot succeed if the Government's policies hint at or promote the very change in question. The ambiguity must be removed. The use of police and military force and political measures must be aligned. By all means we can couple that with giving people the opportunity of joining the political process, but that must be done not on a false basis, but on the basis of an honest appreciation of the realities.
  If we encourage people to enter politics, we must show that politics in Northern Ireland can work. That means having representative political institutions which can actually do something, in which all who want to can play a meaningful part, and we in the Ulster Unionist party have done so in the blueprint for stability. It is high time that that, too, was taken up by the Government and implemented.
  10.45 pm
  Mr. David Wilshire: Tonight's debate is bound to be seen by many inside and outside the House in the context of the Downing street declaration. Some people will inevitably ask whether that declaration makes the order unnecessary. Others will ask whether the order will make the peace process more difficult. However, those are not the key questions. For me, the declaration is relevant tonight only in so far as it offers one possible route to a permanent end to violence. That and only that will make the order unnecessary.
  I am totally persuaded that a permanent end to violence must come first and Labour's refusal to agree to the orders by voting against them tonight plays into the hands of terrorists and signals that violence can pay if one sticks at it long enough.
  For me, the key questions when deciding how to vote tonight are not about the peace process or the theory of democracy but are quite simple: is terrorism currently continuing and will the order help to counter it? Nobody who follows the events in Northern Ireland, whether living there or from across the water, can be in any doubt at all that the answer to the first question, "Is terrorism continuing?" has to be an unequivocal yes. We have heard the statistics tonight. There have been 32 murders since the declaration was signed. That is more than in the same period last year before the declaration.
  We are not only talking about murder: extortion, intimidation and maiming continue. The 32 deaths are simply the tip of the iceberg. Terrorism continues and we have to address it, whatever is happening in the peace process. I am persuaded that the answer to the second question, "Will the order help to counter terrorism?" is also yes. The Secretary of State set out the case earlier this evening. It fits with my knowledge and experience. I accept that the order is necessary and I will not repeat the arguments again at this time of night.
  I am only too well aware that some people would dispute my conclusions. There are those within the Labour party who believe that such powers make violence worse and that the order would lead to the abuse of power. Worse still, there are even some people in the Labour party who believe that the orders turn us into terrorists as well. Year after year, those same Labour Members have voted against these orders. That is a complete and utter disgrace. I hope that they sleep soundly in their beds, because if I opposed the orders, I would feel that I was condoning murder, maiming and extortion.
  I shall spend a moment answering each of what I consider to be bogus points. The first allegation that is made against people who say as I do and vote for the orders is that it will make violence worse. As I understand the affairs of Northern Ireland, it was not the orders that caused the violence; they came about as a response to it. If I understand anything, the violence has been going on for 25 years. Yet these particular powers date back just three years, and others for 16 years. It was only after trying for nine years without them that the House took action. I believe that that is the answer to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon), who said, "Beware of knee-jerks." Given the nine-year delay before taking those powers, I do not judge them to be remotely a knee-jerk reaction: they are the inevitable response to people who will not respect the rule of law and the discussions in this House.
  Mr. Mallon: Would the hon. Gentleman like to re-examine what he said recently—that those who oppose the Bill condone murder and extortion? In the light of the responsible attitudes that have been shown down through the years from this side of the House, would he like to rethink that statement and reflect on the enormity of it?
  Mr. Wilshire: I will always reconsider what the hon. Gentleman asks me to. I do not doubt or question for one moment his sincerity and views. Similarly, I hope that he will show me the respect of believing that what I say is what I believe. I will reconsider, but I very much doubt whether in the morning I will wish to rephrase what I said.
  The second allegation is that the order will offer a cloak for further abuse of power. We are all well aware of the allegations that are made about the abuse of physical and legal power, and I see no need to repeat them here. But we must also all be aware that the Government have responded to those allegations by setting up the opportunities for people to complain, for investigations to be carried out and for public reports to be made. Earlier in the debate, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State responded to that process. He made announcements; he announced decisions. I believe that they will go a long way to reassuring the people who are prepared to consider such issues with an open and fair mind.
  The third allegation is that the order makes us as bad as terrorists. It is all too easy to deliver lectures on the theory of democracy from the relative comfort of the House and the relative safety of the mainland, but I judge that psychopathic murderers, be they acting in the name of Catholicism, Protestantism or anything else, are not amenable to rational argument and democratic debate. It was not the state that recently murdered an elderly woman. It was not the state that recently maimed a three-year-old child. It was terrorists and terrorism. No lectures on democracy will wipe those facts from the history book.
  At the outset, I rejected any attempt to put tonight's debate in the context of the Downing street declaration, but there is one context that I hope that the Government may be willing to think about and act on as quickly as possible. I believe that we could and should make the future renewal of these provisions part of a package that is designed to do not the one thing that happens at the moment, but two things. The first thing that it should do—as we have been doing each year and will, I hope, continue doing until terrorism is overcome—is make it clear that we in this House are determined to resist debate by semtex, and that we are determined to prevent change coming via the barrel of a gun. But I hope that the second part of a package for future debate will present an opportunity for democratic debate in a locally elected forum in Northern Ireland. I hope that the package will ensure that there is real and proper scope for change by peaceful, agreed consent.
  I support the order—perhaps with some regret, but none the less willingly. I support the belief that terrorism must never be allowed to pay or be seen to pay, or be supported by any hon. Member, regardless of political persuasion. I would support proposals to allow the people of Northern Ireland to settle their own future, through democracy, in their own Province.
  10.55 pm
  Dr. Joe Hendron: I did not intend to speak, especially after the excellent analysis of the legislation presented by my hon. Friend the Member for

  297
  Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). I am prompted to do so by the speech of the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Rev. William McCrea). He used powerful language to condemn the murder in Armagh city of a young soldier from Cookstown, and eloquently described the funeral and the effect on the family; he used the word "scum".
  In an intervention—I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing it—I said that I agreed: I, too, would use that word to describe the people who had committed the murder. I asked the hon. Gentleman whether he would also use the word to describe members of the loyalist community—the so-called loyalist paramilitaries of the UDA or the UVF. He did not answer my question. I am not criticising him, but I would have been happier if he had used the word in that context.
  I am not in the numbers game, but I believe that more people have died as a result of violence in my constituency than in any other constituency in Northern Ireland—or, for that matter, in any other part of these islands. I am talking about people who have been murdered. We have heard a good deal of talk about Sinn Fein tonight; most of its leaders are within yards of my advice centre in west Belfast, as is the advice centre—I hesitate to use the term—of the Sinn Fein president, Mr. Adams.
  Not very far away—just over the so-called peace line, but also in my constituency—are the hard men of the UDA and UVF. On both sides of that so-called peace line, there has been a frightening number of murders over the years. Unfortunately, I cannot give the exact number. The people who live there worry every day and every night about their families—their sons and daughters.
  I, too, have stood beside the graves into which young people have been lowered, and have seen the tears of families—not only as a public representative, but as a medical practitioner in the area for many years.
  I understand the position of the police, and have great sympathy for them. Policing a divided community is fraught with difficulty. However, I must make a couple of comments about the Castlereagh interrogation centre.
  I deeply resent any action or legislation that in any way helps a paramilitary organisation, be it the IRA or the UDA. The vast majority of the police are doing their best in very difficult circumstances. But it is a fact that, over the years, people have been assaulted in the Castlereagh interrogation centre, or holding centre; I do not mind what it is called.
  I take no pleasure from saying it, but many of my constituents have been assaulted over the years. Some may have been guilty of terrible crimes, but many were not. That is why I make my point about helping the godfathers of the paramilitary to exploit young people and bring them into their organisations.
  Hon. Members will remember the Bennett report, produced some years ago, about people assaulted in Castlereagh. The last thing I want to do is undermine the police, but it must be said that in all those years not one policeman has been charged and found guilty of assault in Castlereagh. We are all aware of the number of cases that have been settled out of court.
  Police and soldiers carry out searches every day of the week. Such searches are necessary—we all understand that. Very often, information is obtained in places such as Castlereagh. Sometimes, it is correct; but sometimes it is wrong. Often a young person under pressure will not give information about a paramilitary colleague. Instead, he will give information about some other family—he will name
  298
  some family who are not involved. As a result, police or soldiers will arrive at their house at 5 o'clock in the morning and a search will be carried out.
  I understand that. But let me emphasise to the Secretary of State and the House that when such a mistake is made, it is simple for either a senior Army or a senior police person to call to see that family in the following few days to say sorry and to explain that the wrong information had been received. This has to do with the dignity of the family and of young people. Young people become easy prey to paramilitaries. Over the years, I have found that such situations, in which there is inevitable confrontation with the security forces, only lead to young people joining the IRA or the UDA. I am sure that the House will agree that that is what the paramilitary organisations want. They want confrontation with the security forces. That is the history of terrorist organisations around the world. It is important that the Government and those in charge of the security forces should be aware of that.
  I totally support the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh about the intimidation of solicitors, but I would like to add one point that is a wee bit opposite to it. We all want law and order in Northern Ireland and we want the paramilitaries off our backs. However, as I have said many times over the years, it is unfortunate that the great legal profession in Northern Ireland, for which I have tremendous admiration—the Incorporated Law Society of Northern Ireland representing the solicitors and the Bar Association of Northern Ireland representing the barristers—has never on one occasion that I can recall over the past 20 or 25 years pointed to the harassment or to the beatings that have taken place in Castlereagh. Those organisations have never acknowledged it in any public way—it would have come out in various court cases—which I deeply regret.
  I fully understand the great difficulties that the police have and it is fair to say that the people on the ground, including those in west Belfast, will support the police as long as they are seen to be supporting the people on the ground.
  11.2 pm
  Mr. Harry Barnes: I have attended many debates on Northern Ireland over the past six years—probably as many as any other Back-Bench Member. In that time, I do not think that I have ever heard as impassioned a speech as that made by the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Rev. William McCrea). I have come to appreciate the problems faced by the Protestant community in Northern Ireland and the violence that is directed towards it. However, there was a very meaningful moment in the hon. Gentleman's speech when the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Dr. Hendron) intervened—a moment to which the hon. Member for Belfast, West referred. He asked the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster to respond in a similar way to the activities of the UFF and the UVF as to those of the IRA. We did not hear such a response.
  Although I expect members of the Ulster Unionist parties to stress IRA violence and members of the SDLP to stress the violence of the UFF and UVF, I also expect all hon. Members to stress in their speeches that they condemn all the violence equally. I hope that our attitude is that we are opposed to violence from any avenue—from any sectarian force or any force involved in the state—and that we must seek to stop it together. That is more important

  299
  than the measure that we are discussing or where we stand in relation to the prevention of terrorism provisions and their extension, whether we are for or against them. Arguments can be made for either case, but, whatever our attitude to the provisions, we should condemn utterly the people involved in violent and sectarian activity, from whichever side it comes. I hope that the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster will do just that so that the passion that he expressed in cases relevant to his own community becomes more broadly based. I would also ask representatives of the SDLP to do likewise.
  11.4 pm
  Mr. Roger Stott: I have listened to almost the entire debate, except when I made a brief visit to the toilet. I listened in particular to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), whom I have known for many years and whom I respect. I hope that on reflection, in the cool of the morning, he will feel it necessary to withdraw or at least to amend some of his comments which, I believe, were directed either at the Social Democratic and Labour party or at myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). I shall deal with that matter in a moment.
  I wish that we did not have to renew the prevention of terrorism Act and the emergency provisions year after year. I look around the Chamber and I think that, apart from the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), only my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North and I were in the House 21 years ago when the legislation was passed.
  Sir Gerard Vaughan: Nonsense.
  Mr. Stott: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. Let us say that not many of us were here at that time. In any event, we have witnessed the renewal ever since.
  I have listened carefully to the speeches made in the debate and, as is now traditional, we heard the Government recite their standard justification for the emergency powers, despite the fact that the legislation has patently failed to suppress terrorist activity in Northern Ireland.
  The hon. Member for Spelthorne in particular implied that the Labour party's opposition to the renewal of the provisions was evidence that we are soft on terrorism. That is a gross misrepresentation of the truth, and I refute it. It is fair to say that all parties and all hon. Members are opposed to paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. The very nature of the campaign to seek political ends through violence must be abhorrent to any democrats. To suggest that the Labour party in any way condones unspeakable acts of violence is to make a cheap political point of an issue that is too important to be reduced to such a level.
  The Labour party is united in condemnation of all acts of terrorism, from whatever quarter they come. We do not disagree with the Government that terrorists need to be defeated and brought to justice, but we disagree on the method by which that objective is achieved. That is perfectly legitimate. Conservatives may not approve, but surely they cannot deny that we have a right to examine what the Government are proposing.
  Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North, I support and commend the work of the security services, the judiciary and the prison service,
  300
  representatives of all of whom my hon. Friend and I have met and will continue to meet. They deserve our support for doing their job in a dangerous and stressful environment.
  In a democracy, the duty of the Government is to protect the civil rights of their citizens. If those rights are to be infringed or suspended, there must be overriding and compelling cause.
  We accept that there may be a need for emergency powers to counteract the terrorist threat in Northern Ireland. However, we believe that the powers in the emergency provisions Acts weaken the core principles on which civilised society is based. That in itself is of assistance to the terrorists in their evil campaign of violence.
  Regrettably, we must continue to oppose the legislation while the power of internment remains on the statute book. In spite of what the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) said in his thoughtful contribution, the power of the Executive to imprison without charge or trial is an affront to democratic principles. It places the Executive above the rule of law, and undermines the criminal justice system—the very system that the terrorists are waging a campaign to defeat.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North outlined in detail why the Labour party favours the introduction of video and audio taping of interrogations in the holding centres. As the Government's own adviser has now argued, mechanisms can be established to limit the disclosure of such tapes so as to protect both the detainee and any sensitive information. The introduction of those safeguards in the holding centres would protect the security services from false allegations by detainees, and would immeasurably improve community relations. The safeguard of audio taping terrorist suspects is already in place here in Great Britain, and the Government have still failed to provide a reasonable justification for their refusal to introduce similar safeguards in Northern Ireland.
  After listening to the contributions to the debate, and having further considered the report by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, I tell the House that if the Government again refuse to introduce audio and video recordings, suspicion in Northern Ireland will be compounded. That is all the more important because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) has already explained, regrettably the security forces do not have the support of the whole community in Northern Ireland. In order to build up trust and confidence in the forces of law and order and in the judiciary, justice must not only be seen to be done but be seen inevitably to be done.
  The is why the Labour party believes that mechanisms to hold members of the security services properly accountable, too, are vital. No one must appear to be above the law. We support the calls by the Independent Commission for Police Complaints for its powers of investigation to be strengthened, to enforce its credibility and effectiveness. Clearly, as has already been said, the reason why so few complaints are upheld against the police and the Army needs to be further investigated. Reforms such as those advocated by David Hewitt and the Independent Commission for Police Complaints need to be considered as a matter of urgency by the Secretary of State.
  The Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973 was passed quickly through Parliament 21 years ago as a temporary measure in extreme circumstances. The very fact that it is still on the statute book is damning evidence

  301
  of the ineffectiveness of the powers within it. I can tell the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell), who challenged my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North a little earlier, that the Labour party has for some time been calling on the Government to join us in developing a more coherent and effective counter-terrorist policy, with due regard to the basic civil rights of the citizens of this country. Thus far, the Government have refused to countenance such a review.
  Rightly, the Downing street joint declaration has been mentioned. It is my view and that of my party—certainly it was the view of my late lamented leader, John Smith —that the declaration is to be welcomed. Indeed, it is the only game in town as a starter for the peace process. It is regrettable that Sinn Fein has not responded more positively to the clarified Downing street declaration.
  It is also regrettable that the DUP and its leader have made this an issue in the European elections. The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) is stomping around the Province saying that a vote for him is a vote against the joint declaration. On television, when he left Downing street he said that he would be back on 10 June with a mandate from the people of Northern Ireland because he is standing in the election against the Downing street declaration. He is making it an issue.
  Mr. John D. Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Stott: No, I will not give way; I do not have time.
  If that is the attitude of the hon. Member for Antrim, North, I suggest that he look at page 24 of the Labour party European election manifesto where we clearly state our support for the Government's join declaration. Every Labour candidate who stands in the election will be standing on the manifesto. Labour candidates in the rest of the United Kingdom will get millions of votes for standing on our manifesto which expressly supports the joint statement.
  Mr. John D. Taylor: How many votes in Northern Ireland?
  Mr. Stott: At the previous election, the leader of the DUP polled 160,110 votes; the Labour candidates polled 6 million votes. We will probably do even better than that; we will probably get up to 8 million votes. If the DUP wants a referendum on the joint statement, the Labour party will give them one.
  Mr. Peter Robinson: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many votes the Labour party got in Northern Ireland in the last election? Does the issue of consent mean anything? Is the Labour party looking for the consent of the people of Northern Ireland? How much consent will his party get in Northern Ireland at the election?
  Mr. Stott: The hon. Gentleman knows that the British Labour party does not organise in Northern Ireland, and he knows the reasons why we do not do so. The hon. Gentleman and his party cannot have it both ways. He claims his loyalty and his Britishness. The British people will have their say on 9 June, and they will vote for candidates who support the joint declaration. [Interruption.] That certainly livened up the debate.
  For the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North and I have given, it is
  302
  regrettable—I say this sincerely—that we cannot find a consensus in the House on these issues, and therefore we will reluctantly vote against the order tonight.
  11.17 pm
  The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Sir John Wheeler): I shall forgo the pleasure of a discourse about the relative merits of the manifestos for the forthcoming European elections and concentrate on the provisions before the House.
  Tonight, the House has had an opportunity to give its full and open consideration to the powers in place to continue the fight against terrorists from both sides in Northern Ireland. I agree with the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) and other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate that, sadly, these powers remain necessary. They will be used resolutely for so long, but only so long, as terrorism persists. They are kept under review and are subject to the annual review process, which we have been debating tonight.
  This year, our debate has been informed by the published reports of three independent and eminent figures. All three are welcome and objective reports. They will be studied with care. That such reports are available is a testament to the Government's determination that our security policy and its implementation should be as open as possible.
  It is essential that those not involved in pursuing their aims by killing people should have nothing to fear. It is important that they should have confidence in the processes involved in defeating terrorism.
  The nine Back-Bench Members who have spoken this evening raised many valuable points and I shall seek to touch on as many as I can in my remaining time. I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Wigan for the joint declaration. At least there is unity in the House about the overwhelming desire for peace in Northern Ireland and an end to the killing.
  The hon Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), raised the question of codes of practice. I remind him that statutory codes of practice dealing with civil and criminal proceedings governing the detention, treatment, questioning and identification of terrorist suspects in police custody came into effect on 1 January this year.
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has also decided to introduce, under sections 61 and 62, a code of practice to cover the police and armed forces' powers of stop, search and seizure under part II of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991. A draft code is in preparation.
  The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North gave as his chief reason for urging that the Opposition should vote against annual renewal the fact that he opposed the continued part played by detention in the 1991 Act. The making of this order has no effect on its availability, which can continue to be activated by separate order unless and until principal legislation removes it from the Act. To justify opposing this order by saying that Opposition Members are against detention is disingenuous nonsense and simply does not wash. When the time comes, I am sure that hon. Members will be clear about that and will have no difficulty in supporting the order.
  The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North also referred to video recording of people interviewed in the

  303
  holding centres. It is not a question of what the Chief Constable wants. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and I have to make very careful judgments. We have to weigh up all the issues. On some occasions, we disagree with what the Chief Constable wants. Earlier tonight, my right hon. and learned Friend announced that some of the Chief Constable's proposals for the review of the law were not acceptable and gave reasons.
  On the question of people detained for interview in holding centres, my right hon. and learned Friend and I are convinced that for the time being—we keep the matter under review—there would be grave repercussions for the fight against terrorism if tapes of any kind were to find their way into the legal system. Those in custody would know it and would be fearful of the consequences of disobeying the instructions of their terrorist organisations not to co-operate with the police. That important consideration must weigh heavily with the House.
  We have heard from many hon. Members about the horror and evil of terrorism in Northern Ireland and the indiscriminate killing there. It would be a serious error of judgment were we to disregard the level of that violence and the advice which the Chief Constable gives to my right hon. and learned Friend as his principal security adviser.
  Mr. McNamara: What is different in principle between audio recordings in Paddington Green police station and those in Castlereagh police station for people accused of terrorist offences?
  Sir John Wheeler: I can help the hon. Gentleman with that. I am glad to learn that he has visited Castlereagh holding centre. It is important that hon. Members who are concerned with the issues should be able to see for themselves what goes on in that centre. There is no mystery about the operation of that centre or about the work of the RUC.
  I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has not yet had the time to visit Paddington Green police station in my constituency—which I do regularly—and discuss that very point with the police officers responsible for that establishment. The two police stations deal with totally different terrorist situations. People in Great Britain are not being murdered by terrorist gangs because of the information which they give to police. People in Northern Ireland are liable to be murdered by terrorist gangs.
  That it is the principal reason why, for the time being, the advice that my right hon. and learned Friend and I are resolved to accept is that we should continue with the present arrangements for the safety of the people who are subject to that interview process.
  Mr. Trimble: I wish merely to remind the right hon. Gentleman that he has only two minutes left. I posed a very important question to him concerning the interpretation of paragraph 10 of the joint declaration which he must deal with.
  Sir John Wheeler: The hon. Gentleman did indeed raise that very important question which I shall come to at once in view of the time. I can confirm that for our part we stand by paragraph 10 of the joint declaration which calls for
  304
  "a permanent end to the use of, or support for, paramilitary violence. They"—
  that is, the British and Irish Governments—
  "confirm that, in these circumstances, democratically mandated parties which establish a commitment to exclusively peaceful methods and which have shown that they abide by the democratic process are free to participate fully in democratic politics and to join in dialogue in due course between the Governments and the political parties on the way ahead."
  I confirm to the hon. Gentleman the point which he seeks.
  Mr. John D. Taylor: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir John Wheeler: I shall not give way now. The terrorists are—
  Mr. John D. Taylor rose—
  Sir John Wheeler: I shall not give way, as I have but a minute left.
  The terrorists are a small and unrepresentative minority of the people in Northern Ireland. They are abhorred by the overwhelming majority, both within Northern Ireland and further afield. They have nothing to say. They will not win. It is our duty, and one which we will not shirk in the defeat of terrorism—
  It being three hours after the motion was entered upon, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to order [19 May]:—
  The House divided: Ayes 257, Noes 154.

  Division No. 258]

  [11.28 pm

  AYES

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Carrington, Matthew

  Alexander, Richard

  Carttiss, Michael

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Cash, William

  Allason, Rupert (Tortay)

  Clappison, James

  Alton, David

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Amess, David

  Coe, Sebastian

  Ancram, Michael

  Colvin, Michael

  Arbuthnot, James

  Congdon, David

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Conway, Derek

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Ashby, David

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Atkins, Robert

  Couchman, James

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Cran, James

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Baldry, Tony

  Day, Stephen

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Devlin, Tim

  Batiste, Spencer

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Beggs, Roy

  Dover, Den

  Bellingham, Henry

  Duncan, Alan

  Bendall, Vivian

  Duncan-Smith, Iain

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Dunn, Bob

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Elletson, Harold

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Booth, Hartley

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Boswell, Tim

  Faber, David

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Fabricant, Michael

  Bowden, Andrew

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Bowis, John

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Brazier, Julian

  Forman, Nigel

  Bright, Graham

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Forth, Eric

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  Burns, Simon

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  Burt, Alistair

  Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

  Butler, Peter

  French, Douglas

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Gale, Roger

  Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

  Gallie, Phil

  305

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Mawhinney, Rt Hon Dr Brian

  Garnier, Edward

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Merchant, Piers

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Mills, Iain

  Gorst, John

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Hague, William

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Hargreaves, Andrew

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Harris, David

  Norris, Steve

  Hawkins, Nick

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Hawksley, Warren

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hayes, Jerry

  Paice, James

  Heald, Oliver

  Patnick, Irvine

  Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Pawsey, James

  Hendry, Charles

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Horam, John

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

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

  Rendel, David

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Richards, Rod

  Hughes Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Riddick, Graham

  Hunt, Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'd'n S)

  Hunter, Andrew

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Jack, Michael

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Ross, William (E Londonderry)

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Rowe, Andrew (Mid Kent)

  Jessel, Toby

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Sackville, Tom

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Jones, Robert B. (W Hertfdshr)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Kennedy, Charles (Ross,C&S)

  Sims, Roger

  Key, Robert

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Kilfedder, Sir James

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  Knapman, Roger

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Spink, Dr Robert

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Spring, Richard

  Knox, Sir David

  Sproat, Iain

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Steen, Anthony

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Stephen, Michael

  Legg, Barry

  Streeter, Gary

  Leigh, Edward

  Sweeney, Walter

  Lennox-Boyd, Mark

  Sykes, John

  Lightbown, David

  Taylor, Rt Hon John D. (Strgfd)

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Peter (Fareham)

  Taylor, John M. (Solihull)

  Lord, Michael

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Luff, Peter

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  Thomason, Roy

  McCrea, Rev William

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  MacKay, Andrew

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Maclean, David

  Thurnham, Peter

  Maclennan, Robert

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  McLoughlin, Patrick

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

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Tredinnick, David

  Maddock, Mrs Diana

  Trend, Michael

  Maginnis, Ken

  Trimble, David

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Trotter, Neville

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Malone, Gerald

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Mans, Keith

  Viggers, Peter

  Marland, Paul

  Walden, George

  Marlow, Tony

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Wallace, James

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Waller, Gary

  Mates, Michael

  Ward, John

  306

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Wolfson, Mark

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Wood, Timothy

  Whitney, Ray

  Yeo, Tim

  Whittingdale, John

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Wilkinson, John

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Wilshire, David

  Mr. Sydney Chapman and

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Mr. Bowen Wells.

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'fld)

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Hanson, David

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Hardy, Peter

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov?try NE)

  Hendron, Dr Joe

  Allen, Graham

  Heppell, John

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Hinchliffe, David

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Home Robertson, John

  Barnes, Harry

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Barron, Kevin

  Hoyle, Doug

  Battle, John

  Hutton, John

  Bayley, Hugh

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  Jamieson, David

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Bennett, Andrew F.

  Jowell, Tessa

  Benton, Joe

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil (Islwyn)

  Berry, Roger

  Lewis, Terry

  Betts, Clive

  Livingstone, Ken

  Blunkett, David

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Boateng, Paul

  Loyden, Eddie

  Boyes, Roland

  McAllion, John

  Bradley, Keith

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  McCartney, Ian

  Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

  Macdonald, Calum

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

  McFall, John

  Burden, Richard

  McGrady, Eddie

  Byers, Stephen

  McKelvey, William

  Callaghan, Jim

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  McMaster, Gordon

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  McNamara, Kevin

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  McWilliam, John

  Clapham, Michael

  Madden, Max

  Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

  Mahon, Alice

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Mallon, Seamus

  Clelland, David

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Michael, Alun

  Cohen, Harry

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Milburn, Alan

  Corbett, Robin

  Miller, Andrew

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Corston, Ms Jean

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Morley, Elliot

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Mullin, Chris

  Dalyell, Tam

  Murphy, Paul

  Davidson, Ian

  O'Brien, Michael (N W'kshire)

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  O'Brien, William (Normanton)

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

  O'Hara, Edward

  Dewar, Donald

  Olner, William

  Dixon, Don

  O'Neill, Martin

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Parry, Robert

  Dowd, Jim

  Patchett, Terry

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Pickthall, Colin

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Pike, Peter L.

  Enright, Derek

  Pope, Greg

  Etherington, Bill

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lew'm E)

  Foulkes, George

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Galbraith, Sam

  Purchase, Ken

  Galloway, George

  Raynsford, Nick

  Gerrard, Neil

  Reid, Dr John

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  Godsiff, Roger

  Roche, Mrs. Barbara

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Gordon, Mildred

  Ruddock, Joan

  Graham, Thomas

  Sheerman, Barry

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Simpson, Alan

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Hall, Mike

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  307

  Soley, Clive

  Winnick, David

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Wise, Audrey

  Stevenson, George

  Worthington, Tony

  Stott, Roger

  Wray, Jimmy

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Wright, Dr Tony

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Wareing, Robert N

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Watson, Mike

  Mr. Eric Illsley and

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Mr. Alan Meale.

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the draft Northern Ireland (Emergency and Prevention of Terrorism Provisions) (Continuance) Order 1994, which was laid before this House on 20th April, be approved.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (European Standing Committees).
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

  MILK QUOTAS (ITALY)
  That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 6428/94, relating to the application of the milk quota scheme in Italy; and endorses the line that the Government is taking in challenging the proposal that Italy should receive its additional milk quota in full for 1994–95.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
  Question agreed to.

Statutory Instruments, &c
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.) and Order [10 May].
Statutory Instruments, &c

  METROPOLITAN RAILWAY GRANT
  That the Special Grant Report (Metropolitan Railway Grant) (House of Commons Paper No. 370), which was laid before this House on 6th May, be approved.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
  Question agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to
  Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  HOUSING MANAGEMENT
  That the draft Local Government Act 1988 (Competition) (Defined Activities) (Housing Management) Order 1994, which was laid before this House on 10th May, be approved.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
  Question agreed to.

INFORMATION
Ordered,
That Mr. Harold Elletson be discharged from the Information Committee and Mr. Rod Richards be added to the Committee. —[Mr. MacKay, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

Rwanda
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
11.42 pm
Mr. Tony Worthington: Before the House adjourns, I wish to discuss the Government's policy on Rwanda, where we are confronted with a human tragedy on an unbelievable scale.
A few weeks ago, it would not have seemed possible for the world to throw up something worse than Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia or Angola, but it has. The scale of the slaughter in Rwanda is now reputed to be of about 500,000 people. Many hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's citizens have taken refuge in Tanzania and Burundi and other countries that are among the poorest in the world. The Red Cross has described it as the largest single movement of refugees in the history of the Red Cross. Five hundred thousand people is the equivalent of the deaths of all the people in Greater Edinburgh. In terms of the much greater population of Britain, it is the equivalent of 4 million people dying and 16 million becoming refugees or being displaced. Can one imagine tragedy on such a scale in Britain? Moreover, there is no sign that the violence is at an end, and there are major fears that Burundi, which has exactly the same tensions, will explode again. After all, just a few weeks ago Burundi was the major source of our fears about those two desperately poor and unhappy countries.
I intend to be very critical of other people, but it is right that Members of Parliament should start by criticising themselves. An unbelievable atrocity has been going on for months; yet this is our first opportunity to debate it. There has been no Government statement, and as yet the House as a whole has displayed very little interest, despite the fact that Rwanda dwarfs Bosnia in terms of casualties. At the tail end of a parliamentary day, in the minor event of an Adjournment debate, we are able to discuss the issue only because of my luck in a raffle. The luck of the draw determines whether an atrocity in which half a million people have died is debated in the House. We must look at our procedures and attitudes.
We must also admit with shame the racism that is involved. It is inconceivable that an atrocity in which half a million white people had died would not have been extensively debated in the House. In the press there has been a terrible tendency to dismiss these tragic events as just tribalism, with "What can you expect from Africans?" as the subtext. By calling this tribalism, we are, in effect, blaming all the people of Rwanda, whereas it is clear that it is vicious political violence led by the Rwandan Government or their agents. We justify our inaction by pretending that all the people of Rwanda are to blame. Even the United Nations reports that reliable indications are that the killing was started by unruly members of the presidential guard. Tribalism is not a black man's invention. The holocaust was European. Bosnia is tribal, and the Balkans is a powder keg for that reason. South Africa has just emerged from domination by a white tribe. To say, as some have said, that the United Nations should pull out because we cannot understand African tribalism is to invent a cosy excuse for ourselves.
Much of the seeming tribalism of Africa has its roots in European exploitation, which used ethnic groups such as the Asians or, as in Rwanda, the Tutsis as an elite.

309
Genocide is certainly involved, but the wellspring for it is the lust for political power. If that means wiping out Hutus as well as Tutsis, it is done. The country's Prime Minister and other members of its Government were slaughtered by this element in the presidential guard. We should not see the slaughter in Rwanda as primitive tribalism. It is politics —brutal politics practised overwhelmingly by one side.
There is much evidence that the slaughter by the Rwanda Government was premeditated to obliterate their political opponents, whether Tutsis or Hutus. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), I attended a House of Commons meeting at which the organisation Africa Rights presented to a large gathering its analysis of physical liquidation of the political opposition to the dead President and the present, self-declared interim Government and the genocide against the Tutsi people as a carefully planned strategy designed in advance. No one in the room dissented from that analysis. Do the Government agree that the so-called Rwandan Government are overwhelmingly to blame?
We must not take refuge just in discussing aid—justifying our actions, or inaction, by saying how much aid we are giving, commendable though that may be. This is politics, and it is foreign policy which is involved. What are we doing in our foreign policy to prevent fiascos of this kind and to bring under control those that do occur? We have to condemn the members of the United Nations Security Council for inactivity and ineptitude. As a member of the Security Council, the United Kingdom must take its fair share of the blame. Just why did we back the decision virtually to pull the United Nations out on 21 April? What an encouragement that must have been to the butchers. The world watched horrified, and it took until 16 May for the decision to be reversed. What was our position on that? We know that New Zealand and Nigeria were active in reversing the decision, but what were we doing? Why have the Government not sought to make a statement in the House on this enormous issue? Why did we authorise the withdrawal of the United Nations instead of augmenting the forces? We must have on our conscience the killing of citizens who would have been saved had the UN presence been augmented.
We must also condemn the United States for its strange behaviour in stopping the rapid deployment of troops once the UN Security Council had decided that up to 5,500 troops had to go in. We are suffering badly because of the American miscalculation in Somalia—thousands are now dying because of that procrastination. I hope that the Minister will say when he expects the troops to be deployed. The UN took the decision that those troops were to be deployed. When will they be deployed and from which countries will they come? Did we support the United States in that delay and, if so, why? Is it not realised just how much the authority ,of the United States is undermined when a UN resolution is passed and then held up by the United States and others?
We must also be critical of the French for their reported role in arming the Rwanda Government, alongside—it is reported—the Egyptians and the South Africans. When they armed the Rwanda Government, they must have known that they were a genocidal Government who would use the arms on their own people. What representations have we made to the French about that, or do we have to shut up because of our own dependence on arms sales?
Above all, we must condemn the Rwanda Government who—obscenely, at present—sit on the UN Security
310
Council. Why is a self-proclaimed Government, who are without authority and are committing genocide, allowed to remain part of the highest authority in the world? Why are they not condemned? What action are the Government and the world taking to express their outrage at the acts of the Rwanda Government, their army and their appalling militias? Why are we being so polite to such killers?
In a parliamentary answer to me, the Minister said that the Foreign Affairs Council appealed to all parties to bring an end to the genocide. He used the word "genocide" and it is admitted that it is genocide, but why does the UN resolution pull back from saying "genocide"? The UN convention on genocide was declared because we were never going to stand aside again: in 1948, the charter on genocide said that we would never stand aside again while genocide occurred. Now we do not even have the courage to use the word in a UN resolution.
Some of what we must do has to be long term. There have been too many UN fiascos like this one. But when we refer to UN fiascos, we must face the fact that a UN fiasco is our fiasco. We cause the UN to be inept. When will we face up to the fact that the UN charter, which states that we can act only through the Government of a country, can be an obstacle to stopping slaughter? Surely there have to be occasions when the UN must act first because the cause of the problem is the Government of the country or, as in Somalia, the lack of a Government. When are we going to give the UN Secretary-General powers to act and, if necessary, justify himself later? We cannot deal with wars or famines through committees that meet occasionally. I gather that the UN Security Council will meet to review Rwanda again not later than 20 June. That is a ludicrous way of conducting business and it helps only those who are carrying out ethnic cleansing. We must also look at the framework of the UN charter.
There seems to be general agreement that the Rwanda Government, and their army and militia, are overwhelmingly responsible for initiating and perpetuating the atrocities. Yet there seems to be some kind of belief that the UN has to be even handed in this matter. Why? We must find a way to give the United Nations Secretary-General his own rapid response force for such situations, so that problems can be nipped in the bud or at least contained —a force of people whose loyalty is to the United Nations, who know the conditions under which they join and who could be deployed instantly and face the risks associated with such a task. The business of touting round the world for troops and then having all the problems associated with incoherent command structures is not good enough. We now need to know the time scale for the deployment of troops.
Just what are we saying at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights emergency meeting which is being held today to debate Rwanda? Is there a Minister there to show the seriousness with which we regard the issue? Are we threatening to activate the 1948 convention on genocide? Has it ever been activated? We are signatories to it. In the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, we affirm that genocide is a crime under international law which we undertake to prevent and to punish. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the Rwandan Government intend to destroy the Tutsis and any of their political opponents. Has there ever been a clearer example of genocide? What is the point of these conventions if we do not take them seriously?

311
Surely events in Rwanda have convinced us that there has to be an international court of criminal justice. The people who set this madness loose have to be brought to trial. At the UN Commission on Human Rights, we need to appoint special rapporteurs as the dimensions of this horror need to be fully documented. The presence of international observers and speedy deployments of civilian police monitors will save lives and document human rights abuses.
I have not so far mentioned aid because I do not want the Government to take refuge in pretending that the world's response has to be limited to aid. I would be the first to mention, however, the wonderful efforts of the Red Cross and all the relief organisations that have acted swiftly and heroically. I mention in particular the 29 Red Cross people left in Rwanda, 10 more living in border areas and the two from Médecins Sans Frontières in France who were left in Rwanda. Their contribution has been simply magnificent. The best tribute that we can pay them is to do our job as they have done theirs under infinitely more difficult circumstances. To mention one example, Oxfam is the lead agency in providing water to 300,000 people at the Benako camp in Tanzania. It beggars imagination how one can try to provide for the needs of 300,000 people in a place where refugees suddenly decide to settle.
The needs will be colossal for months, perhaps years. Will the Minister give us a full report on the scale of the problem and what is being done to fill the gaps in food and other pipelines such as transport, water and provision of materials for shelter? Just what will be the role of the troops in arranging for the free passage of relief supplies and how will the United Nations arrange for the safety of those working for such organisations? Is it intended that safe areas will be established throughout Rwanda and not just in the border areas?
On the preventive side, what is being done to ensure that the problem does not spread to Burundi? Just a few weeks ago, Burundi had the same problems of relationship, which were seen as the major threat. In the face of reports of systematic extrajudicial killings in Burundi, the 1994 session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights failed to appoint a special rapporteur. What is being done now? In this emergency are we going to pay more attention to what the UN specialist organisations are doing? In my analysis of these tragedies, including the ones that I visited, some organisations, such as the World Health Organisation, consistently underperform. We want to know what is being done to ensure that they perform in the way that the non-governmental organisations perform.
In the long term, we must also look at the underlying causes. The number one underlying cause in this case is that Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, is grindingly poor. I want to hear from the Government about Britain's position in these African tragedies. Why do we seem to be so silent? Just how do we justify our permanent seat on the Security Council when we have so little to contribute in the continent where we were the dominant European power? I look forward to the Minister's reply.
12 midnight
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd): The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) has brought to the attention of the House a matter of great tragedy, and I am pleased to respond this evening to give an indication—I hope that it is a full one—of the Government's position.
All of us share the horror felt around the world at the appalling events in Rwanda in recent weeks. The images of mass killing, butchery, hopelessness and despair go to every heart. The reaction of decent men and women everywhere is that the United Nations should do something —anything—to protect the innocent caught up in the spiral of violence in Rwanda. All of us share the anger and frustration of seeing such things take place without being able to take effective action to step in and bring them to an immediate end. The fighting and the killings are continuing.
The Government's policy is to support all efforts to bring an end to the conflict and to the atrocities, and to give all the help that we can to the humanitarian relief effort. We are playing our full part in the efforts of the international community to achieve those ends.
Mr. Worthington rose—
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I shall move fast to try to cover most of the hon. Gentleman's points.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda —UNAMIR—was established by a Security Council resolution in October 1993 at the requests of both the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front to monitor the Arusha agreement, which had been signed in August of that year.
Given the political will for peace in Rwanda, the Security Council agreed that a United Nations peacekeeping force should be deployed. There was, at that time, a measure of hope and optimism. The peacekeeping force, therefore, had a clear, carefully defined mandate; it had precise objectives and a timetable of two years, after which time democratic elections would have placed Rwanda firmly on the path to peace and, it was hoped, prosperity. Most important, the force also had the consent of both parties.
The United Nations was asked, and was able to respond to the call, to go to Rwanda because of its greatest asset —its impartiality. It was accepted by both sides and, indeed, was invited in because it was neutral. The experience of Somalia shows how rapidly the United Nations can get sucked into a war once it appears prepared to compromise on that point of impartiality. Its recognised impartiality has enabled the UN to help end conflicts in El Salvador, Cambodia, Namibia and Mozambique. I cannot emphasise too strongly the need for the consent of the leaders of the parties to a conflict for the United Nations to operate successfully.
As we know all too well, the disaster that befell Rwanda in early April made it impossible for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda to fulfil its mandate. Instead of disarming soldiers from each side in preparation for elections, the UN troops in Kigali and the surrounding areas, who were, of course, only lightly armed, suddenly found themselves in the crossfire of a bloody war. Some of them found that they had become targets, as they witnessed

313
the abduction and killing of 11 of their Belgian counterparts, and four Ghanaian solders have since been killed.
The Security Council was therefore faced with a very difficult decision: UNAMIR no longer enjoyed the consent of the parties to do what it was sent to Rwanda to do. It was not equipped to enforce a peace. That would have required resources that were simply not available. Nor, of course, would it have been responsible for UNAMIR to withdraw altogether.
On 21 April, the Security Council agreed unanimously to maintain a presence of 270 UNAMIR troops and to give it a mandate to concentrate on helping to negotiate a ceasefire, to assist to the extent feasible with the humanitarian relief and to monitor the situation generally. That reduced presence was the maximum that could enjoy consent on the ground.
However, the Security Council continued to follow the situation closely, and the United Kingdom was at the forefront of those insisting that the United Nations should remain engaged to the maximum extent feasible. Our representative at the UN argued strongly that withdrawal would be totally irresponsible. We supported the further decision increasing the authorised strength of UNAMIR to 5,500 and giving it an additional mandate to support and protect civilians at risk and provide security for humanitarian operations inside the country.
It is, however, essential that further deployments are properly planned and executed. As a first step, more than 100 UNAMIR observers now in Nairobi will return to Kigali; the Ghanaian mechanised battalion will also be brought up to strength—800 men. The Secretary-General will report as soon as possible on the next phase of UNAMIR's deployment, taking account of the cooperation of the parties, progress towards a ceasefire and the availability of resources.
I must emphasise that there is no question of UNAMIR's providing an interposition force in the civil war without a full ceasefire between the parties. UNAMIR's task will be to provide a protective presence for civilians caught up in the horrific atrocities. That will require the consent of the opposing factions. The Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping arrived in Rwanda today in an effort to achieve that consent.
The hon. Gentleman asked me which side the Government considered to be most to blame for the atrocities. Rwanda has had a tragic history of ethnic-political violence since its independence. Both the Hutu and the Tutsi have been guilty of ethnic violence in the past. In the current conflict, it appears that the worst atrocities have occurred in the areas controlled by forces of the interim Government, although there have also been reports of killings in Rwanda Patriotic Front areas. It is essential that all in a position to do so take immediate, effective action to halt the killings: we have made that clear to all the parties.
When asking me to apportion blame, the hon. Gentleman must bear in mind the fact that, whatever our personal views, the UN must operate with the consent of the opposing factions. That is less achievable if blame is apportioned by the Government or the UN. It is not a question of being even handed.
In parallel with the deployment of the UN forces, there are political developments. The UN, the Organisation of African Unity and the regional governments have been trying to bring about a ceasefire and relaunch peace
314
negotiations. Those efforts have so far been unsuccessful, but we and our partners in the European Union support all efforts to bring the two parties back to the negotiating table. The Foreign Ministers of the European Union issued a declaration on 16 May expressing their support, and my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister for Overseas Development has written to President Museveni of Uganda and President Mwinyi of Tanzania to express the British Government's appreciation of their efforts. We urge all parties to return to the Arusha agreement of August last year, which still offers the best available basis for national reconciliation.
Although I wish to deal with the political aspect, I must say a word about humanitarian relief. Since the start of the emergency, we have committed more than £4.5 million bilaterally in emergency aid. Initially, we gave support to those fleeing the violence by granting funds, through the British non-governmental organisations Action Aid, CARE and Oxfam, to pre-position relief items in the region and provide medical assistance. Then, following the massive influx of refugees into northern Tanzania at the end of April, we acted very quickly to provide further assistance for those in need, funding two British Red Cross relief flights and a further flight consigning technical equipment and personnel to set up an airbridge in Mwanza to facilitate an increased UNHCR airlift operation. We are continuing to support that effort, and have since provided more equipment and personnel to maintain the operation and ensure its continuing effectiveness. Last week, we agreed to help UNHCR by obtaining, in Britain, a Bailey bridge, which is urgently required close to the Benako refugee camp in northern Tanzania, where the largest number of refugees is located. That will speed up the relief effort. As I said at Question Time yesterday, we have provided the Save the Children Fund with support for its work with the Lutheran World Service in Uganda to collect and bury the bodies that have appeared around the north-west shores of Lake Victoria.
The hon. Gentleman asked me to comment on any possible gaps in the aid pipeline. We are informed that, despite major logistical problems, the world food programme is maintaining basic food supplies into all the refugee camps, which, as at mid-May, contain 322,000 refugees. In addition, it has been moving supplies into north and south Rwanda for another 200,000 refugees and displaced people. That has been achieved by a combination of local purchasing, borrowing from existing emergency operations and by taking advantage of the very generous gesture by the Government of Tanzania, taxed as they are with their own internal drought problems, to advance 5,600 tonnes of maize from their reserves. I am also glad to say that the Overseas Development Administration has agreed to provide United Kingdom-made grinding mills to produce maize flour in support of that, which will be flown to Tanzania very shortly.
This week, an ODA humanitarian assessment mission is visiting the region. It will assess the impact of the emergency aid that we and others have provided and it will determine priorities for future support. It will be reporting back on Friday. Rwanda, especially, is likely to need external help to cope with the longer-term aftermath of the dreadful crisis. When that stage is reached, we shall review the situation with our European Union partners and other donors. A European Union ministerial troika mission to assess requirements is being planned. The priority must be to alleviate the immediate suffering. I hope that the

315
political and humanitarian measures that I have described will provide a practical demonstration of the Government's commitment to that end.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Twelve midnight.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Lloyd Pacifico
  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how long and in what circumstances the Lloyd Pacifico has been arrested in the Port of Tilbury; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Lloyd Pacifico was arrested at Tilbury by the Admiralty marshal on 16 April 1994. The action was instituted by the Admiralty court on behalf of Reparacoes Navais Do Tejo LDA of Portugal in respect of a claim against a sister ship of the Lloyd Pacifico, the Rio Negro, for alleged unpaid costs of repairs carried out between October and December 1993 in the sum of US$677,000.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many seamen and ship's officers remain in the Port of Tilbury as a consequence of the arrest of the Lloyd Pacifico.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  Thirty officers and crew are presently aboard the Lloyd Pacifico.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what is the entitlement of seamen serving on the Lloyd Pacifico to payment of wages.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The seamen are entitled to the payment of wages. If they are not receiving them, they may make a claim against the vessel through the court. Should the vessel be sold by the Admiralty marshal, the crew will have a high priority against the proceeds of the sale. If an order for sale is made, it is usual for the crew to be repatriated.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what representations have been made to the Government of Brazil about their obligations as owners of the Lloyd Brasileiro shipping line to the creditors of that company.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Admiralty court has no knowledge of any such representations to the Brazilian Government.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department under what powers the Lloyd Brasileiro shipping line vessel, the "Lloyd Pacifico", is being detained at the port of Tilbury.

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Lloyd Pacifico is detained at the port of Tilbury under sections 20 (2) and 21 (4) (ii) of the Supreme Court Act 1981.

  Mr. Mackinlay
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what United Kingdom agencies have made contact with the seamen of the Lloyd Pacifico in order to ensure that their rights and welfare are protected.
  92
  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Admiralty marshall is in frequent contact with the vessel's agents at Tilbury on various matters including the crew's welfare. He has also met members of the crew to assure them that food and other necessary supplies would be provided for their comfort.

SCOTLAND

  Tuberculosis
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how many deaths were from tuberculosis in each year since 1988;

  (2) if he will give the number of notifications of tuberculosis in each year between 1987 and 1993.

  Mr. Stewart
  The information requested is set out in the tables.

  Deaths from Tuberculosis in Scotland

  Year

  Number

  1988

  48

  1989

  56

  1990

  39

  1991

  56

  1992

  46

  1993

  161

  1 Provisional figures.

  Notifications of Tuberculosis in Scotland

  Year

  Number

  1987

  560

  1988

  528

  1989

  533

  1990

  563

  1991

  546

  1992

  559

  1993

  1554

  1 Provisional figures.

  Mental Health Services
  Ms Rachel Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he intends to take on the recommendations of the health committee on the care of people who are seriously mentally ill.

  Mr. Stewart
  The Government are currently considering the report of the Select Committee on Health entitled "Better off in the Community? The care of people who are seriously mentally ill". The Select Committee did not address the situation in Scotland, but the Scottish Office will take its report into account in the development of policy concerning the care of the mentally ill.

  Universities (Advertising)
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list for each university the amount spent on advertising and promotion in the last year for which figures are available.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  This is a matter for each university or higher education institution to decide. The information requested is not collected or available centrally.

  "Shaping the New Councils"
  Mr. McFall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to his answer of 28 April,Official Report, column 324, what restrictions were placed by Councillor William Petrie in respect of the publication of his response to the consultative document on local government.

  Mr. Stewart
  Councillor Petrie did not submit a response to the consultation paper "Shaping the New Councils".

  Travellers
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) if he will list the interested parties he proposes to consult in relation to his review of the role, membership and functions of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Scotland's Travelling People;

  (2) if he will make a statement concerning his review of the work of the advisory committee on travellers in Scotland;

  (3) what proposals he has to provide financial assistance to bona fide travellers' organisations to provide and develop sites where local authorities or landowners have been, or are, unable to offer such facilities during the last five years; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The review of the work of the advisory committee on Scotland's travelling people, to be undertaken before the committee's three-year term of office expires at the end of 1994, is in its very early stages, and no decisions have yet been taken about external consultation. The review will include consideration of grant assistance for the provision of sites.

  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the capital budget and actual spend on the provision of grant aid for the establishment and modernisation of travellers' sites in(a) 1991–92, (b) 1992–93 and (c) 1993–94 and the estimated expenditure in the year 1994–95; and if he will make a statement.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The information requested is as follows:

  (1) Vote provision £ million

  (2) Outturn £ million

  1991–92

  2.327

  1.850

  1992–93

  2.385

  2.372

  1993–94

  2.445

  11.060

  1994–95

  2.506

  22.506

  1 Provisional

  2 Estimated outturn.

  The figures in column 1 represent the Department's best estimate in advance of each year of the value of work in progress during the year, or completed in previous years which will be subject to claims for payment by local authorities.

  The figures in column 2 represent actual claims met during the year. Claims for payment can be affected by delays in the completion of work, in the submission of claims, in audit certification, and by agreed contractual retention moneys.

  Community Care
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the role of the Mental Welfare Commission regarding community care policies for the mentally ill; and what changes he is considering in this role.

  Mr. Stewart
  [holding answer 20 May 1994]: The functions and duties of the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland are set out in part II of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984. The Act places a general duty on the commission to exercise protective functions in respect of mentally disordered people who are, or may be, incapable of adequately protecting their persons or interests. In the exercise of that duty, the commission is constantly monitoring the implementation of the community care policies as they affect individuals with a mental disorder.

TREASURY

  Inland Revenue, Wakefield
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the future of Inland Revenue offices in Wakefield.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Like the rest of the civil service the Inland Revenue has a strong commitment to achieving further significant improvements in service to the public, in operational effectiveness and in cost efficiency. To achieve these objectives the Revenue has embarked on a major programme of change. The first part of the programme is already under way and involves restructuring the Inland Revenue's local office network.

  The controller of the South Yorkshire regional executive office is considering moving work from the tax office in Wakefield to a restructured office in Barnsley. The proposal is currently being evaluated to ensure that it is cost efficient and provides a good quality service to the public.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many staff are employed by the Inland Revenue in Wakefield.

  Mr. Dorrell
  There are 72 staff employed by the Inland Revenue in Wakefield.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what estimate he has of the costs which would be incurred in transferring Inland Revenue offices out of Wakefield;

  (2) if he will make a statement on the future standard of services available for persons in Wakefield provided by the Inland Revenue.

  Mr. Dorrell
  Further detailed work is required before a decision can be made on this proposal, but preliminary estimates suggest that it offers considerable financial savings as well as the opportunity to offer a better quality service to the taxpayer.

  Agricultural Compliance Unit
  Sir Richard Body
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the number of gang masters operating in Lincolnshire in the last 12 months of which the agricultural compliance unit is aware.
  95
  Mr. Dorrell
  The Inland Revenue's agricultural compliance unit is aware of about 700 gang masters based in Lincolnshire.

  Tax Increases
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 12 May,Official Report, column 224, if he will specify the representations he has received since 1 April regarding increases in taxation.

  Mr. Dorrell
  I receive representations on many aspects of taxation. It would not be practicable to identify separately those concerned with increases in taxation.

  Public Expenditure Survey
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish the Treasury guidelines to the 1994 public expenditure survey round.

  Mr. Portillo
  [holding answer 20 May 1994]: No.

ENVIRONMENT

  European Better Environment Awards
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment which United Kingdom companies were recognised in the European better environment awards for industry awards ceremony in Copenhagen on 9 May.

  Mr. Atkins
  A winner in the eco-product category was Pilkington Glass Ltd., St. Helens. Highly recommended United Kingdom entrants were: Stanhope Properties plc, London (Good Environmental Management category); Wade Furniture Ltd., Leeds (Environmental Technology Transfer category); and BEWT (Water Engineers) Ltd., Alcester, and Ricoh UK Products Ltd., Telford (both recovery of waste category). The United Kingdom' s total of five finalists out of 18 finalists in all was the largest from any EU member state.

  Non-domestic Rating
  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many appeals were outstanding against the 1990 non-domestic rating lists on 31 March in each year since 1991.

  Mr. Gummer
  The numbers of 1990 non-domestic rating appeals outstanding with English valuation tribunals each year on 31 March were—to the nearest thousand—582,000 in 1991; 558,000 in 1992; 412,000 in 1993; and 259,000—provisional figure—in 1994. These figures take account of all appeals received in valuation tribunals since the rating lists came into force.

  Local Government Act 1992
  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received from(a) local authorities, (b) local authority associations, (c) the Audit Commission, (d) publishers of free newspapers and (e) others about the requirement in the Local Government Act 1992 to publish local authority performance indicators in a paid-for newspaper; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have received a number of representations form local government, the Audit 96
  Commission, and others, including publishers of free newspapers, that the requirement of the Local Government Act 1992 for information on local authority performance indicators to be published in a paid-for newspaper should be modified to allow publication in free newspapers. We are concerned to ensure that information about an authority's performance has the widest possible circulation in the local community, and hence we are carefully considering these representations with the view, if necessary, of seeking at a convenient opportunity amending legislation to the 1992 Act.

  Sizewell B
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what new information he has received to update paragraph 15.4 of the third-year report of "This Common Inheritance", Cm. 2549, concerning the progress made in commissioning the Sizewell B nuclear plant.

  Mr. Atkins
  Her Majesty's chief inspector of pollution and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are undertaking public consultation on whether the operation of Sizewell B is justified; that is, whether any detriment from the discharge of radioactive waste would be outweighed by the overall advantage. The consultation began on 19 May and is due to finish on 16 June.

  Radioactive Waste
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what date he has set for receipt from the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee, of its views on the options for waste substitution in the return of reprocessing radioactive waste to foreign countries of origin.

  Mr. Atkins
  I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave him on 18 January,Official Report, column 567.

  Local Government (European Conference)
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment who represented the Government at the 10th session of the conference of European Ministers responsible for local government in The Hague on 15 and 16 September 1993.

  Mr. Baldry
  My hon. Friend, the Minister for Local Government and Planning.

  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assessment he has made of the report on local referendums prepared by the steering committee on local and regional authorities for the 10th conference of European Ministers responsible for local government.

  Mr. Baldry
  My hon. Friend, the Minister for Local Government and Planning, made it clear at the conference that it is for local authorities to decide for themselves whether to hold referendums on particular issues. This remains the Government's view.

  DSS Hostels
  Mr. Allason
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) what size of hotel will be required to register as a DSS hostel under the new regulations;
  97
  (2) when he expects to publish the new regulations concerning the registration of hotels and bed-and-breakfast establishments which now accommodate DSS benefit claimants;

  (3) what criteria he will include when determining which bed-and-breakfast establishments will require registration;

  (4) which Department will be responsible for the registration of DSS hostels.

  Mr. Baldry
  As my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister indicated on 5 May,Official Report, column 843, we are considering introducing a licensing scheme for hostels. We are currently considering how such a scheme might operate, and to which properties it might apply. Any scheme will require primary legislation.

  Privatisation (Consultants)
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, pursuant to his answer of 9 May,Official Report, column 70, if he will provide such information as is available on the cost of employing consultants in connection with privatisation programmes.

  Mr. Gummer
  [holding answer 13 May 1994]: The cost of employing consultants for privatisation is available centrally for only some programmes completed prior to 1992–93 and is approximately £26 million. All but £70,000 of this expenditure was due to the privatisation of the water authorities which generated net proceeds of £3,594.4 million. The remainder has been incurred in respect of the pending Docklands light railway privatisation.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  E-mail
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will publish the E-mail address of each Government Department and agency.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  Departments and agencies who wish to receive mail in any of the electronic forms currently available are able to include details in their entries in the list of ministerial responsibilities or the civil service year book, or in their own departmental material. It is for Departments and agencies to judge whether it is valuable to them to receive correspondence in this way.

  Open Government
  Mr. David Shaw
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will develop plans to create more openness in Government by publishing Government press releases and other information on a free access electronic news or bulletin board system.

  Mr. Waldegrave
  The Central Office of Information's HERMES database of Government press releases is already available to the public via a number of on-line services. Charges for access are determined by the database hosts. I have no plans to examine the feasibility of setting up a bulletin board system for free public access. Distribution of press notices to the public is a matter for individual Government Departments.

  Government Information
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what arrangements have been made for the distribution of material publicising the code of practice on access to Government information.

  Mr. David Davis
  A leaflet has been produced explaining the operation of the code, giving a contact point for further information and mentioning the telephone inquiry service on 0345 223242.

  To coincide with the launch of the code in April, the Central Office of Information wrote to public libraries, college and university libraries, citizen's advice bureaux, independent advice centres and law centres inviting them to stock the leaflet. By 17 May there had been a very encouraging positive response rate of 15 per cent. This means that 52,500 copies of the leaflet explaining how to apply for information under the code of practice have now been distributed to some 1,300 outlets.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  D-day
  Ms Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what events his Department has itself organised to commemorate the D-day landings; what other events are included in the co-ordinated plans; and which Members of political parties have been invited to these events.

  Mr. Sproat
  In April, the Department of National Heritage arranged a launch of the popular programme of D-day commemorative events and a memorial in Grosvenor square to which members of the main Opposition parties were invited. It is organising a "Tribute to the Normandy Campaign" family day in Hyde Park on 14 August. An invitation list has not yet been drawn up, but members from the main parties will be included. There are some 700 separate events being organised by others in different parts of the country.

  Sport
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what contribution his Department is making by way of finance and expertise in the development of sports coaching, sports science and sports medicine in the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Sproat
  These activities are not supported directly by my Department but by the Sports Council, which it sponsors. I understand that the principal planned Sports Council grants in 1994–95 are as follows:

  £ million

  National Coaching Foundation

  1.5

  Sports Science

  0.7

  National Sports Medicine Institute

  0.6

  Television
  Mr. Brandreth
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what priority he intends to give to digital technology in relation to the licensing of future television services.
  99
  Mr. Brooke
  The Government will continue to look at how best to take advantage of the opportunities this technology offers. Studies are continuing into the feasibility of launching an analogue Channel 5 without prejudicing the development of digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom, and an announcement on this issue will be made before long. These studies are based on technical work which has recently become available. The relevant sentence in the "Competitiveness" White Paper is overtaken by this answer.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Proscribed Drugs
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to include(a) khat, (b) gamma hydroxybutyrate, and (c) ketamine hydro-chloride on the list of the proscribed drugs; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  We have no plans at present to schedule these substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The key criterion in the 1971 Act is whether the misuse of a substance has or is capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs considered the misuse of khat in 1988 and ketamine in 1992 against this criterion and reached the view that bringing them within the 1971 Act controls would not be appropriate.

  We are keeping the situation in respect of all three substances under review.

  Immigration Rules
  Sir Donald Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to make changes in the immigration rules.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  My right hon. and learned Friend yesterday laid before Parliament a statement of changes in the immigration rules. The new rules will come into effect on 1 October. The format of the rules has been revised to make them easier for applicants, practitioners and staff to use. The changes of policy which I announced last July, when a consultation document was published, have been incorporated, including the removal of sexually discriminatory provisions, the creation of a new category of investor, and changes in the rules relating to working holidaymakers. A statement listing and explaining all the changes is available in the Vote Office.

  Secure Training Centres
  Sir Ivan Lawrence
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now publish details of the operating specification of the proposed secure training centres for young offenders.

  Mr. Maclean
  I have today placed a copy of the operating specification and associated paper on staff selection, training, qualifications and certification in the Library of the House.

  Sex Offenders
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many convicted sex offenders who were sentenced to life imprisonment in each of the last 20 years have now been released from prison.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The information requested is in the table.

  Sex offenders sentenced to life imprisonment, received into a Prison Service establishment in England and Wales who were released on licence by 31 December 19931

  Year of reception

  2Number of sex offenders received, sentenced to life imprisonment

  Number of sex offenders released by end 1993 by year of reception

  1974

  9

  3

  1975

  9

  3

  1976

  11

  4

  1977

  11

  2

  1978

  9

  2

  1979

  8

  2

  1980

  9

  2

  1981

  10

  —

  1982

  20

  —

  1983

  12

  1

  1984

  9

  —

  1985

  11

  —

  1986

  13

  —

  1987

  21

  —

  1988

  15

  —

  1989

  21

  —

  1990

  13

  —

  1991

  17

  —

  1992

  16

  —

  1993

  16

  —

  1 Provisional figures.

  2 Of these 23 have been transferred to hospital or to a Prison Service establishment outside England and Wales and 30 have been discharged on appeal.

  Marriage of Convenience
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the definition of marriage of convenience referred to in the Immigration (European Economic Area) Order 1994.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  We regard a marriage of convenience as a sham marriage entered into solely for immigration purposes where neither partner has the intention of living permanently with the other as man and wife in a settled and genuine relationship.

  Bait-digging
  Mr. Beith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 23 March,Official Report, column 219, when he now expects to reply to Alnwick district council's representations to him of 12 March 1993 about bait-digging.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  A substantive reply was sent to the Council on 23 May, following careful consideration of the legal issues involved.

  Ballot Papers
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list those European Union countries that provide ballot papers in local, national and European elections in Braille or a similar system; and if he will make a statement.
  101
  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The information requested is not available. I shall make inquiries and write to the hon. Member.

  Turkish Workers
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what specific measures have been adopted to comply with the obligation of the United Kingdom Government under article 6(3) of decision 1/80 of the association council established in accordance with the Turkey-EC association agreement 1963 to establish under national rules the procedures relating to the rights of residence of Turkish workers in the United Kingdom; and what plans he has to include such mandatory measures in the next consolidation of the immigration rules to be laid before Parliament.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  We have no plans to change the immigration rules in this respect. We consider our procedures under them to conform with the requirements of article 6 of Association Council Decision 1/80.

  Roadside Cameras
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of moving traffic offenders detected by roadside cameras are not apprehended; and what assessment he has made of the reasons.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  The figure requested is not available. It is for the police to decide on the basis of the photographic evidence whether they wish to take action in a particular case.

  EEA Immigration Order
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the definition of vocational training under the proposed Immigration (European Economic Area) Order 1994.

  Mr. Charles Wardle
  The term vocational training is drawn from article 1 of Council Directive 93/96/EEC which refers to a student as being:"enrolled in a recognised educational establishment for the principal purpose of following a vocational training course".
  In accordance with a judgment of the European Court of Justice vocational training is interpreted very widely in this context to include all forms of higher education and any education which prepares for a qualification or provides the necessary training and skills for a profession, trade or employment even if the training programme includes an element of general education.

  Prisons (HIV/AIDS)
  Ms Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received regarding the distribution of condoms in prisons in order to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  [holding answer 23 May 1994]: Responsibilty 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 Ms Joan Ruddock, dated 24 May 1994:
  102
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your recent Question about representations concerning the distribution of condoms in prisons in order to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.
  The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended in their 1993 report on AIDS and drug misuse that condoms be made available to prisoners in order to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. The Prison Service Health Advisory Committee has now also recommended that condoms be made available for use by prisoners in England and Wales in its comments on the 1992–93 report of the Prison Service Director of Health Care. In addition, the Prison Service is considering a report from the Prison Service AIDS Advisory Committee on HIV in Prisons in which recommendations were made about condoms and cleaning materials.
  Procedural guidelines issued to prison governors in November 1991 advised that the period leading up to release is an important time for educational measures and for individual counselling of HIV infected prisoners and others with lifestyles which suggest that they themselves may be at risk or that they may be a risk to other people. The guidelines also recommended that governors introduce schemes under which all prisoners released—and perhaps those going on home leave—have discrete access to a small supply of free condoms. The Prison Service is reviewing HIV/AIDS policy generally, including the policy on the issue of condoms.

PRIME MINISTER

  Post Office Privatisation
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Prime Minister, pursuant to the answer from the President of the Board of Trade of 17 May,Official Report, column 389, if he will institute an inquiry to establish the source of the leak which disclosed the President's preferred option for Post Office privatisation.

  The Prime Minister
  We are considering whether a leak inquiry would be justified.

  Stephan Adolphus Kock
  Mr. Meacher
  To ask the Prime Minister what duties. Stephan Adolphus Kock has performed for(a) the Prime Minister, (b) the Ministry of Defence, (c) the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, (d) the Department of Trade and Industry and (e) any other Department between 1964 and 1979; and in which countries overseas each of these duties was carried out.

  The Prime Minister
  Mr. Kock performed no official duties for any Government Department during the period 1964–79. It remains the Government's policy not to comment on the contacts which an individual may or may not have had with the security and intelligence agencies.

  Baroness Thatcher (Overseas Visits)
  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Prime Minister what meetings were held by the former Prime Minister and her officials with representatives of the Indonesian Government during her visit to Indonesia in April 1985; and what issues were discussed at each of those meetings.

  The Prime Minister
  During her visit to Indonesia in April 1985, my right hon. and noble Friend and her officials met President Soeharto, the Foreign Minister, the Minister for Research and Technology, the Minister for Education, 10 Cabinet Ministers concerned with the economy, the governor of West Java and the director of the British Council. Issues discussed included oil prices,
  103
  technical co-operation, China, Cambodia, East Timor, defence and economic, developmental and international matters.

  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Prime Minister what meetings were held with representatives of the Thai Government by the former Prime Minister and her officials during her visit to Thailand in August 1988; and what issues were discussed at each of those meetings.

  The Prime Minister
  My right hon. and noble Friend and her officials met the outgoing Prime Minister, General Prem Tinsulanonda, his successor, General Chatichai Choonhavan, deputy Prime Minister, Admiral Sonthee Boonyachai, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsili. My right hon. and noble Friend also had an audience with His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Her Majesty Queen Sirikit.

  The situation in Cambodia was the main focus of the discussions. Other issues covered included trade, drug co-operation, defence, education, and regional economic and developmental matters.

  Mr. Tom Clarke
  To ask the Prime Minister what meetings were held by the former Prime Minister and her officials with representatives of the Jordanian Government during her visit to Jordan in September 1985; and what issues were discussed at each of those meetings.

  The Prime Minister
  My right hon. and noble Friend held meetings with King Hussein, Crown Prince Hassan and Prime Minister Zeid Rifai. Discussions with the King and the Jordanian Prime Minister concentrated on the Arab/Israel question, and those with the Crown Prince on the Jordanian economy.

  Engagements
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 24 May.

  Sir Peter Tapsell
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 24 May.

  The Prime Minister
  This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Child Support Agency
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what costs have been incurred by the Child Support Agency in hotel accommodation and services provided to staff since the agency was established.

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

  Letter from Ros Hepplewhite to Mr. David Hinc,hliffe, dated 23 May 1994:
  I am replying to your recent Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about hotel and accommodation costs incurred by the Child Support Agency.
  Such costs are charged to different budgets, for example training or travel and subsistence, depending on the nature of the expenditure.
  104
  To establish the hotel cost element from the various budgets and provide the information you require would involve detailed clerical analysis of all staff expenses claims and payments made over the past year at the Agency's headquarters, centres and some of the district offices. This would involve disproportionate cost to the Agency.
  I am sorry I cannot be more helpful.

  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what information he has available to show the number of parents with care whose incomes have increased as a result of Child Support Agency involvement in maintenance arrangements.

  Mr. Burt
  It is not possible to collate this information from records held by the Department.

  The Child Support Agency does not collect maintenance on behalf of the parent with care—PWC—in all the cases where it has assessed the level of maintenance to be paid. Where the agency is not providing a collection service there is no record of the amount or frequency of payments made and therefore no record of whether the overall income of the PWC has increased.

  Benefits Agency
  Mr. Pike
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) when he proposes to conduct a review of the progress of the new one-stop initiative; if he will publish the results; and if he will make a statement;

  (2) how many Benefits Agency offices are at present running the new one-stop initiative;

  (3) what cost has been incurred in moving towards the new Benefits Agency one-stop initiative.

  Mr. Burt
  The introduction of a one-stop service for Benefits Agency customers is a matter for Mr. Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member with such information as is available.

  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Peter Pike, dated 23 May 1994.
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions about the One Stop initiative.
  As you know, the Secretary of State for Social Security announced on 9 September last year a national programme to move, by July 1994, towards a One Stop service for all the benefits processed by the Benefits Agency. I wrote to you on 27 April 1994 with some information on the progress at that stage. By July, all Benefits Agency Districts will be expected to offer customers a One Place service.
  The One Place Programme will mean that customers will be able to:
  obtain advice and information on all benefits from their local Benefits agency office;
  lodge a claim for any Benefits Agency benefit at a local office (regardless of where that benefit is processed), report a change of circumstance and receive reliable advice about the claim to benefit from that local office.
  Progress is being monitored by local Managers and the central project team and a report on One Stop will be published in the Benefits Agency Annual Report and Business Plan in the normal way. Progress so far has been encouraging; in January of this year, for example, approximately 90 per cent of District offices were able to offer customers advice on the range of benefits, including in work benefits such as Family Credit.
  The Benefits Agency agreed to implement the improvements in service from within our existing total resource allocation, although by the prioritization of other tasks we were able to give Districts additional funds for training. The pace of future developments will, of course, depend on the level of resources available.
  I hope you find this reply helpful.

  Lung Conditions
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) how frequently the instruments used by the medical boards for lung function tests are monitored to ensure uniformity of standards;

  (2) when was the last review of the instruments used by the medical boards for lung function tests; and what was the conclusion.

  Mr. Scott
  The administration of medical boards is a matter for Mr. Michael Bichard, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member with such information as is available.

  Letter from Michael Bichard to Mr. Michael Clapham, dated 23 May 1994:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions about the instruments used by Medical Boards for lung function tests.
  The most recent review of the type of instrument used by the Adjudicating Medical Authorities (Medical Boards) was in March 1993, prior to the introduction of prescribed disease D12, Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema (PD D12).
  This review considered the type of instrument to be used in relation to PD D12. The instruments at examination centres are not portable, and, as many of the potential customers were elderly and housebound, there was a need to provide the Medical Boards with protable equipment.
  There was also a need to achieve consistency in recording, because the lung function result was an essential condition for the diagnosis question to be answered. This consistency is needed to cover use of the equipment in a variety of environmental conditions.
  The machine used was chosen because it is easily portable, simple to use and can be calibrated easily by the operator; it gives a computerised result showing recorded and predicted figures for the customer; it also produces a printed hard copy of the results and records the date of calibration for retention.
  The machines are regularly serviced, maintained and calibrated in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations and they are replaced as soon as they become unserviceable. The airflow measurement system of the machine requires regular calibration to offset variations in volume due to ambient temperature changes. Re-calibration is carried out at the beginning of each examination session and after every ten tests when carried out at an examination centre. On visits to the customer's home the machines are re-calibrated each time before use.
  Several other types of machine are in use in Medical Boarding Centres for respiratory diseases, although these are not used for PD D12. They are not programmed with Professor Cotes' figures of comparative lung function volumes which are the standard for PD D12 diagnosis. These machines are non-portable and hold calibration well. In accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations, adjustments are needed only every 6–12 months because they are static and less subject to ambient temperature variation.
  I hope you find this reply helpful.

  Industrial Injuries Benefit
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to amend the current definition of pneumoconiosis in the social security legislation to include chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

  Mr. Scott
  None. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are separate diseases and could not be included within a definition of pneumoconiosis.

  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many applications were received from miners(a) over and (b) under 70 years of age for
  106
  disablement assessment under the Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Regulations; how many applications have been processed to date; and how many were successful.

  Mr. Scott
  The total number of claims received by 8 May 1994 was about 43,300. Up to the end of the first phase of the take-on (6 February), about 22,500 claims were from miners and ex-miners over 70; since that date, those over 70 have been included in the overall claims figures. Of about 31,400 claims processed to date, about 3,200 were assessed as 14 per cent. or more disabled. Figures are based on a 100 per cent. count and subject to amendment.

  War Veterans
  Mr. Dowd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many former members of the armed forces who served during the 1939–45 war are now in receipt of income support and other means-tested benefits.

  Mr. Burt
  The information is not available.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Child Care Survey
  Mr. Barnes
  To ask the Chairman of the Administration Committee, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) of 17 May,Official Report, column 416, what was the cost of the child care survey; and what are the reasons for not publishing the results.

  Mr. Michael J. Martin
  As stated in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones) on 9 February at column 278, the fee paid to the consultants who conducted the childcare survey is a matter of commercial confidentiality. Given the Committee's decision to take no further action on this issue it considered the publication of the survey results to be inappropriate.

  Satellite Television, Millbank
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Lord President of the Council if he will install a satellite dish on 7 Millbank to enable hon. Members to receive the live coverage of Parliament produced by Sky TV.

  Mr. Michael J. Martin
  I have been asked to reply.

  Any consideration of providing Members with the means to receive satellite television would be best undertaken once the House has considered the respective conclusions of the Information and Broadcasting Committees, on the introduction of the parliamentary data and video network and the "clean feed" of parliamentary proceedings.

  Private Members' Bills
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Lord President of the Council (1) what was the average length of time taken by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel in responding to departmental requests for assistance with the drafting of(a) amendments or new clauses in relation to Government legislation and (b) Government-prompted amendments for onward transmission to Back Benchers for use in debate in relation to private Members' Bills in each of the last 12 months;
  107
  (2) if he will list for each month in 1994 the number of amendments or new clauses which were drafted by or with the assistance of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel categorised as (a) Government legislation, (b) Government amendments and so on in relation to private Members' Bills and (c) Government-assisted amendments or new clauses for supply to Back Benchers for use in debate in relation to private Members' Bills;

  (3) how many requests the Office of Parliamentary Counsel has had from each Government Department in each quarter for the past two years for the drafting of amendments and in relation to (a) Government legislation and (b) private Members' Bills in which amendments or new clauses are for supply to Back Benchers for use in debate;

  Mr. Newton
  This information is not recorded.

  Ministerial Salaries
  Mr. Dowd
  To ask the Lord President of the Council how many members of the Government are currently in receipt of a ministerial salary, and what was the comparable figure in April 1979.

  Mr. Newton
  One hundred and eight members of the Government are currently in receipt of a ministerial salary. The comparable figure prior to the general election of 1979 was 107, and after the general election 106.

  Mobile Telephones
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Lord President of the Council, pursuant to his answer of 16 May,Official Report, column 311, what was the cost of the calls made on portable telephones in 1993–94; how much this equipment cost to buy or hire; and what were the maintainance costs.

  Mr. Newton
  In 1993–94 the cost of calls made on portable telephones was £204.70. The purchase and subscription costs were £2,038.04. There were no maintainance costs.

DEFENCE

  Nuclear Test Veterans
  Mr. Galbraith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment he has made as to whether the National Radiological Protection Board's study of nuclear test veterans who have developed posterior subcapsular eye cataracts will be undertaken in sufficient numbers to prevent a false negative result; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hanley
  Although we are following its progress, the study in question is not being carried out on behalf of my Department. We have therefore made no such assessment.

  Mr. William O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what consideration he has given to paying compensation to nuclear test veterans as part of the recognition given to service men in the context of the commemorations of D-day and of the end of the second world war.

  Mr. Hanley
  Over the period between the nuclear tests and the end of 1990, the total incidence of death and 108
  malignant disease among British nuclear test veterans has been no higher than among either the general population or a matched control group. This was clearly shown in the report of the National Radiological Protection Board published last December, a copy of which is in the Library of the House. These facts do not sustain a case for compensation.

  D-day
  Ms Mowlam
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien), of 10 May 1994,Official Report, column 127, if he will provide a breakdown of the estimated expenditure by his Department on events commemorating the 50th anniversary this year of the D-day landings.

  Mr. Hanley
  The current estimates of additional costs break down as follows:

  £

  Portsmouth area events

  800,000

  Normandy area events

  300,000

  Public relations programme

  200,000

  Media facilities

  1,500,000

  Miscellaneous (including planning staff, education programme, VVIP/VIP transport and accommodation)

  700,000

  Total

  3,500,000

  Exercise First Crusade
  Sir Nicholas Bonsor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will set out the participation by principal units in 1 Brigade's recent First Crusade exercise, enumerating those units absent on operational or other training commitments, and expressing their strength as a proportion of the brigade's strength.

  Mr. Hanley
  Those units under the operational command of 1 Mechanised Brigade which participated in Exercise First Crusade were 1 Royal Tank Regiment and 1 Royal Welch Fusiliers. Those units that were absent because of operational commitments were 1 Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment—who were serving in Northern Ireland—and 1 Duke of Wellington's Regiment—who were serving in Bosnia.

  The following units also took part in the exercise:

  a. I Royal Horse Artillery

  b. 22 Regt Royal Engineers

  c. A composite logistic unit

  d. 7 Gurkha Regiment, Gurkha infantry battalion from 5 Airborne Brigade and a squadron from the Household Cavalry Regiment, all of whom acted as enemy forces.

  Eurofighter 2000
  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he last met his counterpart in(a) Germany (b) Spain or (c) Italy to discuss progress on Eurofighter 2000; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Aitken
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence met the Italian Defence Minister, the State Secretary in the German Ministry of Defence and the Spanish national armaments director at the Eurofighter 2000 international debut at Warton, Lancashire
  109
  on 4 May. They noted the major step forward in development which the commencement of the flight test phase represents, and the importance of the project both to our military capability and the European aerospace industry.

  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment he has made of Eurofighter's test flight; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Aitken
  The first Eurofighter 2000 development aircraft made a successful maiden flight on 27 March 1994 in Germany followed closely by the second development aircraft in the United Kingdom on 6 April 1994.

  The initial reports from the test pilots were very positive and both aircraft met their full test objectives successfully.

  Since then the two aircraft have made a total of 12 flights without any significant problems: the EF2000 flight test programme is now well under way and although flight test evaluation is still in its early stages, the initial results are very encouraging. I have every confidence that the aircraft will live up to all our expectations.

  RAF Valley
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment he has made of the possible impact of adverse weather on weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley.

  Mr. Hanley
  Irrespective of the base of operation, adverse weather sometimes affects range sorties and results in a failure to complete the planned exercise. However, these occurrences are kept to a minimum by the use of range controllers and weather check aircraft.

  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) what assessment he has made of the possible impact of human error on the part of solo trainee pilots on weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley;

  (2) where weapons will be loaded for weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley after the closure of RAF Chivenor;

  (3) what assessment he has made of the possible impact of solo trainee pilots encountering unforeseen difficulties on average times spent on the weapons range in weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley, as compared to the existing pattern of sorties from RAF Chivenor.

  Mr. Hanley
  There is no intention to fly solo weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley. Should a decision be taken to close RAF Chivenor, aircraft from RAF Valley would load weapons at RAF St. Athan.

  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment he has made of the possible impact of congested airways on weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley.

  Mr. Hanley
  The effect will be negligible as aircraft transiting between RAF Valley and RAF Chivenor—or RAF St. Athan—will not usually need to fly through civil airways.

  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what estimate he has made of the extra transit fuel costs of operating weapons range training sorties from RAF Valley instead of from RAF Chivenor.

  Mr. Hanley
  Because more efficient flight profiles can be used by aircraft flying to and from RAF Valley, the difference in fuel costs would be negligible.

  Combat Aircraft
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what has been the percentage reduction in Royal Air Force overall front line combat aircraft strength since 1990.

  Mr. Hanley
  Since 1990, the number of RAF front-line fast-jet combat aircraft—including those in operational conversion units—has reduced by about one third.

  Civilian Personnel
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is the total number of civilian personnel employed by the Ministry of Defence.

  Mr. Aitken
  The total number of civilian personnel employed by my Department on 1 April 1994 was 143,700.

  Nuclear Co-operation
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what recent discussions he has had with his French counterpart on future further nuclear co-operation.

  Mr. Hanley
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has regular meetings with Defence Minister Leotard at which they discuss a variety of issues, including nuclear co-operation when appropriate. I can confirm that exchanges with France on nuclear matters are progressing well.

  RAF Manpower
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what has been the percentage reduction in Royal Air Force uniformed manpower strength since 1990.

  Mr. Hanley
  Between 1 April 1990 and 1 April 1994, the Royal Air Force total strength—including trainees—fell by 15.6 per cent. from the April 1990 position.

  HMS Endurance
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 11 May,Official Report, column 188, what consideration he gave before October 1991 to the replacement of HMS Endurance; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Hanley
  The 1991 annual structural survey of HMS Endurance unexpectedly revealed a risk of hull failure in Antarctic or very cold conditions. The decision was therefore taken in August of that year to decommission the vessel. It had originally been assumed that HMS Endurance would continue in service until at least the middle of the 1990s, and planning for her replacement had therefore not commenced when this decision was taken.

  As the Government were committed to maintain the programme previously carried out by HMS Endurance, a market survey was undertaken to investigate which suitable ships might be available to undertake the ice patrol task in the 1991–92 season. This survey identified MV Polar Circle as the only suitable ship, and she was accordingly taken up by the Ministry of Defence on a short-term bare boat charter while the requirement for a longer term replacement was being considered.

  Northern Iraq
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 10 May,Official Report, column 130, if he will take all possible steps to ensure that the families of those United Kingdom service personnel killed in Northern Iraq on 14 April are satisfied with the information his Department is able to provide them on the circumstances surrounding the incident.

  Mr. Hanley
  The United States investigation into the incident is not yet complete. Once completed, the results will be made available to the next of kin of the British service personnel as soon as possible. Both the United States and United Kingdom Governments are working closely to ensure that the families will receive as much information as possible.

  Defence Costs Study
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 10 May,Official Report, column 188, whether the publication of the broad outcome of the Defence costs study will include detailed information on reductions in logistical support; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Aitken
  I hope to announce the broad outcome of the Defence costs study in July. Where it is possible to make public the detail of proposed changes to our logistic support services arising from the Defence costs study, as part of the announcement, I shall do so.

  Royal Navy Hydrographic Service
  Mr. Page
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether he is in a position to report the outcome of the Government's review of the Royal Navy's hydrographic service.

  Mr. Hanley
  The Government attach importance to a specialist hydrographic capability to provide effective support to Royal Navy operations in peace and war. We have consequently decided to upgrade the capability of the hydrographic service by the purchase of four new hydrographic vessels, which will be commercially designed with an improved technical capability. The new ships, which will be larger than the existing vessels, will be either leased or owned by MOD, depending on which option offers best value for money. Her Majesty's survey launch Gleaner will remain in service for the foreseeable future. We believe that the resultant squadron of five survey vessels will best meet the requirements of Defence, including the ability to respond to unexpected short-notice tasking. All the vessels will be manned by Royal Navy crews and will fly the white Ensign.

  Army Base Repair Organisation
  Mr. Page
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what are the key targets set for the chief executive of the Army Base Repair Organisation Agency for 1994–95.

  Mr. Hanley
  The chief executive of the Army Base Repair Organisation Agency—ABRO—has been set the following key targets for 1994–95.

  1. To complete the repair programme to the plan as agreed on 1 April 1994.

  2. Implement an automated, full cost accrual accounting system by 31 March 1995.

  112

  3. Within the overall total quality management (TQM) philosophy adopted by ABRO, to achieve ISO 9002 pre-assessment by 31 March 1995 in the HQ and all workshops.

  4. To complete the market test of ABRO services in the eastern district by 31 March 1995. (Subject to review and revalidation following the outcome of the Defence costs study recommendations).

  5. To reduce by 5 per cent. the 1993–94 ratio of labour costs to hours of production by 31 March 1995.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Iran
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what practical measures Her Majesty's Government intend to take to combat Iranian terrorism; and how the Government will act in concert with partners in the European Union and the United Nations in measures to tackle this problem.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We are very concerned about reports of Iranian involvement in terrorism and have regular contacts with our partners in the European Union about how best to tackle this issue. We and our European partners have promoted resolutions at the UN General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights expressing our concern, while the latter resolution also urged the Government of Iran to refrain from activities against members of the Iranian opposition abroad and to co-operate wholeheartedly with the authorities of other countries in investigating and punishing offences reported by them.

  European Parliament
  Mr. Winnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the Government will take steps to prevent neo-fascists from taking their seats in the European Parliament.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  All members of the European Parliament are democratically elected and therefore fully entitled to take up their seats.

  Upper Limb Disorder
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the present number of civil servants taking legal action against his Department as a result of work-related upper limb disorders.

  Mr. Goodlad
  Three members of staff have initiated legal action against the FCO for alleged negligence in respect of upper limb disorders said by the claimants to be work-related.

  Henderson Island
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action he is taking to prevent damage by rats and tourists on Henderson island.

  Mr. Goodlad
  We are currently drawing up a management plan for Henderson island, in consultation with the Joint Nature Conservation committee, the governor of Pitcairn and the Pitcairn islanders, which will address the threats posed to Henderson's environment by rats and tourists. In the meantime, tourists visiting Henderson are obliged to comply with a number of regulations drawn up by the governor to minimise damage to the island's ecology.

  Cyprus
  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of which international organisations Cyprus is a member and of which either Greece or Turkey is not a member.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  Cyprus is a member of the following organisations to which neither Greece nor Turkey belong:

  The Commonwealth

  The Non-Aligned Movement

  The Group of 77.

  Mr. John D. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus restricts Cyprus from joining any international organisation; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We understand that the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus does not restrict it from joining any international organisation.

  Italy
  Mr. Denis MacShane
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussion the British ambassador in Rome has had with neo-fascist politicians in the Italian Government regarding common positions in advance of the EU 1996 Intergovernmental conference; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  None.

  Palestine
  Mr. Elletson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assistance Her Majesty's Government are providing bilaterally and through the EC to support the Palestinians in the light of the Gaza-Jericho agreement signed in Cairo on 4 May.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The following is the information:

  United Kingdom aid to Palestinians

  The United Kingdom intends to provide £70 million bilaterally and multilaterally to the Palestinians over the next three years.

  EC assistance

  Much of our aid will go through the EC, which will provide 500 mecu during 1994–98, half in grants, half in EIB loans. Of the 50 mecu of grants for 1994, the United Kingdom was instrumental in stimulating a contribution of up to 10 mecu for the Palestinian police.

  The EC is also providing assistance for the Palestinian elections.

  Bilateral and other assistance

  We are providing £6 million to UNWRA in 1994. In addition, the United Kingdom has put together a series of bilateral initiatives in areas where we have particualar expertise and which the Palestinians have identified as priorities. These include:

  (i) Police Training

  We are running two training courses for senior Palestinian police officers in June and July. We are considering offering further training in specialist areas such as riot control, forensic work and community policing.

  We are providing 200 sets of riot control equipment.

  (ii) Legal Assistance

  We are providing expert legal help to the chairman of the Higher Palestinian Legal Committee.

  114

  (iii) Assistance with the Palestinian Elections

  We are helping with preparation for the elections—in addition to the EC assistance. We will provide monitors for them when they take place.

  (iv) Financial Sector

  The UK held a very successful seminar on financial markets in the Middle East on 28 and 29 April.

  The Bank of England is offering assistance on central banking matters—probably primarily training.

  The UK has offered to provide consultancy services and other assistance to the commercial banking sector in the occupied territories.

  We are undertaking a study of middle east stock markets.

  (v) PECDAR

  The UK is ready to provide assistance to the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction—PECDAR.

  (vi) Media Project

  The UK is supporting the establishment of a Palestinian radio station.

  (vii) Assistance to NGOs and Other Agencies

  Under the ODA' s special programme of assistance to the occupied territories, we are providing support for: a nurses training programme in Gaza; work of British NGOs including medical aid for the Palestinians and Save the Children; water resources management projects; and training in institution building, with the British Council.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Mr. Karel Van Miert
  Mr. Etherington
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he last met the European Commissioner Mr. Karel Van Miert; and what matters were discussed.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  My right hon. Friend, the President of the Board of Trade last met Mr. Van Miert on 11 May 1993. They discussed the direction of EC competition policy and the European merger regulation.

  Company Investigations
  Mr. Austin Mitchell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Brymore (Steels) Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost to the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (2) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Andromeda Electronics Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (3) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of H. and C. Davis Company Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (4) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Elliot Group of Peterborough Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;
  115
  (5) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Helmville Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (6) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Alarmount Properties Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (7) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Brush Aggregates Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (8) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Metalman Engineering Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (9) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Reliance Plastering Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (10) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Intervester SA were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the

  Company

  Date of appointment of inspectors

  Date of report

  Helmville Limited

  25 July 1973

  13 November 1979

  Brush Aggregates Limited

  13 December 1974

  30 June 1980

  Wilson-Mandelberg Limited

  5 August 1975

  30 April 1980

  Intervestor SA

  10 November 1975

  31 August 1979

  Portcarne Holdings Limited

  20 January 1977

  27 November 1980

  Alarmount Properties Limited

  20 January 1977

  27 November 1980

  Parsons, Sherwin and Company Limited

  21 April 1977

  3 July 1980

  H & C Davis Company Limited

  8 February 1978

  112 October 1978

  223 December 1980

  Phoenix Shipbuilders Limited

  3 March 1978

  26 May 1982

  Elliott Group of Peterborough Limited

  16 May 1978

  125 September 1979

  216 October 1980

  Andromeda Electronics Limited

  28 June 1978

  1 September 1980

  Reliance Plastering Limited

  8 February 1979

  4 September 1980

  Metalman Engineering Limited

  19 September 1979

  15 May 1981

  Brymore (Steels) Limited

  19 September 1979

  15 May 1981

  1 Interim.

  2 Final

  Patent Office
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade when he intends to announce his policies on the future of the Patent Office.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The Government are considering the report by Price Waterhouse which was commissioned as part of the review of the Patent Office. An announcement will be made to Parliament once the review is complete.
  116
  inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (11) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Phoenix Shipbuilders Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (12) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Wilson-Mandelberg Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when the will publish the final reports;

  (13) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Portcarne Holdings Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports;

  (14) when the inspectors to inquire into the affairs of Parsons, Sherwin and Company Ltd. were appointed; when their inquiry was completed; what are the business connections of the inspectors; what is the cost of the investigation; how it has been disbursed to each inspector; what reports have been published; and when he will publish the final reports.

  Mr. Neil Hamilton
  All the inspectors were Departmental officers and the costs of their investigation are not available. Decisions not to publish their reports were all taken in 1979 or the early 1980s. The further information requested by the hon. Member is as follows:

  Research and Development
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how he measures the success of investment decisions made by his Department through the research and development budget.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  All programmes supported by the Department's innovation budget are subject to regular monitoring and ex-post evaluation. Reports of completed evaluations are lodged in the Library of the House.

  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) if he will list the schemes organised by his
  117
  Department to provide public investment in research and development relevant to industry, the amount of money made available for each scheme in each of the last five years, its distribution between the private and public sectors and the percentage allocation in each standard planning region;

  (2) how much money in each of the last five years has been allocated to the research and development of advanced composites; what organisations or companies have received financial support; and what percentage of funding went to academic research in each year;

  (3) if he will list for each of the last five years the amount of money that was awarded to each company and organisation in each standard planning region of the United Kingdom for research and development, indicating the percentage awarded in each region;

  (4) what percentage of his research and development budget is awarded to small companies.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  Information about my Department's schemes for supporting research and development is given in "Trade and Industry 1994" (Cm 2154) and in the "Forward Look of Government Funded Science, Engineering and Technology 1994", published by HMSO (ISBN 0 11 430098 4).

  The additional detailed information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what are the criteria and procedures set out for applications for, and granting of, funding for research and development from schemes operated by his Department.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  My Department's small firms merit award for research and technology—SMART—and support for products under research—SPUR—support research and development by individual smaller companies. The LINK and EUREKA schemes support collaborative research. Eligibility criteria and procedures are given in the scheme literature.

  Timber
  Mr. David Nicholson
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will set up a register of United Kingdom-based companies, and their size, by turnover and employment, which are principally or partially involved in timber exploitation in the areas of tropical rainforests.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  No, I see no useful purpose for such a register.

  DTI Region

  Regional Selective Assistance companies employing:

  Regional Enterprise Grants

  Less than 100

  100–250

  More than 250

  East

  14

  —

  —

  12

  East Midlands

  36

  1

  3

  92

  London

  9

  1

  —

  6

  Merseyside

  89

  8

  12

  37

  North East

  124

  9

  26

  132

  North West

  139

  7

  13

  58

  South East

  23

  —

  1

  22

  South West

  69

  6

  6

  85

  West Midlands

  121

  11

  14

  45

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  88

  8

  11

  229

  Trade Associations
  Sir Dudley Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what progress he has made in his policy in respect of harmonising trade associations and the sponsorship of their industries by his Department.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  We wish to see trade associations that are powerful, effective and influential in representing their members and which play a significant role in promoting the international competitiveness of their sectors. The Department has therefore worked closely, and will continue to work closely, with many trade associations with these aims in mind and to ensure that there is an effective and representative trade association for each sector of industry and commerce.

  Sustech Programme
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what information he has received from the European Chemical Industry Council, CEFIC, on its programme, Sustech-1; and what support is being given by the European Commission's industry directorate and research directorate to the Sustech programme.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  We have had no contact with CEFIC or the European Commission on the Sustech proposal, although officials have been appraised of the proposal by one company closely involved in it. I understand that development of the proposal is still at an early stage.

  Regional Assistance
  Mr. Fatchett
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many companies by region, employing(a) fewer than 100, (b) between 100 and 250 and (c) more than 250 persons have been awarded (i) regional selective assistance and (ii) regional enterprise grants since the new assisted areas map was announced in 1993.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  [holding answer 23 May 1994]: The number of companies that have been offered (i) regional selective assistance and (ii) regional enterprise grants in England from the introduction of the new assisted area map on 1 August 1993 to 17 May 1994, are as follows. All the offers of regional enterprise grant were made to companies employing fewer than 100 persons.

HEALTH

  Health Service Staff
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent guidelines she has issued in respect of senior NHS staff meeting shadow spokesmen.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  None.

  Ambulance Service
  Mrs. Fyfe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are her future plans for the ambulance service.

  Mr. Sackville
  National health service ambulance services are to be commended on the considerable advances they have made in recent years.

  The Government will ensure that services maintain the excellent progress made towards meeting national standards for response times and towards the target of having a paramedic on each front-line ambulance.

  Patients Charter
  Lady Olga Maitland
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been made under the patients charter on outpatient waiting times; and how she proposes to strengthen the charter in this area.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  We are committed to reducing all waiting times. Since 1 April 1992 the patients charter has required health authorities to set and publish local charter standards for waiting time for first out-patient appointments for each hospital, specialty and consultant. On 13 April 1994 my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that a national target will be set for the length of time patients have to wait for their first out-patient appointment. Further details will be announced later this year.

  Organ Donation
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the individual's choice as to donation of organs.

  Mr. Sackville
  The wishes of the individual are paramount when considering the question of organ donation. This is secured by the Human Tissue Act 1961 under which organs from a deceased person may be used for therapeutic, educational or research purposes if that is known to have been the wish of the deceased or, if his wishes are not known, those of his relatives.

  Access to Hospital
  Ms Jowell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she last met members of the medical profession to discuss access to hospital for their patients.

  Mr. Sackville
  We have regular meetings with representatives of the medical profession during which a wide range of issues are discussed.

  Geriatric Beds
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the current total number of geriatric beds in English hospitals; and what the figure was three years ago.
  120
  Mr. Bowis
  In 1992–93, the latest year for which figures are available, the total number of national health service beds in England specifically designated for elderly people was 59,562. In 1989–90 the figure was 73,046.

  In the same period the number of elderly people treated rose from 449,000 to 529,000, reflecting more effective treatments and use of hospital beds. In addition improvements in rehabilitation and community services are enabling more people to receive care at home, including things like hospital at home initiatives.

  Junior Doctors
  Mr. Ottaway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been achieved in reducing the hours worked by junior doctors in the south Thames region.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Between September 1990 and March 1994 the number of posts contracted for more than an average of 83 hours a week in south Thames fell from 1,963 to nine. In the year to 31 March 1994, the number of hard-pressed on-call posts contracted on average for more than 72 hours a week fell from 1,404 to 879. Our priority this year is to eliminate these remaining hard-pressed posts.

  Mr. Bellingham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been achieved in reducing the hours worked by junior doctors in the Anglia and Oxford region.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  In September 1990 there were 1,225 posts contracted to work for more than 83 hours a week in Anglia and Oxford. All these posts have now been eliminated. In the year to 31 March 1994, the number of hard-pressed on-call posts contracted on average for more than 72 hours a week fell from 1,051 to 518, a reduction of 51 per cent. Our priority this year is to eliminate these remaining hard-pressed posts.

  Traffic Pollution
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what strategy she is adopting to combat the bad health effects of traffic pollution especially in relation to carcinogens; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Sackville
  We will continue to work to identify any adverse health effects that may arise from traffic pollution and to mitigate those effects.

  National Health Service Trusts
  Mr. Spring
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of hospital and community health services in Suffolk is now carried out by national health service trusts.

  Mr. Sackville
  Suffolk is an excellent example of the success of the trust movement. Within the Anglia/Oxford region, all provider units are now trusts.

  Dentistry
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the dentistry provision in Leeds.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  We are committed to an effective and accessible national health service dental service in Leeds.
  121
  The latest available figures indicate that both the number of dentists and the number of patients registered in Leeds has risen throughout the past year.

  Royal Free Hospital
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many individuals over pensionable age are being treated at the Royal Free hospital.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  This information is not available centrally. The hon. Member may wish to write the Baroness Gardner of Parkes, chairman of the Royal Free Hampstead national health service trust for details.

  Help Us to Help You
  Mr. Booth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on the Help Us to Help You campaign.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  I announced on 19 May, jointly with the medical profession, an extension of the Help Us to Help You campaign to encourage the appropriate use of general practitioner out-of-hours services.

  Hip Replacements
  Mr. Mark Robinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is her latest estimate of the number of hip replacements carried out by the NHS; and how many were carried out in 1979.

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

  11979

  21990–91

  Hip replacement operations

  23,410

  50,725

  1 source: Hospital In-Patient Enquiry Operation Codes 810 & 811

  2 source: Hospital Episode Statistics Codes W37 W38 W39 W46 W47 W48

  Hospital Performances
  Mr. Sykes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she expects to publish comparative tables of hospital performance.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  The national health service performance tables will be published towards the end of June.

  Limb Defects
  Sir Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will initiate an inquiry into the incidence and geographical location of births involving the absence of limbs.

  Mr. Sackville
  The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys conducted an inquiry into the prevalence of these malformations in coastal and inland areas. It concluded that there was no difference in prevalence.

  NHS Budget
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the NHS budget and projected budget for London and England in(a) 1991–92, (b) 1992–93, (c) 1993–94 and (d) 1994–95.
  122
  Mr. Sackville
  Figures for London and England are not available on a comparable basis.

  Out-patients
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will give the latest figures for the number of people on the waiting list for out-patients.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  There are no waiting lists for out-patient appointments.

  NHS Audits
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the expenditure on audits in the national health service in each of the last three years; and what breakdown of that expenditure is available.

  Mr. Sackville
  Total expenditure for the external audits recorded in the individual accounts of national health service bodies was approximately:

  £ million

  1991–92

  18·3

  1992–93

  30·1

  Notes

  1. These figures may significantly overstate the true increase between the two financial years because of variations in the accounting treatment of audit services.

  2. A meaningful national total cannot be derived for 1990–91.

  3. The totals quoted do not include external audit expenditure for Special Trustees, the Special Hospitals Service Authority, or the Mental Health Act Commission.

  4. Figures for the Prescription Pricing Authority were not separately identifiable in 1991–92.

  Child Suicides
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children have committed suicide in each of the. last 10 years by using paracetamol.

  Mr. Bowis
  The information is shown in the table.

  Suicide deaths from poisoning where paracetamol is mentioned in the deaths' records for children (age 0–16), England and Wales 1983–1992

  Year

  Number

  1983

  1

  1984

  —

  1985

  —

  1986

  1

  1987

  —

  1988

  —

  1989

  —

  1990

  —

  1991

  —

  1992

  1

  Hospitals (Paper Towels)
  Mrs. Helen Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the use of paper towels in hospitals and clinics in preference to hot air driers.

  Mr. Sackville
  None. It is for the managers of hospitals and clinics to decide upon the appropriate methods of hand drying to be used within the varying departments of the unit.

  Mental Health
  Mr. Bates
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he expects to publish the conclusions of the consultation on proposals to address section 18(4) of the Mental Health Act 1983.

  Mr. Bowis
  Shortly.

  Infertility Treatment
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list those hospitals which have contracts with purchasers to provide infertility treatments, giving their average and lengthiest waiting times for first appointment and commencement of treatment for(a) those on the hospital's own list, (b) those who are accepted for treatment unde a contractual agreement with a fundholding general practitioner and (c) those who are accepted under a contractual arrangement with a health authority outside its own area.

  Mr. Sackville
  There is no central list of contracts agreed between purhasing authorities and hospitals. It is the responsibility of purchasing authorities to monitor the waiting times for treatment under the contracts they have agreed with hospitals inside or outside of the authority's area. Infertility treatment is not included on the list of procedures which a fundholding practice can purchase.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list the average waiting times for infertility treatment to begin at each hospital providing this service, in each year since services began.

  Mr. Sackville
  Such information as is available is given in "Hospital Episode Statistics, Volume 2", copies of which are available in the Library.

  Breast Unit, Guy's Hospital
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps she is taking to ensure the continuation of the work of the breast unit at Guy's hospital.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Guy's and St. Thomas's hospital trust and the London implementation group have jointly indicated their intention to retain breast cancer services, and the associated research programme, within the trust.

  There will be a full public consultation on any proposed changes to hospital services in south east London in due course.

  National health service projects using private capital worth over £0.25 million approved in the 12 months to end of February 1993

  National health service partner

  Scheme

  Private sector partner

  Private sector capital cost £ million

  Northern General Hospital NHS Trust (Sheffield)

  Satellite dialysis facilities

  Priory Hospitals Group

  0·5

  NHS Supplies Authority

  Lease of central headquarters (Reading)

  Prudential

  3·0

  NHS Supplies Authority

  Lease of divisional headquarters (Harrogate)

  St. Martin's Property Investments Ltd.

  0·6

  Royal Victoria Infirmary and Associated Hospitals NHS Trust (Newcastle)

  Lease of magnetic resonance imager

  GVD Finance

  1·1

  Standing Committee on Postgraduate Education

  Lease of offices

  Wellcome Trust

  0·5

  Doctor-nurse Teams
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people there are to each doctor-nurse team in(a) South Yorkshire and (b) nationally.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  Information is not available centrally in the form requested.

  Alcohol-related Disease
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what current information her Department maintains on occupations vulnerable to alcohol-related disease.

  Mr. Bowis
  All occupations are vulnerable.

  Drug Misuse
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what assessment she has made of the dangers to health of the use of gamma hydroxybutyrate;

  (2) what assessment she has made of the dangers to health of the use of the drugs (a) ketamine hydrochloride and (b) khat;

  (3) what assessment she has made of the dangers to health of the use of (a) amyl nitrate and (b) butyl nitrate.

  Mr. Bowis
  The Department continues to monitor the extent to which drugs are misused and the changing patterns of misuse. As with any drug that is misused, the Department warns the public of the risks to health.

  Crohn's Disease
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of the benefits of cannabis use for sufferers of Crohn's disease.

  Mr. Sackville
  None.

  NHS (Private Capital)
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to her answer of 11 March,Official Report, column 706, if she will provide details of the value of private sector capital for each of the nine schemes listed using private capital approved up to the end of February 1993 and the private sector companies involved.

  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 19 May 1994]: The information is shown in the table.
  125

  National health service partner

  Scheme

  Private sector partner

  Private sector capital cost £ million

  South East London Commissioning Agency and Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham FHSA

  Lease of offices

  Central Parkes South Ltd.

  11·0

  Kings Healthcare NHS Trust

  Clinical waste incineration

  Clinical Waste (PTY) Ltd.

  4·0

  Oldham Hospital NHS Trust, Rochdale NHS Trust, North Manchester Health Authority and Tameside Health Authority

  Clinical waste incineration

  Yorkshire Water Enterprises

  2·7

  Royal Liverpool University Hospital NHS Trust

  Patient hotel

  Scandinavian Service Partner Plc

  4·9

  Nursing Students
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many nursing students took up places in each region in England in each year since 1990; and if she will make a statement on the likely level for 1994–95 assuming both volume and percentage changes.

  Entrants to pre-registration nurse training by geographical area

  Year ending 31 March 1992

  Year ending 31 March 1993

  Region

  Year ending 31 March 1991 Registered nurse training total

  Registered nurse training total

  Percentage change 1990–91 to 1991–92

  Registered nurse training total

  Percentage change 1991–92 to 1992–93

  Northern

  1,262

  1,268

  +0.5

  1,405

  +10.8

  Yorkshire

  1,589

  1,838

  +15.7

  1,775

  -3.4

  Trent

  1,999

  1,832

  -8.3

  2,649

  +44.6

  East Anglia

  673

  786

  +16.8

  643

  -18.2

  North West Thames

  1,512

  1,884

  +24.6

  1,652

  -12.3

  North East Thames

  2,247

  2,815

  +24.7

  2,562

  -9.0

  South East Thames

  1,800

  1,754

  -2.9

  1,811

  +3.3

  South West Thames

  1,175

  1,237

  +5.2

  1,095

  -11.5

  Wessex

  1,201

  1,382

  +15.1

  1,406

  +1.7

  Oxford

  582

  967

  +64.2

  990

  +2.4

  South western

  1,168

  1,330

  +13.4

  1,335

  +0.4

  West Midlands

  2,216

  2,261

  +2.0

  2,298

  +1.6

  Mersey

  1,061

  1,213

  +14.4

  1,323

  +9.1

  North Western

  1,697

  2,224

  +31.5

  1,989

  -10.6

  TOTAL

  20,368

  22,838

  +12.9

  22,943

  +0.6

  Resource Allocation
  Ms Jowell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) when she intends to publish the report of consultants from York university on resource allocation; and if she will make a statement;

  (2) what was the extent of the shortfall in the funding of London's health services identified by the King's Fund Research Institute in its report "London, The Key Facts"; and what steps she has planned to reduce that shortfall;

  (3) what assessment she has made of the conclusion of the King's Fund Research Institute in its report "London, The Key Facts", on the extent of the underfunding of London's health service and the conclusions of the resource allocation review conducted for the Department of Health.

  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 23 May 1994]: We have received the report of the review of weighted capitation which builds on the analytical work undertaken by consultants from York university. The review is a major piece of work and will require consideration.

  The King's fund report entitled "London, The Key facts" has confirmed the view that London's primary and
  126
  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 20 May 1994]: The available information is shown in the table.

  Final figures for 1993–94 and 1994–95 are not yet available.

  community care services are underdeveloped compared with the rest of the country. An extra £85 million is being invested this year to improve primary and community care services in the capital.

  The King's Fund Institute also claimed that London's health services are underfunded by £200 million, but did not give any detailed reasoning for this conclusion.

  Abortions
  Ms Primarolo
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many women from(a) Jersey, (b) Guernsey and (c) other Channel islands have had legal abortions in England in each year from 1968 to 1992; and at what gestational age.

  Mr. Sackville
  [holding answer 23 May 1994]: The information requested can be provided only at disproportionate cost. However, the total number of legal abortions for residents of the Channel islands performed in England and Wales in 1992 was 370; of these, the gestation period was under nine weeks for 119, nine to 12 weeks for 207, 13 to 19 weeks for 38 and 20 weeks and over for six. Information for 1970 to 1991 inclusive is shown in the table, but only grouped as Channel islands, or from 1970 to 1985 Channel islands and the Isle of Man. A breakdown

  127
  of these figures by age-group for 1974 onwards is given in part (i) of table 25 in the annual reference volume "Abortion Statistics" series AB 1 nos. 1 to 18; copies of which are available in the Library.

  Legal abortions in England and Wales to women usually resident1 in the Channel islands and Isle of Man.

  Channel Islands

  Isle of Man

  1970

  165

  1971

  215

  1972

  295

  1973

  306

  1974

  371

  1975

  373

  1976

  336

  1977

  389

  1978

  413

  1979

  457

  1980

  484

  1981

  455

  1982

  467

  1983

  462

  1984

  454

  1985

  515

  1986

  418

  148

  1987

  416

  158

  1988

  445

  182

  1989

  488

  221

  1990

  465

  232

  1991

  462

  191

  1 Data by country of usual residence are not available for 1968 and 1969

EMPLOYMENT

  Industrial Diseases
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will review the conditions of eligibility for compensation under the Pneumoconiosis, etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 following the acceptance by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council of industrial causes of chronic bronchitis and emphysema in order to include sufferers from chronic bronchitis and emphysema, who had previously worked at industries recognised as causing industrial lung diseases and who hitherto have been excluded from compensation under the Act.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  I have no plans to do so.

  Education net current expenditure (a) (cash prices)

  £000

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94 (b)(c)

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Clwyd

  47,127

  54,720

  52,327

  61,190

  62,187

  73,006

  61,638

  66,289

  Dyfed

  48,617

  47,673

  53,297

  52,420

  65,421

  61,025

  62,734

  61,643

  Gwent

  59,471

  60,846

  57,474

  62,138

  76,862

  73,861

  77,471

  73,830

  Gwynedd

  29,333

  33,692

  32,107

  37,893

  37,759

  42,335

  36,225

  40,227

  Mid Glamorgan

  72,870

  72,453

  84,616

  84,270

  92,159

  98,730

  101,981

  102,613

  Powys

  15,201

  15,164

  18,129

  16,029

  22,647

  20,110

  21,177

  21,401

  South Glamorgan

  44,718

  48,440

  51,269

  53,256

  62,228

  61,237

  61,276

  56,721

  West Glamorgan

  48,641

  51,084

  53,396

  54,965

  68,418

  59,833

  64,523

  59,585

  Total Counties

  365,978

  384,072

  402,615

  422,161

  487,681

  490,137

  487,025

  482,309

  Radiation
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many deaths have been recorded in each year since 1979 arising from the over-exposure to radiation doses from X-ray equipment used to examine industrial welds and other industrial uses.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  Neither the national mortality statistics nor the Health and Safety Executive's database of fatal accidents show any deaths from acute overexposure to any type of radiation in the period 1979 up to April 1992—latest available information.

  However figures from the Department of Social Security show that between 1983 and 1988 there were five awards of industrial death benefit for the prescribed diseases due to electro-magnetic radiations, other than radiant heat, or to ionising particles. It is not possible to say whether these individuals were industrial radiographers, or other exposed workers. Nor is it possible to determine when these individuals were exposed.

WALES

  Training and Enterprise Councils
  Mr. Win Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list for each training and enterprise council in each of the last three years and endorsements for training purposes categorised, A, B and C.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment on 16 May at column 363.

  Education Expenditure
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what has been the level of expenditure on(a) primary education and (b) secondary education in (i) money terms and (ii) real terms in each of the past five years in each local education authority in Wales.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  The available information is given in the following tables. Information on individual education authorities is not available on a comparable basis for 1989–90. It is not possible to disaggregate pre-primary and primary expenditure. Figures on capital expenditure for 1993–94 are not yet available.
  129

  Education net current expenditure (a) (constant 1993–94 prices)

  £000

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94 (b)(c)

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Clwyd

  53,726

  62,382

  56,102

  65,604

  64,208

  75,379

  61,638

  66,289

  Dyfed

  55,425

  54,349

  57,142

  56,201

  67,547

  63,008

  62,734

  61,643

  Gwent

  67,799

  69,366

  61,620

  66,620

  79,360

  76,261

  77,471

  73,830

  Gwynedd

  33,440

  38,410

  34,423

  40,626

  38,986

  43,711

  36,225

  40,227

  Mid Glamorgan

  83,074

  82,598

  90,720

  90,349

  95,154

  101,939

  101,981

  102,613

  Powys

  17,330

  17,287

  19,437

  17,185

  23,383

  20,764

  21,177

  21,401

  South Glamorgan

  50,980

  55,223

  54,967

  57,098

  64,250

  63,227

  61,276

  56,721

  West Glamorgan

  55,452

  58,237

  57,248

  58,930

  70,642

  61,778

  64,523

  59,585

  Total Counties

  417,225

  437,853

  431,658

  452,614

  503,531

  506,066

  487,025

  482,309

  Education gross capital expenditure (cash prices)

  £000

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Clwyd

  3,258

  2,691

  5,223

  2,942

  4,208

  2,337

  Dyfed

  2,226

  2,391

  3,093

  2,893

  3,267

  2,567

  Gwent

  7,635

  1,175

  4,669

  1,415

  8,751

  1,421

  Gwynedd

  1,210

  1,260

  1,391

  1,372

  431

  776

  Mid Glamorgan

  3,706

  3,613

  2,909

  3,225

  2,337

  3,672

  Powys

  631

  548

  933

  840

  1,495

  1,635

  South Glamorgan

  2,890

  3,382

  5,000

  1,989

  5,200

  2,233

  West Glamorgan

  1,182

  5,022

  2,739

  1,877

  3,891

  2,736

  Total Counties

  22,738

  20,082

  25,957

  16,553

  29,580

  17,377

  Education gross capital expenditure (constant 1993–94 prices)

  £000

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Pre-Primary and Primary

  (b) Secondary

  Clwyd

  3,714

  3,068

  5,600

  3,154

  4,345

  2,413

  Dyfed

  2,538

  2,726

  3,316

  3,102

  3,373

  2,650

  Gwent

  8,704

  1,340

  5,006

  1,517

  9,035

  1,467

  Gwynedd

  1,379

  1,436

  1,491

  1,471

  445

  801

  Mid Glamorgan

  4,225

  4,119

  3,119

  3,458

  2,413

  3,791

  Powys

  719

  625

  1,000

  901

  1,544

  1,688

  South Glamorgan

  3,295

  3,856

  5,361

  2,132

  5,369

  2,306

  West Glamorgan

  1,348

  5,725

  2,937

  2,012

  4,017

  2,825

  Total Counties

  25,922

  22,894

  27,829

  17,747

  30,541

  17,942

  (a) Excludes school catering.

  (b) Excludes grant maintained schools.

  (c) Revised Estimates. Inter-authority recoupments are not available at school level from revised estimates and are therefore excluded. Revised estimates also exclude some central expenditure on the provision of education support services.

  Severn Bridge
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his assessment of the number of lorries diverted from the Severn bridge in a westerly direction through Gwent roads since each of the last two increases in tolls on the Severn bridge.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  There have been increases in the numbers of heavy goods vehicles entering Gwent from England over the last two years, but I cannot say that all are due to the effects of tolling. From the limited data available, it is estimated that the increases in daily flows are:130

  200 on the A48 in Chepstow

  150 on the A40 in Monmouth

  320 on the A4136 at Monmouth

  In March 1994 the Highways Agency commissioned traffic surveys to establish the true extent of the problem. The report of the survey is not expected until mid June.

  Employment
  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the latest estimate of the proportion of men between the ages of 60 and 65 years in Wales who are gainfully occupied.

  Mr. Redwood
  According to the autumn 1993 labour force survey there were 25,000 men in Wales aged 60 to 64 who were in employment, representing 35 per cent. of all males aged 60 to 64. The figure includes all men who were
  131
  doing some paid work in the referene week, those who had a job that they were temporarily away from and those doing unpaid family work for a business that they or a relative owned.

  Head Teachers (Dismissal)
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales in what circumstances he will dismiss head teachers; and what will be the process involved.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  My right hon. Friend and I expect the governing bodies of all schools to keep under review the performance of the headteacher and consider what action might be appropriate when the school is underperforming. When a school is identified in a report by Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools or a registered inspector as failing to provide acceptable standards of education, and my right hon. Friend is not satisfied with the action the school proposes to take to address the shortcomings, he has the power to establish an education association to take over the running of the school. We would expect any education association to look at the position of the headteacher and other staff in considering its plan of action. My right hon. Friend has the power to require the association to do so.

  The circumstances in which headteachers can be fairly dismissed are the same as those for other employees. There can be no hard and fast rules about what action should be taken in respect of the headteacher: each case would have to be considered on its merits. Any dismissal would have to be in accordance with the procedures and requirements set out in the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978.

  Species

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  Buzzard

  10

  1

  1

  1

  4

  Kestrel

  1

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Sparrowhawk

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  The only confirmed shootings of any of these species during the period were those of two buzzards in 1992.

  Health Service Funding
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) of 16 March,Official Report, column 698, if he will explain on what figure he bases his claim that the £1,295 million available for current spending on health authorities is a 4.3 per cent. increase on 1993–94 plans, and where that figure appears in the Welsh Office's published expenditure plans 1994–95 to 1996–97 (Cm 2515).

  Mr. Redwood
  The £1,295 million which I announced on 16 March as available for hospital and community health services current spending in 1994–95 represents a. cash increase of 4.3 per cent. over the £1,242 million planned spend on comparable services in 1993–94. These amounts are encompassed in the provision shown in figure

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales on which date notice was given to each NHS trust in Wales of their funding for the financial year 1994–95; what plans he has regarding the timing of notice to trusts in regard to pay awards; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  I refer the hon. Member to my right hon. Friend's announcement of 16 March, which sets out the external financing limits for NHS trusts in 1994–95 together with the allocations to health authorities and family health services authorities. The external financing limits, however, relate only to new borrowing or the use of reserves by NHS trusts. Their general funding is determined via the contractual negotiations with the various health authorities and GP fundholders which they serve.

  The Government's acceptance of the recommendations of the pay review bodies was conveyed to health authorities and NHS trusts in February with notification of the increases payable to relevant staff groups from 1 April followed in March. The notification of pay awards for other staff groups entitled to Whitley council terms and conditions of service is totally dependent upon the conclusion of 1994–95 pay negotiations within each of the functional councils. The amount and timing of pay awards to staff employed on local terms and conditions is a matter for each individual NHS trust.

  Birds of Prey
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many incidents were reported of(a) thefts and (b) poisonings or shootings of buzzards, kestrels and sparrowhawks in each year since 1989.

  Sir Wyn Roberts
  Information on thefts of birds or their eggs is not held by the Department.

  Details of confirmed poisoning incidents in Wales are as follows:

  9.01 of Cm 2515 as planned expenditure in 1993–94 and 1994–95 for current spending on hospital and community health services and—in anticipation of the transfer of funding from health authorities to GP fundholders for their spending on hospital and community health services—within the current expenditure provision for family health services.

  1994 GCSE Examinations
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what consultation he has had with the chairman of the Welsh Joint Education Committee in relation to irregularities in the conduct of the 1994 GCSE examinations and access given to the candidates to the examination papers before time; if the school was in the state sector; what guidelines he has issued with respect to disciplinary proceedings in relation to the teacher concerned; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  None. The school was in the state sector. The WJEC has investigated this matter thoroughly
  133
  and is satisfied that a change to the current instructions about the security of examination papers which it issues to all examination centres, is not required.

  The matter of disciplinary proceedings in relation to an individual teacher, is primarily a matter for the school concerned.

  Dearing Report
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is the(a) estimated and (b) out-turn cost of printing and delivering copies of the Dearing report, "The Review of School Curriculum and Assessment" to all schools.

  Mr. Redwood
  Copies of the Dearing report were issued to schools in Wales together with copies of the final report of the Curriculum Council for Wales. The final cost of printing and distribution of these reports was £42,108.

  Cross-border Tendering
  Mr. Hanson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales when his proposed consultation on cross-border tendering will take place; what will be its format; whom he proposes to consult; if he will make the consultation results public; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  My officials have written to the Council of Welsh Districts and Assembly of Welsh Counties inviting them to submit written comments preferably by Tuesday 7 June. I will place copies of any responses received in the Library of the House. I propose to announce the conclusions I have reached during report stage of the Local Government (Wales) Bill.

  Canton Area Traffic Management Scheme
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what representations he has received from(a) the South Glamorgan county councils and (b) others in relation to the funding of the Canton area traffic management scheme; what decisions he has made and announced in relation to grant aid for the scheme or further studies in relation to it; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  South Glamorgan county council submitted a proposal for a £1.5 million scheme last year and the hon. Member wrote in support. Under current arrangements for transport grant the Department can support only schemes costing over £5 million. Funding for smaller schemes has to be found from the unhypothecated annual settlements for capital and revenue spending. It is possible that elements would be eligible for strategic development scheme assistance. The council was advised of our conclusion on 12 January.

TRANSPORT

  Noise Regulations
  Mr. Soley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he will publish the draft noise regulations for new railway lines.

  Mr. Freeman
  Comments on the draft already issued. for public consultation are currently being considered. Our aim is to present draft regulations to Parliament during the summer.

  Transport Research Laboratory
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of proposals for the Transport Research Laboratory to be allowed to undertake commercially-funded research.

  Mr. Key
  The Transport Research Laboratory already undertakes commercially-funded research. The Government's assessment is that the laboratory will be much better placed to compete for commercially-funded work when it is in the private sector.

  M25
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) what representations he has received from members of the public in Coventry regarding the effect on the environment of proposals to widen the M25; and what proposals he has for minimising the effects these proposals will have on the environment;

  (2) how the sites of special scientific interest affected by the proposed widening of the M25 will be protected; what representations he has received about these proposals; if he will list them; and what consultations he has carried out with members of the public or organisations.

  Mr. Key
  These questions relate to operational matters of the Highways Agency. I have asked the chief executive, Mr. Lawrie Haynes to write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Lawrie Haynes to Mr. Jim Cunningham, dated 23 May 1994:
  The Minister for Roads and Traffic, Mr. Key, has asked me to write to you in reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions about widening the M25 motorway.
  I am sorry, but information about representations received from particular locations is not readily available and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. Similarly, many thousands of representations have been received about the widening proposals and I am afraid it would not be practicable to list them as you requested.
  About 70 per cent. of the proposed M25 widening will be undetaken within existing highway boundaries to limit the effects on surrounding areas. Where environmental effects cannot be avoided, a range of measures are proposed to keep them to a minimum. Depending on the particular location, the measures include the provision of noise and visual screens, landscaping, noise insulation to properties and, where appropriate, the use of porous asphalt to reduce traffic noise.
  It is not currently expected that any land will be required from Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) except possibly for a small area which may be needed from Ockham and Wisley Commons SSSI which surrounds Junction 10.
  We have consulted the public and a wide range of organisations, including English Nature, Countryside Commission and National Rivers Authority, on all M25 widening proposals published to date. Environmental statements have been published for comment on each of these proposals (except for proposed link roads between junctions 15–16 which is at an earlier stage of development and where an Assessment Report was published) and public exhibitions held in each case.

  Roads (Land Acquisition)
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what will be the impact of the review of the road programme upon land acquisition costs over the next five years; and to what extent he expects the review to lead to the disposal of any land.
  135
  Mr. Key
  As the information requested relates to operational matters of the Highways Agency I have asked the chief executive to write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Lawrie Haynes to Mr. John Marshall, dated 19 May 1994.
  I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the impact of the review of the road programme upon land acquisition costs and the extent to which it will lead to the disposal of any land.
  The decision to withdraw schemes from the road programme, announced by the Secretary of State on 30 March, will result in a reduced spend on land acquisition over the next 5 years. It is not possible to give precise figures since the amount of land required for those schemes has, in many cases, not been determined and acquisition costs are subject to general fluctuations in the property market.
  Where land has already been purchased for those schemes —for example under blight powers—it will be disposed of at the earliest opportunity consistent with sound management and disposal practice and Government Accounting requirements.

  Seat Belts
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which countries in the European Union require the fitting of seat belts in minibuses and coaches.

  Mr. Key
  None.

  Bridges (Lorry Strikes)
  Mr. Snape
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps his Department has taken to prevent lorries from striking rail bridges.

  Mr. Key
  We work closely with Railtrack and other bridge owners, local authorities, bus operators and the haulage industry to monitor and reduce bridge strikes. Local authorities have been given guidance on the use of traffic signs to warn drivers of high vehicles in good time; and at 21 low bridges of particular concern we have installed automatic signs which are switched on by detectors of vehicles that are too high.

  Piggyback Rail Corridor
  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what are his plans to respond to the report of the Piggyback consortium and the proposals from Central Railways to provide a piggy back rail corridor; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Freeman
  I congratulate the Piggyback consortium on its report and would like to see the initiative taken forward to the next stage. To this end, the Government will be prepared to support the consortium's bids for European funds, subject to eligibility and competing pressure on available funds.

  The central Railway group's proposal is an entirely private sector venture that would need in due course to obtain statutory authorisation by means of the procedures established in the Transport and Works Act. It would, therefore, be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage.

  Four-wheel Drive Vehicles
  Mr. Enright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport (1) what research his Department has conducted into the change in the numbers of safari-type four-wheel drive vehicles;
  136
  (2) what research his Department has conducted into the impact on pedestrian safety of the level of ownership of safari-type vehicles.

  Mr. Key
  Market trends and predictions from the motor industry suggest that the market share for four-wheel-drive vehicles typified by the Land/Range Rover is rising rapidly and may reach 3 per cent. of the car population by 1996.

  The Department has not carried out any research in terms of the level of ownership of safari type vehicles. But Transport Research Laboratory tests on such vehicles fitted with bull bars showed that the rigidity of the metal bars could cause an increase in pedestrian injuries. We have now taken steps to identify accidents involving a vehicle with bull bars and a pedestrian to ascertain whether bull bars are causing increased injuries. We do not expect to see results from this exercise before the end of 1994.

  Cars (Safe Manufacture)
  Mr. Enright
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what research his Department has conducted into the safe manufacture of cars in respect of the severity of the effect on pedestrians of accidental impact.

  Mr. Key
  For nearly 20 years the Transport Research Laboratory has been studying pedestrian safety and the mechanism of injury when struck by a car. The United Kingdom has led the European research institutes in the preparation of a draft directive. We are now awaiting a proposal for a directive from the EC Commission. Independent research carried out in the United Kingdom, supported by similar research in Germany, suggested that if all cars were softened to meet the proposals 7 per cent. of fatalities and 21 per cent. of serious injuries due to impacts by cars would be avoided. This might save approaching 100 lives per annum in the United Kingdom.

  M5
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what were his reasons for approving the J17 link road from the M5 to Weston-Super-Mare town centre.

  Mr. Key
  Various stages of the Weston-super-Mare primary distributor road between the M5—junction 21—and the town centre have been supported with transport supplementary grant. This scheme meets the criteria for acceptance of expenditure on TSG, being an improvement to the primary route network which relieves a residential area from the effects of through traffic. It was given a high priority by Avon county council, the local highway authority responsible for all aspects of its planning and design.

  New Road Schemes
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what representations he or any members of his Department have received from persons or organisations concerned with the strategic importance of proposed new road schemes.

  Mr. Key
  [holding answer 20 May 1994]: My right hon. Friend receives many representations from individuals and organisations about all aspects of proposed new road schemes, including questions of strategic importance.

  Information about specific schemes in the road programme is available from the chief executive of the Highways Agency, Mr. Lawrie Haynes.

  Family Railcards
  Mr. Dobson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will publish a table showing for each of the past five years, and as a total over the same period, the total amount spent on saver and supersaver tickets by rail passengers using family railcards, broken down into

  1989–90

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  1993–94

  Saver and Supersaver discounted adult spend

  N/A

  N/A

  N/A

  £17.825 million

  £18.706 million

  Saver and Supersaver discounted child spend

  N/A

  N/A

  N/A

  £0.997 million

  £0.956 million

  Saver and Supersaver Total adult and child

  N/A

  N/A

  £17.231 million

  £18.822 million

  £19.622 million

  Adult Saver discount

  34 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  Adult Supersaver discount

  34 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  25 per cent.

  Child discount

  £1 flat rate

  £1 flat rate

  £1 flat rate

  £1 flat rate

  £1 flat rate

  N/A = Not available—These figures are not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

EDUCATION

  Teachers, Kent
  Mr. Dunn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many teaching staff and non-teaching staff were employed by the Kent local education authority for each year since 1988.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  Information on the number of employees of each local education authority is compiled by the local government management board from data collected on behalf of the joint staffing watch. The table shows the data available for the Kent local authority.

  Teachers and lecturers

  Education Other

  March

  Full-time

  Part-time

  Full-time

  Part-time

  1990

  12,496

  5,006

  3,999

  9,653

  1991

  12,087

  4,176

  3,655

  7,854

  1992

  11,504

  5,379

  3,657

  9,064

  1993

  10,857

  5,592

  3,546

  9,692

  1994

  8,708

  4,189

  2,706

  9,970

  1. The table covers all staff in the LEA maintained nursery, primary and secondary schools sector, special and further education, and central administration. Staff employed by self-governing—GM—schools are not included. The 1994 figures exclude colleges which transferred to the new FE sector in April 1993.

  2. "Education—Other" includes educational support, clerical, school meals and premises related staff employed in schools and colleges, together with central services and administration within the education service.

  Dearing Report
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what is the(a) estimated and (b) out-turn cost of printing and delivering copies of the Dearing report on the review of school curriculum and assessment to all schools.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The out-turn printing and distribution costs of Sir Ron Dearing's final report on the national curriculum published in January 1994 were £460,000; the bulk of this expenditure was in respect of copies of the report sent to schools but a precise breakdown is not available.

  In line with Sir Ron Dearing's recommendations, proposals were published earlier this month for a slimmed down national curriculum in all subjects. The estimated
  138
  discounted adult fares and discounted child fares, together with the level of discount on saver and supersaver tickets for each year afforded to rail passengers using family railcards.

  Mr. Freeman
  [holding answer 20 May 1994]: This is a commercial matter for British Rail, but I understand that the information requested is as follows:

  cost of printing and distributing 120,000 sets of these consultation documents is about £700,000. About two-thirds have been sent to schools.

  Student Statistics
  Mr. Robert Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many mature students attended universities and colleges in each of the last three years.

  Mr. Boswell
  The table shows the number of students on their first year of an higher education course in Great Britain who were defined as mature' in each of the last three academic years.

  1990–91

  1991–92

  1992–93

  262,249

  308,147

  352,258

  1Mature students are defined as those who at the start of their undergraduate course are aged 21 and over, and for those commencing a postgraduate course 25 years old and over.

  Mr. Robert Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many mature students currently in higher education are aged over 30 years.

  Mr. Boswell
  In the academic year 1992–93, there were 163,446 students aged over 30 years in their first year of study, of whom 154,219 were United Kingdom domiciled.

  Educational Psychologists
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education what is his estimate of the increase in numbers of educational psychologists needed to fulfil the additional requirements set by the Education Act 1993 and the code of practice on the identification and assessment of special educational needs.

  Mr. Forth
  Local education authorities should be able to meet the requirements of the 1993 Act and the code of practice within existing resources: the number of educational psychologists has increased by over 30 per cent. in the last 10 years. It is for each LEA to determine staffing levels based on local needs and priorities.

  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many educational psychologists have(a) entered and (b) left the profession during the past three years for which figures are available.

  Mr. Forth
  This information is not held centrally.

  Schools Research
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list those research projects into(a) local management of schools and (b) grant-maintained

  Subject

  Researcher

  DFE grant £

  Financial Delegation to Schools

  Coopers and Lybrand Associates

  68,277

  Local Management of Schools—Guidance Manual and Training Programme

  Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA)

  135,000

  LMS: Extension to Special Schools: Feasibility Study

  Touche Ross Management Consultants

  40,000

  Review of LMS Initiative—Formula Funding Study

  CIPFA

  25,000

  Advice to Schools on Service Contracts: LMS

  Coopers and Lybrand Associates

  54,500

  LMS: Advice for Small Schools

  Coopers and Lybrand Associates

  55,999

  Effectiveness of Schooling and Educational Resource Management

  University of Birmingham (Professor H. Thomas)

  45,927

  The following projects have been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council:

  Subject

  Researcher

  ESRC Grant £

  LMS and Provision for Special Educational Needs

  University of London Institute of Education (Ms J. M. Evans; Ms I. Lunt; Dr. P. E. Young)

  73,537

  Parental and Institutional Choice: Effects of More Open Enrolment and LMS

  Open University (Professor R. Glatter; Dr. A. Hibbert)

  35,910

  Industrial Relations and the Local Management of Schools

  Keele University (Dr. R. Seifert; Mr. M. Ironside)

  43,150

  LMS and School Culture: The Perceptions of Teachers, Heads and Chairs of Governors

  Sheffield University (Mr. D. Shearn; Dr. R. Laughlin; Mrs. P. Broadbent)

  9,970

  The Effects of the Education Reform Act's Formula Funding on Resource Setting

  Open University (Ms R. Levacic)

  32,400

  Opting for Grant-Maintained Status: A Study of Policy Making in Education

  University of West of England (Dr. J. Fitz; Dr. D. Halpin)

  53,071

  School Budgets
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will list those local education authorities whose local management schemes contain provision for schools to carry forward budget deficits from year to year.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  All local education authorities are required to include provision in their local management of schools schemes for the recovery of deficits incurred by individual schools at the end of the financial year. This will normally be from the following year's budget share, except where clear practical considerations preclude recovery on this timescale.
  140
  status which have been supported by public funds, stating, in each case, the cost of support and the names of the applicants and their institutions.

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The following projects have been supported by the Department for Education:

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  South Africa
  Mr. Cox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to introduce a know-how fund for South Africa.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  On 4 May the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs announced that we expect to provide £100 million of British assistance over the next three years. This includes £60 million of bilateral aid which will provide know-how and support to the Government of National Unity and assistance to initiatives arising from the non-government sector.

  Palestine
  Mr. Battle
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much aid(a) was given through Britain's bilateral aid programme to Palestine in each year between 1990 and 1993 and (b) will be given in

  141
  (i) 1993–94, (ii) 1994–95 and (iii) 1996–97; and in each year, how much of this aid was or will be spent (1) in the form of direct grants to local Palestinian organisations, and (2) on the provision of consultation services and technical assistance by British organisations.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Our bilateral aid flows to the occupied territories from 1990–91 to 1992–93 were as follows:

  Year

  £ million

  1990–91

  1·1

  1991–92

  1·5

  1992–93

  1·5

  Apart from the British Council-managed training programme—£0.2 million in 1990–91, £0.3 million in 1991–92 and £0.4 million in 1992–93—most of the funds were disbursed through British non-government organisations—NGOs—in many cases working with local Palestinian NGO partners.

  In addition we have been making an annual contribution of £6 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA—which is responsible for Palestinian refugees.

  In 1993–94 we spent about £2.9 million which includes a contribution of £1.3 million to the technical assistance trust fund set up by the World bank following the signature of the Israeli/Palestinian declaration of principles.

  Over the next three years our assistance to the Palestinians will be primarily through our contributions to EC aid and UNRWA. Our bilateral aid will continue to include assistance through NGOs, as well as direct help to Palestinian institutions. The exact proportions of each type of aid are not determined in advance. We aim to respond flexibly to Palestinian needs.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Blue Ear Disease
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action is being taken by Her Majesty's Government to counter blue ear disease in pigs.

  Mr. Soames
  The Blue Eared Pig Disease Order 1991 was revoked in November 1992, in line with an EC decision which made it clear that official control measures had become inappropriate and unnecessary. The disease was considered by veterinary experts to be of less economic significance than was orginally thought and had become milder in its effects. The United Kingdom pig industry was subsequently provided with advice which included recommended disease control measures and guidance on steps to take to deal with an outbreak. I am arranging for copies of the advice note prepared for farmers to be left in the House of Commons Library.

  Milk Marketing Board
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will estimate how long she expects the residuary milk marketing board to continue in existence.

  Mr. Jack
  A residuary milk marketing board will come into existence only if an approved reorganisation scheme is 142
  implemented. My right hon. Friends, the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister, have yet to reach a decision on whether to grant the milk marketing board's application for approval. If a residuary MMB were to take over it might need to remain in existence for six years or more, given the legal possibility which exists for product liability claims to be brought in that period.

  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will bring forward proposals providing for milk producers to have majority representation on(a) the residuary milk marketing board, (b) the milk development council and (c) Genus.

  Mr. Jack
  The milk marketing board has proposed in its reorganisation scheme that the board of a residuary MMB should have majority producer representation. I cannot comment on individual aspects of the MMB's proposals in advance of a formal decision on whether to grant the board's application for approval but we have said that we believe producers should be strongly represented on any residuary board. If the MMB's proposals were implemented Genus would become Genus Ltd, an independent company. The constitution proposed by the MMB does not make special provision for producer representation on the board.

  No decision has been taken to establish a milk development council. We are awaiting the result of the recent poll of producers.

  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make it her policy to promote a free market in milk supply rather than establish an arbitration mechanism.

  Mr. Jack
  My right hon. Friends the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretary of State for Wales are considering, in accordance with the provisions of the Agriculture Act 1993, whether to grant the milk marketing board's application for approval of its reorganisation scheme. The question whether or not approval should be granted does not pose itself in the terms suggested.

  Milk Marque
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when she will bring forward proposals to enable the operations of Milk Marque to begin officially.

  Mr. Jack
  It is not for my right hon. Friend the Minister to bring forward proposals but rather to consider, together with the Secretary of State for Wales, whether to grant the milk marketing board's application for approval of its reorganisation scheme. They will announce a decision as soon as they are in a position to do so.

  Fishing Nets
  Mr. Beith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, pursuant to her answer of 12 May,Official Report, columns 201–2, what instructions have been given to inspection officers as to the conditions which must be satisfied for a net to be acceptable in which the square mesh panel is fitted forward of the flapper.

  Mr. Jack
  The statutory instruments to which I referred in my reply of 12 May at columń201–02 and to which my hon. Friend the Palriamentary Under-Secretary of State at

  143
  the Scottish Office referred in his reply of 17 May at column 410 set out the requirements for the use of square mesh panels. Inspecting officers are instructed to enforce these SIs as part of their fisheries enforcement work.

  Article 4(i)(c) of Statutory Instrument 1992 No. 1344 requires square mesh panels to be sited in the codend, or in any extension piece or immediately in front of any extension piece or, in the absence of any extension piece, immediately in front of the codend. Article 4(i)(f) additionally requires that the panels be placed forward of any flapper or with the front end of the panel to the rear of any flapper by at least three flapper lengths.

  In the light of the questions raised by the hon. Member the legislation and related instructions are currently being examined by Fisheries Departments to see whether there is any need for clarification in order to ensure that the objective of the legislation, to facilitate the escape of undersized immature fish, is achieved.

  Mr. Morley
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what actions the Government are taking in response to breaches by the French Government of EU rules on drift-net lengths; and if she will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  It is for the Commission to ensure that member states comply with European Union law and to institute infraction proceedings as necessary.

  Straw Disposal Survey
  Mr. Chris Smith
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans she has to undertake a survey of straw disposal and utilisation following the 1994 harvest; and what are her plans in respect of the future publication of the results of the straw disposal survey.

  Number of LFA holdings (wholly or mainly in the LFA) designated as wholly or mainly SDA or DA by County

  County

  1987

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  Cheshire

  SDA

  181

  179

  181

  179

  178

  176

  174

  DA

  39

  39

  39

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Cleveland

  SDA

  121

  120

  115

  108

  107

  106

  103

  DA

  18

  18

  19

  19

  20

  20

  20

  Cornwall

  SDA

  168

  169

  163

  147

  147

  142

  140

  DA

  1,342

  1,355

  1,352

  1,222

  1,205

  1,190

  1,172

  Cumbria

  SDA

  1,873

  1,975

  1,988

  1,938

  1,949

  1,952

  1,972

  DA

  611

  618

  610

  602

  605

  601

  610

  Derbyshire

  SDA

  1,128

  1,131

  1,126

  1,085

  1,094

  1,104

  1,103

  DA

  314

  318

  319

  318

  327

  330

  332

  Devon

  SDA

  1,279

  1,272

  1,262

  1,237

  1,226

  1,231

  1,234

  DA

  1,351

  1,347

  1,364

  1,327

  1,347

  1,351

  1,359

  Durham

  SDA

  1,053

  1,052

  1,061

  1,004

  982

  980

  977

  DA

  187

  185

  182

  185

  190

  186

  191

  Hereford and Worcester

  SDA

  223

  210

  208

  207

  210

  207

  206

  DA

  132

  131

  137

  137

  138

  146

  153

  Isles of Scilly

  SDA

  65

  68

  68

  62

  55

  50

  58

  DA

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Lancashire

  SDA

  1,001

  997

  996

  936

  927

  923

  911

  DA

  766

  769

  778

  822

  827

  865

  860

  Northumberland

  SDA

  1,360

  1,374

  1,361

  1,332

  1,330

  1,329

  1,316

  DA

  189

  185

  185

  181

  187

  185

  183

  Shropshire

  SDA

  433

  420

  414

  411

  414

  440

  449

  DA

  325

  325

  320

  292

  295

  294

  301

  Somerset

  SDA

  369

  381

  395

  376

  365

  357

  355

  DA

  50

  48

  48

  46

  45

  47

  46

  Staffordshire

  SDA

  323

  325

  323

  319

  320

  321

  326

  DA

  717

  720

  713

  664

  657

  664

  670

  Greater Manchester

  SDA

  128

  134

  138

  144

  155

  162

  162

  DA

  101

  102

  106

  148

  157

  170

  172

  South Yorkshire

  SDA

  82

  83

  95

  94

  94

  91

  92

  DA

  140

  150

  169

  165

  169

  170

  170

  North Yorkshire

  SDA

  1,528

  1,515

  1,514

  1,495

  1,495

  1,508

  1,519

  DA

  745

  741

  749

  747

  767

  769

  767

  West Yorkshire

  SDA

  1,173

  1,144

  1,176

  1,095

  1,109

  1,094

  1,095

  144
  Mr. Jack
  A survey of straw disposal is planned for the autumn of 1994 and results will be published as normal through a statistics notice. In common with all Government statistical inquiries the content and frequency of this survey is subject to regular review.

  Earnings
  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what were the average earnings of regular full time hired workers on holdings in the special development areas, development areas and less-favoured areas for each year since 1979.

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

  Hill Farmers
  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many less-favoured area hill farmers there were on land designated(a) a special development area and (b) development area, for each year since 1979 for England as a whole and for each county.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  The table shows estimates of the number of LFA farms classified as SDA or DA are obtained from the annual June agricultural census. This information is available on a consistent basis only for the years 1987–1993.
  145

  County

  1987

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  DA

  205

  237

  256

  250

  260

  258

  255

  England

  SDA

  12,488

  12,549

  12,584

  12,169

  12,157

  12,173

  12,192

  DA

  7,232

  7,288

  7,346

  7,164

  7,236

  7,287

  7,303

  Footnotes:

  Source: June Agricultural Census of main holdings. The last minor holdings survey was carried out in 1989, as a result of which a number of holdings were removed from the register of main holdings in 1990.

  Very small areas of land have been amalgamated with the LFA areas in adjacent counties in order to avoid disclosure

  SDA are holdings with at least half their land in the LFA and at least half of this is the SDA

  DA are holdings with at least half their land in the LFA and more than half of this in the DA

  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many less-favoured area hill farmers there were for each year since 1979 for England and each county(a) over eight European size units and (b) below eight ESUs.

  Number of LFA holdings (wholly or mainly in the LFA) by county and ESU size groups

  County

  ESU size group

  1987

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  Cheshire

  <8 ESU

  105

  103

  107

  104

  110

  103

  107

  >=8 ESU

  115

  115

  113

  114

  108

  114

  109

  Cleveland

  <8 ESU

  37

  40

  42

  34

  40

  37

  37

  >=8 ESU

  102

  98

  92

  93

  87

  89

  86

  Cornwall

  <8 ESU

  792

  825

  828

  710

  713

  704

  680

  >=8 ESU

  718

  699

  687

  659

  639

  628

  632

  Cumbria

  <8 ESU

  602

  677

  690

  643

  645

  678

  712

  >=8 ESU

  1,882

  1,916

  1,908

  1,897

  1,909

  1,875

  1,870

  Derbyshire

  <8 ESU

  627

  650

  646

  614

  644

  663

  661

  >=8 ESU

  815

  799

  799

  789

  777

  771

  774

  Devon

  <8 ESU

  1,160

  1,148

  1,162

  1,115

  1,158

  1,158

  1,209

  >=8 ESU

  1,470

  1,471

  1,464

  1,449

  1,415

  1,424

  1,384

  Durham

  <8 ESU

  461

  459

  462

  419

  431

  429

  441

  >=8 ESU

  779

  778

  781

  770

  741

  737

  727

  Hereford and Worcester

  <8 ESU

  123

  124

  125

  127

  134

  130

  130

  >=8 ESU

  232

  217

  220

  217

  214

  223

  229

  Isles of Scilly

  <8 ESU

  28

  32

  31

  26

  19

  19

  20

  >=8 ESU

  37

  36

  37

  36

  36

  31

  38

  Lancashire

  <8 ESU

  702

  707

  731

  721

  720

  737

  721

  >=8 ESU

  1,065

  1,059

  1,043

  1,037

  1,034

  1,051

  1,050

  Northumberland

  <8 ESU

  384

  404

  403

  363

  374

  364

  363

  >=8 ESU

  1,165

  1,155

  1,143

  1,150

  1,143

  1,150

  1,136

  Shropshire

  <8 ESU

  288

  291

  274

  262

  266

  285

  293

  >=8 ESU

  470

  454

  460

  441

  443

  449

  457

  Somerset

  <8 ESU

  177

  187

  204

  190

  192

  184

  181

  >=8 ESU

  242

  242

  239

  232

  218

  220

  220

  Staffordshire

  <8 ESU

  471

  495

  502

  448

  441

  451

  463

  >=8 ESU

  569

  550

  534

  535

  536

  534

  533

  Greater Manchester

  <8 ESU

  110

  117

  121

  150

  165

  174

  181

  >=8 ESU

  119

  119

  123

  142

  147

  158

  153

  South Yorkshire

  <8 ESU

  79

  81

  98

  96

  102

  100

  104

  >=8 ESU

  143

  152

  166

  163

  161

  161

  158

  North Yorkshire

  <8 ESU

  563

  574

  596

  578

  604

  641

  663

  >=8 ESU

  1,710

  1,682

  1,667

  1,664

  1,658

  1,636

  1,623

  West Yorkshire

  <8 ESU

  887

  880

  925

  837

  856

  839

  843

  >=8 ESU

  491

  501

  507

  508

  513

  513

  507

  England

  <8 ESU

  7,596

  7,794

  7,947

  7,437

  7,614

  7,696

  7,809

  >=8 ESU

  12,124

  12,043

  11,983

  11,896

  11,779

  11,764

  11,686

  Footnotes:

  Source: June Agricultural Census of main holdings. The last minor holdings survey was carried out in 1989, as a result of which a number of holdings were removed from the register of main holdings in 1990.

  Very small areas of land have been amalgamated with the LFA areas in adjacent counties in order to avoid disclosure.

  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many less-favoured area hill farmers of(a) less than eight European size units and (b) over eight ESUs operate as a proportion of all LFA hill farmers and all farmers in the English LFA and in each county.
  146
  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  Estimates of the number of farms wholly or mainly in the LFA, classified by the two ESU size groups, are contained in the table. This information is available on a consistent basis only for the years 1987–1993.

  Mrs. Gillian Shephard
  The table shows, for each county in England, the number of holdings wholly or mainly in the LFA which are less than eight ESU and more than or equal to eight ESU as a proportion of all holdings that are wholly or mainly in the LFA. In addition it shows the number of holdings wholly or mainly in the LFA as a proportion of all holdings with land in the LFA.
  147

  June 1993

  Proportion of the number of holdings (wholly or mainly in the LFA)

  Number of holdings (wholly or mainly in the LFA) as a proportion of all holdings in the LFA

  less than 8 ESUs Percentage

  8 ESUs or more Percentage

  Percentage

  Cheshire

  49·5

  50·5

  89·6

  Cleveland

  30·1

  69·9

  93·2

  Cornwall

  51·8

  48·2

  87·2

  Cumbria

  27·6

  72·4

  80·6

  Derbyshire

  46·1

  53·9

  96·3

  Devon

  46·6

  53·4

  95·5

  Durham

  37·8

  62·2

  97·7

  Hereford and Worcester

  36·2

  63·8

  79·8

  Isles of Scilly

  34·5

  65·5

  100·0

  Lancashire

  40·7

  59·3

  92·9

  Northumberland

  24·2

  75·8

  91·6

  Shropshire

  39·1

  60·9

  83·4

  Somerset

  45·1

  54·9

  93·0

  Staffordshire

  46·5

  53·5

  95·6

  Greater Manchester

  54·2

  45·8

  93·8

  South Yorkshire

  39·7

  60·3

  96·0

  North Yorkshire

  29·0

  71·0

  90·6

  West Yorkshire

  62·4

  37·6

  94·5

  ENGLAND

  40·1

  59·59

  90·8

  Notes:

  The proportions are based on counts of holdings.

  Source: 1993 June Agricultural Census of main holdings.

  Dr. Strang
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the average occupancy rate of a hill farm in England.

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

  Upper Limb Disorders
  Dr. Marek
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the present number of civil servants taking legal action against her Department as a result of work-related upper limb disorders.
  148
  Mr. Jack
  There is currently one case of legal action being undertaken against this Ministry in relation to an alleged work-related upper limb disorder.

  Animal Transportation
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will make a statement about the transport of live animals.

  Mr. Soames
  [holding answer 23 May 1994]: I refer to the reply which I gave to the hon. Members for Worsley (Mr. Lewis) and for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) on 24 March 1994 at column 370.

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

D-Day Tributes
Lord Moran Lord Moran asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will take the opportunity of the forthcoming anniversary of the Normandy landings to express to Commonwealth countries the thanks of the House and of the nation for their help on D-Day and throughout the Second World War.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moran, for affording it the opportunity to pay tribute to the magnificent assistance which Commonwealth countries gave during the last war.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear.
Lord Wakeham: Commemorative events planned for the anniversary of the end of the Second World War next year will provide a fitting occasion to give full recognition to the contributions of Commonwealth countries and, indeed, of our other allies.
Lord Moran: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for that reply which will be widely welcomed. Does he accept that those of us who, 50 years ago, were in the Channel or in the skies over it or preparing to land on the Normandy beaches were in no doubt about the enormous debt of gratitude owed to our friends from distant parts of the Commonwealth who came to fight with us, not only in Europe, like the 3rd Canadian Division, which was to land on D-Day, but in other theatres as well? For example, is the noble Lord aware that between 1943 and 1945 the proportion of pilots in Bomber Command from Canada, Australia and New Zealand rose from 37 per cent. to 46 per cent.—nearly half—and that in 1944, when we were critically short of junior officers, the Canadians lent us, as volunteers under the Canloan scheme, 673 junior officers, who fought with British regiments from D-Day to the end of the war, suffering 75 per cent. casualties and receiving an outstanding number of awards for gallantry?
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I echo entirely the sentiments of the noble Lord in expressing our debt of gratitude to those from Commonwealth countries who served with distinction with British regiments from D-Day through to the end of the war. The heads of state of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, together with representatives of their veterans, have been invited to the 50th anniversary D-Day commemorations which will recognise the contributions of all those allies who provided formed military units in and around Normandy on 6th June 1944.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Government of New Zealand— New Zealand is the point furthest from the Polish corridor, the source of World War II—met on 1st September 1939 and decided that as from the day on which Britain was at war they would be also?
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. I know that the High Commissioner for New Zealand is aware of this occasion in your Lordships' House today and is very pleased that we are taking the opportunity to pay tribute to his country.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I had the privilege of being a reconnaissance corps officer serving in Normandy from 6th June 1944. I had the privilege also of being a Commonwealth observer in South Africa on 10th April 1994. Therefore, the Minister will not be surprised to learn that I share totally the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Moran. Would not the best way of demonstrating our support for what Commonwealth countries have done in the past be to give maximum support to what the developed countries of the Commonwealth are doing today through the many practical projects which help developing countries of the Commonwealth—projects which are valued and needed by those developing countries?
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I am sure, that the noble Lord is absolutely right. We shall continue to strive to develop relationships with the Commonwealth in the way the noble Lord suggests and in other ways. However, this Question is about one very great event in our history.
Lord Shaughnessy: My Lords, I am sure that the response of the noble Lord the Leader of the House to the Question in the name of my noble friend Lord Moran will be greeted with great pleasure by the Commonwealth forces who took part in the D-Day landings and later in Operation Overlord. I cannot speak for those of the Canadian forces who took part in the D-Day landings because I did not land on Juno beach until D-plus 23 but I should like to support the splendid celebration of 6th June to commemorate that terrific military operation, and I associate the Canadians who took part in paying tribute to the wonderful co-ordination and reciprocation of the combined efforts on the part of our British and American comrades who made such a tremendous contribution to that great operation.
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I am sure the whole House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shaughnessy, for recounting his particular experiences and for saying what he said.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, may I associate these Benches with the thoughts expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Moran, and indeed the thoughts expressed by the noble Lord the Leader of the House? I would say to the noble Lord the Leader of the House that I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord Shaughnessy, mentioned the Canadian contribution, which was very important. Will the noble Lord the Leader of the House tell us what arrangements might under certain

603
circumstances be made to commemorate in the same way those soldiers of former Commonwealth countries which are no longer in the Commonwealth but which we believe and hope will come back into the Commonwealth?
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, the position is that the nations invited to the D-Day celebrations are those which formed military units on 6th June. They include nations both within the Commonwealth and outside it, for example, Greece, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia, as well as the major Commonwealth countries and the United States. There will be an opportunity of course in the VE celebrations and the VJ celebrations to widen the invitation to others and consideration will be given to exactly who the list will contain. However, I am hopeful that most of the nations your Lordships would wish to see invited will be invited.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, in associating my noble friends and myself very closely with the tributes which have been paid, might not the tributes paid this afternoon be drawn to the attention, on an individual basis, of those Commonwealth units which took part in the fighting in Normandy?
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, that is a helpful suggestion. I believe the High Commissioners of the countries concerned know of this Question in your Lordships' House and are pleased that it is being asked. However, I shall ensure that everyone who should be told of it is told. I think we should move on fairly soon to the next Question.

Benzodiazepine Litigation: Legal Aid Costs
2.45 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
What was the cost to the Legal Aid Fund of the collapsed proceedings in respect of tranquillisers and other sedative drugs; and what is the total estimated cost of legal aid in the current year.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, final figures for the cost of the Benzodiazepine litigation are not yet available, and some aspects of the litigation are still continuing. This Answer can therefore only be an interim estimate. Some 13,000 legal aid certificates were granted. The Legal Aid Board estimates that the average cost per certificate where no proceedings were issued is £1,750. In cases where proceedings have been served, the average cost is estimated as £3,500. In addition there are generic costs in the region of £3 million to £4 million. The provision for legal aid for the current financial year is £1.406 billion.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for that interesting if rather depressing Answer. Will he say whether the real efforts
604
which the House knows he is making to restrain the growth of this expenditure are being continued and will have any success?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, we are continuing with the efforts and I believe that they meet with a certain degree of success. The particular subject matter of the early part of this Question is difficult. The Legal Aid Board, and I hope also the Procedure Committee of the Supreme Court, will give consideration to whether the court arrangements can be improved for dealing with litigations of this type. Sadly such litigation has become more common in recent years and some new system for dealing with such cases may require to be established.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is not the noble and learned Lord aware of some recent reports in the press which show that people who are alleged to have misappropriated large sums of money will be in receipt of legal aid? I believe in one case a sum of £2 million was referred to. If it is correct that a case is receiving such an amount of legal aid, does it not follow that that sum of money prevents people at the bottom end of the scale, who may have more minor cases but who may be more genuine, from receiving legal aid? If that is so, should not the whole system be looked at and reviewed and a different system be introduced to prevent that kind of abuse?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, it is easier to state the problems that face the legal aid system than to produce comprehensive solutions for them. If someone is accused of a serious crime and that person qualifies under the regulations for means, that person is entitled to legal aid. The cost of defending a person in serious proceedings may be quite substantial. On the other hand it is important that smaller cases are also properly serviced. The financial conditions for civil legal aid are of course different from those for criminal legal aid and are somewhat more stringent. My efforts have certainly been directed to try to secure, with the money available, as wide a service to the public as possible under this scheme.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor recall a recent appeal, which was rejected by your Lordships' House, in which two counsel appealed against the reduction by the Taxing Master of their original claim for £107,000 for four days work to £34,000? Does he also recall that on that occasion the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman, said that it was up to the Bar Council to get a grip on these highly inflated figures? Has the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor received any indication from the Bar Council that it is making any effort to deal with these recent highly inflated figures?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, as regards this Question, my principal concern is with legal aid. In relation to that matter I know that the Bar Council has always expressed concern where claims have been unduly inflated. As the noble Lord knows, there is a system for taxing or checking the fees claimed, and what is awarded is what the authority responsible for taxation considers to be reasonable. Therefore, it is not

605
particularly important that larger amounts have been claimed except that it is easier for me to make satisfactory arrangements if the claims are as close as possible to what is regarded as reasonable and is ultimately awarded.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, to revert to the original Question of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, is the noble and learned Lord satisfied with the application of legal aid funds in the tranquilliser litigation? Rather than spend large sums of money on the investigation of the particular circumstances of many thousands of cases, would it not have been far preferable to have brought forward a small number of strong individual test cases in order to determine whether there was a generic case?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, as I said earlier, this matter goes further than merely arrangements for legal aid. The statutory arrangements for legal aid require the Legal Aid Board to consider the merits of individual claims. That is what it has done, and that is why I was able to distinguish between cases in which proceedings had been served and those in which proceedings had not been served.
Underlying the noble Lord's question is the important matter of court procedure as to whether there should be some system in the court for staying cases raising the same issue in order that strong cases might go forward. There is always difficulty in judging which are the strongest cases because most litigants have their own advisers, and to achieve a consensus view as to which are the stronger cases is not always easy. However, I believe that there may be scope for improving the procedures of the court in this connection and I hope that consideration can be given to that matter by the Supreme Court Procedure Committee and others. If any of your Lordships have good ideas as to how the matter might be handled I shall receive them with deep gratitude.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor say why legal aid costs are much lower in Scotland than in England?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, there are considerably fewer people in Scotland than in England and Wales and therefore considerably fewer applications for legal aid. I have no doubt that that is an important factor in the difference between the amounts spent in those countries.

Broadcasting Act 1990
2.53 p.m.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth Lord Thomson of Monifieth asked Her Majesty's Government:
What plans they have to amend the Broadcasting Act 1990.
Baroness Trumpington: None, my Lords, at present; but the Government are reviewing the rules which restrict ownership between newspapers, television companies and radio stations.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the latter half of her Answer. Is she aware that today the board of Channel 4 has sought amendments to the Broadcasting Act 1990 to deal with what has developed as the rather grotesque anomaly that a statutory public service corporation is; being compelled to subsidise the shareholders of ITV companies to the tune of about £38 million a year— money which, in the interests of the viewers, should be spent on the programmes?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the funding arrangements were designed to safeguard Channel 4 in the long term. The arrangement has been in operation for only one year. The Government would have to be persuaded that changes were justified.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, as one who has backed Channel 4 from the start, I am delighted to hear of its financial success. Will my noble friend recognise that that success should be rewarded in future financial arrangements for broadcasting?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, to answer my noble friend Lord Whitelaw, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage is meeting the chairman of Channel 4 next month to hear his views on the funding formula. I am sure that he will take account of my noble friend's views, particularly as it was he who set up Channel 4.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that almost any changes to the misjudged Broadcasting Act 1990 should be viewed with sympathy and, in particular, changes which would move money into programmes rather than elsewhere—although I would hope not into programmes such as the shabby Channel 4 programme on the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, last week? The general standard is very high. Will the Minister specifically give an assurance that any changes will not involve any movement towards privatisation of Channel 4?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I can answer the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, simply. We have no plans to do so.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that last night Mary Whitehouse, who has done more than anyone to try to uphold the standards on all television channels, bowed out after serving for many years as the chairman of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association? Is she also aware that in Sir Hugh Greene's time—although matters have changed very much now—he put round a notice saying that no employee of the BBC was to have any contact with Mrs. Whitehouse whatsoever? Indeed, she says in her book that for 11 years she was not invited to appear on any single programme. Her appearance last night shows that the new management has different policies.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am sure that we all wish Mrs. Whitehouse a long and happy retirement. She is a brave lady who has fought a great fight for what she believes in.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, does the noble Baroness recall that in January when I moved for Papers in a debate on pornography and violence she undertook to examine the question of the watershed with a view possibly to moving it from 9 p.m. to 10.30 p.m., as is the practice in France? Has she made any progress with her studies?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, that question does not have much connection with the Broadcasting Act. However, I should like to reply to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. The regulatory authorities have specifically responded to anxieties about violence on television, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage had meetings with them earlier this month. Perhaps I should point out that the programmes shown after 10.30 p.m. in France would not be allowed to be shown in England.

Corporal Punishment
2.58 p.m.
Lord Palmer Lord Palmer asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have plans to reintroduce corporal punishment as a deterrent for those who commit crimes of violence and vandalism.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, we have no such plans.
Lord Palmer: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that not altogether surprising answer, but does he not agree that if his Government did have such plans they would meet with widespread support throughout the country?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that many people would like to see the return of corporal punishment. However, that does not remain part of the Government's policy simply because it would be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the alarming and disappointing prospect of arming the police generally stems almost directly from the failure to administer proper punishment to thugs, bullies, muggers and the like? Does he agree that the practice in Arab countries, where the perpetrators of such offences as theft have their hand cut off, has succeeded remarkably well?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not know whether my noble friend suggests that we should use that kind of penalty in this country. However, I know that many people share the premise of his original question.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is some positive evidence that in this country at any rate corporal punishment may not be as effective a deterrent as is sometimes supposed? I am sure he will agree that when it was open to courts to impose lashes by the cat-o'-nine-tails for such offences as armed robbery, two separate studies showed that the subsequent criminal careers of a number of men who
608
received that penalty were distinctly worse than the subsequent careers of a number of men convicted of precisely comparable offences who had not received that penalty.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it is always difficult to transpose the careers of one type of person with those of another, assuming that the first may have had a different punishment. I should have thought that many people would have found the punishment that the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, mentions a certain deterrent, but statistics may show otherwise.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that the whacking he received at Winchester improved his behaviour no end?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I have always wondered what it was that made me such a delightful person. I never ascribed it to that, but the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, is probably correct.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, if one allows for the fact that the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits corporal punishment—in-stitutionalised violence—on the ground that it is degrading, whom do the Government consider more degraded by corporal punishment? Is it the victim, the punisher or the accused? Some of them must be degraded to a considerable extent.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I believe that the most degraded person is the victim on whom the violence has been perpetrated in the first place.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, have not recent cases abroad served to show that, even under a Tory Government, we are living in a decent, humane society which pays much attention to punishment and the effects of punishment and reform? Does it not also serve to remind those who travel abroad and violate the laws of those countries that the punishments in those countries may be cruel and vicious and that if they break the laws they should not whine when those punishments are inflicted?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is absolutely correct. If people go abroad they subject themselves to the laws of the country they visit. If they offend the laws of that country they get what they receive and deserve it.

Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) (No. 2) Bill [H.L.]
3.3 p.m.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to prohibit discrimination against disabled people on the ground of their disability; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time. -(Lord Ashley of Stoke.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Business of the House: Debate, 25th May
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Healey set down for Wednesday, 25th May, shall be limited to 5 hours.—(Lord Wakeham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Church of Scotland (Properties and Investments) Order Confirmation Bill
Read a third time, and passed.
Vehicle Excise and Registration Bill [H.L.]
Report received.

Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill
3.5 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Earl Ferrers.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Ampthill) in the Chair.]
Clause 55 [Powers to stop and search in anticipation of violence]:
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 46:
Page 39, line 19, leave out ("superintendent") and insert ("commander").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 46, I speak also to Amendments Nos. 47, 48, 49, 51, 53 and 54. The amendments relate to Clause 55 of the Bill which comes under the general heading of "Powers of police to stop and search". Those Members of the Committee who have long memories will recall that "stop and search" is a phrase of considerable hallowed significance in the British legal system. Not so many years ago, after many years of outcry against the use of the power to stop and search—it used to be called the sus laws—the powers which existed for police to stop and search without any reasonable suspicion were abolished. They were used in many parts of the country quite conspicuously as an element of discrimination in particular against black people, but also against young people and unconventional people of all ages. Clause 55 proposes that there should be a return to stop and search procedures under certain circumstances.
I remind the Committee that the stop and search measure involves the power of arrest, detention and search, if necessary without any requirement that there should be any suspicion, let alone reasonable suspicion, of any offence having been committed. The Government have chosen to bring in the provision in Clause 55 by way of what I can only describe as a
610
device. The device is to say that a police officer of or above the rank of superintendent under certain circumstances, which are entirely up to him to decide, may give an authorisation that stop and search powers -shall be given in any given locality for a period not exceeding 24 hours but capable of being extended by a further six hours. That set of procedures is fraught with uncertainty and inconsistency. I take the issues one by one and as expeditiously as I can.
First, it states in the first line of the clause that it is,
"a police officer of or above the rank of superintendent",
but in subsection (2) the provision immediately continues that such an authorisation can be given by an inspector. Therefore the provision regarding rank does not stand up well.
Then there is the question about the reasonable belief of the officer. That sounds all right because the word "reasonable" has a meaning in law. However, the provision continues that it is expedient to give an authorisation to prevent the occurrence of incidents involving serious violence. Expedience is as expedience does. Expedience can mean almost anything. Expedient is in the mind of the person who decides about expediency. It has nothing to do with whether the action is reasonable. Therefore that limitation on the powers does not survive well.
In subsection (1) (a) the phrase "serious violence" is used. What is serious violence? There is no crime of serious violence. There is a range of crimes which, in the opinion of the superintendent or inspector referred to in subsection (2), may be described as serious violence. There is no legal definition. Any restraint on that power which depends on the use of the words "serious violence" does not stand up.
Subsection (1) states that,
"the powers … conferred by this section shall be exercisable at any place within that locality".
What is a locality? A superintendent's area can be wide. A locality can be any part or all of that area. A "place" can be any part or all of that locality and therefore of that area. In other words, within the clause as drafted there is no significant geographical restriction other than the restriction of being within a superintendent's area.
It appears at the outset from subsection (1) that the restriction is for 24 hours, but further down Clause 55 we find that the 24-hour period can be extended by a further six hours. Here, a new offence is being created under Clause 55(7) which provides even for a month's imprisonment for failing to stop and agree to a search under such circumstances. No crime has been committed; there is no suspicion—reasonable or otherwise—that anyone has been involved in a crime. There is no suspicion required—reasonable or otherwise —that the person being stopped and searched has in his possession anything which might be thought to be suspicious, whether in the form of an offensive weapon, a dangerous instrument or anything else. The person could be walking, cycling, driving, riding a horse or anything. If he fails—perhaps because he has not heard of the authorisation—to stop and be searched by someone who does not produce a warrant and is not

611
accusing him of anything but who just says, "I want to look in your car", he is already guilty of an offence for which he can be imprisoned for up to a month.
I suggest that here we have not merely a return to the sus laws; that would be bad enough. But we also have a return to the public order provisions which were common in the 18th and 19th centuries and probably earlier. I would rather we went back to the Riot Act where we had a magistrate appearing before a mob and reading a piece of paper which then gave the police powers to do something about the situation. That at least was an open and honest provision. But the provision which is allowed here, which permits interference with the liberty of the individual on no suspicion whatever other than the virtually untrammelled power of a police officer to make a declaration, seems to me to be excessive. I gladly give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Is the noble Lord suggesting that a senior police officer shall under no circumstances be allowed to use his judgment in a possible incident which may develop into something serious? Is he never to be allowed to implement a judgment which an experienced man ought to have?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I suggest that all officers of police have the power to use their judgment when they have a suspicion—reasonable or not—that an offence has been committed or is about to be committed. They use their judgment under the present law. They do not need a provision like the one in Clause 55 in order to do so.
My final point is very serious. It is highly likely that the provisions in the Bill are in conflict with Articles 5 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I refer to Article 5(1) (c) of the convention which states that:
"no one shall be deprived of his liberty…save for…the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence."
That is what Article 5 says. I do not believe that it can seriously be claimed that the use of the stop and search powers given here has anything to do with reasonable suspicion of someone having committed an offence.
Article 8 of the convention provides that a person's privacy must not be interfered with unless the interference is,
"in accordance with the law [and] … necessary in a democratic society".
I suggest that the virtually untrammelled powers—I repeat the words—which are given to police officers go beyond the basis of policing in this country, which is that detention, stopping and searching are carried out only when there is reasonable suspicion of an offence being committed. The clause goes well beyond the powers which the police ought to have and need to have in a democratic and free society. It is seriously defective in those respects.
This is a revising Chamber and we have not sought to take out the entire clause. In the amendments we have sought in detail to remedy the defects of the clause to which I referred. In Amendment No. 46 we propose that the rank of superintendent should be changed to that of
612
inspector or commander. In Amendment No. 47 we propose that the vague statement "serious violence" should be changed to:
"grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, [murder] or rape". In Amendment No. 48 we propose that the 24 hours should be reduced to six hours. In amendment—
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Amendment No. 49.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, I have the group. I am delighted to see that the noble and learned Lord is with me all the way. In Amendment No. 51 we propose that the provision that it should be expedient to give an authorisation should be altered. In Amendment No. 54 we propose that anything which is neither an offensive weapon nor a dangerous instrument which is found in the course of an investigation under Clause 55 should not be admissible in evidence in any other proceedings. In other words, Clause 55 should not be used as a cover for some other kind of search which ought to be carried out under other powers.
We do not wish to oppose clauses as a whole unless we have to. We believe that Clause 55 is capable of amendment for the protection of civil liberties and that this group of amendments will help to amend it. I beg to move.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I take a different view from the noble Lord. Serious violence has become a plague on our society, whether in demonstrations or in connection with football. Without the assistance of the police, the whole country would be at a certain degree of risk. We either trust the police or we do not trust them; if we trust them, we give them the powers to help them do what they should do to protect us and the public.
The noble Lord said that that is not open and honest. I cannot quite understand why. He said that it involved untrammelled power. The power is limited; it is limited within the reasonable belief of a police officer. If we do not trust the police officers or the police, where do we end? This is a necessary reserve power, as I see it, for the police to protect our society in the situation in which it now finds itself. Assuredly, it is not a fair analogy to suggest that it is a return to what is commonly called the sus laws.
By and large, I cannot see the objection in the amendment. The noble Lord says that Clause 55 does not stand up. With the greatest respect to him, I do not think that his criticism of it stands up.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): The purpose of Clause 55 is to give the police the power to search for offensive weapons in a particular area and for a limited period of time when they anticipate the likelihood of serious violence taking place. I listened to the noble Lord opening on the amendments with some surprise. My understanding was that when the provision was introduced in another place, not only was there a wide measure of cross-party

613
support for such powers, but also, if there was any disagreement displayed, it was over who might claim the credit for the measures first being introduced.
Clause 55 is about the prevention of crime. Its provisions accordingly need to be appropriate to that purpose. I have to advise the Committee that this group of amendments would have the effect of seriously reducing the usefulness of the powers. Perhaps I might explain by reference to each amendment that has been tabled.
First, Amendment No. 46 would have the effect of increasing the level of authorisation for the exercise of the powers to stop and search from superintendent to commander, which is the first ACPO rank in London and, as I think the noble Lord will appreciate, is not a rank known outwith London. It is equivalent to assistant chief constable elsewhere. We have adopted the terminology of "commander" in this amendment. We recognise that it is important that the power to stop and search without having grounds for reasonable suspicion against an individual should be available only on the authorisation of a supervisory officer of appropriate rank. In our view the right level is that of superintendent. The superintendent is the most senior police officer with direct operational policing responsibilities. In our view, and harking back to debates on a previous Bill, it would seem that the superintendent is indeed the person who is best able to assess the local situation. His involvement will ensure a full assessment of the wider consequences in the local community. Authorisation at ACPO level would remove that important decision too far from the local community. For that reason we remain of the view that superintendent is the right level.
Amendment No. 47 would change the grounds on which the senior police officer could authorise the exercise of the powers of stop and search from where he believes that incidents involving "serious violence" may take place to where he believes that incidents involving "grievous bodily harm, attempted murder or rape" may take place.
As I have sought to explain, the purpose of Clause 55 —as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway also pointed out—is to enable the police to take measures to prevent violent disorder involving the use of offensive weapons from taking place. It is not possible for the police to anticipate that particular crimes will take place, still less crimes such as rape or attempted murder. So the amendment would render the power very difficult to use unless the police—unusually —had very particular and precise intelligence as to the intentions of those involved. In our view this amendment would render the power nugatory in most cases.
Perhaps I may pass to Amendment No. 48, which would reduce the maximum period for which the exercise of the power to stop and search could be authorised from a period not exceeding "twenty four" hours to a period not exceeding "six" hours. Of course, the maximum period will not always be needed and will not always be authorised. But there will be occasions when 24 hours will be necessary and when six hours would not be sufficient. I would point out that there is no provision for a renewal or extension of the period of
614
authorisation except after violent incidents have actually taken place. So again, this amendment would seriously reduce the effectiveness of the power as an important crime prevention measure.
Amendment No. 49 would remove the urgency provision that would allow an officer of the rank below superintendent to authorise the use of the power to stop and search if he believed that violent disorder was imminent and no superintendent was available. If we are giving a power to the police, then we have a duty to ensure that it is capable of being used in all the circumstances that we can reasonably anticipate Superintendents are sometimes absent from their areas. Serious trouble can blow up very suddenly. If we do not cater for these eventualities in framing the law, the public will rightly say that we have fudged our duty.
The noble Lord's amendment would also remove the provision that allows the original period of authorisation for the exercise of the power to stop and search to be; extended for a further six hours in the event that serious violence actually occurs. This provision was included precisely to reflect the views of Opposition Members in another place that powers were needed to deal retrospectively with violence that had broken out. The police are very keen to have a power of this kind. This amendment proposes to limit severely the use of the power to even fewer situations than the restricted number that we envisage. Again, it would seriously reduce the value of the power.
Amendment No. 51 is an alternative to the second part of Amendment No. 49. It would change the grounds on which the original period of authorisation could be extended for a further six hours after incidents of serious violence had actually taken place from because,
"it is expedient to do so",
to because,
"he has reasonable grounds to believe that it is necessary".
If a provision of this kind were to be made law, it would be necessary to spell out what those grounds might be related to: for example to gather evidence or to prevent further violence. With respect, I do not think that that would add anything. Given that in this situation incidents of serious violence will be known or will be reported to have taken place, there will always be such grounds. I believe, as a matter of drafting, that the present wording is clearer and simpler.
Amendment No. 53 is probably intended to refer to line 14 instead of line 12, but it would require that, where a written statement is provided to a person who has been stopped and searched under these powers, the statement would have to,
"set out the reasons why this provision was used on this occasion".
In many instances the decisions of authorising officers will be based on intelligence or other sensitive sources of information. The intention of this provision is to do no more than provide confirmation that the person concerned has been lawfully stopped and searched under these particular powers. If that person wishes to challenge the police about their use of the power—for example, by claiming false imprisonment—the proper place to do so would be in the courts, which would be able to consider questions such as the release of sensitive information.

615
Finally, Amendment No. 54 would make evidence of any offence, other than the carrying of knives and other offensive weapons found during any search made under this section, inadmissible in any criminal trial. This would prevent the police from arresting a person who had been stopped under this power and found to be in possession of prohibited items other than knives or other offensive weapons; for example, drugs or suspected stolen articles. I think it is probable that the police would not wish to be diverted from searching for knives and offensive weapons to prevent an outbreak of violence in order, for example, to deal with possession of a small quantity of cannabis; but it is possible that they will discover evidence of a more serious crime and I wonder whether the public would not think that the law would be coming into disrepute if in such circumstances the police could take no action whatsoever to bring that offender to justice.
To sum up, we must ensure that the powers that we give to the police are adequate to deal with the problems that they are intended to address and to deal with all reasonably foreseeable contingencies. The effect of this group of amendments would be seriously to reduce the usefulness of the power to stop and search to prevent violence. They are not just small modifying provisions. They would bring about that effect. I can only conclude by saying, as I started, that my clear understanding is that in another place there was clear cross-party support for this measure. I invite the Committee to reject these amendments.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I do not go so far as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, does in his amendments, but I speak in support of two of them, Amendments Nos. 46 and 49, which are narrow but important.
As the Minister just indicated, the powers conferred by Clause 55 are new and important powers resulting from an all-party initiative in the other place. They are designed to enable the police to tackle a serious social problem; namely, serious violence on our streets. But because the exercise of the powers of stop and search is capable of interfering with personal liberty and personal privacy, there must be adequate safeguards against their misuse.
At Report stage of the Bill in another place the Minister of State, Mr. David Maclean, recognised that situation and pointed out that the powers proposed by a Labour Party amendment departed from the safeguards against the misuse of police powers in Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Those powers may only be lawfully exercised if the police have reasonable grounds for suspecting that they will find stolen or prohibited articles.
Clause 55 abandons the safeguard that there must be reasonable suspicion before the new powers are exercised. Because it does so, I suggest that it is essential for other adequate and effective safeguards to be in place to reduce the dangers of the misuse of the new powers, especially the danger of damaging public confidence in the police service among members of
616
ethnic minorities, who were justifiably concerned about the ways in which the bad old sus law used to be misused before the enactment of PACE in 1984.
Therefore I support Amendment No. 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, because it introduces an important safeguard as to the level at which this important decision will be taken, triggering the exercise of these new powers. No doubt at that more senior level regard will be had to what the local police say is the position within the local community. In the same way, I support Amendment No. 49, which would remove the power of a police inspector to authorise the special powers of stop and search. They are draconian powers which should be exercised at above inspector level.
I do not believe that the language of Clause 55 as it stands provides adequate safeguards. The requirement that a superintendent must have a reasonable belief that incidents involving serious violence may take place in any locality in his area is indeed a safeguard; but the courts would give a very wide margin of discretion to the superintendent in deciding (in the words of Clause 55(1) (b)) whether he reasonably believes that it is expedient to give the necessary authorisation to prevent occurrence of serious violence.
The courts will only review the exercise of such a wide discretion if it has been done in bad faith or for an improper purpose, or because the superintendent had taken leave of his senses. As the Committee knows, our courts do not review whether public powers are properly exercised according to a stricter standard known as the principle of proportionality. They do not review whether the powers are exercised only to the extent necessary to enable the police to achieve their legitimate aims. In other words, the police will enjoy very wide discretionary powers under Clause 55 and be virtually immune from judicial review about their exercise. That is why I suggest that it is appropriate for key decisions to be taken only at a very senior level within the police service.
Perhaps I may add that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that, if the powers were abused, there would be a serious risk of breaches of Articles 5 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I suggest that that is a further reason for doing what we can as legislators to minimise the risk of breaches of that kind.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, advanced what I regard as the dangerous argument that one can trust the police. There is no question of not trusting the police service to do its job properly. But our society is one which is based on respect for human rights and the rule of law. These amendments would have the beneficial effect of providing some adequate safeguards against the possibility of abuse.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Finsberg: After listening to that speech, it occurs to me that we are looking at one issue: whether we believe that it is better to try to prevent crime than to let it happen. From the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble Lord who has just spoken, it seems to me that they do not share that point of view. For example, if there is no superintendent available, are

617
we to wait until a superintendent is found from somewhere or is it wiser that under those circumstances an inspector should be entitled to act? Moreover, surely anybody who has nothing to hide will not object to being stopped, as suggested in this clause.
With regard to Article 8, over the past 10 years I have had to read with some care most of the judgments that came from the European Court of Human Rights. I believe that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is misconceived. The noble Lord spoke of a democratic society. A democratic society is governed by parliamentary democracy. If Parliament passes a law which it believes will preserve democracy and prevent crime, I do not believe that the Commission (and now, under the new set-up, the Court) is likely to say that we are outwith the Convention on Human Rights.
For those reasons, I believe that the whole collection of amendments is misconceived and ought not to be accepted.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Nobody who reads these clauses and makes a fair assessment of them could in any way say that they come within the bounds of what is known as the sus law. Even the effect of that sus law, which earned such a reputation in the past, was exaggerated. I feel that it would be a grievous mistake at this stage to interfere with the clauses as they stand. Even if there were any strength in the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and others about different words easing the position a little, they would reflect a reluctance on the part of Parliament to give the powers that the police need if they are to face up to the problems that we know they must face every Saturday when there is a football match, quite apart from other matters in the meantime.
I do not believe that at this time, with the circumstances that we all know exist, Parliament ought to be reluctant to recognise that in this issue the police, and particularly senior officers, have a part to play and their judgment should be allowed to stand up, quite apart from the detailed examinations that would flow from the amendments proposed by the noble Lord.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister has done a service to the Committee in setting out more clearly and accurately than I the effect in detail of my amendments. I am sure he would agree that what both the Government and those of us who put forward the amendments are trying to do is to strike a balance. We are trying to secure public order, which we consider to be of very great importance, but not at the expense of individual liberty.
There are a number of different balances that different people will strike under different circumstances. I suggest that those who have been accustomed to having their individual liberty put at risk—in particular, young people, black people, people in inner city areas and poor people—may well take a different view from the view taken by some Members of this Committee. It is very unlikely that many Members of this Committee were stopped by the police under the sus laws when those laws were enforced. Even when they were young, it is unlikely that many Members of this Committee were stopped for anything other than possibly taking
618
policemen's helmets on Boat Race night. There seems to be a considerable difference between the way in which upper-class violence, as at Twickenham or on Boat Race night, is treated compared with the violence of people who pursue other kinds of sporting activities.
It is therefore a balance that we are seeking to strike. The fundamental difference between these Benches and the Government on this issue is the extent to which it is permissible to go beyond the principle behind both British and European law; that is, that interference with liberty, except in wholly exceptional circumstances, is confined to occasions when the police have a suspicion, or a reasonable suspicion, that a crime has been or is going to be committed. In these amendments we are saying that the extension of the ability of the police, without suspicion or reasonable suspicion, to interfere with liberty goes too far.
I take seriously the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who is so much more experienced than I both in the courts and particularly in the interpretation of European legislation. If he says to me that my amendments, other than Amendments Nos. 46 and 49, go too far—I understand that to be his position—I shall bow to his greater experience. I propose, therefore, that a decision taken on Amendment No. 46 should only be taken to apply also to Amendment No. 49, and that the other amendments in the group should not be moved. They will not be taken as part of the group and to that extent I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for his wise advice.
But we must draw the line somewhere. We must oppose the extension of police powers to interfere with individual liberty without suspicion or reasonable suspicion well before the line that the Government have drawn. Some restriction must be brought on Clause 55. That should be an issue which commands respect and support in all political parties and in none. On that issue I seek the opinion of the Committee.
3.42 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 46) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 99; Not-Contents, 201.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Ardwick, L.

Eatwell, L.

Avebury, L.

Ennals, L.

Barnett, L.

Ezra, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Gallacher, L.

Bonham-Carter, L.

Geraint, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Glasgow, E.

Bottomley, L.

Gould of Potternewton, B.

Bruce of Donington, L.

[Teller.]

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Gregson, L.

Carter, L.

Grey, E.

Castle of Blackburn, B.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Haskel, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Dahrendorf, L.

Howell, L.[Teller.]

David, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, B.

Hunt, L.

Desai, L.

Hylton, L.

619

Irvine of Lairg, L.

Parry, L.

Jacques, L.

Peston, L.

Jay, L.

Plant of Highfield, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Rea, L.

Kagan, L.

Richard, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Kirkhill, L.

Rochester, L.

Lester of Herne Hill, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Lincoln, Bp.

Seear, B.

Listowel, E.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Liverpool, Bp.

Serota, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Shannon, E.

Lockwood, B.

Shepherd, L.

Longford, E.

Stallard, L.

Macaulay of Bragar, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Mallalieu, B.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Mason of Bamsley, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Mayhew, L.

Tordoff, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

McNair, L.

Varley, L.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Whaddon, L.

Molloy, L.

White, B.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Wigoder, L.

Nicol, B.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Ogmore. L.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Craig of Radley, L.

Ackner, L.

Cranborne, V.

Aldington, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Cross, V.

Alexander of Weedon, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Alport, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Annaly, L.

Daventry, V.

Annan, L.

Davidson, V.

Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Arran, E.

Denham, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Astor of Hever, L.

Derwent, L.

Attlee, E.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Donegall, M.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Eccles, V.

Bellwin, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Biddulph, L.

Elles, B.

Blatch, B.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Blyth, L.

Elton, L.

Boardman, L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Borthwick, L.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Ferrers, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Finsberg, L.

Brain, L.

Foley, L.

Braine of Wheatley, L.

Forbes, L.

Brightman, L.

Forteviot, L.

Brigstocke, B.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Burnham, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Burton, L.

Gainford, L.

Butterworth, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Cadman, L.

Geddes, L.

Caldecote, V.

Gisborough, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Goschen, V.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Gridley, L.

Camegy of Lour, B.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Carnock, L.

Haddington, E.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Hampden, V.

Chesham, L.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Harmsworth, L.

Cochrane of Cults, L.

Hayhoe, L.

Cockfield, L.

Hayter, L.

Colnbrook, L.

Henley, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Hives, L.

Courtown, E.

Holderness, L.

Coventry, E.

HolmPatrick, L.

Cox, B.

Hood, V.

620

Hothfield, L.

Pym, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Quinton, L.

Ironside, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Kenyon, L.

Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, L.

Kimball, L.

Renton, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Renwick, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Rodger of Earlsferry, L.

Kintore, E.

Romney, E.

Lauderdale, E.

Roskill, L.

Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, E.

Salisbury, M.

Long, V.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Lonsdale, E.

Sandford, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Savile, L.

Lyell, L.

Seccombe, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Selborne, E.

Mackay of Clashfem, L. [Lord

Sempill, Ly.

Chancellor.]

Sharpies, B.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Skidelsky, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

Slim, V.

Manchester, D.

Somerset, D.

Mancroft, L.

Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, L.

Manton, L.

St. Davids, V.

Marlesford, L.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Marsh, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Melville, V.

Strange, B.

Merrivale, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Mersey, V.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

Middleton, L.

[Teller.]

Milverton, L.

Sudeley, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Swansea, L.

Monson, L.

Swinfen, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Swinton, E.

Morris, L.

Terrington, L.

Mottistone, L.

Teviot, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Moyola, L.

Tonypandy, V.

Munster, E.

Trefgarne, L.

Murton of Lindisfame, L.

Trevethin and Oaksey, L.

Nelson, E.

Trumpington, B.

Norfolk, D.

Ullswater, V. [Teller.]

Norrie, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Northboume, L.

Vivian, L.

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Wakeham, L. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Palmer, L.

Wamock, B.

Peel, E.

Waterford, M.

Pender, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Wise, L.

Pike, B.

Wynford, L.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Young, B.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
3.53 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 47 to 49 not moved.]
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie Lord Fraser of Carmyllie moved Amendment No. 50:
Page 39, line 27, at end insert ("a chief inspector or").
The noble and learned Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 50 I shall speak also to Amendment No. 52. The amendments are relatively minor and are designed to tighten up the drafting of Clause 55.
Amendment No. 50 would allow the emergency authorisation to be given by either a chief inspector or an inspector, in recognition of the fact that, following the decision of your Lordships' House, the rank of chief inspector is no longer to be abolished by the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill. It makes sense to allow either a chief inspector or an inspector to give an emergency

621
authorisation because in some basic command units the second in command will be a chief inspector but in others it will be an inspector.
Amendment No. 52 seeks to amend Clause 55 to ensure that the police are able to seize any offensive weapon or dangerous item that they discover when conducting a search using this new power. Clause 55 currently empowers police officers in certain circum-stances to stop and search pedestrians and vehicles for offensive weapons or dangerous articles, but there is no express provision to allow the police to seize any such weapons or articles that they find. It is obviously desirable that such items should be immediately taken out of circulation.
I would add that we are not seeking to extend the power of seizure to other illegal items which might be found, such as drugs. The reason is that Clause 55 is narrowly addressed to the matter of offensive weapons and violence and we do not wish to go beyond the narrow purposes of the clause. I am sure your Lordships will agree that both amendments are sensible and improve the drafting of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Committee will be glad to have confirmation from the Minister that the Government do not intend to overturn the decision taken by your Lordships on the consideration of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill to retain the rank of chief inspector. We understand from the proceedings in another place that that is the case, but it is nice to have it confirmed here. We hope that the only amendments we shall have to consider when the Bill comes back from another place will be those carried by my right honourable and honourable friends.
Amendment No. 52 is welcome, but it is curious that all of this elaborate procedure for providing for stop and search powers has never extended to the power to seize a dangerous weapon. I cannot think what the draftsman must have been doing before now and how the provision got through another place without this obviously necessary amendment.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Perhaps I may follow up that point. As I understand the position, there is no provision at the moment for giving the power to the police to seize a dangerous weapon. Is that the case? Secondly, I echo what was said by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Your Lordships will recall the rather substantial debate that we had on the issue of ranks in the police service. I too welcome the fact, notwithstanding that the Government were defeated on the question in your Lordships' House, that they have now accepted the judgment of the House. That will be widely welcomed both in the House and outside it.
Lord Avebury: I understand very well what the Minister said about not wanting to widen this clause beyond the power to stop and search, but I was a little amazed to hear him say that if a substantial quantity of drugs was to be found during an operation of this kind the police could simply allow the possessor of those drugs to drive off with them. The noble and learned Lord shakes his head, so I am obviously wrong about
622
that. However, I should like a fuller explanation of what happens when in the course of a search under this clause the police find quantities of dangerous drugs.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: I am happy briefly to elaborate and explain the position. I understood that it was the desire of the House that this power should be kept as narrowly defined as possible. However, if other unlawful items were found the police would then have the option of arresting the person and instituting criminal proceedings. In such circumstances the arrest itself would trigger any necessary seizure powers. It seems to the Government that that is the desirable way to approach any other illegal items—not by an extension of this power.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 51 not moved.]
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie Lord Fraser of Carmyllie moved Amendment No. 52:
Page 39, line 44, at end insert:
("( ) If in the course of a search under this section a constable discovers a dangerous instrument or an article which he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be an offensive weapon, he may seize it.").
The noble and learned Lord said: I have already spoken to Amendment No. 52. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 53 and 54 not moved.]
Clause 55, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 56 [Power to remove trespassers on land]:
Baroness Mallalieu Baroness Mallalieu moved Amendment No. 55:
Page 40, line 30, leave out from ("If) to ("that") in line. 31 and insert ("a county court is satisfied").
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 55 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 57, 59, 59ZB, 60, 61 and 83A. I omit Amendment No. 82 which is grouped with the other amendments because I think it is in error.
Clause 56 extends the existing powers to remove trespassers on land. The powers are currently contained in Section 39 of the Public Order Act 1986. That provision was introduced to deal with mass trespass and trespass which involved damage or offensive behaviour. The proposal in Clause 56 gives a police officer at the scene who reasonably believes that two or more people are trespassing on land with the intention of living there for any period of time after the occupier has asked them to leave and who have either caused damage or behaved in an insulting or threatening manner, or simply have six or more vehicles, the power to direct them to leave. If they fail to go as soon as is practicable or return within three months, they face penalties of up to three months' imprisonment or a substantial fine. The offences are arrestable ones.
The provisions are extended to land which adjoins highways, minor roads and bridleways as well. They also apply to Scotland. As I understand it, the reasons for the provisions in Clause 56 are an increase in mass trespass by large groups of what I understand to be the New Age traveller variety. Perhaps I may make it clear from these Benches that we have the greatest sympathy particularly with rural communities who have suffered a very real problem and with farmers who have found

623
their livelihood disrupted by trespass involving grazing land, crops and often damage, or the threat of damage, to sheep as a result of dogs which are part of such invasions of their land.
We are concerned that as a consequence of Clause 56 small family groups of gypsies and travellers are likely to be caught. The reduction from the Public Order Act minimum of 12 vehicles to six vehicles in the clause, possibly comprising three residential caravans and three towing vehicles, could affect two family groups travelling together, as they increasingly wish to do for reasons of security.
What troubles us primarily about the clause is that no court order will be required in order to direct such groups to go. A single police officer telling them to leave is to be sufficient. Your Lordships will be considering at later stages of the Bill matters concerned with the provision of caravan sites for those who choose a nomadic way of life. But it is beyond argument that in many parts of the country -I would go so far as to say that it applies in almost every part of the country-there is a shortage of official, residential and transit site accommodation for those who have a nomadic lifestyle.
Over the centuries we have tolerated small nomadic groups. That toleration must surely be the mark of a civilised society, even one which is becoming increasingly urban and suburban. Our worry about the provision is that it will extend the powers for speedy removal of small groups and thus inevitably lead to an increase in such evictions.
Clause 56 provides that a single police officer may order such a group to go even where no nuisance is being caused, no damage has been caused, and there has been no threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, but simply because there are six vehicles present. As I indicated, we are concerned primarily about small family groups who surely need some leeway. Such groups will often require urgent access to health care, to a general practitioner; for example, to facilities in connection with childbirth and ante-natal and post-natal provision. Above all, because they are groups which more often than not have small children among them they need access to educational facilities.
Hardship, especially to family groups and those with small children, is likely to be increased by the Bill. It does not take a great deal of imagination to picture a group who stop near a village where they can have access to a local doctor when a child is ill or when a mother is about to give birth and who cause no damage on the land where they settle, who behave in no way offensively to the landowner and who at the present time would have a short breathing space while a court order was being obtained in which to find somewhere suitable to move to where they can still have access to the services they require. Under Clause 56 they would have to move as soon as practicable; otherwise they would be committing an arrestable offence for which they were liable to imprisonment. I ask this: they would have to move, but where to? We are in very real danger of putting people in Britain in 1994 in the position of the
624
road sweeper in Bleak House in the last century who was forever being told to move on but had nowhere to go.
It may be perfectly proper that in many cases those who trespass should be directed to go and go speedily, particularly where damage or harassment is being caused to others in the community. What we say-and it is the purpose of these amendments-is that it is the court that should make the order, not simply a single police officer who happens to be on duty and passing at the time. Toleration does involve sometimes tolerating a degree of inconvenience from one's neighbours. I hope that we shall hear from the Government, when they respond to these amendments, that they accept that it is a basic principle that those who choose to have a nomadic way of life are entitled to do so and that there will be provision for possibly putting up with some inconvenience. That is the mark, I say again, of a civilised society. These minor amendments make very small changes to the provision but provide some safeguard and leeway for small family groups. I commend the amendments to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: Amendment No. 83A, which applies to Clause 65 and trespassory assemblies and is tabled in my name, is designed to make sure, as my noble friend said, that it is the court which deals with these matters and not the council. The amendment deletes "a council" and inserts,
"the court after ordering intimation and hearing such representations as it deems fit".
It shall then make the appropriate order. The amendment ensures that the court will be in control of matters and that it will not be merely a case of a constable going to a member of a local authority and asking for an order, so to speak, willy-nilly without the matter being properly examined in the usual way. It will also give those affected by the order being sought the opportunity to come before the court and explain why the order should not be sought; for example, if the people are there for what appears to the court to be reasonable cause. There will be practical difficulties in carrying out intimation and hearing representations, but that should not be a barrier to justice between the parties. It certainly should not be used as an excuse to impose restrictions on individuals who are doing the community no harm. There must be some control over random applications without the application being demonstrably necessary for the interests set out in Clause 65.
This raises quite an important point. It may seem to be a minor point, but it is not because most trespassory assemblies will probably take place at the week-end. Who is going to find a member of a council at the weekend? The courts are always available because there is a duty magistrate or duty judge in every area of the country who can be dragged from his bed if necessary to consider any application. Furthermore, the Bill does not spell out who in the council will be responsible for acceding to the request for the order. Will the chief executive delegate powers so that any constable who comes along and asks him for an order can grant it off his own bat, so to speak, on behalf of the council?

625
It is interesting to note in Clause 65 that the phrase "trespassory assemblies" is not defined-I am not quite sure how to pronounce the word "trespassory"-so what we have is someone seeking an order for some undefined breach of something from an undefined member of a council. It is therefore important that the courts should retain some measure of control over the fairly draconian measures that are contained in Clause 65.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: When moving her amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, talked about where the travellers should be moved to. With respect, we shall deal with that matter in considerable detail later. As I understand it, Amendment No. 55 means that before moving on any travellers, a police officer would have to apply to the county court. If that is correct, the amendment is, if I may say so, a complete wrecker because in practice it would take months before the travellers could be moved on. Historically, as far as the use of Section 39 is concerned-that is what these provisions are basically replacing-police officers have been very careful before using their powers.
Lord Renton: I am bound to agree with what my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley says. Although I do not agree that the procedure would necessarily take months, it would be bad enough if it took only days. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has already made clear, she and her noble friends agree with the Government that, as stated in the clause, something must be done about people trespassing on land. I should have thought that if something is to be done, we do not want much delay. Even getting a constable could take a bit of time because he might have to come some miles from the nearest town. Alas, we no longer have a village constable in every village as we used to have.
Having to refer the matter to a court means not merely applying to a county court judge for an injunction which in civil actions, in England at any rate, is fairly easily done -indeed, one sometimes had to telephone a judge's private house at the weekend and ask him if he could come along (perhaps when he had finished a round of golf) to grant an injunction-but no, the amendment suggests that the court should be involved. That means a court hearing with both sides being heard.
If we are to make effective the power in Clause 56 to remove trespassers from land, I believe that what the Government have proposed is much more practical and realistic. I believe that the purpose of the clause would be defeated if Amendment No. 55, and those that are grouped with it, were to be accepted.
Surely the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay of Bragar, who said that a court is always readily available, must, with his knowledge of Scotland, agree on reflection that the distances in Scotland are such that one might have to go a very long way to obtain the services of even a sheriff substitute. Further delay would be involved. I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Ferrers will resist the amendment.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Hylton: Perhaps I may give two examples of nuisance and aggravation that have recently been caused in the past year by New Age travellers. One example is from Somerset and one from Avon. In the first case, some six vehicles almost blocked a public footpath and bridleway, making access along it very difficult, Furthermore, the travellers' dogs frightened young and timid walkers. In the second case, a group of travellers placed themselves in the middle of a public park which had been rather nicely landscaped by the local authority In both cases it took a very long time to remove the groups. I think that the amendment goes too far.
Lord Hooson: If there is any justification for Clause 56-from my experience, I think that there is considerable justification for it-it is that action is taken swiftly to prevent the build-up of the kind of troubles that have been experienced in Mid Wales and elsewhere. I share many of the sentiments that were expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, when she moved her amendment, but when one looks at the impracticality of what is proposed with the reference to county courts and so on, one must realise that that makes a complete nonsense of Clause 56.
As I have said, I share many of the noble Baronesses' sentiments, particularly about gypsies. I think that they need to be given careful consideration as a separate body. However, that is not the basic mischief against which the clause is directed. Everybody knows the tremendous problems that have been encountered with the build-up of large conglomerations of people in caravans in the past few years. I am referring to New Age travellers. It is when those groups grow to such a size that they are totally impossible to manage that the real difficulties arise. Therefore, I am bound to say that I cannot support the amendment.
Lord Finsberg: The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said much of what I wanted to say, so I can be brief. Having analysed what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, I think that she has presented some problems. I believe that the first problem that I have with the provisions is shared by many Members of the Committee. I would love to find some way of defining the Romanies so that they would not be affected in any way by this piece of legislation. I hope that it might be possible to find some way of doing that because they are the only people whom I regard as genuine nomadic travellers with a long history and culture of their own.
Most of the others who follow a nomadic lifestyle do it by choice and they are perfectly entitled to decide to do that, provided that they do not interfere with the enjoyment of other people. But the noble Baroness very clearly did not say that. I believe that the noble Baroness said something to the effect that such people are not causing trouble and that police constables should not be doing what they are doing. However, Clause 56(1) refers to the person who owns the land and who must have a right. If one is trespassing, one is interfering with the rights of somebody else. Therefore, I believe that the clause is correct as it stands.

627
My last point is that having had experience both in London and elsewhere of the appalling slowness of bringing a matter to court, like many other noble Lords I do not believe that the court angle is even a starter, as the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said.
Lord Avebury: I agree with my noble friend Lord Hooson that the procedure would be far too long-winded if an application had to be made to a country court. I also agree with those who say that a distinction ought to be made between New Age travellers and gypsies. That distinction is not apparent in the clause which hits both groups equally. If one reads the clause in conjunction with Clause 72, which we have not yet reached, but upon which the Committee will no doubt have a lot to say when we do reach it, one can imagine that gypsies may be evicted from an unauthorised site under Clause 72 and then camp on another piece of land where they become liable to victimisation under Clause 56.
The defect of Clause 56 is that it is indiscriminate in its application. It applies just as much to gypsies. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, that we must give them special consideration, because it is their traditional way of life. Those people who take to the road voluntarily, perhaps by acquiring a vehicle in which they reside, become nomadic, and thus fall technically within the definition of gypsies. I can assure the noble Lord that we shall deal with that point later because various amendments have been tabled making the distinction between the two categories of nomadic persons—those who are traditionally of a nomadic habit of life, and are, as he would say, genuine gypsies, and those who, like the New Age travellers, have recently adopted a nomadic way of life and who are causing all the nuisance, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has described it. We all know about that. We have seen it in many counties.
The clause rightly gives the police power to put an end to those nuisances promptly instead of having to wait for the months a county court would take. I beg the Government to consider more carefully than they have done hitherto the wording of Clause 56 so that it can remedy the evil, which we all agree exists, of large numbers of people descending upon an area, or camping near a built up area, without any sanitary provision or running water, causing an enormous amount of disturbance and health risk to people in the neighbourhood. For genuine gypsies, as we shall see later, adequate provision was not made under the 1968 Act, although we are moving towards a position where we can say that there will be full provision in the near future. Will the Government undertake to consider the wording of Clause 56 between now and Report so that it touches the evil that we all agree exists of New Age travellers camping unexpectedly in large numbers in rural areas or near to villages and towns, and provides also for the genuine gypsies for whom this place and another place have always agreed special provision has to be made.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord sits down, will he, on reflection, agree—
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: The amendment is totally and absolutely out of touch. People ask the police for help; but no one policeman will ever go to those described, in this ghastly terminology, as New Age travellers. I travel today, and I call this a new age compared to the last century. Those people are hippies. They are wasters. Let us be clear, if we have people coming along to a particular patch of land, the farmers want them removed. Those farmers will get together, tow the vehicles away and dump them on the highways. They have already done that.
We must also get clear the fact that if a person wants to have a mobile home, or whatever, he must be able to afford it. Such people then get social security and continue to afford their lives at the expense of those people whom we are supposed to be representing-that is to say, the majority of the country. The majority of the country knows jolly well where the hospitals and schools are. Let us not dilly dally around these people who come along and make their names with the press. Let us get a grip on this problem and not set a precedent with regard to the number of vehicles, and so forth. Those people are trespassing, as the Government have suggested.
Lord Burton: The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness is flawed, because, if I am not mistaken, this is UK legislation and there is no such thing as a county court in Scotland.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: I presume that we shall resume this debate on Clause 72 where we deal with the provision of sites by local authorities, the point which is at the root of the problem. I am tempted to rise only because of the speech that has just been made by the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, in which New Age travellers, among others, were described as wasters. There are people in our society who prefer to opt out of the orthodox behaviour which most of us observe. We do not, as the noble Lord suggested, represent only the majority of our people; we have in our society a responsibility to protect minorities. That is what democracy is about: protecting minorities.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: That is why we have social security and provide minorities with the ability to live.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: If the noble Lord reads his speech in Hansard tomorrow he will see that he described that minority collectively as wasters. As I say, there are people who prefer that way of life. It is a problem with which our society must deal. I hope that we will deal with it when we discuss Clause 72 and the provision of facilities.
I commend the interesting document which has been provided to me, among many other documents I have received, by Save the Children. It raises the important issue of the provision for children. What do we want to do when dealing with some of these cases? Do we want to take the children into care—that is the alternative of not providing facilities—and turn their parents into the occupants of cardboard city in London? We have a problem to deal with. There are people who choose that way of life. We should not consider them collectively as

629
wasters. The media frequently highlight some of the extreme elements in those groups; but at the same time we have the right in a civilised society to acknowledge that that situation exists. I hope that when we come to the subject of alternative sites we will observe our right and exercise our right.
Lord Burnham: I find myself in some difficulty in agreeing with those Members of the Committee who sympathise with the gypsies, because I know of only one incident of a gypsy whom we have had anywhere near us who has kept the ground upon which he has lived for a period even remotely clean. That was a man who was prepared to clean up after those who went before him, but he is a rare beast.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, does not suffer, as we have suffered, from lamed horses because of the glass, metal and other substances which are left behind by ordinary gypsies—I am not talking about New Age travellers—as part of their normal way of life. Their normal way of life seems to generate that rubbish.
A tenant farmer was foolish enough to leave a field empty. The gypsies got in by breaking down the gates. In the 10 days before they could be removed they caused so much damage that it cost £2,000 to make that field habitable again. This is an area where, thank goodness, we have not so far had New Age travellers, or any of that lot. Damage is caused, and it takes a long time to obtain a remedy. During that time the amount of damage increases. If one is lucky enough to catch a gang of gypsies before they have unhitched their vehicles, one can get rid of them almost at once. This is a game of grandmother's footsteps. It needs careful liaison between the farmers in the area.
It takes time to persuade a magistrates' court to take action. In south Buckinghamshire we have an efficient and sympathetic gypsy officer. If the council will take action, we can get rid of such people within four or five days. If one has to go to the county court, as the landowner has to, and an order to remove those people from the land is made, first, the landowner is responsible for the costs of so doing or of employing a contractor to do it for him. But the longer the time, the greater the expense, and the more trouble he is put to, to make his land habitable and usable for agricultural purposes.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Avebury: Will the noble Lord say how many authorised sites have been provided in south Buckinghamshire for the gypsies residing in or resorting to that area?
Lord Burnham: I believe that there are four but I am not certain. The matter is under discussion; but I can tell the noble Lord where the most prominent sites are. The amendment must make matters worse rather than better. If such people would only behave themselves and keep the place clean, no one would have any such problems.
Lord Northbourne: Will the noble Lord accept that his experience is not universal? My family has known a family of gypsies who have always wintered in a particular wood at the intersection of a Roman road and
630
a Saxon road. My guess is that gypsies have been wintering there for hundreds if not thousands of years. Certainly, I am not going to be the person to turn them away. I have tucked them in behind a woodland so that people do not complain about them.
The essential point is that they should be there for only part of the year because the nature of the true gypsies is that they are nomadic. They are there by permission and they keep the site clean because they want to come back next year. The trouble arises on sites which gypsy families occupy as of right. If the site is to be kept clean, some form of discipline is necessary.
However, I believe that the New Age travellers are a different kettle of fish. The only such people to have been on land which I am privileged to own threw buckets of dog muck at me when after a long delay I asked them to move off. They broke up the local social services office because the social service payments did not arrive on time. They are, indeed, people who have opted out of our society. But surely in our society rights should carry with them some obligations.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: Perhaps I may take up the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I am sure that he did not mean to create the impression that Scotland is like the Wild West and that if you need a judge you jump on your horse and ride off into the sunset hoping to find one.
There are 49 sheriffdoms in Scotland, each with a resident judge. Within each sheriffdom there are district courts and there is no difficulty in accessibility to justice in Scotland. Ex parte applications can be dealt with in a matter of hours. I am advised that a 1989 Scottish Office study demonstrated that no person in Scotland is more: than 30 minutes from a legal adviser. The so-called difficulty of getting to the court to make these: applications does not exist in Scotland, whatever maybe; the case in England.
Lord Renton: Perhaps I may quickly reply. The noble Lord gave examples of easy cases, which do not always prevail bearing in mind the distances in. Scotland. In any event, if the amendments were accepted, there would have to be a court hearing and that: is quite different from asking a police officer to assume responsibility.
Lord Roskill: Perhaps I may disclose an interest. I have lived all my life in a house on the edge of a common, which my parents owned before me. We on that common have suffered again and again from New Age travellers. They leave behind an indescribable mess and filth which compares with that described by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. Excrement has been left everywhere and trees have been cut down. People have been frightened and dogs have been set upon anyone who tried to intervene.
The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said that people should not be evicted without a court order. In a perfect life that would be right; one can always get a court order. During my days as a Queen's Bench judge I was called out of bed in the middle of the night to grant injunctions or bail. One gladly does so when that is necessary. The problem is not to obtain an order but to

631
enforce it. As one Member of the Committee said, the law's delays are quite appalling. As a Law Lord, I apologise for saying that.
Our common is managed by the local authority; there was no registered owner. That local authority had a standing High Court injunction against New Age travellers, which it enforced from time to time. However, taking advantage, the New Age travellers arrived shortly before the bank holiday weekend at either Christmas or Easter, which was a long weekend. During a bank holiday weekend nothing is more immovable than an under-sheriff's office. The result was that the travellers were able to sit there continuing to do damage for several days before anyone could do anything about it.
I respectfully agree with those who say that something must be done about it. No one wishes to penalise the gypsy, the genuine nomadic person. We all see them about the place and we have great affection for them. However, they are a very small portion of those who are causing the trouble. Those who are causing the trouble have opted out and are defying the ordinary conventions of society. Those are the people who are allowed to behave as appalling nuisances all over the south of England and elsewhere, and we must stop that. I venture to submit to the Committee that the Government are on the right lines.
Lord Ogmore: I have received personal representations about New Age travellers. We must be careful that this is not the thin end of the wedge. Certain sections of the public are worried that if we are not careful representations will be disallowed. Any protest involving more than a certain number of people could be disallowed. Many people are worried that any kind of feeling will be stamped out if we are not careful. That is why the position is causing considerable worry to some people, who are perhaps in the nature of protest but are doing so peacefully and are not causing a nuisance. Some people are worried that the provision could affect a peaceful protest or demonstration, and they are concerned that the Government should keep that in mind.
Earl Ferrers: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, made as good a defence of the reasons for keeping this clause in the Bill as one could possibly wish for. He is absolutely right. When such people appear, one must deal with them quickly. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, if ever there were a justification for this clause—and I am glad that he said, "And there is"—it is the matter of speed.
We are dealing with large invasions of travellers and people who so upset the countryside, as experienced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, was anxious about small groups of people. She asked for an undertaking that gypsies, if they wish, should have a nomadic way of life. Of course, the nomadic way of life is part and parcel of the lives of many people in this country. Our only stipulation is that they do that within the confines of the law. That is what we are talking about.
632
The noble Baroness was concerned that there might be small groups of people, one of whom is about to have a baby, and the group wants a short breathing space. Let us recall the conditions under which such people will be moved. There must be two or more on land as trespassers; they must have had the intention of residing there; they must have caused damage to that land or used threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or to have brought with them more than six vehicles and the owner has asked them to go. Only then can the provision come into effect. The noble Baroness gave an example of people wandering around and hoping to find somewhere to spend the night. If there were less than six vehicles, and they had not used abusive language they would not be caught by the provision. Here we are talking about a nuisance. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asks us to reconsider the words of Clause 56 so that they cover New Age travellers and not gypsies. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said that there are a few protesting minorities. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, referred to people protesting peacefully. Here we are talking about people who are trespassing. It does not matter whether or not they are protesting peacefully. The question here is whether they are trespassing. When they trespass, then these provisions come into force.
The amendments would restrict very considerably the ability of the police to defend local communities from the travellers and the ravers. Members of the Committee may be worried that the police are being given too much power but the powers are not mandatory; they are discretionary. The police have the power to move these people on if they have fulfilled the criteria and if the police consider that it is proper to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Macaulay, suggests that the police should be kept out of this matter and that it should be dealt with by the courts. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, that that would delay the whole process. The police have always found that once the New Age travellers arrive and settle, the difficulties arise in relation to moving them on. Therefore, it is important to have the facility to move on those people when they have gathered in relatively small numbers in order to avoid an increase in the numbers, with all the devastation that we have seen at Castlemorton Common and elsewhere. For that reason, it is wholly appropriate that the police should take the action rather than the courts.
Baroness Mallalieu: I moved the amendment with knowledge and experience that is very similar to that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, and the noble Lord, Lord Burnham. I come from an area of South Buckinghamshire which has a large number of gypsies and also a New Age traveller problem. The village in which or near which I live now has a common which is protectively surrounded by barricades.
Therefore, I move the amendment with a personal knowledge of the inconvenience and difficulties that such trespass can provoke. But I am concerned about two matters that I do not believe are being addressed at present.

633
Under this clause, a single police officer is, in effect, being asked to discharge a judicial function. He has to make a number of decisions and the noble Earl has just indicated what they are. Some of them are easy. He must be satisfied that two or more people are trespassing. He has to be satisfied about their intentions; namely, that they are there with the intention of living there. That may not present him with too many difficulties, but it is a decision that he must take on the material before him. He must be satisfied that reasonable steps have been taken on behalf of the occupier to ask them to leave. He then has to take decisions about damage to land, abuse, numbers of vehicles and so on. Essentially he is being asked to exercise a judicial function. He is being asked to make a decision, partly no doubt on his own observation, but partly no doubt on evidence that is presented to him by other people.
If he gets it wrong and makes a mistake, under the clause there is no way in which his decision, his order that the people should leave, can be reviewed. I make it abundantly clear, because of what the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, said, that anybody who is nomadic either by tradition or choice—and I make no distinction in that —has an obligation not to disrupt the lives of others. I do not for one second skate over that or omit that from the reasoning behind the amendments.
But the end result of the clause will not deal with the problem. The officer will merely order groups to leave; they will have to go; and they will move elsewhere to cause trouble and possibly damage in another location to another landowner or another set of people.
I am not in any way reassured by what the noble Earl said in relation to providing protection for the small family groups who have always been tolerated hitherto and about whom we are primarily concerned. But it seems to me that there are other parts of the Bill—and in particular, Clauses 72 to 75—where the basic issues will have to be debated by this Chamber. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No. 55A:
Page 40, line 34, after ("leave") insert (", or where the occupier cannot be found after reasonable enquiries or is not immediately available the senior police officer present has asked them to leave.").
The noble Lord said: This clause gives the police powers to act urgently to seek control of a developing mass trespass incident. As drafted, the Bill provides that reasonable steps must have been taken by or on behalf of the occupier to ask people to leave. There may be circumstances where the occupier is not immediately available and yet the police wish to act quickly which, as we have just discussed, is very important to contain and control the situation before it gets out of hand.
This amendment seeks to allow the senior police officer present to ask trespassers to leave on behalf of the occupier. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell me that in those circumstances, a senior police officer could take action without the occupier being present. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: There have been a number of occasions on which great offence has been caused to some people when occupiers have actually invited travellers onto their land. The case of the Glastonbury festival is probably the best known example. Must the owner or occupier be around all the time? Is the noble Lord saying that in the owner's absence, people whom he has invited onto his land can be thrown off without him being contacted if he is not immediately available? I find that a very strange extension of the already draconian powers provided in this part of the Bill.
Lord Elton: As a sideline to what the noble Lord has just said, I believe that my noble friend has in mind occasions on which the persons trespassing on the land, who may be there at the invitation of the landowner, are causing considerable and grievous discomfort and unhappiness to the neighbourhood. If the landowner has so invited them, it is only right that he should be there to share that discomfort and unhappiness and defend it when the police request the removal of the people.
Lord Renton: Also, we need to consider the position where the owner is either in hospital or on a holiday or is away for some other good reason.
Lord Kenyon: In supporting my noble friend's amendment, I speak from experience. I had a case recently where the owner of a piece of derelict land lived more than 100 miles away from the land itself. He had bought it in order to develop it but was unable to obtain permission to develop it. When the council discovered where he lived, it found that he was on holiday and it took nearly three weeks to obtain the owner's permission to serve the injunction. Therefore, I support the amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: But I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, or other noble Lords have read what the clause says. Clause 56 applies if:
"any of those persons has caused damage to the land or to property on the land or used threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards the occupier, a member of his family or an employee or agent of his".
The clause is not concerned with damage that may be caused to other people. It concerns damage caused to the occupier.
The amendment proposes that a police officer may go on to an occupier's land, assert that the occupier's interest is being damaged and kick them off without even consulting the occupier. That includes cases where the occupier may well have invited those people onto the land.
Lord Hooson: It appears to me that this amendment raises a very important point. If a landowner is away, for example on holiday, it seems to me ridiculous that the police cannot take action. The prior requirement, as stated in Clause 56(1), reads as follows:
"If the senior police officer present at the scene reasonably believes that two or more persons are trespassing on land".
If the landlord has invited them on to the land, they are obviously not trespassing. I believe there are defects in

635
the proposed amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley. However, this point needs further thought and inquiry on the part of the Government.
The Marquess of Hertford: I support my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley with a personal example. A few years ago I happened to be here when my wife asked our local police to get rid of some people who were in our park. They said they could not do that because I was not there and my wife was not the owner.
Earl Ferrers: I am bound to say that I quite understand the anxiety of my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley. However, I am afraid that I believe the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, is right. The purpose of Clause 56 is to help occupiers to protect their land. We are dealing here with the law of trespass. I do not think one can achieve that by giving the police powers to move people on irrespective of whether the occupier himself was remotely concerned by the invasion of those people. The occupier may have disappeared off to the Caribbean and does not care what happens to his land. That may be inconvenient for his neighbours, but if people are trespassing on land and the occupier does not request them to be removed, it is difficult for the police to do that or to, as it were, be in loco parentis for the occupier.
I was surprised at what my noble friend Lord—I apologise; I was referring to my noble friend Lord Hertford. If I momentarily forgot his name it was a mental aberration that happens from time to time. I was surprised at what my noble friend Lord Hertford said. If someone goes on holiday, it is perfectly all right for him to delegate his responsibility to his agent or even to his wife to enable them to say to trespassers, "You are trespassers and you should go".
I fully appreciate what my noble friend is trying to do but I do not think that it would be justified to empower the police to remove people from land on which those people might have permission to be, or where anyhow they had certainly not been told that they should not be. This is a difficult matter but a balance needs to be achieved. I believe that the draft clause just about achieves it. We must remember that the police have ample powers as regards specific nuisances such as loud music at night, damage to land or property or in cases of theft or abusive language. However, where people have permission to stay on a property but the next-door neighbours do not like it, the travellers are in the position of being unwelcome next-door neighbours. There is nothing one can do about it when they have been given permission to stay. It is difficult to see that they ought to be removed when the landlord has not complained.
I can only repeat that we are dealing with the law of trespass. I have a great deal of sympathy with my noble friend and indeed with the experience of my noble friend Lord Kenyon, but I do not think one can alter a clause in this way to deal with the law of trespass.
Viscount Mountgarret: Before my noble friend sits down, I hope I may ask him whether there is merit in considering whether to accept some part of the
636
amendment. As far as I could discover, the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, was reasonably sympathetic to this principle. However, there is a difficulty as regards defining the word "owner", as my noble friend Lord Hertford pointed out. Would it not perhaps be possible for the words "owner or agent"—I appreciate one would have to define those words—to be used? If an owner knew he was due to go away on holiday, perhaps he could delegate his wishes and authority in relation to his house, garden, estate or whatever to a recognised person. I wonder whether that might find favour with my noble friend.
Earl Ferrers: I have no reason to believe that the landlord cannot do that at the moment. I do not think we need to put it into the Bill.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I thank the Committee for that constructive debate. I would point out to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that I have tabled an amendment which deals with the very case he has brought up where a landlord or occupier has asked travellers on to his land and then later decides to turn them off. However, we shall discuss that matter a little later in the evening. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, summed up the position pretty fairly. As my noble friend Lord Ferrers and indeed the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, have said, I believe my amendment may be too widely drawn. I am not entirely happy as regards whether the clause would allow an occupier to delegate his responsibility. But I shall certainly look at that matter before Report. Meanwhile I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 56:
Page 40, line 39, leave out ("six") and insert ("twelve").
The noble Lord said: My noble friend Lady Mallalieu referred to this amendment when she was speaking on the group headed by Amendment No. 55. I shall not repeat her arguments on that point. I shall treat this as a probing amendment to see what the Minister says in response.
The point that my noble friend was making is that the existing law concerns itself with groups of 12 or more vehicles. The restriction to six vehicles does not single out particularly disruptive groups: it is a blanket restriction and it applies equally to—whatever one cares to call them—genuine gypsies or romanies and to so-called New Age travellers. We cannot keep worrying too much about the terminology: what we have to recognise is that all sorts of people in our society take to the roads and they have rights as well as other people. They deliberately give up some rights but they do not give up the rights to find somewhere to park their caravans. There must be some particular reason why those rights should be abrogated, but not on general principle. I suggest to the Committee that the provision that the size of the caravan (using it in its other sense) should be as low as six vehicles is a particularly restrictive condition which applies equally to romanies as to other people of nomadic habit. I beg to move.
Viscount Mountgarret: I think I am right in saying that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred three times

637
to caravans. I agree with him that one cannot get too many people into a caravan. But what is the definition of a vehicle? To my mind it usually has four wheels on the ground and a steering wheel and it goes from A to B. Minibuses can carry anything up to about 18 people. If one extended the provision from six vehicles to 12 vehicles, it could cover, instead of approximately 120 people who are in a particular place illegally or are not desired to be there, some 240 people. I should have thought that that was rather a lot. I should have thought that the Bill as drafted is more appropriate.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I thought I had made it clear to the noble Viscount—perhaps I did not do this adequately—that when I used the word "caravan" I was using it in the sense of the battered caravanserai of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; in other words, a collective noun for vehicles of all kinds. Vehicles and caravans are adequately defined in the Bill.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord said that this was a probing amendment to ascertain why we were reducing the number from 12 to six. The number of vehicles which triggered this provision was originally set at 12 by the 1986 Act so as not to catch small groups of gypsies and other such people. We are still anxious not to do so under these provisions. However, over the years we have been worried that encampments which are too small to be caught by Section 39, as it now is—which refers to 12 vehicles—are nevertheless sufficiently large to cause significant discomfort for the unfortunate and unwilling people who find themselves the hosts of these itinerant characters. We therefore believe that it is right to set the number at six. That represents a sensible middle course which I commend to the Committee. I believe that it is the right figure: 12 has proved to be too many.
5 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That sounds very much like assertion in place of argument. I have not heard any examples of where 12 has proved to be too many.
I believe that we shall have to return to this whole issue. I appreciate the strength of numbers present in the Chamber this afternoon in favour of established landowners and against anybody of nomadic habit. I shall not press the amendment to a vote for that reason. Nevertheless, I am deeply dissatisfied with the approach of this part of the Bill. I shall find some way to seek to persuade the House at a later stage that a profound intrusion on civil liberties is brought about by this part of the Bill.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord says that he is profoundly dissatisfied. Am I right in interpreting his dissatisfaction as due to the fact that he wants people to continue to break the law and to trespass where the law says they should not be?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I want the law to be restricted to proven nuisance rather than extended to a whole range of perfectly valid alternative ways of life.
Earl Ferrers: Is the noble Lord saying that trespass is perfectly all right and that the breaking of law is acceptable under certain circumstances?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister must not seek again to put words into my mouth. There has been a law of trespass for many years. There have been specific complaints of occasions where the present law of trespass is inadequate. Nothing that I have said has been in opposition to a law of trespass or to a law of trespass which is extended to deal with specific and well defined nuisances. My complaint is that the law of trespass is being extended very widely on the grounds of particular nuisances which have been identified in ministerial speeches and at Conservative Party conferences and that the effects of the changes in the law which are proposed are very much wider than the nuisances which have been identified. That does not mean that I am opposed to an effective law of trespass.
Earl Ferrers: I do not want to prolong this exchange, but the noble Lord cannot get away with that. He says that the law of trespass is being expanded. The law of trespass is the same. It is the abuse of the law which has been expanded. All we say is that it ought to be put into a reasonable state.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Perhaps I may continue, if the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will forgive me. I shall not seek to withdraw the amendment before he has had an opportunity to speak.
We are talking about turning what has been the law of trespass into, under certain circumstances, a law of criminal trespass. It is the extent of the interpretation of criminal trespass to which we object, not the attempt to deal with certain specified, identified nuisances.
Lord Hooson: I took exception to the way in which the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, dealt with this point. We were discussing an amendment to a specific clause of the Bill. The noble Lord referred to people's rights. There are rights and obligations. He did not at one stage mention people's obligations.
I am against a libertarian society in all its manifestations, whether in its sophisticated manifesta-tion of rave parties and so on, which we shall deal with presently, or in the form of New Age travellers who take; advantage of a situation and pay no regard to their obligations. They have rights. I believe, as do my colleagues on these Benches, that the Government have: certain obligations, which they are not discharging in this Bill, with regard to certain travellers, including New Age travellers. However, that is not the point of the amendment or of the clause. The clause deals with a specific problem which has manifested itself all over the country in recent times. If the party of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, were in power it would have to do something about that problem, just as the present Government are doing something about it.
Lord Avebury: I take a middle position between my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, in that I did not hear the Minister say anything that justified the

639
figure in the Bill. It needs to be justified on some objective grounds rather than for the Minister simply to say that that appears to be the appropriate figure.
As has been said by a number of Members of the Committee, New Age travellers tend to move around in large numbers. That is why they are so objectionable. If a hundred or so caravans descend on a quiet rural village, it is extremely disruptive and annoying for the people who live there. As I said earlier, it may even cause health hazards. However, if there are between six and 12 caravans, the nuisance is that much less. Bearing in mind that, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, says, we are criminalising trespass, we have to be more objective in defining the circumstances in which those criminal penalties may be brought into play.
Therefore, without necessarily agreeing that six is the appropriate figure, I believe that consideration has to be given as to whether 12 or six should be the figure in the Bill and that we may need to return to the matter at Report stage.
Lord Hylton: In defence of the figure six, I believe that we ought to take into consideration the fact that the vehicles concerned can be, and sometimes are, coaches or buses, which can accommodate a large number of people.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: I should like briefly to support the position which my noble friend on the Front Bench has taken and also to endorse strongly what the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said.
Turning to what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, I very much regretted the introduction of Conservative Party conferences into the debate. It is many years since I went to one, and even longer since I enjoyed one, but for the noble Lord to suggest that these proposals were hatched at Conservative Party conferences is very wide of the mark. There is a genuine problem, and the use of loose phrases such as "valid alternative ways of life", which I believe was the phrase used by the noble Lord, does not help. Such phrases have to be carefully defined if they are to mean anything at all. I say with great respect to the noble Lord, for whom I have great regard, that I do not believe that his performance was up to his usual level today.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I enjoy this sort of thing. When I am attacked by both the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, and the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, not for what I say but for the way that I say it then I believe that I am striking home after all.
I do not think that I shall ever reach agreement with the noble Lords who have spoken in that way about the issues. There is a genuine difference of view between us and those who think that the rights of the established part of the community can be widely extended at the expense of minorities in our society. That is perhaps a philosophical point of view rather than a party political point of view, and clearly I shall not persuade the Committee of that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Peyton, says that I am speaking loosely. I say to him that if that is so it is a grievous fault, but it is nothing like as grievous a fault as drafting
640
legislation loosely, which is happening here. The legislation is being drafted apparently in response to specific nuisances which have been identified and which are far better known to many Members of the Committee than they are to me as a town dweller. But I seek to suggest that the effect of the legislation will be very much wider than the nuisances which it seeks to remedy.
That is the fundamental point behind my objection. I sought to save time rather than anything else by referring to the general nature of my objection to these provisions in reference to this particular amendment. I do not believe that the case has been answered. There are matters which will have to be considered, but for the present I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 57and 58 not moved.]
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No. 58A:
Page 41, line 3, at end insert ("who may enter any vehicle for this purpose.").
The noble Lord said: With the permission of the Committee, in moving Amendment No. 58A I shall speak also to the other amendment standing in my name, Amendment No. 58B.
If Clause 56 is to work effectively, trespassers should be in no doubt that they have been given a direction to leave the land by the police. There have been cases where trespassers have hidden in their vehicles so as to claim that they have never received a direction from the police. The amendment ensures that if necessary the police could enter the vehicle for the purpose of communicating the direction. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell me that my amendment is unnecessary and that the police have that power anyhow.
Amendment No. 58B is similar. The provision puts it beyond a legal doubt that trespassers have received a direction to leave. There may be practical difficulties for the police in communicating a direction where a large number of people and their vehicles are involved. The police may overcome that difficulty, for example, by using a loud hailer from a police helicopter. Amendment No. 58B uses exactly the same words as those contained in Clause 58(4) concerning communications directed at ravers. If it is right to have that power in Clause 58, I do not understand why it is not included in Clause 56. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend encouragingly invites me to tell him that his amendment is unnecessary. I am happy to do so. I should be quite happy to tell a number of noble Lords that their amendments, too, are unnecessary, but I shall resist the temptation.
Under the terms of Clause 56 as drafted, the senior police officer present at the scene can direct people to leave land. There is no need for each person to be told individually or face to face in order for the direction to take effect. It will not be necessary for police officers to enter vehicles in order to give a direction. To give them the power to do that would run the risk of unnecessarily inflaming passions and sparking disorder.

641
Amendment No. 58B would have the effect that people would be treated as having been directed to leave the site of a trespass on land if reasonable steps had been taken to bring the direction to their attention.
I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. We envisage that the police will issue a direction, for example by using a loud hailer, or even by some other methods of informing people globally of the fact that they have to leave. I do not think that it is necessary therefore to have a provision of this kind. It would mean that each person would have to be given a personal instruction to leave. I do not think that that is right.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Avebury: Let us suppose that the police come onto the site and issue the directions by loud hailer but not all the persons who own the vehicles are present at the time. Some are shopping, or are about their business in a neighbouring town, or are perhaps at work. After a while several vehicles are removed from the site. However, one is not and the person who occupies that vehicle pleads that he was not present when the directions were given by the police by loud hailer. Will the Minister say what the position would then be if an attempt is made to invoke the criminal provisions of the clause by charging the person subsequently with failure to obey the order of the police to leave the site?
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, stimulates my imagination. Let us suppose that there are 300 vehicles on the site, the police say that everyone has to leave and all the vehicles depart, but about 12 hours later the police return and find one vehicle on the site with no one in it. I find it extraordinary to think that the occupants of the vehicle would be so trusting as to leave their vehicle surrounded by a whole lot of other people in order to do their shopping. If that were the case, I think that the police would come back and say, "What are you doing here? There has been a direction to leave". The occupant would say, "Oh dear, I was away shopping. I didn't know". The policeman would say, "I think you had better go".
Lord Avebury: I sought clarification of the point. The Minister says that he thinks that that is what will happen. Clearly if there were 300 vehicles on the site and 299 left there would be a presumption that the occupant of the vehicle which remained had deliberately ignored the notice given by loud hailer because he would surely have been told by some of the other people on the site that those directions had been given.
However, if we consider a small number of vehicles on the site, let us say six vehicles, and five had left, with only one remaining, it could well be that by the time the occupant of that vehicle returned from his work in the neighbouring town, or from a shopping trip, he would be in ignorance of the directions that had been given. I wish to be sure that criminal penalties will not be imposed on him for something that was not his fault.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord continues to excite my imagination. If there were only six vehicles on the land I find it unlikely that the police would go round with a loud hailer telling the occupants that they must all go.
642
With a small number, the police would probably tell the occupants individually that they should go. The point about a loud hailer is this. Where one has a huge number of people there should be no requirement for those people to say, "I have not been served with a piece of paper directly and personally". People will know—it will be up to the police to make sure that everyone on the site knows—that they have to leave. It will depend on the circumstances of the case exactly how the police will ensure that.
The Earl of Dudley: Is the noble Earl satisfied that the police and the courts will on all occasions be able effectively and as a matter of law to distinguish between night and day?
Earl Ferrers: If the police were present yesterday evening, they might have found that rather difficult. I agree with my noble friend. Where we are referring to raves there is no question about night and day. The strict answer—I shall need confirmation of it—is that night starts at sundown.
Lord Burton: Will my noble friend at some time consider the whole question about asking those persons to leave. The matter has taxed me. The position may be easier for the police who have loud speakers. However, the occupier has first to notify those people. I should not have thought that the average occupier would have a loud speaker. If there were 20 or 30 people on the site the occupier might have considerable difficulty in notifying them. The police may have difficulty but not as much as the occupier.
Earl Ferrers: I should be surprised if the ingenuity of the occupier was so stultified that if he found 20 or 30 people on his land he could not find some way of telling them that he wished them to go. That is a matter for the individual judgments of occupiers.
We cannot cater for every single conceivable scenario. The position is perfectly simple: the occupier has to tell people that they have to go, whether it is a collection of six vehicles or more. If those persons do not go then the police can come along and take such action as the Bill allows.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I always believe every word that Ministers say. Therefore I shall take it for granted that what my noble friend says is right. I am pleased to hear that my two amendments are not needed.
I do not know whether my noble friend can answer this question. Why was it necessary to put the words used in Amendment No. 58B in Clause 58, which deals with raves, but not in Clause 56? I find that somewhat disturbing. If the Minister does not wish to answer that point now, I shall consider the matter between now and Report. I see that obviously he does not wish to answer, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 58B not moved.]
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 58BA:
Page 41, line 11, leave out ("imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or").
The noble Lord said: I have already mentioned this point in passing. It causes me immense concern.

643
Throughout the whole of this part of the Bill we are creating new criminal offences at a time when the prisons are bursting at the seams and plans are having to be made for alternative provision for the people in police stations and elsewhere. Yet, under the Bill, we propose to criminalise the offence of trespass and, under later clauses, actions which have never been treated as criminal before will now be subject to three months' or, in one case, six months' imprisonment. I wonder whether that is the right way to proceed.
Is it not better to take such measures as we need against those causing nuisance? I in no way disagree with what has been said by Members of the Committee on previous amendments. The occupation of land by substantial numbers of New Age travellers is a threat to the peaceable enjoyment of a neighbourhood and it has to be countered by Parliament. However, if we go so far as to say that ultimately if someone refuses to accept a direction by a police officer to leave the site, he makes himself liable to a heavy fine, or the confiscation of his vehicle, that should be adequate. Why do we need to put him in prison as well?
What will be the result of that in terms of his future activities? Does it mean that he desists from his trespass because he has lost the vehicle? Does it mean that he behaves in a civilised and law-abiding manner in future? Alternatively, by putting him in prison for three months, do we provoke in him a sense of bitter resentment which is likely to increase the anti-social way in which he behaves, to the extent that he may be a recurrent client of the prison system?
I shall not suggest many scenarios that would cause the Minister's imagination to work overtime because the Committee can already see the dangers of the provision. We can see the dangers of increasing the numbers in our prison system and in particular putting people in prison who may be a nuisance but whose conduct has for centuries past been treated as a matter for the civil law. Surely we do not wish to expand indefinitely the number of actions or types of behaviour which render a person liable to action in the criminal courts at a time when we have perhaps the largest proportion of the population in prison of any country in Europe. I hope that the Government will think again about this retrograde and reactionary provision. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I strongly support this group of amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is quite right in pointing out that not only are we increasing the number of criminal offences, but also at a time when we have overcrowded prisons and a high prison population anyway, we propose to put considerable numbers of people in prison. We not only put more people into prison but we put in people who do not think that they have done anything wrong. There may be disagreement about that; it may well be that people have different views. I recognise the sincerity of Members of the Committee who express the view that New Age travellers are not to be tolerated in any circumstances, and that all the provisions of the Bill are necessary in order to restrain them. But the travellers do not go on the road in order to become criminals, they do
644
not believe that they have committed a criminal offence. They do so because they have chosen an alternative way of life, as I said earlier. If we are serious about putting in our prisons a significant number of people who think that they are, in effect, political prisoners, it may be good for the morale of the prison population, but it is not the right way for a society to behave.
Lord Hylton: Imprisonment seems to be a somewhat excessive penalty for a case like that. Can the Minister at least assure us that the provision would only be used in cases of persistent offenders who have also behaved violently and destructively?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I do not agree with much that has been said in this short discussion. If the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will forgive me, I do not believe that such people as New Age travellers can reasonably regard themselves as political prisoners. If they are judged to be guilty of an offence it is because Parliament has decided that that constitutes the criminal law.
However, I must express my anxiety at the penalty of imprisonment. The noble Earl and I, and others, have debated on many occasions the size of the prison population. I am warmly in favour of people who breach the law rightly being punished, either by a fine or under this legislation by the confiscation of a vehicle in certain circumstances. I suspect that that will be the most effective penalty. But constantly adding new offences which are to be imprisonable, is, in my view, extraordinarily foolish at a time when there are hundreds of prisoners packed into police cells. It is absurd to do that. I hope that the Government will reflect upon the matter. A fine, yes; confiscation, yes; but imprisonment, no.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: There are two simple answers to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. First, the Government cannot give an assurance that the courts will not commit someone to prison in particular cases because it is the responsibility of the magistrates and the courts, not of the Government. The second answer is that if, as the noble Lord suggests, such people have committed crimes of violence, then no one—neither the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, nor I—suggests that it might not be appropriate for them to be committed to prison. The Bill proposes that they should be committed to prison for the offence of criminal trespass, not for any other offence. If the noble Lord's arguments are against the amendment, I do not believe that they hold water.
Earl Peel: I find the attitude of the two noble Lords opposite quite extraordinary. We are talking about offences which have developed and the Government are responding positively to what has happened. Is the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, saying that if new offences develop, we should not put anyone in prison and that we only put people in prison for old offences, not new ones? It seems an extraordinary attitude. The Government have considered this carefully. Many people have given clear examples where grievous offences have taken place; that is why the Government decided to make the offence criminal rather than civil. It is well proven and we should support them.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I do not suppose for a moment that large numbers of people would be committed to prison under this provision. Therefore, alarm about increasing the prison population seems quite uncalled for.
However, where we are concerned with providing a measure of protection for members of the public who are worried about the New Age travellers, it seems to me right that there should be an ultimate penalty of imprisonment for those who deliberately defy the law and stand out against the prohibition.
There is also the practical point that people who stand out regularly against the law, as some New Age travellers no doubt will, will have all their money taken from them, at any rate by way of fines. Therefore the only effective penalty will be imprisonment. I hope that my noble friend will stand firm on the matter.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: Before my noble friend replies I should like to follow my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter on that point. The problem will be that they will not pay their fines. They will be on social security. I should like to ask my noble friend, and indeed my noble kinsman when he sums up, in that case, when they have not paid the fines, presumably it is then up to the courts to impose a prison sentence.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: That is the practical issue at the moment so far as prostitution is concerned. Prostitutes cannot be sent to prison for the offence of prostitution; but they can of course find themselves in prison, as many do, as a result of their failure to pay the fine.
5.30 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: With regard to the point that was raised by my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley, he is quite right. Where a court issues a fine and where the fine is not paid, the court will have to take other steps to make sure that the sentence for any offence that has been committed is carried out properly.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. He gave such an impeccable answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton—that does not often happen—that I wish the noble Lord would give such impeccable answers to some of the other questions that I am asked, whether by him or by others. It was a perfect answer.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: After the next general election I will.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord has a long time to wait for that. His answer was so impeccable that it contrasted amazingly with what he had said. The noble Lord said that the Government were proposing to put lots of extra people into prison who do not think that they are doing any harm. Well, I will not elaborate on the question of whether they think they are doing any harm. The New Age travellers who go along and sit on other people's land in great masses and do a lot of trespassing know perfectly well what they are doing. I simply advise the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that he might like to have a look at the video of what was known as "the battle of the bean field", which as he may remember took place (I believe) in Wiltshire some 10 years ago. If the noble
646
Lord saw what went on there he would know perfectly well that everyone knew that what they were doing was not right and was illegal.
I find it astonishing, if I may say so to the noble Lords, Lord Harris, Lord Avebury and Lord McIntosh of Haringey, that they say that measures like this should not be put into a Bill when the prisons are already bursting at the seams and people are in police cells. That argument does not hold any water whatsoever. What we are doing in legislation is saying, "These are offences which we believe will have to be punished in a certain way; it is up to the courts to decide what punishment to give, and these are the maxima". The penalties which are suggested here fit into a range of similar existing penalties.
The amendments seek to remove imprisonment as a sanction which the courts might impose on those convicted—let us be clear about this—of failing to obey a police direction to leave land where they are trespassing with intent to reside, attending or preparing for a rave or committing or intending to commit aggravated trespass or those convicted of attending a trespassory assembly.
The penalties are not new. They already exist in legislation. The penalties for the various offences of collective trespass and nuisance on land are in line with the existing legal framework which is contained in the Public Order Act 1986. The Act provides police powers to deal with trespass on land. It is correct that these penalties should be in the Bill. I hope the Committee will agree.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Perhaps I may return to the point that the noble Earl made a few moments ago. The implication, in so far as I was able to understand it, was that if an offence is created it is always right that there should be a period of imprisonment available to the sentencing court. I hope that the noble Earl will remember that there was a great deal of disquiet about the activities of prostitutes in the streets in many residential areas of London. Disquiet was expressed, particularly in the House of Commons. Notwithstanding that, the present Government decided to make that no longer an imprisonable offence. That was what the noble Earl and his friends decided. So there were plenty of precedents for Parliament to take note of the consequences of making offences imprisonable.
The noble Earl constantly comes here and tells us how grief-stricken he is that there are hundreds of prisoners in police cells; and here he cheerfully asks the Committee to make this offence imprisonable, notwithstanding the fact that there is a provision in this section of the Bill for confiscation of vehicles, which in my view is a far more adequate penalty to direct at those who commit the offence.
Earl Ferrers: Unlike the noble Lord, I am not too familiar with the activities of prostitutes. I shall have to look at what he says. But the comparison between prostitutes and New Age travellers really does extend the imagination. I am not quite so sure as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury; there may be some connection, but I suggest that the argument that the noble Lord puts forward is very tenuous. The point here is that we

647
suggest a level of fines, a level of penalties, for certain crimes. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, knows perfectly well that if in the event people do not pay fines for the penalties that they incur, eventually there has to be another sanction. I do not believe for a moment that the courts will use the penalty of imprisonment very often, but that is no reason why it should not be there.
Lord Avebury: We are not here to please Mr. Howard, who wants to increase the number of offences which justify imprisonment and to lengthen the time for which people are locked up. We are trying to legislate for what is undoubtedly a serious social evil; namely, the presence of large numbers of New Age travellers on land where they are trespassing and their refusal to leave on the directions of a police officer.
I challenge the Minister to say why he thinks that the penalties, as set out in the Bill, of a fine and the confiscation of a vehicle—which, after all, must be very serious for a person who is living in that vehicle and who has nowhere else to go—will not be an adequate disincentive to such a person to leave the land on the direction of a police officer.
I also point out to the Committee that we are not just talking about New Age travellers. As we said in relation to an earlier amendment, if the number of vehicles is reduced to six, a large number of groups of gypsies will be included, whom everybody says they do not want to penalise. I pointed out earlier that under Clause 72 of this Bill it will be made impossible for a gypsy to camp anywhere lawfully. He will move from one place to another, and will undoubtedly, on occasions, settle on land where he is trespassing and will render himself liable to the penalties that are imposed under this section if he is in company with members of his family numbering more than two and occupying at least six vehicles. We are not attacking simply the evil of the New Age travellers; we are rendering everybody who adopts a nomadic way of life liable to the penalties of imprisonment as an ultimate sanction.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, says that he does not think that those penalties will very often need to be used. I must say that I am bound to agree with him. If one looks at the Financial Memorandum on page xviii, one sees that there are no costs associated with the imprisonment of people under this part of the Bill. I ask the Minister to comment on that. If nobody is to be put in prison under this clause, why have it there in the first place? On the other hand, if people are to be put in prison, then as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is well aware, it costs about £3,000 a week to keep somebody in an average prison establishment in England and Wales. That figure, multiplied by the number of people who will be caught under this provision, ought to have been included in the Financial Memorandum. Let us find out why it has not been included.
Obviously at this stage I shall not convince the Committee of the undesirable nature of multiplying offences without necessity. But perhaps I may remind the Committee of what Occam said: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. I say that offences
648
which render a person liable to imprisonment should not be multiplied without the most severe necessity, when we have clogged up our prisons to the extent that we have. We have a larger proportion of our population in prison than any other country in Europe.
That is what the Minister proposes. It is neither extraordinary, as his noble friend on the Back Benches said, nor astonishing that some people should seek to remedy that situation by preventing the Government from embarking on a policy of multiplying offences which result in imprisonment. We make no apology for that.
I can see that this is not the moment to press the amendment to a Division. However, I shall return to it at a later stage, when I hope that the Minister will take a more reasonable view.
Earl Ferrers: Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, although we do not want to spend too much time on it or we shall be here until tomorrow morning, I ought to point out to him that the penalty which is appropriate for any offence is a matter for the judgment of the court. In these cases we are talking about activities which include threatening behaviour and intimidation. In my view it is appropriate that imprisonment is a facility available to the courts.
Baroness Faithfull: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him what would be the alternative to imprisonment?
Lord Avebury: The alternative is set out in the Bill. There are fines at level 3 or ultimately there is the confiscation of the vehicle. As I pointed out, if a person lives in a vehicle and that is the only accommodation that he has, confiscation becomes a very severe penalty indeed. It is one which I should have thought quite sufficient without adding a period of three months in prison to it. As I said, I am not sure that we shall convince the noble Earl on the Front Bench this afternoon. We shall just have to come back to the matter at Report stage, when I hope that the Committee will have had an opportunity to reflect on not just this clause but the imprisonment provisions all the way through Part V of the Bill and the effect that they will have on the prison population.
I hope that at some point the Minister will give me an answer to my question about the Financial Memorandum and why there was nothing on page xviii which deals with Clause 56 and subsequent clauses to show what the cost will be of putting people into prison under this clause. I hope that I shall have that information before we reach Report stage. We shall then be able to discuss the matter in the light of the cost as well as the social penalties that will be inflicted, I suppose, on a large number of people by shutting them up in prison for what is at present a civil offence.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Before the noble Lord sits down, does he appreciate that simply to say that confiscation of the vehicle is the right penalty misses the whole point? Whereas confiscation of the vehicle may well be a penalty to the owner of the vehicle, it is not a penalty to any of the other occupants. That is why it is

649
fallacious to say that confiscation rather than imprisonment should in all cases be the appropriate penalty for the severe offence.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is a penalty if the people have nowhere to live.
Lord Avebury: As the noble Lord asked the question, I must tell him that I disagree with him. The other occupants of the vehicle in 99 out of 100 cases are the family of the owner of the vehicle. If they are not the family, they may be people living in other kinds of ménage. They may be the partners of the person who lives in the vehicle. Obviously they are very closely associated with the owner. If the vehicle is confiscated, they too will lose their only means of accommodation. That is a very severe penalty and one which renders homeless all the occupants of the vehicle, not just the owner of the vehicle.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: I must point out that they can get their vehicle back immediately by going away.
Lord Avebury: As I said, in view of the fact that the Minister does not wish to give me an answer on the cost and is intransigent on the main point that I am trying to get across, I shall return to the matter at a later stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 58BB not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Serota): I must tell the Committee that if Amendment No. 58C is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 59.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No. 58C:
Page 42, leave out lines 4 to 14.
The noble Lord said: Section 39 of the Public Order Act 1986 specifically excludes all highways and land on which police can operate their powers. Clause 56 now contains an improvement in the position, in that footpaths and driveways are brought into the scope of the law. However, the Government have continued to resist the notion that powers be made available on all highways, apparently on the grounds that it is off private land and onto highways that trespassers would normally be moved, and also on the grounds of their powers under the Highways Act to remove persons obstructing highways.
I do not agree. Experience in recent years has shown that there have been several cases where travellers have parked on highway verges, causing great difficulties for adjoining occupiers but not in fact obstructing the free flow of traffic on the highway. Therefore, highway authorities as such decline to take any interest in the problem. As many Members of the Committee will know, there are instances of what I call oxbows of highway land where the main road has been improved and a large lay-by created on the old route. There is an instance on the A.249 on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent
650
where there is an area of highway land near the bridge which is used by travellers and is a known trouble spat for the authorities.
I must remind the Committee that Clause 56 can only operate when the police, in their discretion, choose to use their powers. As I said, all the evidence is that they exercise great caution when contemplating doing so. Yet they are frustrated when circumstances demand their use. They cannot act because trespassers happen to be parked up on a highway land.
Under Clause 72, to which we shall come later, local authorities are given new powers to direct unauthorised campers to leave the land, whether it be unoccupied land, occupied land without the consent of the occupier or any land forming part of a highway. A highway is not defined in Clause 72. Local authorities can therefore move on campers.
Once again, I must tell my noble friend that that seems quite inconsistent with the restriction on the police use of powers in Clause 56. I believe that Clause 56 should be widened to bring it into line with Clause 72 and give the police the operational flexibility, if they so wish, to move on people in major trespass situations. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: When I saw my Amendment No. 59 grouped with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, for one moment I thought that we were in agreement. Much as I love the noble Lord, that would not be appropriate. In fact my amendment is the exact opposite of his amendment. His amendment seeks to bring all highways within the scope of the new criminal trespass provisions. My amendment seeks to exclude not only formal highways but also footpaths, bridleways, byways open to traffic or cycle tracks. Nobody wants to see cycle tracks or bridle paths blocked by travellers of any description, but surely it is an extension of the concept of trespass to make it cover highways and "green highways", as may be the best way to describe them.
The point of which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, rightly continues to remind us is that in many cases travellers, including gypsy travellers, will, if Clauses 72 to 75 are agreed to, have nowhere to move to. What happens in practice is that where local authorities have not provided sites under the Caravan Sites Act, the gypsies park along the sides of the road. The noble Lord cites one example of where a nuisance is caused. But I suggest that the kind of oxbow which he describes, or the kinds of lay-by or certain parts of highway land, are the only available places for travellers, including gypsies, to go. To seek to take those out and make them subject to the provisions of criminal trespass under Clause 56 would seem to me harsh indeed.
Earl Ferrers: Clause 56 gives the police powers over lanes, bridleways and by-ways open to all traffic. My noble friend Lord Stanley wants them extended to major highways. The police already possess adequate powers in that regard. It would not be right to extend them to highways. Not only is the type of nuisance created by people camping en masse on a highway very different from that which afflicts an occupier, but the police already have perfectly adequate powers under

651
highway law to clear any obstruction. The amendment would bring unwelcome duplication and confusion to the law and I hope that my noble friend will be satisfied with the knowledge that the police already possess adequate powers to deal with highways.
Amendment No. 59 seeks to achieve precisely the opposite result, by disapplying the provisions of Clause 56 to any land which forms part of a highway. That would return us to the position under Section 39 of the Public Order Act 1986 where no highways—whether roads, boats or green lanes—are covered. That is one of the areas which gave rise to so many problems in the past.
Clause 56 is intended to improve Section 39. The police and others represented to us strongly that the inability to use Section 39, where vehicles may be on footpaths or bridleways, has been a considerable hinderance to the protection of rightful occupiers. Footpaths, bridleways, green lanes and so forth are meant for the purpose of passing and re-passing. It is unacceptable that they should be camped upon with scant regard for the rights of others. Clause 56 seeks to put the matter right. I hope that my noble friend Lord Stanley will realise, when he tries to transpose the position on to major highways, that the police already hold adequate powers in that regard.
Lord Burton: There are three areas near me where the loops referred to by my noble friend occur, where the road has been straightened. They are used by New Age travellers and cause considerable problems. The police say that they are unable to move them on because the loops form part of a public highway. It may be that the situation is worse in Scotland because, under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984, any road, including private roads, comes under that Act. I ask my noble friend to look at that point, which is even more severe than the point in relation to loops in public roads.
Earl Ferrers: I know that Scotland has all kinds of idiosyncrasies peculiar to itself which are not reflected always in England. But I shall certainly look at the point raised by my noble friend.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I cannot agree with my noble friend. Indeed, about 10 years ago I did not agree with my noble friend Lord Glenarthur on Section 39 on this matter of the highways—it may have been my noble friend Lord Caithness, I cannot remember. I shall try to explain to my noble friend why he is wrong.
Section 137 of the Highways Act makes it an offence when a person,
"wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway".
That person may not be so doing; he may just be on the side of the highway, in which case the provision does not cover the situation. Section 143 of the same Act allows an authority by written notice to
"require the person having control or possession of the structure to remove it",
from the highway within one month. The time period cannot be reduced.
We have been over this matter before and the Highways Act does not work. Moreover, the point is reinforced by the Powys County Council report. The
652
council studied the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, may know, after the trouble that they experienced. It recommended that Section 143 of the Highways Act be amended to allow highway authorities to serve notice to remove vehicles and structures set up upon the highway within 24 hours. It comes to a question of time, as my noble friend Lord Renton mentioned. In one month an enormous amount of harm can be done and the problem can increase tremendously. I do not know whether my noble friend wishes to comment on that, but if he does not, then I must come back to the matter on Report.
Earl Ferrers: My only comment is this. My noble friend makes out a perfectly good case and I shall certainly look at it between now and Report stage. I cannot tell him what the answer will be but I shall certainly look at what he said.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I am grateful to my noble friend. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 59 not moved.]
Lord Macaulay of Bragar Lord Macaulay of Bragar moved Amendment No. 59ZA:
Page 42, line 43, after ("vehicle") insert ("but shall exclude the personal belongings of the vehicle's owner or his family").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 59 refers to the definition of "vehicle" in Clause 56. It is designed to ensure that the personal belongings of anyone to whom a vehicle belongs are excluded from the definition or are not covered by the word "load" in the definition. The definition of "vehicle" reads,
"any vehicle, whether or not it is in a fit state for use on roads, and includes any chassis or body, with or without wheels, appearing to have formed part of such a vehicle, and any load carried by, and anything attached to, such a vehicle".
The amendment seeks to ensure that the power to remove the vehicle does not mean that the personal belongings of the persons to whom the vehicle belongs will also be removed; for example, clothing and tools of trade. The amendment is in keeping with other forms of diligence where people are left with a means of livelihood when other materials are taken from them. I beg to move.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I believe I am right in saying that Amendment Nos. 59A and 59B are grouped with Amendment No. 59. Clause 56 provides the police with powers to direct trespassers to leave the land and to remove vehicles and other property that they have with them off the land. Clause 57 provides back-up powers to the police to seize and remove the vehicle that has not been removed. However, the clause does not extend to other property which might include, for example, dogs. There have been numerous incidents—I need hardly remind the Committee—of farmers' sheep being worried by such dogs. The police should be able to deal with property other than vehicles which have not been removed, but which are causing obstruction and nuisance or are a threat to persons or indeed animals.
Earl Ferrers: Amendment No. 59ZA seeks to amend the definition of "vehicle" so as to exclude the personal property of the vehicle's owner or his family.

653
In so doing, where a constable exercised his power to seize a vehicle left behind by a person who had been directed to leave land under Clause 56, he could remove the vehicle but not its contents.
That is not a practical solution. We are providing the police with powers to enable them to deal promptly and effectively with those who fail to obey a direction to leave land. In practice, when most people are directed to leave land, they will comply with the direction and take their property with them, as in most cases their vehicle is their home. That is the experience under the existing legislation, which is contained in Section 39 of the Public Order Act 1986. But if someone ignores such a direction, the supplementary police powers, which are provided under Clause 57, will enable vehicles to be removed and so to end the nuisance. If the vehicle has been left behind, under this amendment the constable would have to go into the vehicle, dig out its contents and leave them on the land. I cannot believe that is what the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay, had in mind. We believe that if people are prepared to leave their property, it is right that it is removed to deal with the nuisance.
Amendments Nos. 59A and 59B in the name of my noble friend Lord Stanley address a somewhat different point. We brought in Clause 57 for use in the last resort where people disobey a police direction to leave land and to take their vehicles with them. The vehicles are the key in this situation: if the vehicles go, the trespass effectively ends. I understand why my noble friend wishes to extend this police power to "other property", but I fear that it would not work. The police would not welcome a power to remove worn out old tyres or bits of clapped out car engines. Nor would they have the ability or need to take care of goats or chickens. The Government believe that the deterrent of having their vehicles removed will be sufficient to deter all but the most hardened trespassers to leave. We therefore think that Clause 57, as drafted, is as far as we need to go.
6 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: There is a humane object behind the amendment which is that people should not be left bereft and without the necessities of life. I note with interest the noble Earl's reply. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 56 agreed to.
Clause 57 [Supplementary powers of seizure]:
[Amendment No.59ZB not moved.]
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 59A:
Page 43, line 4, after ("vehicle") insert ("or other property").
The noble Lord said: I have already spoken to this amendment and my noble friend has replied. I shall have to think about what he said. I am a little concerned that there may be a need to remove the dogs or whatever without removing the vehicles. I shall have to look at the Bill very carefully. My noble friend may well be right.
[Amendment No. 59A not moved.]
[Amendments Nos. 59AA, 59B and 59BA not moved.]
Clause 57 agreed to.
Clause 58 [Powers to remove persons attending or preparing for a rave]:
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No 59C:
Page 43, line 16, leave out ("during the night").
The noble Lord said: We move to raves. Clauses 58 to 61 provide a new range of powers to control raves which have not been properly licensed by the local authority. While Clause 58 introduces the welcome concept of causing serious distress to the inhabitants of the locality, unfortunately the police power to direct persons to leave the land to prevent the disturbance caused by the playing of amplified musk: relates only to music played during the night. The difference between day and night was raised earlier by a noble Lord and my noble friend gave a reply on which I was not too keen
Obviously, loud music is more likely to cause serious distress when played at night; but surely it could do so during the daylight hours, too, if it is very loud and if its source is close to local residents, a village or a collection of farm buildings. Moreover, there is no definition of "night". I look to noble Lords who live north of the Border where, according to my memory, it hardly gets dark at all at this time of the year. The duration varies according to the latitude and indeed the season. Although under Section 34 of the Game Act 1831 there is a statutory precedent for night—as my noble friend on the Front Bench said, one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise—I feel that does not apply to raves. If I lived in Scotland, I do not think I would welcome being kept awake until two o'clock in the morning and woken up at three. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: I do not mind saying that I have a great deal of sympathy for my noble friend's amendments and for what prompted him to put them down. My difficulty is that I fear that they would be difficult to work in practice. We thought very hard indeed and carefully when drafting these clauses. The intention is to stop innocent local communities being kept awake at night. That is where the most insidious damage occurs. I accept that my noble friend does not like raves during the day—and I dare say a number of your Lordships feel that, too—but it is the constant noise at night which destroys the lives of everyone and prevents people from sleeping.
We all know what we want to stop but it is very difficult sometimes to put these things into draftsman's language which will make for easy interpretation later on. If my noble friend's amendment were carried, a whole host of events would be liable to be prohibited —barbecues with recorded music; a pub that had music being played during the day; Christmas carol collections outside a supermarket; the Notting Hill carnival; and even a Pavarotti concert. Each of those things, other than possibly a Pavarotti concert, might cause serious distress to the more genteel appreciation of music which sometimes your Lordships have and indeed many other people have too. They would be caught by virtue of the amplified music which is played even if they take place on private land, and even if they have the consent of the occupier. That kind of permission would not protect them from Clause 38.

655
It is quite obvious that one cannot catch events like that. While it may be deeply unpleasant and deeply distressing to have a noisy party in a neighbour's garden, tolerance levels during the day, when most people are not trying to sleep, tend to be higher than at night. We think it is the night time noise that has to be addressed. We are giving the police wide-ranging powers and it is right that they should be provided. However, it is important too that they should not extend further than is necessary. While I have a great deal of sympathy for his personal involvement and distress, I think that to put that into law would be quite difficult.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Does my noble friend the Minister recognise that serious injury could be inflicted on people if loud music or other loud noises are made during the day? The essence of so many of the places where the New Age travellers go is quiet and peace. Indeed, in many of them there are a number of elderly people, perhaps invalids, who require quiet and peace if they are to be allowed to convalesce. It is a pity that we should do nothing to restrain excessive noise unless it is made during the night. I hope my noble friend will be able to think a little further about this. He will well understand what an appalling menace it could be to have loud, blaring noises—so-called music; whether it is music is perhaps a matter of opinion—for hour after hour during the day. The effect of that, particularly on elderly invalids, could be very serious indeed. With great respect, my noble friend ought to think a little further about this.
Earl Ferrers: I say to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that I am happy to think about this matter if he will also be good enough to do so. He might like to draft a clause which would catch a rave party but would not also catch a Pavarotti concert, a barbecue or people having a dance in the early hours of the evening. It is very difficult. I entirely agree with my noble friend that some loud music is deeply offensive, but when we start to tell people that they must not play such music under any circumstances and even during the day, that is quite an intrusion into their life. The real danger comes at night-time and that is the reason why we have limited the provision to night-time. I have personal sympathy with what my noble friend said.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I hope that the noble Earl is not accusing Pavarotti of emitting,
"sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I hope that we shall also do our best to avoid sending Pavarotti to prison for three months.
Lord Avebury: Before we leave this matter perhaps I may say something in support of my noble kinsman. It may be to his astonishment, but I point out to the Minister that during the month of June it does not get dark until about 10.30 p.m. or even later in northern parts of the country. It is light at 4 o'clock in the morning. People have parties that go on during these hours. Not so long ago we had in our neighbourhood a
656
party that went on all night and it was still going on at 6.30 the next morning. I believe that it was held in a house, so it probably would not have been covered by the clause. But let us suppose that it had been held in the open air and that someone had called it to the attention of the police. The police would have been unable to do anything about it because by that time it would have been broad daylight.
The phrase "during the night" needs a little careful thought. We should not allow people to flout this particular provision during the hours of daylight in the summer when many people are still trying to sleep. Perhaps I may also point out that children in civilised households go to bed between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. and that it is still broad daylight in June at that time of the evening. If you want people to have loud parties at a time when the children are being put to bed or when people are still trying to sleep in the morning, then you should leave the clause as it is. If you want people to have a reasonable night's sleep then you might consider altering it.
Earl Ferrers: I say to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that I understand the problem he had with his neighbour's party which went on until 6.30 in the morning. It must have been a jolly good party and no doubt the noble Lord regretted not being invited to it. In such cases the police would not get involved, but the environmental health officer would do so because there are enhanced and speedy local authority powers which deal with noisy neighbours and noise as a problem. That comes under the jurisdiction of the environmental health officers and the local authorities. Here we are dealing with raves which are a particular and peculiar manifestation.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Monson: I venture to suggest that the noble Earl has not listened attentively to what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said. Some children may have to get up early to go to school the next morning and for them to be kept up to 11 p.m. in Scotland or in the north of England, because night has not occurred by then, is no laughing matter. Although I believe that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, goes a little too far, might it not be possible by the next stage to provide that for the purposes of this section "night" shall be deemed to start at not later than 10 p.m?
Earl Ferrers: That is certainly an interesting observation. I realise that if you live in the north of Scotland you would get no sleep there if there was such a rave party going on—you would not have very much sleep because, according to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, the party would be going on during the day! I fancy that not many people would want to have rave parties in the north of Scotland.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Earl Ferrers: Perhaps they do. That shows that many things happen in Scotland which one does not know about. I shall consider the matter because there is

657
a difficulty about the definition of "night". I am not sure whether, off-the-cuff or off-hand, that will satisfy. I shall certainly look at it.
Lord Mishcon: Before we leave this matter and in considering these great nuisances which do exist, I wonder whether the noble Earl will also look at the definition of "music". He mentioned the revered name of Pavarotti. I am not going to add any jokes in regard to that matter. Does the noble Earl realise that amplified singing by about 100 people would not amount to music if no musical instrument was used or no repetitive beat occurred? Is the noble Earl aware of that? Is he equally aware what a nuisance over 100 people singing, many of them out of key, no doubt, can be to music lovers?
Baroness Carnegie of Lour: Before my noble friend replies, perhaps I may give him an example which illustrates the problem as regards an incident near where I live in Scotland which occurred during the last weekend. On Dunnichen Hill close to the site of the battle of Nechtansmere, which happened a very long time ago in the early stages of Scottish history, 700 New Age travellers (so-called Picts) encamped themselves as they have done in previous years. The drum beats from the music were amplified and could be heard all night. At present night ends at about half-past five in the morning where I live. At the same time, and only about four miles away, there is a permanent camp owned by the Girl Guides. No doubt they were having a camp fire, possibly after it got dark. So whatever my noble friend is able to do to the law to limit the one, one would have to be very careful not to limit the other because doubtless the Girl Guides were singing quite loudly too.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: Is not the noble Baroness aware that that matter could have been dealt with very simply by applying the law of a breach of the peace in Scotland without any convoluted legislation?
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend makes a valid point which shows how difficult it is when you want to try to catch one particular problem without catching something else which you did not intend to catch. It would be a tragedy, for instance, if a Welsh male voice choir of 100 people were to be caught by this provision, which would no doubt greatly disturb the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, even if it caught another 100 people who were singing out of tune without any repetitive beat. These are not easy matters to define. It would be wrong for us to consider that we have got them wholly right. So far we believe that we have got them in as good a position as one is likely to get them. I shall certainly consider what has been said.
Lord Hooson: Does the noble Earl appreciate that no Welsh male voice choir worthy of the name needs to be amplified?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Cannot the Minister come clean and admit that Clause 58(1) (b) which refers to,
"sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"
is in fact drafted to cover the music of Philip Glass?
Earl Ferrers: No, I would not give such an undertaking.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I thank all Members of the Committee for their support and that includes my noble friend on the Front Bench. I am not at all happy that the environmental health officer could deal with this problem. I am taken with the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that perhaps we could try to redraft this matter. I am sure that my noble friend would be pleased to put in a time. At my home at the moment it does not get dark before about 10 o'clock at night and it is light again well before half-past three, so it is quite a short night. In Scotland it would be even shorter.
I was pleased to have support from my noble kinsman. For a change perhaps he might even be a noble friend today. I was also very pleased to get support from the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. He quoted a case which was almost similar to the one which occurred in Bala a few years ago when old people in the village were shaken to the core by the noise that went on. It is not acceptable. I shall leave the matter like this: my noble friend gave the Committee quite a lot of comfort to the extent that he understood the situation. I believe that the whole House understands the problem here. It is a question of drafting. I shall try to get those who draft for me to try to do better and to come back on this matter at report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 59D to 61 not moved.]
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 62:
Page 43, line 35, after first ("to") insert ("prepare or wait for or to").
The noble Earl said: This is a technical amendment to ensure that the direction to leave the site of a rave; applies to all those who might subsequently wish to come to such an event whether they come while it is in progress, whether they are preparing for it or whether they are waiting for it. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar Lord Macaulay of Bragar moved Amendment No. 62A:
Page 43, line 35, after ("and") insert ("to").
The noble Lord said: This is a minor amendment which I hope will meet with the Government's acceptance. It seeks to clarify the direction given by the officer in terms of Clause 58(2), which states that the officer,
"may give a direction that those persons and any other persons who come to attend the gathering are to leave the land and remove any vehicles or other property which they have with them on the land".
That is capable of two readings: that the person who is ordered to leave the land removes the vehicles or it may by implication give the officer a power to remove the vehicles. The word that I seek to insert by this amendment has been included at line 41 of Clause 56(1). It looks as if there may have been an omission on the part of the draftsman or the printer. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: As befits a lawyer, the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay, has looked at this matter with great care —as I have because I thought that the noble Lord may

659
have a point. The power in this clause is to direct that vehicles should be removed. The noble Lord's fear is that, as the clause stands, it does not give the police officer a power to remove. I think that such a reading is pretty far-fetched given that the powers of seizure are specifically dealt with in Clause 59. I have taken advice as to whether the amendment would be a suitable addition. I am told that it is not necessary and that the interpretation of the provisions is fairly obvious. I commend that thought to the noble Lord.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: I thank the noble Earl for that answer. However, it is far-fetched propositions that make money for lawyers and keep the courts occupied. I wonder whether the Minister will take another look at the amendment, but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 63 not moved.]
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 63A:
Page 44, line 4, leave out ("imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or").
The noble Lord said: I can dispose of this amendment fairly briefly because the arguments on it are precisely the same as those which applied on the previous clause in which imprisonment was introduced for something that was previously a civil offence. I repeat that throughout this part of the Bill we are threatening to lock up people for something which has not previously been an imprisonable offence, and we are extending the range of criminal offences which can result in persons spending three months (or in one case six months) in prison without sufficient justification.
We have not only the imposition of fines, but also in Clause 59 the confiscation of not only vehicles but sound equipment. I warmly welcome those provisions because I can think of nothing which would hit the organisers of the raves harder than to have their expensive sound equipment confiscated. Therefore, I do not object to that provision in the slightest and nor do I object to the imposition of heavy fines on persons who are no doubt making a lot of money (as they do) from organising such events.
However, I do think that it is objectionable in principle to threaten to send such people to prison if they fail to comply with the directions of a police officer to leave the land. I repeat that the Minister has not answered the questions that I asked him. What is going to be the cost to the public purse of imprisoning large numbers (or even small numbers) of persons who fail to comply with the directions of a police officer? As I have pointed out, there is nothing in the Financial Memorandum on page xviii to indicate that the Government have even contemplated the thought that a cost would arise from that clause.
Let us not increase the number of offences which render people liable to imprisonment. Let us not clog up our prison system totally unnecessarily. Let us leave the penalties to be dealt with by means of fines and the confiscation of equipment. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: If I may put it in the most gentle of ways, I really think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury,
660
went a bit over the top when he spoke about clogging up the prisons. This is the same argument as we had previously on Amendment No. 58BA, and I can only tell the noble Lord what I told him then. These penalties form a range of penalties which equate with other penalties of a similar nature in the statute. The noble Lord says that I will not tell him what it will cost the Government to lock up all those people in prison, but the answer is that I do not have the slightest idea and nor does anyone else for the simple reason that we do not know how many people the courts will decide should go to prison. My guess is that there will be very few indeed, but that is a matter for the courts.
The point is, as the noble Lord knows perfectly well, that whenever you have an offence, you have to have a penalty and there is sometimes a variety of penalties, and one is sometimes imprisonment. However, that does not mean that anyone who has contravened the Act will therefore go to prison. The noble Lord seems to think that the Government are getting too enthusiastic about locking up people, but the Government do not lock them up; it is the courts that would subject people to imprisonment if they thought it necessary—and that would only be in the worst of cases.
Lord Avebury: The Government cannot slide out of their responsibilities by saying that it is the courts which lock up people. It is the Government—or rather Parliament—who lay down what the penalties are. That is why we are here. If we were not going to object to anything that the Government wanted to do, we might as well all go home and have a nice evening in front of the fire. We are here to look at the penalties which the Government propose to impose—or rather, to allow the courts to impose, if the Minister wants to make that fine distinction.
I cannot accept the noble Earl's argument that because the Government do not know how many people will be locked up under that provision, they cannot estimate the cost in the Financial Memorandum. There are many other examples in Financial Memoranda of where the Government have had only the slightest and haziest idea of what the costs would be, yet they still managed to make some estimate, even if only a range. The Minister has given a completely spurious reason for not including an amount in the Financial Memorandum. I can only conclude that the Government completely forgot that they had to calculate and include some amount and that, therefore, in default of their duty to give Parliament the necessary information that it has to have before it can reach a decision, the Minister made that spurious argument.
Before we reach Report stage, I hope that the Minister will come up with some estimate so that the House will then be able to consider the full implications of the proposal. In the meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 63B not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: I must advise the Committee that Amendment No. 63C is to page 44, line 22, and not as it appears on the Marshalled List.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar Lord Macaulay of Bragar moved Amendment No. 63C:
Page 44, line 22, at end insert ("or in Scotland a licence granted in terms of Schedule 1 of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1776").
The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 63C, 70B and 178A run together. The first two would be consequential upon acceptance of the third—that is, Amendment No. 178A—which is a probing amendment to inquire whether the Government have any view of whether the provisions relating to so-called "raves" should be extended to Scotland. As the Bill stands at the moment, the provisions do not apply to Scotland. There is a danger—probably a real danger—that if the law is rigorously applied in England and Wales through this legislation, there will be some cross-border transference of activity in terms of raves into Scotland and, apart from the provisions that I mentioned earlier relating to breaches of the peace, very little could be done to stop that happening.
I am puzzled, as may be other Members of the Committee, as to where the word "rave" comes from. It does not appear in the Bill's Long Title. It appears in the heading and the side note to Clause 58, but is nowhere defined. Would the Minister care to embark upon the definition of a rave? I can think of a number of ways it could be applied, apart from loud music and so on. The Committee will be aware that one of the problems is that a rave is an extension of disco dancing, lights and all the rest of it, but within the context and under the cover of a rave the drugs people move in and use the musical attraction as a vehicle for getting rid of drugs and, in particular, for supplying drugs to young people.
Unfortunately, two teenagers have died within the past two months from being supplied with drugs at a rave on the west coast of Scotland. That in itself was sufficient to sound alarm bells that there is an activity in Scotland which may require to be covered by legislation. The amendment is a probing one to allow the Minister to indicate whether any representations have been received from the police, social workers, local authorities or any other group in Scotland suggesting that there should be legislation to cover Scotland. I await the Minister's answer with interest. I beg to move.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: The word "rave" does not appear other than in a side note, but if the noble Lord looks at Clause 58(1) (b) he will see that music is defined as:
"sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If the noble and learned Lord will forgive me, it is not defined as that; it is defined as including that.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: It is time for Beethoven to roll over if that is to be the definition of "music". I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to respond to the amendment. If carried, the amendment will extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland powers in relation to raves and power to retain and charge for seized vehicles and property under Clause 59.
662
Our original view was that the extension of those powers to Scotland was unnecessary. Contrary to some criticism to which we have been subjected in Scotland, we had not intended that the whole of Part: V should be adopted for Scotland merely because it was perceived that there were provisions which might be useful in England and Wales unless we could ascertain that they would serve some comparably useful purpose in Scotland. For that reason, having looked at the existing powers, we concluded that they were adequate to deal with the current and estimated future scale of any problems likely to be encountered in controlling unlicensed raves.
The majority of raves in Scotland are relatively orderly events held in licensed premises. The noble: Lord referred to an unfortunate recent event where two young people in Scotland appeared to have been supplied with one or more drugs and died as a consequence. That rave took place in premises subjected to licence conditions. It was not part of the uncontrolled unlicensed activity which has been a feature of the scene: this side of the Border. Our experience is that organisers of raves in Scotland have invariably co-operated fully with the police in ensuring that the arrangements for them are satisfactory and that necessary security precautions are in place. The type of disruptive, illegal rave witnessed in parts of England which can cause considerable distress to local residents has, fortunately, not been replicated in Scotland.
Any problems or complaints resulting from open-air gatherings at which loud music is played made by local residents in Scotland are usually resolved quickly through co-operation on the site between the police and those responsible for holding the event. In extreme cases, the police have powers to seize music-making equipment where an offence has been committed under Section 54 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, but such action has seldom been found to be necessary. The power of seizure is in itself most probably an effective deterrent to persons who might be inclined to hold illegal raves in Scotland and thus lose valuable equipment. Similarly, the existing law in Northern Ireland seems to be adequate to deal with any problems there which might be encountered with illegal raves.
However, having listened to what the noble Lord said, I would invite him not to press his amendment on the undertaking that we will reconsider the position in Scotland. I am sure that he will appreciate that that is not a promise to introduce our own amendments, but we shall take the opportunity of the gap between Committee and Report to check again with the police and others and to secure an up-to-date assessment of the risks of a growth in illegal raves of the kind that have been experienced in England. If the assessment is that there is a substantial risk, we would clearly wish to avoid it. If our existing powers are not sufficient, we know from the amendments that the noble Lord has tabled that there are provisions for Scotland that we could adopt satisfactorily.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Before my noble and learned friend sits down, when considering the matter

663
will he bear in mind the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay, that the pressure to have illegal raves in Scotland might increase if and when the English legislation becomes law?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: That is a valid point. That is why I said that I should like to secure an up-to-date assessment of the possible risk of illegal raves in Scotland. Part of that assessment may be that they might be driven out of production, as it were, in England and Wales.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: I am grateful to the Minister for the caring and thoughtful reply which he has given to this serious problem. That the two boys died in licensed premises may underline the fact that the sooner we can control raves outwith licensed premises the better it will be. I am obliged to the Minister for undertaking the review that he has promised. I look forward with interest to hearing his conclusions in due course, whether or not they are reflected in an amendment. Perhaps he will be good enough to write to me on the matter if he does not propose to put down an amendment. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 64:
Page 44, line 31, after ("(b)") insert ("in England").
The noble Earl said: I shall speak also, if I may, to Amendments Nos. 65, 66 and 85. These are technical amendments designed to ensure that the provisions of the Bill will apply properly in Wales after the reorganisation of local government there on 1st April 1996, as a consequence of the Local Government (Wales) Bill. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendments Nos. 65 and 66:
Page 44, line 32, after ("Scilly;") insert:
("(c) in Wales, a county council or county borough council;").
Page 44, line 33, at end insert:
("(11) Until 1st April 1996, in this section "local authority" means, in Wales, a district council".").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 58, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 59 agreed to.
Clause 60 [Raves: power to stop persons from proceeding]:
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley moved Amendment No. 66A:
Page 45, line 22, after ("force") insert ("or to land to which a direction under section 56(1) is in force,").
The noble Lord said: With the Committee's permission, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 66B and 68A. The amendments extend the five-mile exclusion zone concept applied by Clause 60 to raves under Clause 58 to trespass incidents under Clause 56. In cases of mass trespass—Castlemorton Common in 1992 was an example—the police can be faced with serious difficulties in containing and controlling large numbers of people and vehicles. It is clearly desirable that there be a means for the police to prevent what may
664
already be a serious incident from becoming worse with the arrival of fresh groups of people. There is therefore just as much a case for an exclusion zone under Clause 56 trespass situations as under Clause 58 raves. I believe that Amendment No. 68 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, does not express similar sentiments. I beg to move.
Baroness Mallalieu: Amendment No. 68, tabled by my noble friend Lord McIntosh, merely reflects the anxiety felt by many of us that five miles by way of an exclusion zone is somewhat excessive. The amendment proposes to introduce instead 500 metres. I hope that the noble Earl will consider that five miles is excessive and involves a considerably unnecessary exclusion.
Lord Monson: I have considerable sympathy with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, but perhaps 500 metres is too small a radius. It is draconian for the police in peacetime to be able to stop people who are not committing a crime from going from A to B. It began only at the time of the miners' strike some 10 years ago and was scarcely known in this country prior to that. It may be necessary in current circumstances; indeed, I am prepared to be convinced that it is. However, the power should be used sparingly and I agree that five miles is excessive.
Earl Ferrers: Amendments Nos. 66A, 66B and 68A seek to extend the police powers to stop persons proceeding in the direction of a rave to occasions where there have been a direction to leave land under the provisions of Clause 56, which deals with trespass with intent to reside. I have some sympathy with my noble friend's intentions but I do not think that his amendments would be enforceable.
The provisions of this Bill give extensive—some might say even draconian—powers to the police to prevent raves. These are unusual in that they impose significant restrictions upon people's rights to travel and to assemble. But, such is the nuisance to whole communities of these large-scale events that we consider that the powers are justified.
Encampments of New Age travellers and the like are also a dreadful nuisance. That is why the Government have brought forward the enhanced powers which are in Clause 56. But I am not convinced that it would be right to go as far as my noble friend would wish and to give these powers over small groups of others. For all the misery which is caused by groups of New Age travellers and so forth, a simple encampment cannot be said to create the wide-scale problems of raves. As regards raves, we are dealing with a major public nuisance rather than a private wrong and it is easier to see that wider-ranging powers are required.
In the case of raves there is hard evidence on which the police can act; published leaflets give details of potential rave sites, for example. Where large numbers of New Age travellers are heading purposefully for a large gathering, our new provisions in Clause 65 against trespassing assemblies can be invoked. In the case of small groups of New Age travellers making haphazardly from place to place, there simply is not this evidence available and the police would be hard pressed to justify

665
a belief that people were travelling to a particular piece of land. This would open the way for all kinds of legal arguments.
Amendment No. 68 seeks to draw the teeth of Clause 60, which enables a police officer to stop people proceeding in the direction of a rave site within five miles of that site. If this amendment were carried that distance of five miles would be reduced to 500 metres. That is hardly any distance, in particular in view of the number who are congregating. When the police are trying to stop a rave happening it is essential that they have the ability to turn people away before they gather in numbers sufficient to make a dispersal operation impractical. If the police could act only within 500 metres of the site this essential preventive power would effectively be removed. Five miles is, I believe, a reasonable distance given that these powers are envisaged for use in rural areas (and given the safeguards which will apply) and I hope that Members of the Committee will agree that the Bill is best left as it is.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Avebury: Will the Minister tell the Committee what powers the police already enjoy which they use at some large gatherings? For instance, when hippies congregate at Stonehenge, the police turn back persons whom they believe to be intending to join the gathering. Therefore, there must already be powers on the statute book. We should be told why those powers are inadequate and why the new powers given to the police to stop persons intending to join a rave within a radius of five miles are considered to be necessary.
If the types of gathering to which those persons intend going are different from those contained in the Bill, might it not be best to ensure that the two sets of powers are in harmony? Alternatively, if we are creating new powers for the police but are not repealing any of the powers that already exist, a conflict could arise and the police might be confused as to which set of powers they should use. If the Minister will explain the position we can decide whether it is necessary at a later stage to delete the other powers from the statute book or, alternatively, to ensure that they are in harmony with those that we intend to enact now.
Earl Ferrers: The police have all kinds of powers over traffic control, the movement of vehicles and so forth. However, in instances such as Stonehenge they are very different. The powers used there must be obtained under Section 13 of the Public Order Act relating to processions. That is a fairly cumbersome procedure which requires the approval of the Secretary of State.
We are now looking at a much simpler provision that is easier to deal with. We are dealing with the possibility of large numbers of people converging on a site, the result of which will be loud noise throughout the evening and congestion of the roads. Once people arrive on a site and the music begins it is difficult to prevent the congregation, as it were, appearing. We suggest in the Bill that, when the police believe that a rave is to take place on a certain site and when a constable
666
reasonably believes that people are going there, it is right for him to say, "I am sorry, you cannot do so. You must turn away from there because the rave should not take place". That must be done over a reasonable distance and that is the reason why we make this proposal.
Lord Avebury: I do not necessarily object to the provision but we must be clear about what we are doing. Is it right that in the case of large gatherings, such as at Stonehenge or Glastonbury, where there is no intention on the part of the organisers—if there are any, because it may be a completely anarchic event where people come together by a process of telepathy —to have music as defined in Clause 58, the police must depend on powers which the noble Earl says are cumbersome to stop people going there? I am merely throwing this out for consideration.
Apart from the evil that we are seeking to address —the large rave concerts which cause an enormous amount of disturbance in the neighbourhood—there is also the question of the protection of ancient monuments. I should have thought that that was equally important. I am not saying that the police should necessarily have the power to stop people attending gatherings of 100 or more persons. But, if in our wisdom we see fit to give powers to the police to stop people attending large-style gatherings where music of a particular nature is to be played, then we should consider whether they should have the same power in respect of gatherings which are likely to cause damage to archaeological monuments.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is quite right to refer to that, because they are important powers. There is a distinction to be drawn. Perhaps I may take the noble Lord back historically. Some years ago those assemblies began to be held at Stonehenge. They created great problems for the police and the people in the locality before one even thinks of the problems in relation to damage caused to the site itself. Therefore, it was decided that the powers under Section 13 of the Public Order Act should be used. Those powers deal with that specific situation and require the approval of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary before they can be used.
The Bill deals with two separate matters: trespassing, and the possibility of New Age travellers suddenly converging on a place, trespassing and creating mayhem in the locality. That will cover, as I understand it, the Stonehenge case where people arrive in large numbers and trespass. Provided that they fulfil the necessary criteria, they can be moved on under the trespassing provisions in the Bill.
The third area to be dealt with is raves. It is easy to consider trespassing and New Age travellers as on a par with raves but the difference in relation to raves is that although people congregate in large numbers, the additional factor is the noise. Therefore, it is not just people in the immediate locality who are offended by the physical arrival of large numbers of people but other people who may be miles away are affected by the noise which is emitted. Therefore, there are those three distinct parts.

667
I believe that I am right to say that, although Section 13 of the Public Order Act, which is used at Stonehenge, is the section that is and will be used, the people attending the raves will be caught also under the trespassing provisions which we agreed earlier. I hope that that has explained the position to the noble Lord.
Lord Moyne: Is not the distinction between Stonehenge and Glastonbury on the one hand and raves on the other that Stonehenge is always in the same place whereas raves can take place anywhere?
Earl Ferrers: That is a remarkably philosophical and intelligent distinction to draw. I cannot disagree with my noble friend. However, such a distinction rather muddies the issue in so far as raves involve music which offends the ears and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to Stonehenge, which is a site of archaeological interest and, therefore, special provisions apply.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: Will the Minister consider that—I coin his phrase—we are muddying the waters somewhat for the police by imposing a five mile limit? My noble friend on the Cross Benches believes that to be rather draconian. I can understand that limit being applied with regard to Stonehenge. However, people from caravan sites within counties may go to raves which are very near to those caravan sites and which may well be within the five-mile limit from the caravan site. I believe that it will cause complications to impose a five mile limit. I believe that the problem may be best addressed if the superintendent or chief constable refers back to the Secretary of State in order to alter that limit if there are any difficulties.
Lord Cochrane of Cults: May I ask the noble Lord why he picked on caravan sites? I can see the problem which he addresses but not that it originates in those circumstances. Will he clarify that point?
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: I apologise. I was not trying merely to pick out caravan sites. I was just trying to point out that the difficulties may arise not only in relation to Stonehenge, which has been referred to, but they may arise in relation to a particular site. I was addressing the imposition of the five-mile limit.
Earl Ferrers: The poor noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, fell into a trap. Had he had the privilege of being here during our debates on the Sunday Trading Bill, he would have realised that my noble friend Lord Cochrane of Cults has a particular interest in caravan sites, which he tried to protect during our discussions on that Bill. Hence his sensitivity when the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, dared to mention the words "caravan sites".
I know what the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, is referring to. I do not believe that it would be possible for a senior police officer to refer back to the Home Secretary to request an expansion of the distance over which he could turn people back. Raves involve a large number of people who converge from all directions. If the provision is to work and if we are to prevent raves from taking place, for all the reasons of inconvenience and environmental offensiveness which they create, the
668
police must be given reasonable powers. With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, it is no good allowing the police to turn people away only within only 500 yards of the site. That cannot be done if thousands of vehicles are involved. The roads will become jammed and so on. The police must have a reasonable area within which to work. That is why we have imposed a limit of five miles. That does not mean that in every case the police will choose to use that limit. They may wish to turn back people within a shorter distance but that depends upon the topography, the site in question and the view of the chief officer concerned. We are trying to provide the police with the authority to use a five-mile limit where it is necessary.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I am extremely grateful to my noble kinsman Lord Avebury for raising the issue with regard to which powers the police will use under which part of the Bill. I am grateful, too, to my noble friend on the Front Bench for explaining so carefully the position. I shall read what he said with great care because I find it quite difficult to understand why there is a Clause 56 offence and then a different set of offences and problems under Clause 72.
Earl Ferrers: I thank my noble friend Lord Stanley for informing the Committee who is his noble kinsman. He referred to him on a number of occasions and I wondered who it was. I have been thinking about that for the past hour. At one point, I thought it was me but then it turned out not to be so. I now discover that it is the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. That is one confusion in life cleared up.
Lord Burnham: Perhaps I may say to the Minister that about half the Members of the Committee are kinsmen of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: Unfortunately so.
Baroness Faithfull: What do you mean, unfortunately?
Lord Stanley of Alderley: Well perhaps fortunately. I must return to the problem. I found it difficult to understand the difference between Clauses 56 and 72 and there are also problems in relation to Clauses 60 and 56.
My amendment asks for a widening of the powers. My noble friend on the Front Bench has said, I believe, that he will consider the matter. I should point out that the police will not use the powers unnecessarily. One can see that they have used very sparingly the powers given to them under the 1986 Act.
I just feel that, as regards raves, trespass, or whatever part of the Bill we are dealing with, the police should be given as much latitude as possible. I believe that we should trust them to use it sparingly. They have done so in the past. I finish by saying that prevention is better than cure. If the chief officer of police feels it is best to stop something that is going to cause trouble at a greater distance from the place in question, I believe that he should be given that power. However, I shall certainly consider everything that the Committee has said

669
between now and Report and I shall consider whether to return to this matter at a later stage. In the meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 66B not moved.]
7 p.m.
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 67:
Page 45, line 26, leave out ("this section") and insert ("subsection (1) above").
The noble Earl said: In moving Amendment No. 67 I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 69, 70 and 86. These amendments seek to create new offences of failing to obey a constable's direction not to proceed in the direction of a rave or a "trespassory" assembly. When these matters were discussed in another place, the Government took the view that specific offences such as these were probably not necessary as anyone failing to obey a constable's direction not to proceed could, we believed, be arrested for the offence of obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty. But, in the light of comments made in another place and of the representations of the Police Federation, we undertook to reflect on the matter. We have concluded that, in order that there can be no possible doubt, it would be sensible to create new offences of failing to obey these directions. I commend the amendments to the Committee.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 68 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 68A not moved.]
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendments Nos. 69 and 70:
Page 45, line 28, leave out ("this section") and insert ("subsection (1) above").
Page 45, line 28, at end insert:
("( ) If a person knowing that a direction under subsection (1) above has been given to him fails to comply with that direction, he commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.
( ) A constable in uniform who reasonably suspects that a person is committing an offence under this section may arrest him without a warrant.").
The noble Earl said: I have already spoken to these amendments with Amendment No. 67. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Stanley of Alderley Lord Stanley of Alderley had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 70A:
Page 45, line 30, at end insert:
("(5) If a person knowing that a direction has been given which applies to him under this section proceeds in the direction of the gathering or the land concerned, he commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.
(6) A constable in uniform who reasonably suspects that a person is committing an offence under this section may arrest him without a warrant.").
The noble Lord said: As I understand it, Amendment No. 70 in the name of my noble friend Lord Ferrers has dealt with this problem, in which case I have great pleasure in thanking him for that. I shall not move the amendment.
[Amendment No. 70A not moved.]
Clause 60, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 61 [Power of court to forfeit sound equipment]:
[Amendment No. 70B not moved.]
Clause 61 agreed to.
Clause 62 [Retention and charges for seized property]:
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 71:
Page 47, line 11, at end insert ("or for different circumstances.").
The noble Earl said: This is a technical amendment to ensure that the Secretary of State has the power, subject to the negative resolution procedure, to make regulations in respect of vehicles which have been seized and retained which may differ to take account of different circumstances. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 62, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Ackner Lord Ackner moved Amendment No. 72:
After Clause 62, insert the following new clause:
("Breaches of privacy with intent to obtain and publish information

—(1) A person who—

(a) enters or remains on private property without the consent of the lawful occupant with intent to obtain personal information with a view to its publication, or

(b) places a surveillance device on private properly without the consent of the lawful occupant with intent to obtain personal information with a view to its publication, or

(c) uses a surveillance device (whether on private property or elsewhere) in relation to an individual who is on private property, without the consent of the individual to such use with intent to obtain personal information about that individual with a view to its publication, or

(d)takes a photograph or records the voice of an individual who is on private property without his consent to the taping or recording, with a view to its publication and with intent that the individual shall be identifiable,

commits an offence.

(2) It shall be a defence to any of the offences specified in subsection (1) above that the act was done—

(a) for the purpose of preventing, detecting or exposing the commission of a crime or other seriously anti-social conduct; or

(b) for the purpose of preventing the public from being misled by some public statement or action of the individual concerned; or

(c) for the purpose of informing the public about matters directly affecting the discharge of any public function of the individual concerned; or

(d) for the protection of public health or safety; or

(e) under any lawful authority.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—

(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine or both;

(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both.").

The noble and learned Lord said: The Committee on Privacy and Related Matters was set up by Mr. Douglas Hurd and was chaired by Sir David Calcutt QC. Its terms of reference were as follows:
"In the light of the recent public concern about intrusions into the private lives of individuals by certain sections of the press, to consider what measures (whether legislative or otherwise) are needed to give further protection to individual privacy from the activities of the press and improve recourse against the press for the individual citizen, taking account of existing remedies, including the law on defamation and breach of confidence; and to make recommendations".
The committee reported in June 1990. It recorded in paragraph 1.5, among other things, that,
"there have been numerous allegations of declining press standards and of growing intrusion into individual privacy".
It referred to a number of striking instances in which,

671
"sections of the press had been severely criticised for intruding upon accident victims and other patients in hospital, for using stolen private correspondence or photographs and for publishing scurrilous (and sometimes false) details of individuals' private lives".
The committee dealt with the position with regard to the existing law and pointed out that there is no general criminal offence of trespass to land, although over the years there have been a number of statutory inroads. It commented that there is little protection against intrusion on private property, and that after the incidents in 1982, when an intruder entered Buckingham Palace, consideration was given to the creation in England and Wales of an offence of trespassing on residential property in a manner likely to cause the occupier alarm and distress, but that the Government had made as yet no proposal for self-regulation. It accordingly proposed, among other things, new criminal offences. It pointed out in paragraph 6.30 that,
'The main desire of a victim of physical intrusion, whether of harassment, surveillance or trespass, is for the intrusion to be stopped immediately".
It explained that the victim would,
"much prefer the police to arrest or remove those who are intruding, as can happen in Scotland".
It further stated that,
"Only the criminal law can guarantee prompt relief to the victim and provide a sufficient deterrent to the intruder".
The committee noted in particular that,
"France, West Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands all have criminal offences of physical intrusion without apparent conflict with the European Convention".
It accordingly recommended that three forms of physical intrusion should be criminal offences in England and Wales. These I have largely mirrored in the amendment which I have proposed and which I will refer to later.
At the request of the Secretary of State for the Department of National Heritage, Sir David Calcutt was asked to conduct a review of press self-regulation. He duly reported on 8th January. He said in terms that he considered that the Press Commission is not an effective regulator of the press. He said:
"It has not been set up in a way, and is not operating a code of practice, which enables it to command not only press but also public confidence".
It did not, in his view,
"hold the balance fairly between the press and the individual. It is not the truly independent body which it should be. As constituted, it is, in essence, a body set up by the industry, financed by the industry, dominated by the industry, and operating a code of practice devised by the industry and which is over-favourable to the industry".
He accordingly went back to the proposals which had been made by the committee. He suggested that, with modifications which are reflected in my amendment, they should be enacted. Accordingly, what I propose has, fortunately, no stamp of personal originality about it. It is the product of careful thought by a committee set up by the Government in order to advise on this matter.
Perhaps I may draw the Committee's attention to what is proposed in the amendment. It is to create criminal offences which will arise when a person:

"(a) enters or remains on private property without the consent of the lawful occupant with intent to obtain personal information with a view to its publication, or

672

(b) places a surveillance device on private property without the consent of the lawful occupant with intent to obtain personal information with a view to its publication, or

(c) uses a surveillance device (whether on private property or elsewhere) in relation to an individual who is on private property, without the consent of the individual to such use with intent to obtain personal information about that individual with a view to its publication, or

(d) takes a photograph or records the voice of an individual who is on private property without his consent to the taping or recording, with a view to its publication and with intent that the individual shall be identifiable".

Then the defences are set out, again as proposed by the committee and subsequently endorsed by Sir David Calcutt, namely:

"(2) It shall be a defence to any of the offences specified in subsection (1) above that the act was done—

(a) for the purpose of preventing, detecting or exposing the commission of a crime or other seriously anti-social conduct; or

(b) for the purpose of preventing the public from being misled by some public statement or action of the individual concerned; or

(c) for the purpose of informing the public about matters directly affecting the discharge of any public function of the individual concerned; or

(d) for the protection of public health or safety; or

(e) under any lawful authority".

Subsection (3) sets out the situation on conviction on indictment or on summary conviction.
I accept that no government wish to lose popularity by being antagonistic to the press. The press are unforgiving and take their revenge whenever possible. Indeed, I have cautioned my wife to read no obituary of mine in due course.
The Government have been subject to such a consistent campaign of press hostility that I submit that they have little to lose and much to gain by showing that they have the courage to stand up to the press. They will improve their standing, albeit not with the media but with the electorate.
We have been told in the past that a White Paper was due to be published and that there would be a consultative document. I hesitated before putting down the amendment because I thought that I would be trumped with the usual excuse that the whole issue was under intense and close scrutiny, that one section could not be dealt with on its own, and that I should show patience and wait for the current consultation to continue and be productive. I hope that that is not correct. However, there is a growing impression that the Government's approach to this very real and increasing problem is pusillanimous and, accordingly, to test the position I put down the amendment. I beg to move.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Colnbrook: I agree entirely with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, in what he seeks to achieve with the amendment. I utterly deplore the activities described—the use of bugging devices to overhear private conversations, the taking of photographs of unsuspecting persons in their own homes and gardens with long-range cameras, and the like. I think that I am safe in saying that the overwhelming majority of people in this country feel just as I do and as he does. It is interesting that, according to their public statements, so do the press.

673
I do not speak for the press in any way. They can speak for themselves. However, as it happens I am a member of the Press Complaints Commission—which I know is derided by Sir David Calcutt—which is charged with the duty of seeing that the code of practice which the press themselves have laid down is adhered to so far as possible. That code specifically states that editors should not publish material obtained by undesirable methods save in the public interest, which is defined in very much the same terms as in the noble and learned Lord's amendment.
The argument for legislation, which I wholly understand, is that the Press Complaints Commission has no power to enforce the code or to impose penalties if the code is broken, whereas an Act of Parliament would do so. It is again of passing interest to note that, according to my understanding, the press have already said that they would not object to such legislation. I certainly would not. However, I must take issue with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and I shall tell the Committee why.
In my view his amendment goes for the wrong man. The noble and learned Lord quoted from Sir David Calcutt's first report, which referred to intrusions by the press. There is nothing about intrusions by the press in the amendment. For example, the amendment states that it would be an offence to take a photograph of:
"an individual who is on private property without his consent … with a view to its publication".
I have taken photographs of individuals on private property without their consent and so, I suggest, have many Members of the Committee. Many of us will have taken photographs at a wedding reception, although not with the intention that they should be published. I have such photographs, and I have put them in my album. If an editor came to me and said, "That's an interesting photograph. Here is Mr. X kissing Miss Y. He should not be doing so; his wife is somewhere else. Will you sell it to me?", I would not do so. Neither would any of your Lordships. Some people would, and some people do. Yet if I did so, because I did not take the photograph with a view to its publication I would escape prosecution. That cannot be right, and it cannot be what the noble and learned Lord intends.
The mischief occurs not with the taking of the photograph but with its publication. That is when the trouble arises. Just as the Press Complaints Commission's code of practice, which your Lordships may well say is weak because it cannot be enforced, refers to the duty of the editor not to publish such material, so should any Act of Parliament. There is nothing about editors in the amendment. There ought to be.
I accept that people who go on to private property and place bugs on telephones, for example, should be liable to the criminal law. However, the real trouble arises when somebody publishes the material obtained, and there is no mention of that here. One day I daresay that there will be such reference. If there is, I shall welcome it. But I cannot advise the Committee to accept the amendment as it stands.
Lord Morris: I, too, have a problem with the amendment. The amendment of the noble and learned
674
Lord addresses a mischief. The mischief is a breach or invasion of privacy. This part of the Bill addresses totally different matters; namely, collective trespass and nuisance on land. The instances that he adumbrates at paragraphs (a) and (b) involve trespass, but that is, incidental to the nuisance. Paragraphs (c) and (d) do not involve such trespass. All Members of the Committee will have the utmost sympathy with the underlying point of the amendment. The noble and learned Lord was quite right to draw attention to the fact that Her Majesty's Government have been looking at this vitally important public issue over many years. Indeed they are looking into the possibility of creating a new tort of invasion of privacy. I believe that that will be welcomed throughout the land.
In the amendment the noble and learned Lord attempts to create a new crime of invasion or breach of privacy. With the greatest respect—I really mean that; I do not use those words as a buzz phrase—I believe that it is not right to place even part of that immensely important aspect of the law within the scope of this Bill. It is a huge and vitally important subject. Although the noble and learned Lord foresaw the argument against his amendment, I beseech him to await events. So far as I know there is a determined intention that that area of the law shall be comprehensively covered by Her Majesty's Government some time in the future.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I believe that the Committee will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, for having raised extremely important issues in the amendment. Perhaps I may briefly explain why, like other Members of the Committee, on balance I am opposed to the amendment.
I begin by saying that the press are not above the law. I fully recognise that there is a serious social evil occasionally committed by newspapers and others when they intrude upon personal privacy in outrageous ways. I also agree that that mischief needs to be dealt with effectively.
One of the difficulties about the amendment is that it is raised in a context unlike that in Sweden, Germany, France or other countries which have criminal and civil sanctions and remedies. In those countries they guarantee a right to free speech and privacy. There is a proper constitutional framework in which courts can decide on the balance between the right to free speech and freedom of the press and the right to personal privacy.
That has not yet happened in this country, even though noble Lords have several times sought to secure that position by passing Bills to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into our law. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees both freedom of expression and a personal right of privacy.
If one considers the specific proposal, one central problem about the amendment is that there is no positive statutory right to free speech and therefore it seeks to introduce criminal sanctions and penalties in an area where magistrates, juries and judges would be unguided on the need to respect freedom of expression except in the language of the defences in subsection (2). The

675
magistrates or a jury would have to decide whether an offence has been committed by a journalist on the basis not of paragraph 2 of Article 10 of the European Convention—that is, whether a finding of guilt or a punishment were necessary in a democratic society for protecting the right to personal privacy—but of whether the act was done for the purpose of preventing, detecting or exposing the commission of a crime or other seriously anti-social conduct.
That was a test which, Sir David Calcutt accepted in paragraph 7.21 of his report,
"might be considered too difficult a concept for criminal legislation".
Incidentally, unlike the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, Sir David Calcutt recommended that the offence should be summary only in nature, with a maximum financial penalty of the level 5 fine, whereas the amendment proposes an indictable offence. The magistrates or jury would have to decide also whether the act was done,
"for the purpose of informing the public about matters directly affecting the discharge of any public function of the individual concerned".
That is rubbery and elusive language which would have a chilling effect, I suggest, on the function of the media as gatherers and purveyors of information to the public about the workings of Government and the activities of Ministers and public officials.
Perhaps I may give a few examples. First, perhaps I may take the easy and the gross example. A popular actor lies gravely ill in hospital, attached to a life support system. His photograph is taken by intruding press photographers. That is what happened to Gordon Kaye, who obtained an injunction against the Daily Sport for its quite monstrous invasion of his privacy. The injunction, it is true, was based on malicious falsehood and not on privacy. But I would expect the Law Lords to create a tort of privacy in just such a case, as was strongly indicated by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Kinkel, in the Spycatcher case. The case relating to Gordon Kaye would also be caught, and rightly so, by the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. I am also confident that the Princess of Wales has an effective civil remedy for the again gross invasion of her personal privacy when she was working out in a private gym.
Perhaps I may quickly give the more difficult examples. What about the Minister agog with schemes to make fathers more responsible for their families who is revealed to have serial mistresses? What about another Minister's foreign holiday revealed to have come courtesy of a PLO paymaster's daughter? The proposed defences in the amendment are completely uncertain in their application to cases of that kind where many would think that the public had a right to be informed. Newspaper editors and their staff would be at a loss to know whether information about matters of that kind could lawfully be published, and, rather than risk the hazards of criminal prosecutions, they would tend to err on the side of caution and freedom of speech would be the casualty.
I suggest that the central problem is that these defences are too narrow. But if they were broadened
676
they would be even more unforeseeable. For my part I would leave the courts to develop common law remedies on a case by case basis in what is a notoriously complex and hazardous area. Given the opportunity, I believe that the Law Lords would develop a right of privacy using cases on confidentiality and on private nuisance to go beyond narrow proprietary interests. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Colnbrook, that we should give the Press Complaints Commission a full opportunity to use non-legal sanctions too. However, in the last resort, I believe that the courts have a vital role to play.
Lord Renton: As I understand it, the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord happens to be within the Long Title of the Bill, which, as I said at Second Reading, is perhaps the longest Long Title in modern times. The provision confers,
"new powers on the police to take samples from or search persons"—
that is irrelevant. It makes,
"further provision in relation to persons unlawfully or without authorisation on land".
Those are wide words. I therefore do not believe that we should be afraid of the amendment merely because it seems to be beyond the scope of this part of the Bill.
The speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, are always interesting, although I do not necessarily agree with them. He complained that there was no constitutional framework for what is proposed; but, my goodness!, if we needed a constitutional framework in our unwritten constitution for every proposal put before Parliament, we would not have much law enacted.
The speech of my noble friend Lord Colnbrook was interesting, especially coming from a person with his responsibilities with regard to the press. However, I point out that publication is not made an offence; doing something with the intent to publish is made an offence and that is rather different. The truth is that the noble and learned Lord's amendment is of limited application in protecting people's privacy.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? If the intent is carried out and the photograph is published, is that not sufficient?
Lord Renton: No, strangely enough, if my noble friend looks at the amendment carefully he will see that the offence is committed, whether or not publication follows later. The Committee may think that this is an unusual consequence, but no doubt it has been carefully thought out by the noble and learned Lord who is anxious to prevent people trespassing on private property and doing something which might infringe the law of privacy. I use broad terms now, rather than expressing the present law which is not covered by the amendment. It can be said that to trespass on someone's land or enter someone's house and take photographs or take notes of what they are up to, and similar actions, is, in broad terms and leaving aside the law, an invasion of privacy.
In passing, after the incursion into Buckingham Palace, I was one of those in your Lordships' House

677
who were anxious that the Government should take steps in the matter. I went so far as to draft a Bill which was moved by my noble friend Lord Onslow some years ago. It would have dealt with the matter; but for some reason the Home Office did not like it and nothing was done.
The noble and learned Lord's amendment does not attempt to deal with that. He merely mentioned it as part of the background, to draw attention to the fact that under our law as it stands it is too easy for people to go into someone else's house, garden or elsewhere on their property and do all kinds of things without the law stepping in.
I shall not take it upon myself to say that I agree with all the details of the noble and learned Lord's amendment. In particular, I doubt whether it is necessary for subsection (2) to be as broadly drawn as it is. Subsection (1) states the intention that has to be proved. If that intention is not proved, it is in itself a defence and that is why I have doubts about subsection (2).
Without putting the press into any jeopardy at all and, to that extent, without interfering with the freedom of the press, the noble and learned Lord has put forward a suggestion which most of us would wish to find a protection in law. It is that people should not go into our homes or gardens or take photographs without consent with the kind of intentions which the noble and learned Lord expressed in subsection (1). I hope that either now or at a later stage in our parliamentary life, something on the lines of the noble and learned Lord's amendment will be made part of the law.
Lord Avebury: We have already decided that we wish to criminalise some kinds of trespass, so it is logical that in the new clause we find an extension of that principle, albeit a rather drastic one. The noble and learned Lord proposes to put people in prison for periods of up to a year, whereas so far we have only been talking about three months. I object to the proposal for the same reason as I object to the other two provisions in the Bill which I have mentioned. I do not like the great extension of criminalisation that we find all the way through the Bill, nor the submission of such a proposal in the middle of a Bill to which it does not relate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton; I have read the Long Title and the amendment falls partly within the provision that he read out.
Some matters in the new clause do not relate to trespass at all. Subsection (1) (d) regarding the offence refers to a photograph which is taken from any place. It does not have to be from within the land belonging to the person concerned. The amendment covers cases like the well-known examples of telephoto pictures being taken of members of the Royal Family from quite a distance. The surveillance devices mentioned in subsection (1) (c) defining the offence do not necessarily have to be on land so the offence could and often will be committed when no trespass has taken place. That too is to be criminalised.
One can place a surveillance device in the neighbourhood of a person's property and pick up their voice or whatever other sounds may occur within the
678
premises and one is committing as great an offence and rendering oneself just as liable to imprisonment as if one had the additional ingredient of trespass.
The noble Lord, Lord Renton, said that if we waited for a constitutional framework, we would probably never have any Acts passed at all. However he missed the other point made by my noble friend that we are talking here about the interaction between the law on privacy and the law on freedom of speech. We are not talking about a general constitutional framework, but the interplay of two important principles which are not being considered together here. The defences which the noble and learned Lord proposes are specific. He is not trying to put the new clause within the context of any general provisions on freedom of speech or even to address the reconciliation of the two opposing principles.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Lester about the dangers of what he called the "rubbery and elusive" wording of subsection (2) (c). I wish to mention one instance where the subsection would lead to serious consequences. It is a defence to the accusation under the clause that one has been seeking information about a matter of public interest from the person immediately concerned. Thus, a Minister may be suspected of doing something improper and someone may reveal that in his newspaper, having obtained a tape recording of words spoken by the Minister which prove the allegation the person is making. Supposing that instead of the Minister, someone in his department, like the Permanent Secretary, who has knowledge of the improper activities of the Minister and is talking about it on his own private property. One may detect the offence by recording his words, but there is then no defence under subsection (2) (c) because it is not the words of the Minister himself that one is picking up but those of someone in his department.
We need to consider much more carefully than the noble and learned Lord has, if I may say that to him with great respect, what kinds of defence there should be which do not enormously limit the activities of whistle-blowers, which, as my noble friend pointed out have on some occasions been quite important. We need to have people in the newspapers who actively seek information about wrong-doing in the public service and frequently reveal it. I suggest that we must tolerate an element of invasion of privacy in that regard.
If sometimes the press goes much further in perfectly frivolous and unfounded acts of invasion of privacy, then let us address the problem by some other means. Again, let us not multiply the criminal offences that we find in the Bill. Let us look at privacy as a completely separate issue, and not as part of a Bill that deals with completely different matters.
Lord Harmar-Nicolls: I do not disagree with the noble Lord's last words. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord has it in mind to push this matter to a vote. I rather doubt it. But whether he does or not, I hope that my noble friend who is representing the Government will take heed of the message that this amendment contains. There is no doubt about it, it is

679
generally understood that at the moment people are being damaged by the misuse of illicit photographs that are being distributed.
I do not know whether my noble friend will give any kind of welcome to the words of this amendment, but I hope that he will not give the answer that the Government gave to my private Bill which tried to deal with one section of this matter as recently as a month ago. It is clear now that a distorted, contorted photograph is more damaging than a 1,000-word article. The photograph can be more damaging than the pen to people's reputation and to people's right to freedom. Whether this is the right Bill in which to try to make the improvements that the noble and learned Lord has in mind, I do not know. But in my Bill I attached the same argument regarding photographs to the copyright Bill. It was quite in accordance with procedures and passed all of the tests as being accurate. But people who opposed it a month ago said that the copyright Bill was not the right one. Now, I have no doubt, others will repeat what has already been said; namely, that this is not the right Bill to which to attach this particular group of amendments.
The only reason that I make a contribution is to impress upon the Government that they ought to give a lead on this issue. The explanation that they gave to my Private Member's Bill at its Second Reading was that they were already quite a way along the road of preparing a White Paper with the idea of doing something about the law of privacy generally. I have no faith in intentions of that kind. One has heard government promises to do something in general terms, and years pass and nothing is done.
I only urge my noble friends on this occasion, whatever the noble and learned Lord does with this particular amendment, to stir their stumps as a government and face up to the dangers that are thrown at people with the illicit use of such photographs. We have already had mentioned the example of the Princess of Wales. We also had the example of the Duchess of York, who had similar treatment. When she put her defence in France for preserving her freedom she received £50,000 compensation and an injunction against the intrusion being repeated. Why can we not give our people the same protection in this country? If it cannot be done by my Bill, attaching a proposal to the copyright Bill, or by the noble and learned Lord attaching his amendment to this Bill, the Government really ought to do something about producing a Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Colnbrook, did the same as was done in regard to my Bill. The noble Lord defended the press under the general umbrella of the freedom of the press to be able to do its duty. The press and the photographer together are the problem. If certain sections of the press did not offer exorbitant amounts of money to cowboys who deliberately take distorted pictures and hawk them round because they are salacious and because the pictures have some circulation value, the problem would not occur.
Lord Colnbrook: Perhaps my noble friend will allow me to intervene. He cannot have listened very
680
carefully to what I said. One of the things that I said was wrong with this amendment was that it does not cover the press, and it should do. I did not defend the press. I said that the press should be covered by the amendment too, but it is not.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: No, the noble Lord said something else. He did say that, if he wants to stand just on that clause but he also said that the commission of which he is a member had powers to do something about the problem but that those powers were not enough.
Lord Colnbrook: No, it has no powers.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Self-regulation adds up to nothing. We know perfectly well that self-regulation does not meet the requirement. Profit is a much greater influence on people than self-regulation whether it be in the interests of privacy or of anything else. I urge what my noble friend claims that he said: I urge the Government to do something about this matter.
At the Second Reading of my Bill only two months ago, it was said that the Government were well on the way with a White Paper. By the time that we had reached the Report stage the announcement had been made that they had had to call off the White Paper preparation because certain things had prevented it. What were those things that prevented the White Paper going ahead? The only point that I am making, in the light of my own experience, is that I hope the Government will not hide behind the reluctance of the civil servants to have any kind of intrusion on a field that they want to keep as their own. I always felt that their objection to my Bill was just that they hoped eventually that they might get down to dealing with privacy and did not want any kind of obstacle put in its way.
Lord Burnham: I thank my noble friend for giving way. Those of us who opposed my noble friend's Bill did so for a considerable number of reasons. The basic one was that in its wording and conception it was flawed.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: As in this case, neither the noble Lord, who represents the press—he has a personal interest—nor the Member who represented the photographers liked the Bill. In the end the House accepted the objection of the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, who is the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, because there were not many Members here. Self-interest overcame the real need for this kind of thing to be dealt with. That is what happened in this House.
If the Government cannot override the self-interest obstacle, then they are not doing their duty. No nation could have had more evidence than we have had over the past 12 months that intrusive photographs are not only putting the country in a bad light but are damaging people unfairly and to a great extent. Even the Prime Minister could have suffered in that way. We saw the photograph of the occasion when he attended a dinner and someone proposing the Grace had made a witty speech. He was thinking of a reasonably appropriate reply, and in the process of doing so—as it was afterwards proved—he sat down. There were bottles in

681
front of him (it was a dinner) and he looked intent. The photograph made it look as though he were a distraught man at the end of his tether who ought not to be in charge of a whelk-stall never mind being the Prime Minister of this country. The picture was presented in a way that was so damaging that it did the country real harm.
The only purpose of my words tonight to my noble friend—it is to him that I speak—is to urge him to take the further evidence of these amendments as a need for the Government to do something about the matter. They are the only people who can do so. If neither a copyright Bill nor this Bill is the right vehicle, then let the Government with their powers produce the legislation. They should not keep promising to do something about the matter only for us to find at the end of the day that nothing happens.
Baroness Strange: Perhaps I may intervene very briefly in support of the noble and learned Lord. Basically his amendment is about two very pernicious things: eavesdropping and Peeping-Toms. My mother once had a daily who constantly used to listen in on the telephone. My mother would say, "I am sorry but I cannot say anything to you now because Ann is listening in", and Ann would say, "I am not". The point is that my mother knew that someone was listening in and was aware of eavesdropping on her conversation. The noble and learned Lord says that people are not aware and do not know what is happening. I think therefore that they should be protected.
Baroness Mallalieu: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, raised matters which have caused concern in all parts of the Chamber. Many of the examples cause a great deal of distress and worry to many of us. However, this clause is not one that we on these Benches feel should be considered in this Bill. We believe that it should be part of a wider review of the law of privacy, which should come as soon as possible. For those reasons, sadly, we cannot support the noble and learned Lord.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Baroness has put very clearly a point of view which reflected a number of speeches made this evening on the noble and learned Lord's amendment. He described vividly the concerns which led him to table the new clause. There is no doubt that the behaviour of certain sections of the press, intruding into the personal lives of both celebrities and ordinary members of the public, has on occasion been nothing less than deplorable.
Modern technology has made it easy for people to be photographed at considerable distances and to have their private conversations listened to. I was disturbed when I heard my noble friend Lord Colnbrook say that he envisaged himself going round at weddings photographing his friends kissing the wives of other friends who were not there at the wedding; but I was delighted that he was at least gracious enough to say that, if he had done that, he would not sell them to the press.
I am sure that the Committee will be as irritated as I am at the excuses which are sometimes put forward as justification. They are generally based on some spurious
682
argument of public interest. Then, when any suggestion is made that there should be legislation to curtail such activities, there is a pathetic cry of "Don't touch the press". If there is to be freedom of the press—and there should be—it is a privilege which carries a two-way responsibility. It is one which should not be abused or manipulated.
As the noble and learned Lord pointed out, the problem of physical intrusion into personal privacy by the press and possible ways of combating it have been examined a number of times over the years. Various studies which have been carried out show that there is a considerable degree of concern—as expressed by the Committee this evening—that the press cannot be trusted effectively to discipline their rogue members. The broad consensus is that Parliament will have to intervene in the absence of such discipline in order to introduce sanctions against those who intrude into the privacy of others for the purposes of publication. It is provisions of that kind which the Committee has been considering this evening.
The proposals put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, are identical with those recommended by Sir David Calcutt in his review of press self-regulation. They are based on the principle that a mischief which is sufficient to justify criminal sanctions occurs when personal information is sought without the subject's consent by intrusive means and in circumstances where he has a legitimate right to privacy.
In any proposal for legislation which attempts to balance two rights, there are inevitably problems of principle and of definition which have to be resolved. It is essential that any proposals in this field should find the right balance between, on the one hand, the application of the criminal and civil law and, on the other hand, the freedom of the press and the rights of others, notably the right to privacy. Any legal formulation in this difficult and sensitive area must be defined as clearly and unambiguously as possible if we are to ensure that it catches unacceptable intrusions but that it allows legitimate investigative work to continue. I shall not conceal from the Committee that we have found it very difficult to reconcile those conflicting claims and to ensure the necessary precision in any legislative proposal.
The various efforts that have been made in the past to control the excesses of press behaviour are only too well known. The Committee is aware of how much time has passed and the fact that the Government have not yet made up their mind on these important questions. But I can assure the Committee that the Government have not been idle. It has become plain to us that the issues involved are very complex and sensitive and that they need to be considered as a whole in order to ensure that the balance is properly struck. With an issue of such importance, it is essential that we get things right and that any proposal should be the subject of fully informed and national consideration.
My noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls said that the Government ought to give a lead. He said that the amendment was further evidence that something ought to be done and the Government ought to act. I can understand that view and my noble friend's personal

683
interest in the matter because of his Bill. I can assure him that the Government are giving a lead. We propose to issue a White Paper on the whole subject of press intrusion into privacy. In addition to dealing with the questions of self-regulation and a new civil tort, the White Paper will also consider in some detail the various questions, both of practice and of principle, to which any extension of the criminal law in this area would give rise. That will give Parliament and the public an opportunity to consider fully these complex issues.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, said that he was hesitant to table an amendment on this subject. I admire him for his humility. He is not normally hesitant about tabling amendments, particularly on subjects about which he feels strongly. But his hesitancy came only from his feeling that he would be trumped by remarks such as, "A wide and careful scrutiny will take place", "Careful consideration is being given to these matters", "We must deal with the whole problem and not with a bit of it" and "We must wait a little longer". I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord had a look at my brief before I rose to speak. He might have chosen those words from it.
I am bound to tell him that that must be the answer that I give him. It is not a bad answer considering the speeches that have been made this evening. A number of Members have been against the proposal: my noble friend Lord Colnbrook said that he could not support the amendment; my noble friend Lord Morris said that we should wait for the Government to make some proposals; the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, said that he had doubts about the amendment; and my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls said that it was very important to get the matter right.
I feel that this debate will be of great value. It has shown that it would be unwise to attempt to legislate in a particular area if we do not get the matter right.
I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, will be disappointed and possibly irritated—I hope not —that I ask him to be patient a little longer. But it is a sensitive area. In the Government's view, it would be unwise to introduce one set of controls in the form of criminal offences without considering how they interact with other possible measures. The Committee has already accepted, in the context of the Bill introduced earlier by my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls, that a piecemeal approach is not the right one. The White Paper will provide an opportunity for us to take a wider and fuller view. I ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, therefore, to be graciously patient a little longer.
8 p.m.
Lord Ackner: Before the noble Earl sits down, perhaps he can give the Committee some indication as to when the White Paper will be provided.
Earl Ferrers: It is always the short questions which are the most difficult to answer. The White Paper will be produced when it is ready and I cannot go further than that. It is unlikely to be immediate because the
684
Government have yet to make up their mind. A debate such as we have had this evening will help them to consider their views. But it will be produced as soon as possible. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, wants to make an intervention.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I was clarifying the observations about timing with my noble friend, having just returned from an important Home Office function.
Lord Renton: Before my noble friend concludes on this matter perhaps I can say that I was gratified, as I am sure we all were, to hear that the Government intend to consider the matter and produce a White Paper. But it has become customary in recent years for a Green Paper —namely, a consultative document—to be produced first. A consultative document is an open-minded document in which problems are posed and people invited to reply as to how they should be solved. On the other hand, a White Paper is rather conclusive and is usually a prelude to legislation. Does my noble friend mean that it will be a consultative document or a final document?
Earl Ferrers: I do not know that there is any virtue in going into these nuances. It is clear to my noble friend Lord Renton and the Committee that the Government have not yet made up their mind and are considering the position. The object of a White Paper is to enable the Government to say, "These are our thoughts", and find out what is the reaction of the public. That will be the purpose of the White Paper.
Lord Ackner: Perhaps I may first assure the noble Earl that I did not look at his brief. But in the short period during which I have taken a relatively active part in the affairs of this Chamber, that is a refrain that I have heard so often that it took no great imagination to anticipate that it would be repeated again tonight.
At the outset of my submissions to the Committee I was at pains to disavow the parentage of the amendment. That prevents me taking advantage of its modesty, because modest it is. It in no way seeks to fetter freedom of speech. It is not directed to freedom of speech; it is directed to intrusion into other people's property without their consent. It does not include a co-defendant, which the noble Lord, Lord Colnbrook suggested. It does not include the editor, whom the noble Lord submits ought to be a defendant either on his own or as a co-defendant. It does not include him because it is a modest amendment.
It was said in terms by the noble Lord that it is of limited application. So it is. In this field one proceeds slowly. If one had started by being ambitious one could anticipate the comments that would have been made. Basically the criticism is, "You have not gone far enough". But that is not a basis for saying, "Don't go at all". Let us build upon what is a new feature. It is rather like our recent references to the right of silence. One is introducing something quite new; let us proceed with appropriate safeguards. That is what I sought to do in this case.
I have heard what Members of the Committee said, in particular that the punishment is too severe. One of the advantages of the matter being raised at this stage is that

685
it can always be altered. I heard the suggestion that one of the defences is too narrow. If that criticism can be made, the defence can be widened. It is intended to be a start. It is apparent that the Government need stimulation on this subject. If that is all I achieve at this stage in moving this amendment, then it is something. At this time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but with the reservation that by improving it I hope to bring it back at a later stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Annaly: I beg to move that the House do now resume. In moving this Motion I suggest that the Committee stage begin again at five minutes past nine o'clock.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Merchant Shipping (Salvage and Pollution) Bill
8.7 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I begin by congratulating the honourable Member for St. Ives, Mr. David Harris, for taking this Bill through its earlier stages in another place. I am most grateful to him for so promptly bringing forward legislation to implement some of the interim recommendations of the inquiry which I was appointed to chair, with terms of reference to identify what further measures could be taken to protect the United Kingdom coastline from pollution. I am sure that the House will support my view that we should strive to protect the marine environment whenever it is practical to do so. But when pollution occurs we must ensure that there is a response capability to minimise the effects of that pollution.
The Bill will help to combat maritime pollution in several ways, principally by permitting the implementation of international conventions and protocols which will enhance the protection of the marine environment. Those are the 1989 Salvage Convention, the 1992 protocols and the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation Convention. Ratification of the Salvage Convention and accession to the 1992 protocols were two of the interim recommendations of my inquiry's report, Safer ships, cleaner seas. By providing for the implementation of those important instruments, the Bill is an essential element in the comprehensive national and international framework to ensure that our seas are both safe and clean.
Since 1980 the Lloyd's Open Form salvage contract has provided for a regime of reward for measures taken to protect the environment called special compensation. The 1989 Salvage Convention introduces the concept of special compensation to salvage law for the first time. Clause 1 of the Bill proposes a statutory basis for such payments.
The traditional "no cure—no pay" principle will continue to apply; that is, a salvage award will still be payable only when a salvor is successful in saving
686
property of some value. However, under the new convention, salvors may claim special compensation from the shipowner if the vessel or its cargo pose a pollution or safety risk to the environment. This may be payable in the absence of, or in addition to, a traditional salvage reward. The convention will therefore encourage salvors to get involved—and, what is equally important, stay involved—in salvage operations when there is a threat of marine pollution, since special compensation assures them that they will at least recover their expenses. Salvors are further encouraged to get involved by the knowledge that, if they actually do prevent or minimise damage to the environment, they may be awarded payment of special compensation up to double their expenses.
Clause 5 provides for the implementation of the 1992 protocols. The 1992 protocols amend the two International Maritime Organisation conventions which established a liability and compensation regime for oil pollution damage. The first convention, adopted in 1969, makes the owners of laden oil tankers strictly liable for oil pollution damage. Liability is, however, limited. The applicable limit depends upon the ship's tonnage. The second convention, adopted in 1971, created an international oil pollution compensation fund, whose role it is to provide additional compensation when the shipowner's liability is inadequate. There is a limit on how much compensation the fund can pay out for damage caused by one incident. The 1992 protocols will dramatically increase the limits on shipowners' liability and the limit on compensation available from the international compensation fund. The protocols also extend the geographical scope of the regime, because pollution caused some considerable distance from shore can drift and cause pollution of the coastline.
At present the total compensation available to the victims of an oil pollution incident from the shipowner and the international oil pollution compensation fund together is limited to £55 million. After entry into force of the 1992 protocols this limit will initially more than double to £125 million, and could subsequently rise to £185 million. The 1992 protocols will also allow the limits to be increased on a regular basis in order to keep them in line with inflation. The protocols will therefore ensure that there is a greater likelihood that the victims of a future oil spill will be fully compensated.
Clause 2 enables the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Convention to be im-plemented by order in council. The convention will provide a framework for international co-operation in combating oil pollution and will encourage states to upgrade pollution preparedness and response capabilities to the high level of competence that already exists in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
Clause 8 of the Bill will improve the domestic framework for combating marine pollution by providing a clear statutory basis for the Department of Transport's marine pollution control unit. This will remove any threat of a legal challenge to the unit's operations. The MPCU is responsible for the co-ordination of counter-pollution measures in response to oil and chemical pollution emergencies in the United Kingdom.

687
The unit also co-ordinates the provision and maintenance of resources in readiness for such operations.
Clause 4 of the Bill will allow the United Kingdom's jurisdiction for counter-pollution measures to be extended beyond the territorial sea. This will allow better policing of the requirements of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships. Such an extension of jurisdiction, up to a maximum of 200 nautical miles from our coasts, is sanctioned by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and is to be implemented as part of a co-ordinated exercise undertaken by all states bordering on the North Sea. I am very happy this evening that I am able to introduce a provision which I think meets a plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, in a letter to The Times which was published yesterday.
Clause 6 of the Bill will enhance the protection of the marine environment against pollution caused by fuel oil. At the moment, there is an anomaly in the treatment of different kinds of vessel. Only owners of laden oil tankers are strictly liable for marine pollution from oil spillages. But other ships can also pose a threat of serious oil pollution. All large ships carry fuel oil, often in very considerable quantities. This type of Gil can be thicker and more polluting than most types of oil carried in bulk as cargo. The Bill will extend strict liability for fuel oil damage to owners of all types of ships. Shipowners will be liable not only for the costs of actual damage caused, but also for the cost of measures taken to prevent such pollution occurring.
Clause 7 removes an inconsistency between the practice of the international oil pollution compensation fund and domestic legislation. It gives the fund a clear right to recover any compensation it pays when it is not in fact legally obliged to do so.
Clause 3 will save parliamentary time by aligning the procedure for making regulations concerning pollution from ships on that for regulations concerning safety on ships.
When the Bill comes before the House at the Committee stage I shall be proposing a small technical amendment. This is to make an order in council under subsection (3) of Clause 1 to implement any revision of the Salvage Convention subject to parliamentary control.
All in all I hope the House will agree that this Bill offers significant improvements on the present arrangements for protecting the United Kingdom coastline and surrounding waters. I am sure that there will be widespread support for the Bill in this House, just as there was in another place. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Donaldson of Lymington.)
8.16 p.m.
Lord Byron: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, for introducing this important Bill into your Lordships' House. It is also particularly opportune that the Bill should be introduced a week after the
688
publication of the major—perhaps I may say landmark —report into the prevention of pollution from merchant shipping by the inquiry in the name of the noble and learned Lord. I hope that in due course the House may have the opportunity to debate the report.
The report emphasises the vital role that the salvor plays in the whole question of safety at sea and in particular in relation to prevention of pollution. Recommendation 85 of the report invites the UK Government to set up a system to ensure that tugs with adequate salvage capacity are available at key points around the UK shores. The inquiry recommends that the tugs concerned should normally be owned, managed and manned by commercial operators but where adequate capacity cannot be provided in any other way, the UK Government should arrange for the funding of the difference between what is needed and what the private sector can provide.
These salvage services are by and large provided by the private sector and rely on salvage awards to make the whole operation economically viable. It is obviously desirable that so far as possible salvage services should be provided by the private sector and that the burden should fall on the public purse only where there is no viable alternative. It is clearly therefore in everyone's interest to encourage private salvage operators, and this Bill, enacting the 1989 Salvage Convention, the 1992 protocols and the other provisions to which the noble and learned Lord referred, is clearly an important step forward. In particular, Article 14, dealing with special compensation where damage is threatened to the environment, is a major step forward, although of course this particular provision has already been included in the 1990 LOF—the standard "no cure no pay" salvage contract.
In this context it is also worth emphasising the very important role played by the City of London and in particular the Lloyd's Open Form and its related arbitration arrangements. Statistics provided in the 1993 bulletin of the International Salvage Union show that in its survey of more than 2,400 cases over a 15-year period relating to salvage carried out in all parts of the world, 74 per cent. were carried out under a Lloyd's Open Form "no cure no pay".
Returning to the particular provisions of the Bill, there are two matters which I should like to raise. I heard the noble and learned Lord refer to a technical matter which he may wish to bring forward in Committee. Unfortunately, I did not detect that it was a technical matter in which I was particularly interested.
Concern has been expressed by a number of organisations, including the salvage committee of the BLMA and the International Salvage Union, relating to the amendment of the Supreme Court Act 1981 contained in the second schedule to the Bill in so far as it relates to the Admiralty jurisdiction of the High Court in salvage cases. The concern is that to confine the court's jurisdiction to any claim under the Salvage Convention 1989 would probably dispose of the court's present jurisdiction in respect of so-called "engaged services" or "services at request," it being arguable that the words,
"under any contract for or in relation to salvage services",

689
do not cover such services. The jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court may also be ousted in respect of claims by disposed salvors other than under contract; claims relating solely to determination of whether a casualty has a salved value; and claims contesting agency of necessity in respect of engaged services or services at request.
It has been suggested that the phrase,
"or in the nature of salvage",
would serve to remedy the otherwise apparently limiting effect of Section 2. That phrase has significant historical foundation. It is of course the existing wording of the Supreme Court Act. It is a phrase which appears in the leading textbooks and in a number of Acts and it is a phrase with which salvage practitioners have long been familiar. This is a matter of considerable practical importance because, as the law now stands, if the master of a vessel asks another ship to stand by during the course of a storm or requests another vessel to fetch and anchor, and that service is carried out but for one reason or another no benefit accrues to the vessel in distress, nevertheless, a claim can be brought and the courts do recognise such a claim. It would be a pity if this important additional area of present salvage jurisdiction were to be lost as a result of this Bill coming into effect.
The second area of concern relates to life salvage. Under the provisions of Article 16 of the Salvage Convention any life salvor has to direct his claim to the property salvor rather than to the property salved itself. That is likely to present considerable problems to the professional salvor in future cases. They will either have to wait until the time limit for a claim by a potential life salvor has expired or actively promote claims by the life salvor in order to ensure that they are taken into account when assessing the property salved value. This will inevitably lead to delay which in the present economic climate the professional salvor can ill afford.
I am aware that in respect of the latter point any amendment to the Bill might well be thought to be a derogation of the UK's international obligation when it ratified the convention. In relation, however, to the jurisdiction point I am not sure that this difficulty arises.
This is not the time or the place to consider detailed amendments to the Bill, but I hope that the Government may be able to consider particular points. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord may be able to give his blessing to suitable amendments at Committee stage.
This is an important Bill which I very much welcome in your Lordships' House. (I do not know whether it is a coincidence that the Bill is being introduced on the 250th anniversary of the Baltic Exchange. I hope that no one here tonight is missing out on those celebrations as a result of being in your Lordships' House.) Therefore, I should like to take this opportunity again to thank the noble and learned Lord for his highly authoritative introduction to the Bill which has considerable significance for the world of international salvage and in relation to the prevention of pollution generally.
8.23 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, at the outset, I declare an interest: I speak also as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Protection of the Sea, which is
690
a non-governmental organisation which receives reasonable—I would not say too generous—support from the Government. It was founded by my noble friend Lord Callaghan in 1952. I believe that it was very perceptive of him to do so. It has since become a notable international NGO.
This debate gives me the opportunity from these Benches to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, for the incredibly able chairmanship of the committee that has produced the report which I hope will, as the noble Lord, Lord Byron, has said, enable us to debate it in the not too distant future once the Government have come forward with their response to the various recommendations which have been made. Unquestionably, it was a work of great skill under the noble and learned Lord's chairmanship and of great significance. I hope that the Government will take urgent action to bring before Parliament not only their response but the actions they propose to take as regards many of the recommendations.
Against that background, it is therefore propitious that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, was asked to pilot this undoubtedly important Bill through this House which will have appreciated his explanation of the purposes of the Bill and of the various clauses contained in it. I know that neither the noble and learned Lord nor for that matter Mr. David Harris who piloted the Bill through another place, will take amiss—because my criticism is not aimed at either of them—my disapproval of the Government using this sort of procedure in introducing Bills which are in reality government Bills. These Bills ought to be introduced in government time. I made this criticism when the House was considering the Merchant Shipping (Regulation) Bill legislation last year. I believe it was, before the noble Lord who speaks for the Government tonight took office so he is in no way to blame for that. I said on that occasion that I thought it was a great pity that the government business managers did not take that criticism on board. I know it is not the fault of the department; maybe it could exercise a little more clout in future, but who knows?
The Bill is only part of the effort to bring into effect a number of salient IMO conventions. It enables enhanced co-operation to take effect within Europe to prevent accidental and routine pollution from shipping. It is noteworthy to say in parenthesis that contrary to public perception it is not shipping which is responsible for the greatest measure of pollution at sea. I believe in that respect that the correct calculations are of the order of 15 per cent. of the total amount of pollution, whereas it is land-based sources of marine pollution which constitute by far the greatest peril. It is appropriate of course that that issue should have been addressed at Rio. I am glad to say that the Advisory Committee on the Protection of the Sea has played a great part in seeking to produce ideas for introducing effective measures and then enforcement to deal with that particular and very complicated problem.
I notice in the briefing that was sent out by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and presumably not only to me, that it identified what might be, but what I do not believe is, a difference in approach between the

691
Donaldson Report, with its essential emphasis of the prevention of pollution, and what they thought was the Government's emphasis on accident response—that is to say, clean up. I do not believe those things to be mutually exclusive. They are complementary and I am sure that the Minister would refute that that alleged distinction of approach exists at all.
I thought it right to refer to that not because I am critical of the RSPB. I am very grateful that it sent the briefing; and in the light of what I have said, I hope that it will not desist from doing so in future. But it is a distinction which it is unfair to draw. There must be an efficient response to accidental and even deliberate acts of pollution from ships. I know that only too well from bitter experience when holding office as shipping Minister some years ago. It is an issue which led directly to the establishment of what was then known as the marine contingencies unit.
But the RSPB is right, as ACOPS has been, in asserting that the priority has to be prevention. It is consistent with what is said in the Single European Act, in the fourth environmental action programme, in the European Year for the Environment and in the Government's own documentation about environmental policy that you must attack pollution at source and the sea can be no exception.
One cannot insulate the Bill from the entire context of the battle against unsafe practices at sea. Sub-standard ships, sub-standard crew and sub-standard operators constitute a standing menace to our coastline and those of many other countries and indeed—and quite as important—to the lives of too many seafarers, lives which are lost in great numbers each year.
Coming to the Bill and to some of the recommendations in the Donaldson Report which touch on the provisions, I should like to know whether the Government are in a position to spell out what they will be doing, pursuant to the provisions of the Bill, to claim a 200-mile exclusive economic zone so that they can take advantage of the provisions for the protection of that area in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. What is the Government's thinking about establishing compulsory routing measures for ships around the United Kingdom? Initiatives have to be undertaken, principally through the IMO; but, by being members of the European Union, we are able to exercise a little more clout and to introduce rather speedier action on the part of the IMO. In saying that, I am in no way criticising the IMO because it is bound by the will of its member states.
One of the important recommendations in the Donaldson Report related to research into shipping practice and data collection programmes which need support if appropriate actions are to be undertaken. I do not know whether the Minister is in a position to say anything about that; but it is highly relevant to many of the provisions of the Bill if the measures to be taken are to be actively and effectively implemented.
I noted that Article 8's important recommendations on the duties of the salvor and of the owner and master are dealt with in the Bill. But will those provisions wholly cover the situation of ensuring that shipowners
692
will be under a duty to call for assistance—the same would apply to masters—without delay when the situation arises? I am not entirely sure that the provisions cover such situations in their entirety. I wonder whether the Minister or the noble and learned Lord can cast a little more light upon it.
In relation to salvage, it is very important that the coastguard should be given enhanced powers to initiate salvage measures if a serious risk is involved. The shipowner must be liable for the cost, providing that any such action is taken reasonably. It is idle to talk about enhanced powers in this connection unless the salvage industry in the United Kingdom is provided with adequate support to enable it to mount effective coverage, a point that was made in the noble and learned Lord's report.
In the wider context of the Bill, there is also the whole question of the training of ships' crews and marine surveyors. In my judgment, that is imperative if the United Kingdom is to make a full and substantial contribution to resolving the problems of deteriorating ship and crew standards. I hope therefore that the Government will give proper support to the institutions that are capable of rendering those important services.
The Bill has major implications for implementing the MARPOL convention. How do the Government see the value of the increased jurisdiction that the Bill provides and the improved European Union and wider international co-operation in helping to implement MARPOL? Do the Government agree or disagree with the Donaldson Report about the inadequacy of the United Kingdom's port reception facilities for the legal discharge of waste oil? I do not know whether the Minister can answer that question tonight. If he cannot, he will no doubt send me a reply in writing.
I should like to know, however, whether the Government agree with the concept of special areas which was promulgated in the report. Most of the dangers that arise from ships arise through the operations of flags of convenience with their permissive attitude towards international conventions. I know that the Government share those anxieties because they have been active in ensuring that there is enhanced port state control through the Paris Memorandum of Understanding. However, we need uniform control and monitoring throughout the European Union and in the countries that are signatories to that memorandum of understanding. I am by no means convinced that that happens at present. However, that is an important ingredient in everything that we are trying to do and which we shall partially have effected once the Bill becomes law.
In conclusion, we shall do all that we can to facilitate the progress of the Bill through the House. Once again, with the qualifications that I have uttered, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord on the steps that he has taken in seeking to pilot the Bill through this place. I am sure that he deserves not only our commendation, but our support for so doing.
8.36 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, it is a pleasure to be able to agree with many of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and, in particular, with his remarks at the beginning of his speech when he paid tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, not only for introducing the Bill, but also for giving us the results of his inquiry into the whole question of shipping around our coast and the dangers from pollution arising out of the "Braer" incident on Shetland a year ago in January.
Perhaps I may advise those of your Lordships who have not yet read the report that it is a fairly weighty document and an extremely good read. The noble and learned Lord has covered all of the issues in a great deal of detail and laid out extremely clearly the various arguments on the issues that he addressed. We are extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord and I am pleased to have this opportunity to pay tribute to him for his work. We did not have that opportunity when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport made a Statement on the report in the other place. Therefore, I am happy to join the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and my noble friend Lord Byron in paying that tribute now to the noble and learned Lord.
I should like to add to the remarks of the noble and learned Lord my tribute to my honourable friend David Harris, who, because of the nature of his constituency in the south west of England, is pretty well surrounded by the sea and takes a great interest in matters relating to the sea, fishing and the ships which pass the coast of his constituency.
Merchant shipping is, by its very definition, an international industry. It has long been our belief that the rules governing shipping should be agreed and implemented internationally through the work of the International Maritime Organisation. We have always encouraged the development and implementation of IMO conventions which improve safety at sea and the marine environment. What is more, we have an excellent record of firm enforcement of such measures.
The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, rightly pointed out—I concur with him entirely on this—that any suggestion that looking at the pollution aspect means that we are oblivious to the safety aspect is totally false. The truth of the matter is that the sea is an extremely dangerous place and the idea that it could be made accident-free is false. It would be quite wrong of any government—no matter how careful they may be to make rules and regulations which try to make the sea as safe a place as possible—to ignore the necessary steps that are needed to deal with an accident should one happen.
The Bill will allow the UK to implement two new IMO conventions and two protocols amending existing conventions. The IMO instruments to which the noble and learned Lord has referred should soon have sufficient signatories to enter into force internationally. The Bill therefore provides an opportunity for the UK to play a key role in triggering those important measures.
694
The House may wish to know the mechanism for entry into force of the instruments. The 1992 protocols will enter into force one year after the date on which a total of 10 states, representing both leading carriers and importers of oil, have agreed to be bound by the protocols. No state has yet formally agreed to be bound by the protocols; but measures in the Bill would enable the UK, like others, to have legislation in place to allow such a commitment to be made in the coming months.
There are at present 14 contracting states to the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Convention. The next state to agree to be bound by the convention will trigger its entry into force 12 months later. It would be, I am sure your Lordships will agree, agreeable if the UK could be the first contracting party to the 1992 protocols and also the state which triggers the entry into force of the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Convention.
Entry into force of the Salvage Convention also requires 15 contracting states. There are currently nine. Several other states have, or will soon have, the necessary legislation in place. There is widespread support for the measures contained in the Bill within the maritime community and, in particular, in the London insurance market. Commercial interests were party to the negotiation of the international agreements which the Bill will implement. They agree that the protection of the marine environment must be enhanced,, and that polluters should be liable for any additional costs that arise.
The Bill has no new public spending implications. It places no significant new requirements on the Department of Transport or any other public body. It will allow the department's Marine Pollution Control Unit to act more effectively, secure in the knowledge that the cost of its operations will—in the majority of cases—be met by the polluter. My department is working within the IMO to see that the "polluter pays" principle is extended to all forms of marine pollution.
In my opinion, the most important measure in the Bill is the power to implement the International Convention on Salvage. As my noble friend Lord Byron said, private salvors must be encouraged to maintain salvage capacity. They will do so only if they are assured of a fair rate of return for their work. The traditional "no cure, no pay" system no longer provides such an assurance in all circumstances. When ships arc. carrying petroleum products, or other dangerous or polluting substances, the costs of intervention are very high but the value of the property recovered may be comparatively low. The new Salvage Convention guarantees salvors just recompense for their efforts in those circumstances and implementation will encourage the continued existence of a private salvage industry which is able to intervene to protect shipping and the marine environment.
My noble friend Lord Byron raised the subject of the powers of the master of a vessel. The convention also gives the master of a vessel the authority to conclude salvage contracts on behalf of the owners of the ship and its cargo. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, asked a similar question. This is crucially important, since in the

695
past serious pollution has been caused while authority to conclude salvage contracts was sought, and such delays have even resulted, tragically, in loss of life.
We have clarified the position with regard to coastguards intervening if they think that it is necessary and taking steps to summon assistance when they feel that the captain of a ship is rather slow in doing so.
A number of questions were put to me, but some of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, asked arise from the report, to which we are considering our response. He asked about the 200-mile EEZ. In accordance with the Paris declaration of North Sea states, our prevention of oil pollution regulations will be extended to cover discharge by all ships out to the 200-mile limit around the UK. On the subject of port facilities for waste to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, rightly drew our attention in his report, we are concerned about the position that he highlighted which contradicts some previous evidence that we received. I have asked the Marine Safety Agency to investigate as a matter of urgency what is the situation at the ports around our shores.
On the question of routeing, which formed an important part of the report, we are working on those matters largely with our European Union partners, because, due to our position, a great deal of the shipping does not call at our ports and many of the waters around the UK are shared with adjacent countries, such as the Channel with France and so forth. We believe that that is a matter which we have to look at with our European friends.
My noble friend Lord Byron asked about salvage claims and the position of the life salvor. We shall probably go into that matter in a little more detail in Committee, and I shall examine what he said, but the 1989 Salvage Convention was intended to codify the law of salvage. My understanding is that we cannot derogate from that convention.
It is a long-established rule of the sea that it is a seafarer's duty to save persons in danger and that no remuneration is due from the persons saved. The Salvage Convention restates that rule. This is a tradition of the sea which the Government and the UK and international maritime communities strongly endorse. It has however also long been the practice for life salvors to share in salvage rewards paid to salvors of property. The convention preserves that practice. The Bill also preserves a back-stop provision currently contained in a section of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 which has to be repealed to avoid inconsistencies with the Salvage Convention. The provision gives the Secretary of State the power to make awards to life salvors who have not been able to receive a reasonable reward in any other manner, although the Secretary of State exercises that power only in rare and very exceptional circumstances. The most recent instances of such payments were in 1939 and 1951 and were for very modest sums. Nevertheless the status quo has been retained at the request of the shipping industry.
The substantive provisions of the 1992 protocols mirror exactly those of protocols adopted in 1984. Entry into force of the 1984 protocols was dependent on the
696
expected participation of the United States of America. Although not party to the original regime, the US signed the 1984 protocols and legislation was even prepared to implement the protocols. However, in the wake of the "Exxon Valdez" disaster in Alaska, the US Congress decided instead to adopt unilaterally the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. To ensure that the 1992 protocols will come into effect, the entry-into-force provisions have been made less onerous. Contributions to the international oil pollution compensation fund from any one state after entry into force of the 1992 protocols are also temporarily limited to 27.5 per cent. of the total in order to ensure Japan's acceptance (Japan is the largest contributor to the fund).
It will be necessary, as the noble and learned Lord said, to amend the Bill slightly in Committee. Those amendments will improve the drafting of the Bill either to ensure that its provisions have the intended effect or to remedy oversights. The most significant of those amendments relate to the implementation of the Salvage Convention. I support the amendment that the noble and learned Lord has proposed to subject to parliamentary scrutiny subordinate legislation to implement revision of the Salvage Convention. Amendments will also be tabled in relation to what is termed in the Convention "maritime cultural property"; that is, property of prehistoric, archaeological or historical interest situated on the sea-bed. These are technical amendments intended purely to maintain the status quo.
Like all noble Lords who have spoken, I welcome this Bill.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He has responded very well to many of the points that were raised. However, the one point that he studiously avoided was the criticism that I made at the beginning of my speech. Will the Minister give an undertaking that, at the very least, he and his colleagues at the Department of Transport will use their best endeavours to ensure that government Bills are introduced by the Government in government time, and notably when this House is not particularly taxed, which is normally at the beginning or even the middle of a Session?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, invites me to go a good deal wider than my brief at the Department of Transport. I am sure that the people responsible for such matters will note what he says.
I urge the House to support the Bill, which will help to secure cleaner seas in the UK and thereby encourage other member states of IMO to follow suit. We have much to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, for. Tonight we are thanking him for bringing the Bill forward and in the wider scene we are thanking him for his inquiry. I commend the noble and learned Lord's Bill to the House.
8.51 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My Lords, in view of the hour, perhaps I may reply briefly. I appreciate the kind words that have been said about my report. In that context, it is right that I should say that it was the work

697
of a team. I had two assessors and a remarkably effective Civil Service team was seconded to help us. The report reflects a great deal of help received from industry and from the Government. But tonight we are here to talk about the Bill and not about my report.
Perhaps I may again express my great appreciation for the support that the Bill has received from all noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Byron, laments the wording of paragraph 6 of Schedule 2, which would abolish the jurisdiction in respect of claims in the nature of salvage. I make no secret of the fact that I share his regret. It is quite clear that we cannot possibly derogate from the Salvage Convention and would not wish to do so. But paragraph 6 is jurisdictional; it neither adds to nor subtracts from the Salvage Convention or anything else.
Today I looked at the Supreme Court Bill, in particular the part which deals with the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court. It is interesting that it always adds to the jurisdiction and never subtracts from it. One paragraph expressly re-enacts all the previous jurisdictions of the Admiralty Court. Furthermore, the phrase "in the nature of is not limited to salvage; it becomes a repetitive refrain. It relates also to towage and to pilotage and I believe that it would be a great mistake for the Bill to go through in a form which consigned the words "in the nature of salvage" to the dustbin. But as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, detected with such perspicacity, I am only the surrogate parent of the Bill. It: will be necessary for me to consult the natural parent, the biological parent, the godfather—whatever the expression should be. I shall undertake the necessary consultation; indeed, I have an appointment at 10.30 tomorrow morning to begin on just that process. I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Local Government Etc. (Scotland) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until five past nine.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.55 to 9.5 p.m.]

Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill
House again in Committee.
Clause 63 [Offence of aggravated trespass]:
Baroness Mallalieu Baroness Mallalieu moved Amendment No. 73:
Page 47, line 31, leave out ("activity") and insert ("sport").
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 73, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 77, 78 and 79 which are consequential.
The amendments all relate to the provisions of Clause 63 which creates an offence of aggravated trespass when
698
a trespasser on land does anything with the intention of intimidating people engaged in a lawful activity on that land or indeed of obstructing or disrupting that activity.
As I understand it, the provision is designed to deal with increasing violence in the countryside, a matter which causes great anxiety to many of us on all sides of the Committee. That violence has arisen not just on the hunting field but also in connection with shooting, fishing and racing.
The anxiety of those of us on this side of the Committee is that a provision which was introduced to deal with violence in those areas may well, because of the way in which the clause is drafted, catch people, for example, who are protesting about road schemes, tree felling or other matters of that kind. These amendments merely confine the clause so that it deals with sports and in particular the sports which have suffered from the attention of those who attempt to disrupt them. Amendment No. 79 defines the sports in relation to which the provision would apply as:
"any activities traditionally carried out in the open air and in the countryside, and shall include hunting, shooting and fishing"
That would of course cover racing too.
We are concerned that, by its wording, what was intended as a provision to deal with violence in a particular area may well be used and extended to cover quite separate forms of protest which, as far as I am aware, the Government had not intended to cover. When the noble Earl replies, I hope that he will agree that the clause be confined to those areas with which it was designed to deal. I beg to move.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: The first two or three clauses in Part V of the Bill target specifically the activities carried out by people protesting peacefully. A new offence of aggravated trespass will outlaw many forms of peaceful protest and peaceful gatherings will be illegal as trespassory assemblies—Clauses 65 and 66.
Clauses 63 to 66 are drafted so broadly that they could be used against anybody holding a peaceful protest on private land. As a result, ordinary people exercising their legitimate and historic right to peaceful protest may now be taken into police custody under arrest and will have to appear before the courts. There is no right written into the constitution, because we do not have a constitution, to peaceful protest but it has always been assumed that in a democratic country we can tolerate those who voice opposition in a non-violent way against activities about which they feel strongly. Peaceful protest is often one of the only ways in which the minority can voice their objections to the activities of the majority, or the weak can protest against the powerful. Many British people believe that peaceful protest which is open and public is a traditional and a legitimate right. It is often vaunted as an example of why this country has no need for a constitution.
The United Kingdom is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 11 of the European Convention provides for everyone to have the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others. The article states that any restrictions placed on that freedom should be only those necessary for the prevention of disorder or crime, in the

699
interests of national security or public safety, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Article 10 provides for freedom of expression. It includes a right to freedom to hold opinions and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority regardless of frontiers. There are many who believe that the clauses as drafted are likely to breach Articles 10 and 11.
We have been told—the noble Baroness who has just spoken has also mentioned this—that the clauses were drafted in response to concern by landowners about the activities of certain animal welfare and anti-bloodsports groups aimed at disrupting hunting and shooting, and as a result of government concerns about motorway protesters. There is as at present nothing in the clauses specifically to demonstrate this intent. The clauses will outlaw non-violent protests which would previously have been dealt with through the civil court. The civil court has traditionally been the place where breaches of individual proprietary rights have been dealt with by way of injunction and damages for trespass and nuisance.
The purpose of the criminal law is to penalise those whose anti-social behaviour is such that society needs to be protected from them. The criminal law usually penalises those whose acts specifically cause harm as opposed to nuisance. But there is nothing in these clauses which reflects the degree of harm against which the public are to be protected. These clauses will label those involved in peaceful protest as anti-society and give them a criminal record for activities such as protesting against hospital or school closures, against road schemes or shortages or in favour of nursery schools.
Let us take the instance of Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace. Those are two bodies on which Members of the Committee will hold different opinions, but on the whole the general feeling is that, while their activities may not always be such as to be commended, nevertheless they are on the side of the angels and the things that they fight for are worth fighting for. Their members are ordinary citizens; they are all volunteers and representative of all groups within society. It is those people who are in danger of being caught by these clauses if they are not amended in the way the noble Baroness outlined.
It is possible, and many people believe, that the Government have purposely drafted the clauses widely and intend to close the avenue of peaceful protest. It is up to the Government to deny that, as I hope they will want to, and to show their true purpose. If it is their true purpose to restrict the activities of anti-blood sport groups and motorway protesters then we cannot see that they would object to amendments whose purpose is to tighten up the language to reflect that. If they do object they ought to make a statement as to the true purpose of the clauses.
Clause 63 is too broad and has the potential to outlaw previously legitimate forms of peaceful protest. It does not include any safeguards against arbitrary arrest. The clause will allow a person to be arrested who is a mere trespasser upon proof of an attempt to disrupt, obstruct
700
or intimidate—terms which can be very widely defined. It is likely to damage relations between the police and the community. It deals mainly with victimless crimes. The clause does not require any person to have been disrupted, obstructed or intimidated.
Current public order legislation and civil injunctions are more than adequate to deal with situations of public disorder where the public are likely to suffer some genuine harm. The Public Order Act 1986 was the result of seven years' consideration of public order law, commencing with a Green Paper in 1980 and a White Paper published in May 1985. It introduced five new offences: riot, violent disorder, affray, threatening behaviour and disorderly conduct. The latter offence penalises threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress. It embraces behaviour which falls short of violence or the threat or fear of violence. That section extended the then existing law into areas of annoyance, inconvenience, disturbance or disruption.
Apart from criminalising the act of trespass, which is in itself deplorable, it is difficult to appreciate how these new clauses add to the existing public order legislation to their benefit.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: I have some sympathy with the amendments as framed on the Marshalled List. Perhaps the definition may be improved by the use of the word "sport" and sporting connotations and limiting the offence to such activities.
When I first read the amendments I thought that there was no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble Baroness were seeking through the amendments to make the offences in this part of the Bill more workable and practicable. On that basis I was inclined to support them, and in principle am possibly still inclined to do so.
However, my worries about the amendment relate to the concerns of those in farming who consider that certain of the offences which are dealt with in this part of the Bill encompass some of their activities. That applies particularly to pig farming and chicken rearing, because the same people who commit offences in connection with country sports sometimes attempt to and occasionally commit the same offences in regard to such farming activities. That was not something of which I was aware before this issue arose, but it was raised when I took advice and discussed the matter before this evening's discussions.
I do not have a firm view on the subject, but it is worth drawing to the attention of the Committee the possibility that in limiting the offence to sporting activities, which would appear to be sensible or reasonable, we may be limiting it too much. That is undoubtedly a matter of concern.
Turning to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, while listening to him carefully it appeared to me that we were living on a different planet. His description of the possible offences and the activities which had taken place as a precursor to the introduction to these offences in my view bore no resemblance to the

701
offences at which the clauses are aimed. Towards the end of his remarks, the noble Lord commented that we were dealing with what he called victimless crimes. They are not victimless crimes. Over the past years many people who have been abused, intimidated or violently attacked and have ended up in hospital would not regard those crimes as victimless.
The problem to which this part of the Bill relates is much greater than the problem to which the noble Lord refers. He stated that the criminal law penalises anti-social behaviour. Such crimes involve very anti-social behaviour.
The noble Lord referred, too, to the dangers of catching those involved in non-violent protests. In order to be charged and found guilty under the provision in the Bill one has to do something which has the effect,
"of intimidating those persons or any of them so as to deter them or any of them from engaging in that activity, of obstructing that activity, or of disrupting that activity".
That is not peaceful protest. We are not discussing peaceful protests. I accept that there is concern from all sides of the Committee that we should ensure that the two clauses deal only, as is their aim, with those who engage in violent, disruptive or intimidating behaviour. As framed at present, I cannot envisage how the provisions would encompass those engaged in peaceful protests. That is a right which the Committee should attempt to defend.
I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, is right. The way in which the provision is framed is suitable. The measure takes account of the anxiety expressed. I do not believe that the amendments are appropriate at this stage of the Bill.
Lord Burton: Is it peaceful protest when someone throws stones into a pool which is being fished by some innocent fisherman? Is it peaceful protest when someone who walks past a notice board pointing out that deer are being culled disrupts the day's work of two or three people going about their legitimate duties? Is that carrying out a peaceful protest?
I believe that the amendments originated in Scotland. Consequently, perhaps I may point out some of the comments by the Scottish Landowners' Federation convenor at the federation's annual conference on 8th March. He stated:
"We have examined the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill very carefully and are quite confident that people enjoying the countryside in a reasonable way such as walkers and campers could not possibly be convicted of aggravated trespass.
We do need this legislation. If Scotland is excluded we shall certainly see mass trespass. This has started already".
He referred to the effects on the Scottish economy and the jobs in remote places that will go. He then stated:
"Reasonable people are not going to be affected".
The Scottish Landowners' Federation legal adviser wrote to the Law Society of Scotland stating:
"We do not think that walkers, climbers and others enjoying the countryside in a reasonable way could be convicted of aggravated trespass".
If that is the case, I cannot understand why the amendments have been introduced.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: Before the noble Lord sits down, will he agree that whether a person is transgressing this piece of legislation depends entirely
702
on the view of the landowner and not of the alleged trespasser? How will the situation be resolved in reality in the middle of a field?
Lord Burton: I do not follow the noble Lord. It is not a question of whether it is the view of the landowner or anyone else. The debate relates to the provisions in the Bill. That seems perfectly straightforward. The. legal advisers in Scotland have confirmed that.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: With respect, I am not interested in the opinion of legal advisers. The Bill is concerned with the practicality of access to land where people are doing no harm. The judgment as to whether a person is doing harm will be entirely in the hands of the landowner who considers that his rights have been transgressed.
Lord Burton: That is quite possibly true because many people come to the countryside, whether or not they wilfully create a disturbance or cause trouble or anything else. As landowners, we know we experience considerable trouble from people who know nothing about the countryside. They let their dogs chase animals all over the place and we have all kinds of problems; they light fires and leave litter behind. That does not come into the Bill but it is clear that this legislation is perfectly reasonable and covers any problem which may arise.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord, Lord Burton, is confident, but I have to tell the Committee that he did not complete his reading from the evidence of the Scottish Landowners' Federation. It is necessary to complete that evidence, and the federation starts by saying:
"The Scottish Landowners Federation, which represents; the owners of most rural land in Scotland, has supported the application to Scotland of suitably targeted UK legislation to deal with the problem of deliberate disruption of field sports".
So far, we are in agreement.
"The view of the Federation is that innocent walkers, climbers and others enjoying the countryside in a reasonable way would not be affected by the new legislation as such people do not have the intention to intimidate, disrupt or obstruct the lawful activity of others".
So far, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Burton, and I are in accord. The federation continues:
"However, the [Scottish Landowners Federation] is conscious of the concerns which have been expressed about the scope of this clause. In particular, any suggestion that the legislation might restrict normal public access to the countryside might prejudice the spirit of understanding and tolerance which are so important on the issue of access to the countryside.
"For this reason, and in particular to improve harmony in the Highlands without in any way detracting from the proper scope of the clause, the Scottish Landowners Federation encourages their Lordships to support the [following] amendments: 73, 77, 78 and 79".
Those are the amendments moved by my noble friend Lady Mallalieu.
Viscount Mountgarret: Does the noble Lord agree that Scotland is slightly different from England? Nonetheless, it is possible that in Scotland they too might be somewhat misguided. Noble Lords may laugh but it is true that bodies can be misguided as well as being anxious. As my noble friend Lord Mancroft said, it is clearly laid down in the Bill that anyone

703
intimidating, obstructing or disrupting perfectly legal and fair activities going on in the open air are committing an offence. That must be plain for all to see and I am astonished that the Scottish Landowners' Federation does not appear to understand that.
Lord Burton: Perhaps I may rise again at this juncture. I quoted the comments of the chairman of the Scottish Landowners' Federation in March. Since then, with remarkably little consultation with any of the other members of the federation, some influence appears to have been brought—and we have suspicions as to where it has come from—to try to put the extra bit in. That has been done through a small number of members and it has affected members who are seriously considering not renewing their subscription to the federation.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The problems within the Scottish Landowners' Federation are the least of my concerns.
Earl Peel: Perhaps I may take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, about the decision being that of the landlord. As I understand it, that is simply not the case. The landlord is quite within his rights to draw to the attention of the police the problems that are occurring, but it is up to the police, the senior police officer on the scene, to decide—it is a discretionary power—whether he wishes to take action. I believe that that is a fundamental part of both Clauses 63 and 64.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: The debate so far demonstrates the need for some kind of limiting amendments such as those that have been moved. Everyone has spoken of the skyline, hunting, fishing and throwing stones into ponds. These clauses as drafted will catch the peaceful demonstrator demonstrating outside Sainsbury's on a market day to try to stop Sainsbury's selling ozone depleting gases. That has happened and, thanks to Sainsbury's good sense—
9.30 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: Will the noble Lord be kind enough to give way? Is he really trying to tell the Committee that peaceful protesters outside Sainsbury's will intimidate, obstruct and disrupt? It is quite clear that they will not do that; and, if they do not do that, they will not be targeted by this Bill.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: What I am saying is that innocent protesters outside Sainsbury's will be accused of obstructing and intimidating. That is what the managers of the stores will say. That is what they will tell the police and that will be taken to be the case from then on. Perfectly decent citizens who are protesting against something that they really believe is wrong will have a criminal record.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I am amazed that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, should have such a low opinion of the police. The police will read the Bill just as the noble Lord and I can read it on the matter of intimidation.
704
Perhaps I may put just one point to the Committee that concerns me. (It is not so much on the sporting side.) Members of the Committee must have seen and heard of the number of demonstrations by animal liberationists against farmers carrying out certain practices in respect of pigs and chickens which perhaps you or I do not like terribly but which are within the law. But, more important than that—and I cannot believe that there is a single Member of the Committee who has not suffered from some form of disease in his or her family —they demonstrate against the medical profession. This clause would help prevent those demonstrations. I cannot believe that any Member of the Committee would not wish to see animals used, very carefully, in vivisection to help the human race.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, as so often, puts his finger on the crux of what we are talking about. Of course some of us agree and some disagree with the particular objectives of protest. I personally am very strongly opposed to the Animal Liberation Front and those who would oppose experiments on animals for human benefit. I personally have no particular sympathy with hunt saboteurs—none at all. I have a lot of sympathy with those who protest on environmental grounds against government schemes which would involve, for example, cutting through sites of special scientific interest or areas of natural beauty for the benefit of road schemes. We all have our different views. We are entitled to those views, and we should continue to express them and to disagree with each other about them.
What we cannot do is use a measure which is apparently designed to protect society against a particular group of people—hunt saboteurs—in order to inhibit the ability of ordinary people to protest peacefully against lawful activities to which they are opposed.
The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, referred specifically to "intimidating". What the noble Lord did not say was that the clause goes on to say,
"obstructing that activity … or … disrupting that activity".
It is right that, on occasion, even if we disagree with them, people should have the ability to protest, obstructing or disrupting even the lawful activities of authorities in this country. That principle goes back hundreds of years in our society. If we abandon it and make it a criminal offence to begin to do that, we are losing something that is very profound in the civil liberties of this country.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: I am sorry to come back to the noble Lord. I agree with a lot of what he says. As my noble friends on the Front Bench know better than anybody, I am the biggest protester that we should have that right. But we should have it within the law. This proposal says that it must be within the law; it must be done civilly. I shall not go on because the noble Lord will finally defeat me. He is a politician and I am a farmer. But that is what I feel and I feel it very strongly.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I cannot have that. The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, and I are both amateurs in politics. He is a farmer and I am a market researcher.

705
Neither of us earns our living in politics. The fundamental point behind the amendment is that we can all disagree with authority and we have a right to protest against authority on certain occasions. In practice, if the noble Lord and I found ourselves on the barricades we would be on the same side. I do not believe that he is in favour of an authoritarian society. Unless there are amendments, this clause will bring in an authoritarian society.
Earl Peel: I should like to return specifically to the amendment. As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is attempting to restrict these activities to sporting activities. But what happens in the case to which my noble friend Lord Stanley made reference? Say that animal liberationists went on to a farm in order to try to disrupt a perfectly legitimate and legal farming activity. Farming is not a sport. If it were, I suspect that the Inland Revenue would have quite a lot of fun over it. Presumably that would be caught by the noble Lord's amendment, although I do not think that such is his intention.
Perhaps I may give one other example. It may be fairly remote but I feel it is relevant. The noble Lord has used the words:
"shall include any activities traditionally carried out in the open air and the countryside".
What about whippet racing? It may sound fairly obscure but I understand that there has been at least one case in which a demonstration has taken place against whippet racing. That would be covered by the noble Lord's amendment in a way which I feel sure he does not intend. I too have a degree of sympathy for what he intends but I think the amendment is too narrow and for that reason will probably not be acceptable.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Let us search for a way to put it right, shall we? Nobody is defending violence. Let us be clear about that. If there is violence, whether in opposition to a sport or any other lawful activity, none of us will defend it. We oppose the creation of a new criminal offence of aggravated trespass which applies not only to sport but to lawful activities. That is our difficulty with the clause as drafted. That is why, even at the expense of hunt saboteurs (and other people with whom some of us—not my noble friend Lady Mallalieu—may have some sympathy), we want to restrict the new offence of aggravated trespass as much as we can. If there is violence, let us deal with it by the existing legislation.
The noble Earl need have no fear that there is any limitation on the ability of the police or the courts to deal with violence. That has always been so, whether it concerns the Animal Liberation Front or anybody else. A quite different sanction is proposed in this clause— the sanction of aggravated trespass. That is what we want to limit.
Earl Peel: Let me reply by saying that the noble Lord opposite should have no fear. The people who carry out peaceful demonstrations and do not disrupt these activities will not be caught by this legislation.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is not what the Bill says.
Lord Avebury: The point is that an area of conduct which is treated as criminal is being extended by these provisions. Actions which are lawful at the moment will be made imprisonable. We shall come on to that point in a few minutes. Surely the noble Lord must see that it is legitimate for people to express anxieties when conduct that is perfectly peaceful—that is to say, non-violent—and has never before been touched by the law is suddenly to be brought within the ambit of the criminal law. Plenty of examples of that have been given.
Whether or not my noble friend is correct in saying that demonstrators outside Sainsbury's who obstruct the entrance to the store and thereby prevent shoppers having the same ease of access to the doors of the premises as they would otherwise enjoy in the absence of the demonstrators, will not be caught by the Bill is a matter for the courts to determine. We cannot say how a court will act if such a case is brought to its attention.
A group of demonstrators standing in front of the entrance to Sainsbury's holding placards and chanting slogans may be deemed to be intimidating to shoppers who would otherwise go into the store to do their shopping but who turn away and shop at Safeway's instead. The manager of Sainsbury's would be perfectly entitled, under the Bill, to call a policeman and say, "Here is the evidence. This lady normally comes here every week to buy groceries. She watched the demonstration, turned away and went into another shop. By definition, therefore, she was obstructed or intimidated from shopping at Sainsbury's"; and the Bill must then bite.
Many similar cases can be envisaged. I know that I sometimes upset the Minister when I use my imagination in these cases. But what about the person who lies down in front of a bulldozer on a contractor's site where a motorway is being constructed? At the moment he can do that and all the police can do—they have done so on many occasions—is remove the person by picking him up, placing him in a transit van and driving him off the site. After the Bill is enacted, if anyone goes to places of special scientific interest or outstanding natural beauty, for instance, where the Government propose to drive through a six-lane highway —such as Oxleas Wood—those persons lying down in front of the bulldozer will be committing an offence under this section because they will be obstructing the contractors in the lawful exercise of their duty to construct that road. I cannot see any way in which the police could avoid taking action if that matter was drawn to their attention.
I want to give one more example which came into my head when I saw the picket line of the BBC standing on the road between here and Lambeth Bridge. If peaceful pickets were standing on land which belonged to a building rather than the highway, they would be committing an offence. They would be setting our. to prevent fellow workers from entering the premises. The people on strike at the BBC intend to prevent their colleagues entering the building and assisting the BBC to put out its programmes. As I read the clause, as long as they are doing that on the footpath or the public highway, they are not committing an offence. But if they

707
were on the forecourt and the forecourt belonged to the BBC, they would be committing an offence; they would be setting out to intimidate or obstruct colleagues from entering and performing their normal duties in pursuance of the picket that they were conducting.
Therefore, what is at present lawful trade union activity and with which no one suggests we should interfere—it is a longstanding right of trade unionists to picket buildings or premises which belong to employers with whom they are in dispute—will need to be carried out on a public highway or on a footpath rather than on land belonging to the employer, otherwise the participants immediately become liable to conviction of a criminal offence. Is that what we are after? I agree with Members of the Committee who say that the clause must be restricted as much as possible. I would prefer to see the criminalisation of these activities removed altogether. But in the absence of any indication that the Government are prepared to remove the penalty of imprisonment from the clause—of which they have so far shown no sign—I shall be prepared to support the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
Viscount Mountgarret: Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps he will clarify one point for me. Is he saying that those who wish to object to the possible destruction of an area of outstanding beauty—he mentioned Oxleas Wood—are acting lawfully? Is he saying that it would be unfair to stop them obstructing the activity of building the road in question? Surely there are other ways to make one's feelings known in a proper and civilised fashion. We have seen too much of this petty and ridiculous obstruction, which the Government wish to cease.
9.45 p.m.
Lord Avebury: The noble Viscount is a lawyer so he can tell me, if he likes, whether people who go onto a contractor's land and lie down in front of the bulldozers, as I am suggesting they have done, have been committing a criminal offence in the past. I am not conscious of seeing the prosecution of demonstrators who obstruct contractors in that way on their own premises. I do not believe that it would be a criminal offence at the moment. The police may come along and remove them from the site, but I do not think that any prosecution would result from their activities.
Earl Ferrers: We have had a delightfully circuitous debate. The amendments seek to restrict the application of aggravated trespass to sporting events. The noble Baroness very fairly said that she was concerned about road traffic matters and tree felling and she argued that there ought to be a right of protest on such things. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said that there ought to be a right to protest against authority. After hearing the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, I agreed with my noble friend Lord Mancroft in that I thought that the noble Lord was living on another planet. He said that there must be a right to protest and that people who protested were not being anti-society. He said that these were non-violent activities, that it was a traditional and legitimate right of people and that that
708
was why we have no need of a written constitution. He talked of the freedom of expression and said that the Government were trying to close the avenue of peaceful protest. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I wondered what on earth he was talking about. What we are talking about has nothing to do with protest; it is trespass and the law of trespass. The noble Lord said that the Public Order Act 1986 is adequate to deal with all cases. It manifestly is not. That is the reason why we have made the alterations in the Bill. The Public Order Act 1986 has not been adequate.
Perhaps I may readdress the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, to what we are talking about. When the noble Lord started talking about picketing outside Sainsbury's I thought that had absolutely nothing to do with aggravated trespass—
Noble Lords: Why?
Earl Ferrers: If you picket outside Sainsbury's you are usually picketing on the highway and on the pavement. That has nothing to do with aggravated trespass.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley:If you are on Sainsbury's forecourt and if you are going to protest outside the supermarkets these days, as often as not you are on an enormous area which belongs to the shop itself. It is exactly that which is being caught by the Bill as drafted.
Earl Ferrers: If that is the case it seems to be fundamentally a very good reason why the clause is in the Bill. Is the noble Lord saying that here is a patch of ground owned by Sainsbury's upon which it has built its supermarket and that everyone else can come along, clobber up the land and fill it up by protests and that the owner is not liable to say, "This is not right. This is unfair"? I think that the noble Lord has made the case for the clause.
Perhaps I may redirect his mind again. A person commits the offence of aggravated trespass if he trespasses on land in the open air and does anything which is intended to have the effect of intimidating those persons, or any of them, so as to deter them from engaging in that activity, or which is intended to obstruct that activity, or to disrupt that activity. That is what we are talking about.
It is perfectly true that country sports are affected. The disorder of field sports events is only one of the primary factors behind the Government promoting this legislation. But we do not believe that it would be right to restrict the provisions solely to that sphere. There is no good reason why other lawful activities should not be protected from obstruction or disruption. There is no good reason why their participants should not be protected from intimidation. Those who take part in garden parties, building a motorway or running Sainsbury's, if the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, wishes to take that view, have just as much right to pursue their lawful activities without hindrance and trespass as do those who are playing croquet or cricket.
If there is to be a law of aggravated trespass—which is what is proposed—then it should apply equally across

709
the board and not just to one set of people, such as those engaging in sport, and not apply to others. That makes no sense and it is not in any way fair.
Baroness Mallalieu: I am grateful to the noble Earl for indicating that it is the intention of the Government to extend the application of this clause beyond the field which I believe most of us thought that it had been introduced to deal with. I shall try to straddle the two strands of the argument and hope not to fall between the two horses that I am trying to ride this evening. Having seen at first hand, as I know a number of other Members of the Committee have, what has passed as peaceful protest but which has involved bullying, violence and intimidation, and speaking purely on a personal basis, I am in no doubt that additional legislation is needed. The noble Earl has been good enough to hear me on occasions outside this Chamber when I have spoken to him about my fears that people would be seriously injured or killed if legislation were not brought in to deal with what has been happening and what I have unhappily seen occur at far too close quarters.
But I, and others on all sides of the Committee, are concerned that in the legislation which the Government now seek to introduce people should not be caught who do not fall into the category of those who are not just protesting or putting their views, but who are actually trying to bully and intimidate others. There is a real anxiety that if this clause remains without any restriction it may catch some whom I believe that even the noble Earl would accept were not in the Government's contemplation and may restrict the freedom of some people who, as they feel, demonstrate and express their views.
I am anxious that there are Members of the Committee opposite who feel that this provision should remain wider than the proposed amendments would allow in order to deal, for example, with disruption to certain farming activities. I see that there are other amendments which this House will consider later which would appear to meet those matters. I am anxious that restrictions which are proposed should be confined to the purpose for which they are designed. If there are other areas of disruption in which there is a need to restrict protest, then they should be contained in separate clauses. I am anxious at the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, that this clause as it stands will affect those who do no more than peacefully protest. I cannot agree with him because I believe that it is designed in such a way as to deal with those whose activities go far beyond what he would consider to be legitimate if he were to face them himself.
For that reason I feel that this legislation is necessary; but in the amended form of the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Having heard anxieties expressed from different parts of the Committee, I hope that the Government will not dismiss them because they are real. If this provision can be restricted so that it applies in this instance specifically to sports, and if there are other areas which are causing anxiety and real concern to the police at the present time where the veneer of peaceful protest is being used as an excuse for bullying, intimidation and violence, then there should be clauses
710
to deal with them and the House should have an opportunity of looking at those situations and deciding whether legislation is needed. All that should not be lumped together in one clause in this way. It is for that reason that my noble friends and I—and noble Lords of other parties—have expressed those reservations.
I shall no doubt take a view on later clauses which the noble Earl would not wish to hear, but, so far as concerns this series of amendments, I should point out that they are very restricted. All that they do is to ensure that the provisions of this clause are restricted to the purpose for which, as I understand it, they were designed. I appreciate that at this stage the noble Earl makes no concessions; but I hope that when he has time to reflect and to consider people's real anxieties about many aspects of this matter, he will feel that some restriction along these lines is necessary.
The Earl of Haddington: Perhaps I may add a note of support to the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. I think that the clause as it stands is too broadly based. It encompasses activities by private individuals and by public bodies. I refer specifically to roadworks. I know that they are as close to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, as they are to mine. Roadworks are becoming more and more extensive in the south of England. They destroy much of the countryside across which my noble friends like to hunt. They really should think about that point.
There is much reference in Clause 65 to penalties against those who vandalise and damage sites of historical and archaeological interest. The Department of Transport is one of the greatest offenders in that respect. In our part of the world, in Scotland, the department wants to march a by-pass through Trimontium, which is one of the largest and least excavated Roman settlements north of the Border. Much knowledge would be lost by that intrusion. In the Winchester area, despite much protest by the local population, an ancient and important burial site at Twyford Down has been disturbed; and at Stonehenge, the greatest of our megalithic monuments, there is a threat to build a dual carriageway in a 48-metre trench no more than about 100 yards away from Stonehenge itself. That would ruin the site —but the sight has already been ruined, if your Lordships will forgive the pun. At Bath, the Swainswick by-pass has caused much excitement and people are protesting about it. It goes past Salisbury Hill at the top of which there is a labyrinth, one of the few ancient British labyrinths—
Lord Elton: I wonder whether the noble Earl will give way for a second. I want to clear my mind as to whether we are still talking about Amendment No. 73 which, as far as I understand it, has not been withdrawn, or whether we have moved on without formal procedure to some other part of the Bill.
The Earl of Haddington: My apologies. Have we moved on?
Baroness Mallalieu: We have not moved on due to my failure to ask the leave of the Committee to withdraw Amendment No. 73. I now beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley Lord Beaumont of Whitley had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 73A:
Page 47, line 32, leave out from first ("in") to ("on").
The noble Lord said: I had expected that Amendments Nos. 73A, 74, 75 and 76 would be grouped together, but they are not. In the circumstances and at this stage, I do not intend to move the amendment.
[Amendment No. 73A not moved.]
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 74:
Page 47, line 33, leave out from ("anything") to end of line 34 and insert ("with the primary purpose").
The noble Lord said: I thought that Amendments Nos. 74, 75 and 76 were grouped and that they made a coherent whole. Under the circumstances, I shall not move my amendments, but we may return to them at a later stage.
[Amendment No. 74 not moved.]
[Amendments Nos. 75 and 76 not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Grantchester): I have to tell the Committee that if Amendment No. 77 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 78.
[Amendments Nos. 77 and 78 not moved.]
10 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar Lord Macaulay of Bragar moved Amendment No. 78ZA:
Page 47, line 42, at end insert:
("(3) A person exclusively exercising his rights as a bona fide rambler, hillwalker or other recreational user of the countryside shall not commit an offence under this Act.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment is designed to exclude from offences under the Bill any:
"person exclusively exercising his rights as a bona fide rambler, hill walker or other recreational user of the countryside".
Most of this has been discussed at an earlier stage. Much of the heat that has been generated by the Bill and the firing that has gone on between landowners and the people who want to exercise rights of access over land arises from doubts that individuals will still be able to exercise rights of access to the land within the law. The object of the amendment is to enshrine in the statute the rights mentioned in the amendment so that people do not end up having a confrontation with the landowner or the police when they are walking about on land doing no harm to anyone.
We have already heard the views of the Scottish Landowners' Federation from my noble friend Lord McIntosh. It would be of interest to know whether the Government have received any representations from any landowners' associations in England and Wales about sustaining the rights of innocent people—if I may put it that way—going about the countryside as they have done since time immemorial. I beg to move.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: As the noble Lord has said, the amendment covers much the same ground as that which has already been discussed. I know that there is concern, particularly in Scotland, that there may be
712
some problem in identifying the intention of those people who are innocently walking across land: are they intending to be innocent or are they not?
The amendment is slightly strange because, were it to be inserted into the Bill, how would one argue in court who is a bona fide rambler? It could be a rose, quite apart from anything else. The noble Lord is a lawyer and will know the answer to that, but it is a strange way to word a statute.
Earl Ferrers: The anxieties of the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay—if I may say so—are misplaced. Those who peacefully enjoy the countryside have nothing to fear. They will not come within the scope of the offence. The offence of aggravated trespass will bite only on those trespassers who wilfully disrupt or obstruct, or who intimidate others who are engaging in lawful activity, or who seek to disrupt, obstruct or intimidate those people.
Intent is a crucial element of the offence. Those who are merely enjoying a recreational pursuit should have nothing to fear. The same goes for ramblers. But it would be wrong to seek to restrict the protection which is available from the criminal law by excluding some people from its scope. The law should apply equally to everyone. Where ramblers, hill walkers and others behave offensively—if they do—it is right that aggravated trespass should apply to them. As I think the noble Lord will agree, that is highly unlikely, but it would be wrong to exclude any particular section of people from the offence.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: I am obliged to the Minister for that reply. That was never the intention. The amendment may have been badly worded with the use of the phrase bona fide, but its intention was to enshrine in statute the right of the citizen as opposed to the right of the landlord. At the moment it is all one-sided. As I observed earlier, the landlord will make the decision. The amendment would at least give some statutory recognition to the fact that there are people who wish to exercise their rights. One can take away the words bona fide—I did not hear the noble Baroness's alternative to bona fide. People who are exercising their well-known and well-established rights to walk over the land should have that right enshrined in statute.
I listened with interest to what the Minister said. Obviously, at this time of night we are not going to enter into a prolonged debate and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 78ZB:
Page 47, line 44, leave out ("imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or").
The noble Lord said: I should not have objected to any of the provisions in the clause had it not been for the criminalisation of the activities that it covers. If the Government had merely presented us with the notion that aggravated trespass was a harmful activity which needed to be deterred and that substantial fines could be imposed on those engaged in it I should have had little to say. The existence of the three months' imprisonment provision has made me think more carefully about the matter and I was not reassured by what the Minister said at an earlier stage.
Dismissive remarks about my noble friend's examples were not helpful. Obviously, the noble Earl knows nothing about the topography of Sainsbury's or he would be aware that in almost every case the shop is surrounded by a large area of car parking and forecourt where people might well wish to demonstrate. And why should they not do so? The noble Earl at the conclusion of his reply was almost saying that no one should have the right to go into Sainsbury's premises and in front of the entrance do anything which would in the slightest inhibit shoppers from entering.
The lack of a proper definition of the activities that will be lawful and what will be caught by the provisions worries me too. Clearly, at one end of the scale is the violence which the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, deplored. I warmly share her views, but we are not talking about that because it is dealt with under other legislation. It is the nature of the intimidation or obstruction, which will be covered by these clauses and which may result in the person's imprisonment, that causes me great anxiety.
People have done things which hitherto under the law they have been able to get away with and which have resulted in important changes as they see it—whether it be as regards environmental destruction wrought by the indiscriminate policy of motorway building or even as regards sport. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that a few years ago I was a defence witness in the trial of Peter Hain who ran an organisation called Stop the '70 Tour. The South Africans were proposing to come to this country to play cricket and many of us thought it was undesirable for us to play host to racist selected teams which came from that country.
As a result of the activities of my friend Peter Hain, who is now a Member of another place, public attention was drawn to the evils of the apartheid system, which mercifully has been brought to an end. My friend Peter Hain made a significant contribution to that in his attacks on apartheid sport, which he would not have been able to conduct under the provisions of the Bill. He was acquitted of every one of the charges brought against him on that occasion, except one of a comparatively minor nature for which he was fined.
If the Bill had applied at the time of the Stop the '70 Tour Peter Hain would have been liable to three months' imprisonment. I do not see that we want to extend the scope of imprisonment in this way. I have said that three times tonight. I said it twice in relation to Clauses 56 and 58 and a third time in relation to the new clause proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner.
I repeat that, by extending the criminal law to a greater range of what have hitherto been considered normal activities, we are making a serious mistake. We should deal with aggravated trespass, as we deal with all the other provisions in Part V, by a process of fines only.
I have no hope that the Minister will give me a favourable reply to this as he has not done so on the earlier occasion. However, I wish to register the fact that this is the third time that we have dealt with offences punishable by imprisonment and it is not the last example that we shall come to in the Bill. I regret that and I hope that, when Members of the Committee have had an opportunity to consider everything that has been
714
said on this subject, we may encounter a more responsive attitude at the next stage of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: Is it not the case that when a statute creates an offence that offence may be committed to any number of degrees, either very trivial or very serious? Is it not the case also that statutes sometimes lay down a minimum but always lay down a maximum? The maximum is supposed to be appropriate for the most serious degree to which the offence is committed. Is it not the case that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, merely removes the appropriate penalty for the maximum degree and substitutes nothing whatsoever? Therefore, it is entirely inappropriate.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: There is no issue in this Committee that unlawful conduct should be visited by a sanction. The issue in the debate in which Members of the Committee participated a few moments ago was as to which unlawful conduct can be left safely to a civil remedy and which is so serious that it should be visited with a criminal sanction.
We understood from the noble Earl that it is the Government's intention that the objectors on Sainsbury's forecourt who may obstruct the path of the odd shopper are guilty of conduct so serious that we should attach to it a criminal sanction; that we should make those objectors criminals. But, if that is the case, I certainly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that we should not then attach to that offence a penalty of imprisonment. Of course that is a maximum. But we are saying that the people demonstrating outside Sainsbury's could fall into the area which is punishable by imprisonment.
If the noble Earl had given a different answer a. few moments ago and had said that it is the Government's intention to confine those clauses to really serious conduct of the kind of which examples have been given by some Members of the Committee, then I should have agreed that there are kinds of criminal conduct which merit imprisonment and I do not believe that I should have supported the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. But if the noble Earl says that the Sainsbury's category is quite deliberately being brought into the clause, then it seems to me that it is quite disproportionate that those people should be liable to imprisonment.
Lord Mancroft: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, have both expressed considerable anxiety about the prospect of the clause catching inadvertently the innocent peaceful protester. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Avebury has moved the amendment so that peaceful protesters are not caught by the criminal law and sent to prison.
That is all very well but the fact is that the noble Lard failed to convince the Committee during the course of the debate on the last amendment that the legislation would catch out those peaceful protesters. He has not taken into account the fact that the purpose of the clauses is to catch out one particular group—and that is not peaceful protesters. If the noble Lord's amendment

715
is accepted, those protesters who are decidedly unpeaceful and, indeed, very warlike, will avoid the sanctions of the law.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to intervene. If he takes the view that the peaceful protesters outside Sainsbury's are not caught by the clauses, then he will need to persuade the noble Earl because the noble Earl assured us a few moments ago that they would be and should be caught.
Lord Mancroft: I do not wish to speak to the noble Earl but, having listened to what he said, it seemed to me that he was not talking about the peaceful protester. He was talking about the obstructive or intimidating protester which is very different from the peaceful protester referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.
The key to the mistake in the reasoning of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on this matter is when he used, in his own words, a few minutes ago the phrase "get away with". The reason these clauses have been brought forward is that people who have been breaking the law and who have been committing serious offences—for example, attacking people and abusing people—which are contrary to the Public Order Act have been getting away with that because the police and private landowners, and anyone else for that matter, have been unable to obtain convictions. That is why the Government have brought these offences forward and that is why they are being introduced. We need these penalties so that those who have escaped the consequences of their behaviour under the Public Order Act will escape them no longer.
10.15 p.m.
Lord Avebury: I do not know whether the noble Lord has ever been convicted of obstruction but I have. The circumstances were that I was passing the Aeroflot offices on Piccadilly minding my own business and there was a demonstration of Jewish emigres who were protesting at the refusal of the Soviet Union to allow their relatives and friends to leave the Soviet Union. One of them accosted me and said, "You spoke at a meeting of the campaign against psychiatric abuse the other day. You will be interested in this". I was then handed a leaflet. I was reading the leaflet on a pavement in Piccadilly when a policeman came up to me and said, "Move". I replied, "Excuse me but I am just talking to this lady about the reasons for the occupation of the Aeroflot offices". He said, "No you are not. When I tell you to move, you move and if you do not move you are committing an offence". I said, "You must be joking". He said, "You will see whether I am joking". He grabbed me by the arm, drew it behind my back and twisted it, dug his nails into my wrist and marched me off to the police car. I was taken to the station and charged with obstruction. When I consulted a lawyer about this he said, "You are causing an obstruction when the police say you are causing an obstruction and therefore there is no way you will rebut this charge in court". The only thing I could do was to make a
716
complaint against the officer—I did so, naturally without success—on account of the violence which he had exhibited against me in the course of the arrest.
I only mention that story to show that a person standing on a pavement, or indeed on the forecourt of premises where he may be protesting against some activity which is lawful in itself, is ipso facto committing an offence and he can be charged with obstruction by the police. If obstruction in this clause means the same thing as obstruction in the ordinary law, to be committing it one does not have to be doing anything violent at all, or anything particularly intimidating. One simply has to be standing in front of premises and perhaps displaying a placard, giving out leaflets, shouting slogans or anything of that sort. If that is the kind of activity that the noble Lord and the Government wish to criminalise, I have to part company with them.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: How can anyone say that the police do not have the power to deal with issues of this kind, perhaps excessively? I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I was present some years ago at a march of the National Front through Haringey. In the course of that march there was peaceful protest by many of us against the intrusion of racists into our borough. In the course of that march I saw one of the people I was with bundled forcibly into a police van. I took out a piece of paper from my pocket and I wrote down the letter and the number of the policeman who did that. Another policeman came up to me, snatched the piece of paper from my inside pocket and said, "If you use that I am taking you in as well". If it was not for the fact that I had my two teenage sons with me at the time I would certainly have been taken by force into a police van under those circumstances.
There is no shortage of powers for the police at the present time to obstruct peaceful protests on a political basis. What is proposed here is the justification in statute of that aggressive power against the community by authority. I do not approve of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raising this matter again when it was grouped with an earlier amendment. I must say that on a procedural point. However, as regards the issue he raises, he is entirely right.
Earl Peel: It is quite clear that the noble Lord is really opposed to these additional powers of pre-emption. He does not like the idea of the police officers or officer having the power to anticipate what this individual or these individuals are going to do. Yet there is clear evidence of the need for pre-emption to prevent such people stopping others from carrying on a perfectly legitimate activity. I suspect that that is the root cause of the noble Lord's objection to the Bill—the provision to allow the police powers of pre-emption. I believe that that power is essential if this Bill is to be effective.
Earl Russell: Can the noble Earl explain how the anticipation of what people may be going to do is compatible with the presumption of innocence?
Earl Peel: The police have great experience in these matters, particularly in relation to field sports. These

717
activities have been taking place for many years. They are becoming worse and worse. That is one of the main reasons why we have these two clauses in front of us in the Bill.
As I said, the police have had experience in these matters for some time. It is clear to them and to those of us who have witnessed these goings on that these people gather with the clear intention of disrupting a perfectly legal activity. If we are to prevent that disruption from taking place I contend that the police must have these pre-emptive powers. Otherwise these provisions will not be effective.
Lord Hylton: In the past I have corresponded with the noble Earl the Minister about the disruption of traditional field sports, in which I do not indulge myself, although I recognise the right of others to indulge in them. What seems to me to be necessary is a clarification of the law on peaceful persuasion. I am not convinced that this Bill sets about achieving that in an appropriate manner, particularly when it creates new imprisonable offences.
Earl Ferrers: One of the advantages of the procedures of this Chamber is that periodically we group amendments together so as to expedite the proceedings. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, moved Amendment No. 58BA. Eleven other amendments were grouped with that amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said with a certain pride that he had already spoken three times this evening on imprisonment. Having done my little bit of mathematics, I can tell him that we are now on the fifth of the 12 amendments upon which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has already spoken three times. Therefore, heaven help us, how many times will he speak on the same subject? He is entitled to do so, but it is rather like having one's dinner three times over. We have heard the arguments which he has pursued this evening three times before.
The trouble is that we get carried away and hear extraordinary things, and, with respect, we waste a great deal of time. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said that he was talking on a street outside the Aeroflot office. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said that he was nearly shoved into a police van in a demonstration in Haringey and that this issue is all about peaceful protest. It has nothing to do with peaceful protest. We are discussing aggravated trespass. The offence of aggravated trespass is perfectly clear. It is committed when, in relation to any lawful activity in which persons are engaged, a person trespasses on land in the open air with the object of intimidation, and obstruction and the disruption of that activity.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and others keep coming back to what happens at Sainsbury's. I feel that Members of the Committee are letting the line run out of the fishing rod. We are discussing aggravated trespass. The definition of that offence states quite clearly that, where people are engaged in lawful activity and others trespass on land with the specific objective of preventing those people from engaging in that lawful activity, that ought to be a criminal offence.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I am sorry to be tiresome, but will the noble Earl give us a straight answer? Does he consider that the people on Sainsbury's forecourt who may get in the way of a shopper should be liable to be sent to prison for three months?
Earl Ferrers: I would not be prepared to say whether a person outside Sainsbury's would be incriminated by a court. However, what is perfectly fair is that, if people are trespassing, and aggravatedly trespassing, on someone else's private land—whether that is Sainsbury's private land or on the estate of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, wherever he has it in Sandwell—it is the offence of trespass.
I was surprised that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer —he has been a Solicitor General; he knows the law backwards and forwards—asked whether these people ought to be in prison. As my noble friend Lord Elton said, when one makes laws, one has to allow for the worst; and the worst is imprisonment. But for that to occur on every or any occasion is unlikely.
I cannot and will not, with respect, answer the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, as to whether it is right for the person who carried out a peaceful protest or aggravated trespass outside Sainsbury's to go to prison. The fact is that if aggravated trespass is to operate, in the end an imprisonable offence might be created. But the chances of people going to prison for such an offence are small. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord realises that.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister must have some historical sense. I agree that if Jack Cade marches from Kent into London and hangs the Lord Mayor of London there might be some legitimate sanctions against him. But perhaps the noble Earl will look back to the Levellers on Saint George's Hill in Weybridge—private land in 1642—to Peterloo in Manchester, to any of the protests of the Chartists, or to any of the legitimate protests of the suffragists in our history. Virtually all those legitimate political protests which have promoted political change in our society over the centuries would now be outlawed by more stringent legal constraints than British law has encompassed in the past. That cannot be right.
Earl Ferrers: I simply say that I do not agree. The majority of protests occur in the public domain, on the streets, in Whitehall, or on the road. If the noble Lord says, "Because we wish to protest over something, let us go into someone's else's house; let us go into their private domain, and let us intrude in order to make that protest", one comes to criminal law. If someone makes a protest in the house of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, he is entitled to contact the police and say, "There are people coming on to my premises who are carrying out actions which are against the law. Will you please remove them?".
Lord Avebury: Although the Minister commented on Sainsbury's, he refused to give an answer as to whether the conduct described was lawful or would be liable to imprisonment. However, he deliberately ignored the other two examples that have been given. He made no comment on my suggestion that if lawful

719
pickets in front of the BBC were on the land of the BBC, they would be criminalised. He also ignored my other example of the Stop the '70 Tour protest. I hope that most people in this Chamber would agree that anyone who demonstrated against apartheid, even to the extent of trespassing upon the pitch at Lord's Cricket Ground, performed a useful service in drawing attention to the wickedness of the racist regime in South Africa and helped to bring about the liberation of South Africa with a democratic Government responsible to the whole of its people, to everyone's enjoyment and wonder.
Was it not right that we should try to do everything possible to secure that outcome? Why did the Minister refrain from any comment on whether Mr. Peter Hain would have been liable to prosecution for a criminal offence and imprisonment for three months for the activities in which he engaged in the Stop the '70 Tour protest?
I am quite certain in my own mind that that would have been imprisonable conduct. If in future anyone wishes to stop a racist regime or dictatorship by taking action against the sporting activities which connect this country and that dictatorship, they would be unable to follow the same tactics as Mr. Hain did in 1970.
The nature of the conduct which has become criminal has not been properly defined and is still—in my mind at any rate —misty and cloudy. I do not understand what I would lawfully be able to do in demonstrations against a dictatorship, a racist regime, a chain of shops or an employer who was in dispute with his workers. Because one of the cardinal requirements of the law is that it should be certain in its application, I think this is a bad clause. The imposition of criminal penalties for conduct which is so ill-defined is not the right course for Parliament to take.
However, I realise that I have not impressed the Minister with my arguments this evening on this or Clauses 56 and 58. I can only leave what has been said this evening for Members of the Committee to consider at greater leisure so that we may return to the matter at Report stage. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 78ZC and 78A not moved.]
10.30 p.m.
Earl Peel Earl Peel moved Amendment No. 78B:
Page 48, line 3, at end insert:
("( ) For the avoidance of doubt, for the purposes of this section a trespass may be committed whether or not the occupier or person entitled to possession is present on the land").
The noble Earl said: While speaking to this amendment, I wish, with the leave of the Committee, to speak to Amendment No. 79H, which refers to Clause 64.
The amendment is similar to the one moved by my noble friend Lord Stanley when he was discussing the New Age travellers. It is important to establish whether the new offence of aggravated trespass can be committed in the absence of the occupier of the land or the person entitled to possession of the land in question. For example, the owner or the person with the shooting
720
rights could have let a day's shooting. The owner or the person who had the shooting rights might not be present; aggravated trespass might be on the horizon, taking place, or the police might pre-empt its occurrence. Would the new offences be operational without the presence of the owner or occupier on the land? It is clear that the police require guidance on this, and I ask the Minister to give me an assurance that that is the case. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: These amendments seek to confirm that the occupier of the land need not be present when the offence of aggravated trespass is committed. I think that I can give my noble friend the comfort for which he is looking.
The powers are exercisable only against people who are reasonably believed by the police to be trespassers. Those who are reasonably but wrongly ordered to leave as trespassers are protected by a defence that they were not on the land as trespassers. I hope that that will satisfy my noble friend.
Earl Peel: I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I am satisfied with it and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mancroft Lord Mancroft moved Amendment No. 78C:
Page 48, line 4, leave out subsection (5).
The noble Lord said: I beg to move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend. As the Committee will recall, the purpose of the clause is the prevention of the new offence of aggravated trespass. As yet, the offence does not apply to roads; subsection (5) gives an exemption for roads and my amendment omits that subsection.
The matter was discussed by my noble friend Lord Stanley earlier in connection with the New Age travellers. I wish to return to it because one of the areas of most serious disruption in the countryside is from the roads—the sides of the roads, not the middle. In answering my noble friend earlier, my noble friend on the Front Bench made two comments with which I gently take issue.
First, he said that there was no trespass on roads. He may have inadvertently misled the Committee; or I may have been misinformed. I am under the impression that there is indeed an offence of civil trespass on roads. It happens to be trespass on the roads of the highway authority, whereas on a piece of private land it is against the owner of that land. So there is already a precedent of trespass on roads.
Secondly, in the Bill as it stands there is no exemption—in other words, the trespass is included— on bridleways, footpaths and rights of way. As the Committee will remember, the purpose of a right of way is for a person to go from A to B. He commits a trespass if he does anything else, anything that is for instance undesirable or unlawful, on that right of way. There is no reason why the same should not apply to roads.
My noble friend on the Front Bench made another point with which I would take issue. He said that the police already have adequate powers. Quite clearly the police do not have adequate powers, or we would not

721
have this problem. And the problem is very severe. When asked to leave private land or when prevented from going onto private land, many of the demonstrators and disrupters—the hunt saboteurs or whatever they may be—retire to the roadside, not the middle of the road. If they were in the middle of the road, they could be moved on by the police for obstruction. They retire to the side of the road and they cause disruption to what is going on in the fields or on the moorland near the road.
We are not talking here about any minor or tiresome disruption. I shall cite three out of many recent examples. In January 1992 a hound belonging to the Oakley hunt was called onto the A.6 by hunt saboteurs and was killed there. In December 1992, another hound of the same hunt was killed on the A.6 for exactly the same reason. In 1993 one of the Barlow foxhounds was killed on the A.61. All those incidents caused damage to cars and might have resulted in very much more serious accidents. Some such accidents have occurred in the past.
The reason that I have taken those three examples is that they were produced by the League Against Cruel Sports in a recent briefing document entitled Riot, which was sent round in another place during the passage of the Bill there as examples of hunt trespass. What it failed to point out in those examples is that hunt saboteurs were using their voices and hunting horns to call hounds onto the road, to the distress of the huntsmen and masters and the followers of those hounds, and ultimately the distress of other road users.
On those occasions, and on many others, about which I know my noble friend on the Front Bench has been informed, as have other Members of this House, the police failed to stop those activities, even though on several of those occasions the police were present. One of the reasons is that, when such people are taken into court, some courts say that the blowing of a horn is an offence and others say that it is not. They leave the court and they can do the same the following week, causing accidents and risk again.
If the police had had the powers to deal with this matter, they would have dealt with it. They have been unable to do so. The reason that the whole offence of aggravated trespass was brought forward was that the police were unable to deal with it on private land. The police are equally unable to deal with it on the sides of roads. At the moment there is therefore a huge loophole in this offence. The purpose of bringing these clauses forward is to deal with an extremely unpleasant, undesirable problem which the Government and the Association of Chief Police Officers have accepted and upon which a variety of people in the countryside have been pressing the Government for some time.
It therefore seems a pity if we allow these clauses to go forward and leave a large gap in them which would allow the disorder, violence, intimidation and danger to road users to continue. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend will look favourably upon this amendment. I beg to move.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): I should remind the Committee that, if this amendment is agreed to, I shall be unable to call Amendment No. 78D.
Lord Renton: I rise only to point out—if it has already been pointed out, I hope that I shall be forgiven for raising the matter —that there appears to be a printing error on page 48 at line 6, where the reference should be to Section 56 instead of Section 55.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. Is not it bad enough that already, under the excuse of restricting hunt saboteurs, we are restricting peaceful political protest on private land on any subject whatsoever? That must be bad enough. But the idea that we should extend that restriction to the highway goes against every tradition of diversity of opinion in this country over 1,000 or even 2,000 years.
I can scarcely believe that it can be the desire of the Government that the protest which has been an essential part of the progress of our society should be made a criminal offence in the way proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft.
Viscount Mountgarret: I sympathise with and understand what the noble Lord is trying to say. However, I must ask him whether it does not go a little: far when people deliberately encourage hounds—I refer to hunting—to get on to the road, maybe for the purpose: of having them killed, running the risk of car accidents and so on, because they object to the sport. There is evidence that that has happened on more than one occasion. It is unpalatable but it is true. It may be necessary to have the measures that have been suggested in this amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I tabled and supported amendments which would restrict the provisions of this part of the Bill to sporting activities which included hunting, shooting and fishing. The noble Viscount makes me wonder whether I was in error to make that conciliatory gesture. If disorder spills onto the roads, there are plenty of measures under the criminal law by which that disorder can be contained and violence can be prosecuted. The idea of using the law of aggravated trespass for that purpose is frankly incredible.
Earl Russell: I should be grateful if I could probe a little further the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. Clearly the incidents that he described are serious breaches of the peace. Clearly they create a great danger. I should want to be convinced that there is no other adequate power available to deal with them.
In the first place, one would have thought that the conduct that he described was conduct tending to a breach of the peace. In the second place, should anyone die as a result of people encouraging hounds onto the A.6, it would be possible to imagine an indictment for manslaughter, which is a fairly severe charge. Thirdly, the noble Lord has already mentioned the Public Order Act. He said that the powers were not sufficient.

723
I beg his pardon if I have missed comments made earlier in the day, but I have not heard why those powers are insufficient. We seem to have here a clash between two perfectly genuine arguments. There is a clash between on the one hand the Queen's peace and on the other hand the civil liberties. It seems to me that a clash between those two objectives is one which ought to be avoided if possible, because they are both laudable objectives.
We ought to explore very carefully whether there exist any adequate powers to curb dangerous conduct of that kind, powers which do not have the spill-over effects that we have been discussing in relation to this clause. If such powers exist they should be used.
10.45 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Earl, Lord Russell, says that in the final instance given there was clearly a breach of the peace and we must ensure that breaches of the peace do not take place. I agree with him. I do not believe that anyone considers that this kind of activity, where danger and possible loss of human life is involved, is acceptable, correct or proper.
I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that there is a great deal of highway legislation. It is clear and provides many powers to deal with obstruction and so forth. Equally, I listened to my noble friend Lord Mancroft and in his view it does not seem to work, for the reasons he gave. Perhaps the best thing I can do for my noble friend is say that I shall certainly consider the position between now and the next stage, and consider all the suggestions that Members of the Committee have put forward, to see whether or not there is a way round the problem.
Lord Mancroft: In closing perhaps I may say to the noble Earl, Lord Russell —who raised some interesting points in an extremely constructive way—that there do not appear to be adequate powers. It is rather a case of the proof of the pudding being in the eating. The police have told us, the Government and various others, that they have been unable to obtain convictions in these situations. Had they been able to obtain convictions and deal with the problem, I should not be introducing the amendment this evening.
I agree, and the noble Earl hit the nail on the head, that I need to convince the Committee and the Government that the powers are inadequate. If I have failed to do that, then the Committee and the Government are quite right to turf me out. But I can safely say that there is considerable evidence that there are not adequate powers or, if there are adequate powers, that they are not working.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Perhaps I can ask the noble Lord one question. He cited a number of examples and indicated that there has been either a failure of prosecution or a decision not to arrest those who have been involved in conduct of this sort. Has the noble Lord been told by a chief officer of police that the police cannot act because of deficiencies in the law, or is it his own judgment? I shall be grateful if he will clear that matter up.
Lord Mancroft: I have been in constant contact with a variety of senior police officers, ACPO and representatives of ACPO, official and unofficial. Obviously they have individual theories and ideas of their own, but it generally appears that senior police officers are saying that they have not been able to obtain the convictions for which they hoped, due to a variety of small and tiresome details—they have not been able to obtain the evidence or identification has been a problem. As far as far as I know, we have not yet suffered a case of manslaughter in this area, though we cannot be far from it. The situation is that at the moment the evidence appears to indicate that the system has not been working; the rules and the powers that have been given have not been working.
Lord Avebury: If one is not able to obtain evidence of identification, then the noble Lord's amendment will not help. Is it possible that between now and Report stage the noble Lord could devise a much more limited amendment which would deal with the offence of enticing hounds on to the highway and causing danger to the public, which would not be extended to all the other kinds of activity which are at present caught by the clause?
Earl Russell: My noble friend Lord Avebury has hit the nail on the head. I am extremely worried about the prospect of convicting people without identification. I should like to be reassured, before the amendment reaches the statute book, that we shall not be convicting people unless we have actually identified them as people committing an offence.
Earl Ferrers: Perhaps I may just help the noble Earl. I find it difficult to imagine any situation where a person can be convicted without being identified.
Lord Mancroft: My noble friend has perhaps answered that point for me. Before I conclude, perhaps I may put forward one point which I hope may persuade the Committee of the danger of not closing this loophole. I suspect that some Members may have missed it because I doubt whether many take the particularly attractive newspaper called Green Anarchist. Issue No. 33, entitled, "Smash the Howard Bill", contained a paragraph which reads,
'The good news is that this only applies in "open air' … and that no provision has been made for 'disruption' from public highways".
That is not the only documentary evidence. The Hunt Saboteurs' Association, in its charming quarterly newspaper, has also been trumpeting its ability to carry on its behaviour from the roads because it, too, has spotted the loophole in the Bill.
I am extremely grateful for the reply given by my noble friend on the Front Bench. He has realised that there is a problem. I do not pretend that today, in this amendment, I have found the perfect solution to it by any means—and I would not dreaming of doing so—but I am glad that I have managed to persuade him that there is a problem. It is very serious. While I accept the concern of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, about peaceful protesters and about moving forward, his concern has been registered to the Committee. My noble

725
friend has been kind enough to see that there is a loophole and I hope that at a later stage we may have a solution.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Before the noble Lord decides what action he will take on his amendment, if he notes the concern and if he recognises the concern which we have expressed on Amendment No. 73, it is a great pity that he did not express that concern when we were considering the amendment.
Lord Mancroft: I think I did express it and I expressed it in the very first remarks I made on this series of amendments. I thank my noble friend for his answer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl Peel Earl Peel moved Amendment No. 78D:
Page 48, line 4, after ("land") insert ("includes water, common land and forestry land, but").
The noble Earl said: This is simply a probing amendment to try to clarify that the offence of aggravated trespass could apply on all water, common land and forestry land.
So far as concerns water, I am sure the Committee is aware that the activities of those who wish to disrupt the sport have grown considerably in recent times. The disrupting of angling has become quite widespread. Clearly, it is important that water needs to be covered in the Bill. I am really asking my noble friend whether land in this case covers water.
So far as concerns common land, I am convinced that because common land is private land it would be covered under Clauses 63 and 64 for the purposes of aggravated trespass. However, for reasons which I fully understand, common land has been specifically mentioned earlier in the Bill in Clause 56(7) when dealing with New Age travellers. As such, and because it has been omitted from Clauses 63 and 64, it could lead to claims in court that it was Parliament's intention that aggravated trespass should not apply to such land. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can confirm that it is included, as much disruption does occur on common land.
I seek a further assurance from my noble friend. There are some commons where the public have a right of open access—generally speaking, established under Section 193 of the Law of Property Act 1925. In addition, there are areas of land, such as in the Peak District or the Lake District, where on non-commons access agreements have been agreed. I am asking my noble friend to confirm that, when anyone behaves in a way that would be an offence under the Bill in conditions where there is what I might describe as a more liberal access arrangement than normal, the police will be able to take action if they think it necessary. Those in breach of aggravated trespass laws must not be able to hide behind the fact that they are on land where access is not restricted simply to footpaths and bridleways. I include forestry as well, though the remarks I have made appertaining to common land would, I feel quite confident, cover forestry as well. This is a purely probing amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: It may be that my noble friend Lord Ferrers will say that this is not necessary and that it is slightly overzealous. But one must remember that meets of hounds take place frequently on village greens and on other bits of common land. I know of one such village green where there is a shallow stream flowing down the middle. If it were held that that was not the kind of land to which the clause refers it would be very unfortunate. I am not quite so sure about forestry land, which I would have thought would be included in the expression "land only".
Earl Ferrers: I should like to think that I could lay the anxieties of both my noble friends to rest. Land includes all land in the open air except major highways. The Interpretation Act helpfully tells us that land includes land which is covered by water. My noble friends were concerned about common land. While there are public rights of access to common land and forestry land, if a person exceeds his licence to be on the land he may be trespassing.
Earl Peel: I am very grateful to my noble friend for that reply. It certainly covers the points which I have raised. I feel satisfied and therefore I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley Lord Beaumont of Whitley moved Amendment No. 78E:
Page 48, line 9, at end insert:
("( ) No private prosecution may be brought under this section.").
The noble Lord said: This is a probing amendment. I believe that it is common ground that this is an extension of the criminal law into an area where it has not been before. It has also emerged in the course of debate that there are likely to be many cases where there is not necessarily complete agreement as to whether an offence has been committed. It is also an area in which there may well be, for perfectly justifiable reasons, very high passions aroused. In that situation I wonder whether it is a good thing, in extending the criminal law here, that there should be a right of private prosecution. I merely ask. I beg to move,
Lord Renton: I hope that my noble friend will not accept this amendment and I say that with deep respect to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley. The right to bring a prosecution is one of the fundamental rights in our country and has been for centuries. It has been limited not by abolishing that right, but by saying that it cannot be exercised except with the consent of the Attorney-General. I hope that: I am right about that. That is certainly my recollection. I see no case for abolishing that right in the circumstances of this clause.
Earl Peel: I cannot understand why the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, could wish for one moment that those who perpetrate the crimes which are covered in these two clauses should have special protection. We have seen time and again the League Against Cruel Sports and hunt saboteurs bring private prosecutions against hunt supporters. I can see no reason why on earth we should change the law so that we cannot do something in return.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend Lord Renton is, as so often, quite correct. In England and Wales the right to private prosecution is a fundamental right. It is important in so far as it secures access to the courts for everyone and not just for the Crown. Where a prosecution is considered to be frivolous or malicious the Crown Prosecution Service has the right to take over the proceedings from the person who initiated them. The Crown Prosecution Service would apply the evidential test—that is, that there must be a realistic prospect of conviction—and the public interest test in making a decision on whether or not to discontinue the proceedings. In so far as that was a probing amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, I hope that he feels satisfied with the answer which I have given him.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: Yes, I believe that I do. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 79 not moved.]
Clause 63 agreed to.
Clause 64 [Powers to remove persons committing or participating in aggravated trespass]:
11 p.m.
Earl Peel Earl Peel moved Amendment No. 79A:
Page 48, line 10, leave out ("on any land") and insert ("at the scene").
The noble Earl said: I am moving this amendment as it would appear that a legal loophole might otherwise have emerged. Under Clause 64 a police officer would not be able to give a direction to an individual or individuals to leave the land as he or she - the police officer - may be standing on the road. That must be a drafting error. My noble friend the Minister gave an example earlier about the use of loud-hailers from a car. If the instruction was coming from a loud-hailer and the saboteurs were on the land, it would not be very effective and they would not need to pay any attention to what the police officer was saying. It would be infinitely preferable to follow the precedent of Clause 56 regarding New Age travellers and to substitute the words "on any land" with the words "at the scene". I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: Under Clause 64 a police officer on any land may direct trespassers to leave land where they have committed aggravated trespass. Under the legislation "land" excludes major roads. This amendment seeks to close a possible loophole by ensuring that the officer could issue a direction to leave while he himself is standing on a road, although the offence which is being committed is on land and not on the road. I think that my noble friend has identified, as they say, a lacuna and I am content to accept his amendment.
Earl Peel: I am grateful to my noble friend.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Earl Peel Earl Peel moved Amendment No. 79B:
Page 48, line 13, leave out ("on land in the open air").
The noble Earl said: I feel confident now that my noble friend will accept this tiny little amendment which seeks to correct what I suspect is again merely a drafting error. The words,
"on land in the open air",
are, I believe, superfluous as they already form part of the definition of aggravated trespass under Clause 63(1). I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend should not push his luck too far. I understand that the intention behind his amendment is to remove words which may be superfluous from the legislation. But in this case the words,
"on land in the open air",
are necessary, I am advised, to pick up and to amplify the reference to "land" at the beginning of the clause. That is why they are also repeated in Clause 64(1) (b).
Earl Peel: I would not even contemplate pushing my luck too far in view of my noble friend's generosity. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley Lord Beaumont of Whitley moved Amendment No. 79C:
Page 48, line 14, leave out paragraph (b).
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment, I understand that we are to discuss also Amendment No. 79D. The object of this amendment is to ensure against arbitrary arrest under the common purpose principle. There is no definition in the clause of common purpose or any safeguard against innocent bystanders being arrested, something about which we have already spoken. Proof of a common purpose can only ever be inferred by conduct - conduct which is not required in the present drafting of the legislation as it relies upon persons having a guilty mind. There is no requirement with common purpose for any prior plan or agreement. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I should like briefly to support the amendment. It is important that it should be seen in context. Clause 64(1) begins,
"If the senior police officer present on any land reasonably believes",
he may direct that person to leave the land. The noble Lord seeks to leave out paragraph (b) which follows. The criterion of "reasonably believes" does not sit well with paragraph (b). I hope that the Government will recognise that the effect of the two provisions together is oppressive.
Lord Mancroft: My understanding of this—it is difficult to understand, but I believe that I have it right —is that the paragraph that the amendment seeks to remove is part of subsection (1) that covers pre-emption. The most important points of the two subsections are that they allow the police to pre-empt. Rather than acting as a cure, this could be a prevention. It would prevent the activities from taking place. My reading of that clause is that where the senior police officer present reasonably believes,
"that two or more persons are trespassing on land…and are there with the common purpose of intimidating"

729
that means that they have not yet intimidated. The senior police officer believes that there is a very good chance that they will do so, and he will give them an instruction which will prevent them from doing that.
That is a great deal better than waiting for people to commit an offence with various people then being carried away with black eyes and broken heads. It seems to me that once again the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, is trying to water down something which does not require watering down and we should resist that.
Lord Avebury: Far from watering down the clause, my noble friend is making it easier for the police, because if paragraph (b) is deleted then the senior police officer has only to establish:
"that a person is committing, has committed or intends to commit the offence of aggravated trespass".
But if the paragraph that he is seeking to remove is left in, the police have also to establish that that person and other persons have a common purpose. I must agree with my noble friend. I do not know how a police officer will form an opinion on such a matter.
There may be several persons present one of whom may have evinced the intention to commit the offence of aggravated trespass in ways that lead the police officer reasonably to conclude that that was his intention. The person may, for example, come equipped with horns, placards or other devices which he intends to use to disrupt lawful activities on the site. There may be another person present who is not in possession of any of those articles and who may be merely standing around. He may be a bystander, as my noble friend pointed out, or he may be there out of curiosity to see what: happens when the demonstration begins.
The police officer then seeing two or more persons gathered in the same spot may conclude wrongly that there is a common purpose, and arrest them both, or he might find it extremely difficult to decide whether they have a common purpose. It causes confusion in the mind of the police officer and makes it more difficult for him to carry out his duty. If he has only to identify that each person on the land has the intention to commit the offence, that places a plain, simple duty upon the police officer, which he will have no difficulty in carrying out. My noble friend has an extremely good point which should be upheld.
Earl Peel: It is clear that this is another example of Members of the Committee opposite attempting to cut out, water down or reduce this fundamental power of pre-emption which is given to the police in the Bill. I do not understand why they are so against it, because, as I have said previously, the police have a considerable degree of experience in dealing with these matters. The essence is to allow the police to intervene before an offence is committed.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: Will the noble Earl give way? The police can do that under paragraph (a). What is the need for paragraph (b)? Paragraph (a) includes the intent to commit and covers that point. Why is paragraph (b) needed?
Earl Peel: When dealing with a large number of people, which I think is the purpose of the amendment, it is clearly more difficult to give an instruction unless it can be done as suggested in the Bill.
Lord Avebury: If the noble Earl has considerable experience in these matters, perhaps he can cite other examples of legislation where the police have to establish common purpose. Will he say in what proportion of cases where prosecutions are brought against such persons the common purpose is established to the satisfaction of the courts?
Earl Peel: As I understand it, the main purpose of the amendment is to have a power of reducing the ability —whichever way one looks at it—of the police effectively to carry out this new power of pre-emption—
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: No, no. Withdraw. That is not the purpose.
Earl Peel: Will the noble Lord please explain to me precisely what the purpose is because I have misunderstood him?
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: Indeed. The purpose is to simplify the whole thing and to make it easier for the police in addition to everyone else. Subsection (1) (a) is all that is needed. It covers the points that the noble Earl raised. Subsection (1) (b) is quite unnecessary.
Lord Wigoder: My noble friend is correct in this matter. It is a perfectly simple question of law. Under Clause 64(1) (a) the police may give directions to any person who intends to commit the offence of aggravated trespass. That is the pre-emptive element. Subsection (1) (b) deals with the situation in which there are two or more people who have a common purpose, according to the view of the police, in intimidating and so forth; in other words, in committing the offence of aggravated trespass. If two or more people have a common purpose to do that, in law each intends to commit the offence of aggravated trespass. Therefore, each is covered by subsection (1) (a). As a matter of law, I cannot see that Clause 64(1) (b) adds anything except a certain complexity so far as the police are concerned.
Lord Mancroft: Perhaps I may help the Committee. The problem probably lies in the fact that the noble Lords, Lord Beaumont, Lord Avebury and Lord Wigoder, have never been present at one of these rather unpleasant incidents in our countryside at which this part of the Bill is aimed. One of the points that I raised earlier, which Members of the Committee found difficult to understand, was the problem of identification.
Perhaps your Lordships will visualise yourselves in the middle of one, two or three large fields and imagine that there are one or two policemen. Some 30 or 40 people are milling about, some of whom are wearing Balaclava helmets to disguise their identity. One person runs out of the crowd and hits someone on a horse or attempts to intimidate someone using a gun and then runs back into that crowd. In those circumstances, the policeman on the spot will find it very difficult to identify that individual in order to issue an instruction to

731
him. Even though at that moment he is after only that one individual, the best way he will be able to proceed is to order off the entire group on the basis that they are consorting with that one individual. Hence the fact that the police require powers to instruct one individual or a group in which that one individual may have concealed himself. Thus they need those two seemingly parallel powers which in practice it will be important to retain.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is only in respect of hunting that we have to have this new provision. In every other criminal offence before the law a policeman has to be convinced that the person he is about to arrest has committed or was about to commit an offence. It is only in these circumstances that the Government seem to believe that there must be a new concept of common purpose which is expressed in totally different terms. Subsection (1) (a) contains a clear use of the phrase "aggravated trespass" which has been introduced in a previous clause to which the Committee have agreed. In subsection (1) (b) that definition is totally abandoned and we have a completely new view of common purpose.
If the Government or the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, want to introduce the concept of conspiracy to commit an offence, we will look at that on its own merits. That is not what is proposed here, however. What is proposed here is an extra freedom for police who cannot identify someone as committing an offence to arrest people at random regardless.
11.15 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: Perhaps I may help the noble Lord. He foresees a problem, his solution to which is to use a much larger hammer to crack the nut than is desirable. He spoke of the special circumstances surrounding hunting. One of the reasons that the Government, after considerable pressure and with some reluctance, have brought forward this provision and seen the need for it is because there are, as there are in many other areas of life, slightly different circumstances here.
Let us suppose that the provisions were aimed particularly at problems encountered in other sports; for example, football, cricket or something like that. Those sports take place in a fixed area. The police are able to be there hours in advance if they wish to be. They can ring the area and have as many policemen there as they like. It is very difficult for them to do that in the hunting field because the hunting field moves rather rapidly. Therefore situations arise in which the police—it may be one policeman on his feet or several in different vehicles—move about very rapidly after the saboteurs, who are also moving around very rapidly in vehicles in different groups all over the place. The problem is that it is very difficult at times for the police to get their hands on the individual person.
Surely it is very much better for the police to say, "We can see that trouble is brewing. People are getting over-excited and they are starting to run. People will end up in hospital." It would be much better to order the
732
whole lot of them off and the problem is then nipped in the bud. The trouble is then prevented before it even starts.
The removal of the clause will make the job of the police more difficult in preventing crime.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Including the hunt, of course. The police should order the whole lot off, including the hunt, should they not?
Lord Mancroft: Hunts are as liable to the law as anybody else. If the police ask a hunt to move in any directions, it does so. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and other members of his party do not seem to understand—and I wish that they would understand— that there is no issue of hunt trespass because no groups have come forward and said that there is a problem. Nobody has ever called the police to prevent the hunt beating him up. That simply does not happen. It is only when we reach the details of the debate that the noble Lord's real concerns start to surface. He can put them well aside.
The police need the power to deal with a small group of extremely unpleasant animal rights activists whose intention is to break the law and get away with it. The Government have responded and the Opposition and other Members of the Committee are trying to water that down. It is simply not acceptable.
Lord Wigoder: I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, is saying. I assure him that I am not trying to water anything down. I am merely seeking to look at the matter as a matter of law.
Perhaps I may take it out of the context of the hunt and take it in a context with which I am rather more familiar. if the police see a man punching another man and causing him actual bodily harm or assaulting him and there are a group of men around who are egging on the man doing the punching and encouraging him by their attitude or by what they say—for example, "Good old Charlie, give it to him Charlie", and shaking their fists or whatever it may be—each of those people is guilty of the offence of causing grievous bodily harm. Even if they lose the ringleader because they cannot identify him, the police are fully entitled to arrest any of the other people present for that offence. There is no need to prescribe in the statute that the police must be satisfied that there is a common purpose. It follows from the state of the law as it is that, if there is that common purpose which the noble Lord postulates, the police are entitled to move in and arrest anybody there.
Therefore, I am merely saying that, if that is applied to the terms of this clause, subsection (1) (b) adds nothing in law and does not water down anything. It does not do anything which is not covered by subsection (1) (a).
Lord Boardman: I have tried to follow the argument but I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder is wrong. There is a clear distinction between paragraphs (a) and (b). Paragraph (a) provides that it must be shown that a person has committed or intends to commit an offence and paragraph (b) deals with a group of people who are clearly, by their actions, doing the very thing which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, suggests would be

733
an offence; that is, collectively intimidating or threatening to intimidate. I believe that there is a very clear distinction and both paragraphs (a) and (b) are necessary to secure the protection at which the Bill aims.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: Before the noble Lord sits down, can he think of a situation in which a group of people have a common purpose to do something in which each of them does not intend to do it?
Lord Boardman: If we are talking about a group of people, an unruly mob—whatever situation is covered in the Bill—it would under paragraph (a), be necessary to show that each one of them had committed or intended to commit the offence for the police to be entitled to act. Instead of trying to show that each of 100 people—that is the sort of size of crowd one gets on some of these occasions—is committing or intending to commit the offence, under paragraph (b) if the whole group quite clearly has a common purpose of shouting and yelling and disrupting and intimidating, the police are entitled to tell them to leave. I believe there is a real distinction between paragraphs (a) and (b) and one that it is necessary to retain for the Bill to be effective.
Lord Avebury: I am no great expert on hunting but I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in considering the example that he puts to the Committee, and that is the case where there are a number of persons in a field, some of whom may be wearing balaclavas and one of whom runs out and commits an act of violence against members of the hunt in the immediate vicinity of this crowd. The police officer has two alternatives. He can either say under paragraph (a), "Each of the persons in that group intends to commit, or in one case has committed, the offence of aggravated trespass" and he then directs each of those persons to leave the land, or he concludes that they have a common purpose and he again issues a direction under Clause 64(1) that they must leave the land. Either way the outcome is the same —the police officer gives directions to all the persons in that group.
But let us suppose that there was a court case and one of the persons said that the police officer was wrong, that he did not have a common purpose with all the rest of the group and that while he was a member of the Animal Liberation Front the rest of them were members of the hunt saboteurs league and so he had a completely different view on the matter, and therefore the police officer was wrong in ascribing a common purpose to him and all the rest of the people in that group. He still intended to commit the offence of aggravated trespass, and therefore he would be caught by paragraph (a). The police officer would be on much stronger ground therefore if he used paragraph (a) and not paragraph (b). It seems to me that the particular case that the noble Lord has offered us as an example of why paragraph (b) is necessary proves the exact opposite.
Lord Burnham: I should like to suggest that this is not a matter which is solely confined to hunting. I cannot give examples from shooting or fishing although I know them to have existed. But there was the notorious case of the riot on Newmarket racecourse in
734
the 1970s. There was also the case of an illegal bare-knuckle boxing match at the Lambourn lurcher show at about the same period. Both these were clearly illegal events with which the police were unable to deal at the time.
Earl Ferrers: One of the interesting aspects of debates in this Chamber is that one gets to know quite a bit about your Lordships. My noble friend Lord Mancroft graphically described his terrible experiences on the hunting field. That was quite alarming, but it so baffled the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that he said, "Let me return to a scene with which I am more familiar —where one man punches another". It is nice to note the kind of company the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, keeps.
This amendment, which is moved by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, would remove the power of the police under Clause 64 to direct people to leave land where they are trespassing,
"with the common purpose of intimidating persons so as to deter them from engaging in a lawful activity or of obstructing or disrupting a lawful activity".
If that were to happen and the amendment were to be passed, the police would have to satisfy themselves that each individual, as my noble friend Lord Boardman said, intended to intimidate others. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said that this was a special power and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, thought that it was a peculiar power and he wanted some examples of it. There is a perfectly good example; this is not a new power. Section 1 of the Public Order Act says quite clearly:
"Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is; such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety, each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot".
Therefore, the concept of common purpose is not new. My noble friend Lord Mancroft is correct in saying that events have shown that it is not uncommon for protesters to be present in large numbers with the intention of preventing a lawful activity.
As my noble friend Lord Boardman said, Clause 64(1) (b) allows a police officer to take effective action by directing an entire group to leave where the police officer believes that they are present on land with the common purpose of disrupting, obstructing or intimidating. Without this provision an officer would be restricted because he would have to form a belief as to the intention of each individual in a group. The language of "common purpose" is used in existing public order legislation to deal with gatherings where there is a clear intention to act together to achieve a common end.
I believe that the pre-emptive powers contained in Clause 64 are essential if the police are to act effectively and efficiently against disruptive trespassers. The amendment would severely hamper their ability to take swift and decisive action. That is why I hope that the Committee will agree not to accept the amendment.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: In these debates it is amazing what simple little amendments trigger such wide-ranging discussion. I detected two main points. I shall deal first with the point relating to foxhunting, of which I have considerable knowledge. I was very

735
interested that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said that the Government introduced the provision reluctantly under great pressure. One wonders who exerted that pressure and how it was exerted. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is possibly beginning to regret the concessions made to the blood sports lobby.
Lord Mancroft: If the noble Lord will be kind enough to give way, I can make that point very simply.
Many hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens in the countryside, who vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal, or for any other party they may wish to support, made their anxieties clear to the Government, through various different organisations—the National Farmers Union, the British Field Sports Society, the Country Landowners' Association, their MPs, those councillors who are not stupidly trying to ban hunting, and a variety of other routes. In addition, the national newspapers constantly carry stories of horrific violence.
As the Committee will know, the Government do not want to legislate unless they have to and a need is shown. Finally, pushed by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which told them that the problem is serious and needs to be dealt with, the Government accepted that there is an unpleasant problem. They said that they do not want violence in our countryside and they agreed to help to solve the problem. Hence this legislation and the lack of support in the Committee for the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, to water it down.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: I have already explained that I did not intend to water it down. I hope that your Lordships take one's statements made in this Chamber as truth. I put forward the amendment as a simplification. It was supported as such by a number of Members of the Committee, including my noble friend Lord Wigoder, who is a very distinguished lawyer and who has no axe to grind on this particular issue.
I was going to go on to say, before the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, so kindly and helpfully expanded on his earlier remarks, that I do not accept what the Government have to say. I do not accept that paragraph (b) is necessary. It seems that those of us who said that paragraph (a) was perfectly acceptable by itself and covered all the points had the better of the argument.
This is a matter to which we ought to return at Report stage, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
11.30 p.m.
Earl Peel Earl Peel moved Amendment No. 79D:
Page 48, line 19, at end insert:
("( ) A direction under subsection (1) above, if not communicated to the persons referred to in subsection (1) by the police officer giving the direction, may be communicated to them by any constable at the scene.").
The noble Earl said: As Clause 64 is drafted at present, the senior police officer must give a direction to all saboteurs present himself or herself. Clearly, as has already been discussed, this may prove to be a somewhat difficult, if not impossible, task when one is dealing with large numbers. As those of us who have
736
witnessed these scenes know, one could be talking of numbers in excess of 200. The amendment allows the direction to be relayed through the other police present, as in Clause 56 to New Age travellers and Clause 58 dealing with raves. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The amendment removes the need for the senior police officer making the direction to leave the land under the aggravated trespass provisions to communicate it personally to all people to whom it should apply. I can see that there might also be occasions where protesters may be present on land in sufficiently large numbers to make it difficult for the senior police officer to ensure that his direction to leave was known to all those committing, or intending to commit, aggravated trespass. The amendment would be of practical value in those circumstances and I should be content to accept it.
Earl Peel: I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to push my luck again successfully. I commend the amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 79E:
Page 48, line 27, leave out ("imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or").
The noble Lord said: At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Minister, I return for the fourth time to the imposition of imprisonment under the various clauses of this part of the Bill. I make no apologies for doing so because every time I rise to move the amendments I hope that I establish in the Committee's minds the fact that we are extending the criminal law very substantially. Although it is unfortunate that it is so late in the evening, I believe that it is necessary for the Committee to consider whether we wish to impose a three-month sentence of imprisonment on people who are found to be guilty of such offences.
In answer to previous similar amendments, the noble Earl has stated that three months is the maximum sentence and that there are few cases for which it will be imposed. However, he cannot tell me even remotely the number of cases.
I have pointed out twice already that there is nothing in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum about the increased costs that will be incurred to the taxpayer by people spending three months in prison at a cost of £3,000 per head per week. The Government ought not to find difficulty in telling the Committee about such substantial amounts of money, even if the numbers of people going to prison are small.
We are dealing with a range of offences which are not as serious as the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has sought to describe to the Committee. The offences of violence would already be covered. Perhaps we may take the example that he gave a moment ago.
Viscount Mountgarret: Perhaps the noble Lord will be kind enough to give way on one point. I may be mistaken, but I believe that the amendment was addressed some time ago. It was grouped with Amendment No. 58BA. Having listened to the noble Lord, the same arguments have been deployed. Does he

737
not feel that he tests the patience of the Committee a little in bringing forward the argument for, I think, the third time?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Perhaps I may say that it is made absolutely clear that the groupings of amendments are suggestions. They are not requirements imposed upon the movers of those amendments. Whether people deploy their arguments in particular ways is a different issue, but on the narrow issue of the procedure of the Committee, one is not obliged to accept the recommendations on grouping of amendments placed before us.
Viscount Mountgarret: I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said. I was merely asking whether, since the arguments being deployed now are so closely allied to those which were deployed previously, perhaps at this hour and knowing the point we wish to reach, it might be more worth while if we proceeded with the other amendments.
Lord Avebury: The answer is no, I do not feel that it would be right for me to forgo moving an amendment which I have placed on the Marshalled List, just as anyone else whose name is to an amendment has moved it in due course. I am taking longer in moving the amendment because of the noble Viscount's intervention. If he wishes to go home, he had better refrain from intervening and let me get on with my speech.
I move the amendment for the simple reason that we are dealing with a different offence from those on which I proposed earlier amendments. It so happens that the speeches are fairly similar because in every case except one the Government have specified a term of imprisonment of three months. Naturally, I have to argue in that context, but the offences themselves are different. Here we are dealing with the case where directions have been given to people by the police officer to leave the land and the person or persons have failed to comply with them, whether or not they were correctly judged by the police officer to be there for a common purpose. It could well be that someone was there simply as a spectator and was caught up in the activities of the police in trying to prevent the unlawful behaviour of some of the group. It is a matter for serious consideration and is not to be dismissed, passed over or ignored altogether, as some Members on the other side of the Committee appear to wish. We are extending the criminal code into more and more areas of conduct which have hitherto been dealt with under the civil law.
I deplore as much as anyone else the violence of hunt saboteurs. I believe that where they commit offences of violence they should be dealt with properly by the courts and sentenced under the existing law which deals with that kind of activity. However, we are talking about something of a lesser nature which the Minister has been reluctant to define. He has failed to comment on any of the examples we have given. I repeat that I believe that the Committee ought to consider carefully whether your Lordships want to extend the criminal law as widely as they are doing under the Bill or whether the cumulative effect of all the additional offences which are being
738
created is to criminalise a new and large class of people who have hitherto been left to be dealt with by the civil law. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said that he made no apology for returning to the matter. My noble friend Lord Mountgarret was quite right. This was one of the amendments grouped with Amendment No. 58BA, of which there were 12. This is the seventh and the noble Lord has spoken four times on the same subject. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, says that the groupings are merely for the convenience of the Committee; people do not have to abide by them. He is quite right, but I emphasise that they are for the convenience of the Committee. Noble Lords might think that it is not convenient for the Committee to hear the same argument repeated four times on the same subject. I have expounded all the arguments on the other three occasions and I shall leave it at that.
Lord Avebury: I was not anticipating that the Minister would have anything fundamentally new to say, but I am disappointed that he cannot even address his mind to the creation of the new offence under Clause 64.
I felt it was necessary, to be perfectly honest, to deal with the amendment separately, even though on the Marshalled List it was grouped with a number of others because it related to a completely different offence. That was a perfectly legitimate view for me to take. It would have been reasonable to expect the Minister to answer this amendment separately instead of behaving as though his replies to the previous amendments on different clauses had satisfied the arguments that I raised. I am extremely disappointed, but not altogether surprised, by the attitude of the noble Earl, which has been nothing if not consistent all the way through this Bill so far as the proposed criminal offences are concerned.
I can only say that we have not exhausted the arguments on the matter. We shall have to return to them in even greater detail when we come to the Report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chairman of Committees: Amendment No. 79F. The Lord Avebury?
Lord Avebury: Not moved.
Earl Ferrers: May I just ask the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, whether he means not to move the amendment?
Lord Avebury: Yes, on this occasion I did mean to say "not moved".
Lord Beaumont of Whitley Lord Beaumont of Whitley moved Amendment No. 79G:
Page 48, line 37, at end insert:
("if—

(a) he engages in offensive conduct which would constitute an offence under this section and the constable warns him to stop, and

(b) he engages in further offensive conduct immediately after the warning.").

The noble Lord said: The object of this amendment is to ensure that there is some safeguard in the Bill

739
against arbitrary arrest and detention. The amendment ensures that the police must be made aware of the offensive conduct by way of complaint and are able to warn the offender against such behaviour. They are then further witnesses to any offending behaviour should the suspect not desist.
The provision for a warning prior to arrest is already required by Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which deals with disorderly conduct. Trespass has only ever been a criminal offence in this country within very limited circumstances. This Bill will criminalise trespass where there is associated conduct which it describes as offending conduct.
The police have very wide existing powers of arrest, both in common law for breach of the peace and under Section 25 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Legislating for a requirement that the police officer must first warn the offender against his behaviour safeguards against unnecessary arrests. Only if the offender does not desist from his behaviour will the police exercise their powers of arrest. Of course this provision would not exclude the police from being able to arrest by using either their common law powers of arrest or under Section 25 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
The police do not appear to have experienced any particular difficulties in the application of a warning under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. It has enabled them quickly to identify and respond to those protesters who wish to engage in non-violent protest and those who may intend to inflame the situation, thereby avoiding mass arrests and keeping good order. I beg to move.
Lord Mancroft: So far as I can make out, this amendment means not only that the offence cannot be pre-empted by the police but that offence has to be committed twice with a warning in between, which implies that, an offence having been committed, the officer can then get hold of the chap, who will presumably have moved rather rapidly at that stage in the proceedings. In other words, it makes the powers of arrest of the officer conditional; it hamstrings the police; and it puts one more obstacle in the way of making these offences and absolutions workable. I hope that my noble friend will reject it.
Earl Ferrers: The offence under Clause 64 is one of failing to obey a police direction to leave the land, and not the substantive offence of aggravated trespass which would have led to the direction being given. To warn someone not to continue to engage in aggravated trespass or face arrest is, I believe the Committee will agree, inappropriate. But I think that the intention behind the amendment is misplaced. I presume that the noble Lord wishes to introduce a provision similar to the one that is contained in Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. That deals with disorderly behaviour which is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. A constable may arrest a person only if he continues to engage in offensive conduct after being warned to stop.
However, the two offences are quite different. Intent is not an element of Section 5 and a person may be
740
unaware of the effect of his behaviour on others. By contrast, intent is crucial to the offence of aggravated trespass. A person will have set out to disrupt, obstruct or intimidate others. The offence will be quite clear. I do not see any reason for giving him a warning about his conduct and then allowing him the opportunity to continue to intimidate others before effecting an arrest. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, will agree that that would be inappropriate.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: I thank the noble Earl for his very full explanation. I shall want to look at it very carefully. Until then, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 79H not moved.]
Clause 64, as amended, agreed to.
11.45 p.m.
Lord Archer of Sandwell Lord Archer of Sandwell moved Amendment No. 80:
After Clause 64, insert the following new clause:
(Trespass by uncontrolled dogs
. In subsection (3) of section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 after paragraph (b) there shall be inserted—
"or (c) it injures any domestic animal either owned by, or authorised to be in that place by, the landowner or occupier.".").
The noble and learned Lord said: A few moments ago the noble Earl observed that groupings are for the convenience of the Committee. I am perfectly content that this amendment should be grouped with those standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walton. But since I am not sure of the situation to which the noble Lord's amendments are addressed, I cannot guarantee that there will be a common theme running through this debate. But perhaps time will tell.
The purpose of my amendment is to explore what has been perceived as a discriminatory element in the proposals in Clauses 63 and 64. In this amendment I do not seek to call in question the content of those clauses. I have little sympathy with those who, however motivated, deliberately intimidate or disrupt lawful activities on someone else's property.
It has emerged during the course of this debate—it was probably suspected by most of us in any event— that the clauses are directed principally at hunt saboteurs and at the motivation of those who hunt. I make no secret of the fact—I should be dishonest if I concealed it—that I am opposed to hunting. But that is a matter that we may debate on another occasion. I believe that issues of that kind should be debated within Parliament. If the Government had addressed the whole of the problem, consulted with all the lawful groups involved and attempted to deal fairly with the whole situation, I should not have troubled the Committee with this amendment—certainly not at this time in the evening.
But if it is true that the clauses were included largely at the instance of those who hunt, the request might have been more acceptable if it had been accompanied by a genuine offer to address instances of complaints against those who participate in hunting. In another place my honourable friend Mr. Elliot Morley introduced an amendment designed to deal with instances of trespass on other people's land by hunts themselves, sometimes

741
by members of the hunt deliberately riding upon the land, but more usually by dogs which were out of control. The answer which Mr. Morley received was that there is an important distinction between trespassing when the unintended consequence is damage and destruction and trespassing for the very purpose of causing damage and destruction.
I say at once that I understand and accept that distinction. I should be reluctant in any event to see the concept of trespass, which traditionally has been dealt with by way of civil remedies, as the subject of a criminal sanction in any but the most compelling cases. For that reason I have not sought in this Chamber to introduce a similar clause, although there can be a degree of indifference to damage which is scarcely distinguishable from intention.
I accept what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, a few moments ago, that many hunts— probably the majority—try to behave with considera-tion, try to avoid entering people's gardens, try to control their hounds and, where there is unintentional trespass, make a handsome apology and an offer of compensation. If that were invariable, again I should not trouble the Committee with this amendment. But unhappily it is not always the case. The League Against Cruel Sports holds correspondence relating to what I would regard as totally inconsiderate and arrogant behaviour by hunt members. I am told that there is a total of around 270 letters from those who appear, on the face of it, to have legitimate complaints. The Committee will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to read them all; I propose to read a brief extract from one of them. It says,
"I could see my own animals just fleeing in terror … and many more were chased in pure terror down my long drive … We were met with what I can only describe as arrogant indifference from the Master of the hounds—we were barely acknowledged when I told him how undisciplined I thought the hounds were as not one had obeyed the horn or the calling of the "whipper-in"'.
Probably the major mischief is the terrorising and sometimes the infliction of physical injury on the animals of those who are the victims of the trespass. It is for that reason that I tabled this new clause. If the Government are concerned for those who hunt, then should they not display some concern that they in turn show consideration for others? Admittedly my amendment goes wider than the mischief I described. What is proposed is that the sanctions already imposed by the Dangerous Dogs Act on those who fail to prevent their animals from trespassing on other people's property and injuring people should be applied where a dog or dogs injure any domestic animal which is lawfully on the land. That is not an unreasonable constraint on the activities of dog owners, among whom I say at once I include myself.
I believe I owe the noble Earl an apology. I accept that the mischief at which the amendment is directed is not readily discernible from the terms of the proposal itself, unless his officials noticed that it was identical with one that was moved in another place. I had intended to write to the noble Earl explaining what I had in mind, but I confess that in the course of dealing with other matters I overlooked it. For that reason I certainly do not propose to seek a decision tonight, either from
742
the Committee or, if he wishes for time to reflect on the matter, from the noble Earl. However, now that I have elaborated on the theme I look forward to hearing the noble Earl's reaction and in that spirit I beg to move.
Lord Mancroft: I wondered what the noble and learned Lord would say when he moved his amendment. It was a source of interest to me. Though he called it "his" amendment, the Committee may realise that it is not actually the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer; it is an amendment produced by the League Against Cruel Sports and put forward in another place—which is fair enough but that is the way it is. And of course, the League Against Cruel Sports, is an animal rights organisation and not, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said in an earlier debate, an animal welfare organisation. Many of its members are former hunt saboteurs and one or two of its members are present hunt saboteurs. These are people who move outside the; law quite happily.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Perhaps the noble Lord will permit me to intervene. It is not advantageous to the standard of debate in this Committee if the noble Lord insists on the practice of "abuse plaintiff's attorney". It is not suitable. Members of the Committee put forward amendments on their own behalf at the urging of numerous bodies outside. It does not do to abuse them in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has just done.
Lord Mancroft: I ask the forgiveness of the Committee, but I do not believe that I abused the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer. I would not dream of doing such a thing. I merely pointed out something which is entirely correct. It is important that the Committee be aware of that fact. I also believe that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, who I am quite sure is doing what he believes to be the best thing in the right place, is being duped—if that is the right word. I do not believe that the noble and learned Lord is aware of the full facts behind this matter.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If the noble Lord persists in this line of argument it will be necessary for me to move Standing Order 30, which deals with asperity of speech.
Lord Mancroft: I hear what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, says and I am extremely sorry about that. But the facts are the facts. I shall therefore turn to the amendment.
The amendment seeks to compare in some way the actions of hunt saboteurs with the actions of hunts. That comparison is not easy to make. Hunt saboteurs happily and consciously step outside the law and seek to interfere on purpose with a perfectly legal activity. No hunt, I believe, in the history of fox hunting, which is a very, very long history, has ever tried to do that. It is true that on certain occasions—a few occasions—hunts undoubtedly go where they are probably not welcome. I hope that they would invariably, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, believes they do not do invariably, apologise and withdraw very quickly.

743
Possibly, if we search very hard, on one or two occasions that has not happened. The noble and learned Lord's friends have searched very hard for him and have produced 270 letters, but I think it is worth reminding the Committee that hunting takes place on more than 27,000 days each year. If all they can come up with is 270 letters, this is not a very large problem, particularly as the police have not had to be called and as violence has not taken place. As the noble and learned Lord said in making his remarks, where damage has occurred there has been compensation and invariably an apology has been given.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I certainly did not say that wherever damage has occurred it has been compensated for. I said that, if there were a handsome apology and an offer of compensation, the problem would not be exacerbated in the way that it is.
Lord Mancroft: I do not take issue with the noble and learned Lord's comments but I take issue with him when he says that the problem has been exacerbated. This problem has been cooked up. If the noble and learned Lord would go back into the shades of the past, the Scott Henderson Commission made a comment in its inter-departmental report in 1949 which is as true today as it was then, as are many things in the world of fox hunting. I quote:
"It has become apparent to us that many people who think they know what takes place obtain their information from propaganda issued by organisations who, in turn, rely to a surprising extent on press reports of particular incidents which, in their turn, are based on misconceptions".
The fact is that these two problems are not comparable. One is a large public order problem involving the police, cost, crime and a great deal of trouble. The other is a tiny pinprick in the affairs of this country and is of no consequence; and it is certainly not one that should involve the Dangerous Dogs Act.
As a solution to the problem, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, has used the Dangerous Dogs Act. I am rather sad in a way that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, is not here this evening, as he would have a great deal to say about that. The Committee will remember what he thinks of the Dangerous Dogs Act. That Act was brought forward by the Government to react against serious attacks by dogs on human beings. It is an extraordinary and specific Act. To attempt to include this area in it is quite ludicrous and is absolutely and completely inappropriate. I hope therefore that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, will withdraw the amendment. I hope, too, that my noble friends will register how dismayed they are that this disgraceful amendment should have been brought forward.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: That really is one of the silliest remarks I have heard in the 20 years or more that I have sat in this House. A very moderate speech has been made by a distinguished Member of the House and it deserves to be taken serious note of. I have no passionate views on either side of this controversy but extreme language of that kind does no credit to the noble Lord who has just used it.
Lord Burton: I know a lady who lives just over a mile from this Palace who used to have a little mongrel terrier. It was, not unsurprisingly, let out in her garden. Every now and then a fox was indiscreet enough to jump into the garden and the terrier would dispose of it. Would that lady have been a criminal if an amendment of this kind had been passed into law?
The Earl of Selborne: Perhaps I may ask for the advice of the Committee. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, indicated, the grouping in this case is perhaps a little eccentric. I am proposing to move Amendments Nos. 80A and 80B, or at least speak to them, but I see no common interest. In those circumstances, sacred though groupings should norm-ally be, perhaps the Committee will allow me to come in later.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Earl is entirely within his rights.
Midnight.
Earl Ferrers: Not only is the noble Earl within his rights, but I believe that he is very sensible, too. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, said that he intended to write to me and he apologised for not doing so. I wholly accept his apology. Had he written it would merely have been another letter for me to open and read, but I would take particular pleasure in reading any letter which comes from him.
In this matter the Government, as a whole, have to be equal. We take the view that people ought to be able to go about their lawful pursuits without let or hindrance provided that they keep within the law. People ought to be able to protest provided that they keep within the law. They ought to have the security of their homes or gardens. If dogs or hounds stray, as inevitably animals do, that is the responsibility of the owners and they should take responsibility for what their charges do.
The noble Lord was quite right and fair in saying that he did not like foxhunting and, if one likes, this is an amendment which is aimed at foxhunting. The amendment would create a new criminal offence; namely, it would be an offence for any owner to allow his dog to enter private property and injure an animal. It goes very wide indeed, criminalising any trespass by a dog which resulted in injury to another domestic animal.
The trespass provisions in the Bill rely on intention. I doubt whether it is possible for a dog to intend to breach an Act even if it can intend to kill a chicken. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 already creates an offence in respect of dogs which are dangerously out of control or which injure any person. Under the Dogs Act 1871 the magistrates have the power to make a control order over a dog which is considered dangerous —in other words, a dog which attacks people or animals. An order made under that Act may specify how the control should be exercised. For instance, it could require the dog to be muzzled, kept on a lead or excluded from specific places such as school playgrounds.
I would be hesitant about suggesting that we should introduce further controls. If an intrusion into a garden is done deliberately the hunt would commit an offence. If it is done accidentally the owners of the hounds are

745
liable to civil damages and the hunt would have to pay for any damage caused. The noble and learned Lord Archer suggested that the offence of aggravated trespass is not evenhanded because it does not catch trespass by hunts where the trespass is not intentional, but nevertheless causes distress.
I think that the offence is evenhanded because as drafted it catches all trespassers who intend to disrupt, obstruct or intimidate. Intention is a very important part of it. But to introduce proposals which can be committed only by hunters would be discriminatory. I understand the noble and learned Lord's anxiety over this, but over all these matters the intention must be there to disrupt, intimidate or obstruct. I do not believe that that can be said as regards what would happen if a hound or a dog accidentally strayed. The fact that it did so would be the responsibility of the owner and also in civil law.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I appreciate the distinction which the noble Earl has just made, and I said so in my speech. I would like to reflect further on this matter. I moved the amendment with some diffidence. I said at the outset that I had no sympathy with hunt saboteurs. I was interested to hear the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. If he had said that he, for his part, had no sympathy with hunts which behaved thoughtlessly and arrogantly and that there were incidents which were to be regretted, and that he would be happy to do anything he could to discourage it then I would have hesitated to pursue the matter, but the noble Lord's reaction was to say that the whole thing was cooked up; that it was a tiny pinprick; that hunts behaved perfectly properly and that he saw nothing wrong in the incidents I mentioned.
That has persuaded me, as I do not think that anything else would, that this is a matter that should be pursued. However, I take the point that one does not readily want to criminalise the domestic dog owner whose dog strays into the next garden. I should certainly like to reflect further on this in the light not only of this debate but of all of today's debates. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Earl of Selborne The Earl of Selborne moved Amendment No. 80A:
After Clause 64, insert the following new clause:
("Offence of disruptive trespass

.—(1) A person commits the offence of disruptive trespass if he trespasses on any land other than in the open air or in any building and, in relation to any lawful activity which persons are engaging in or about to engage in on that land or adjoining land or in that building, as the case may be, does anything which is intended by him to have the affect—

(a) of intimidating those persons or any of them so as to deter them or any of them from engaging in that activity,

(b) of obstructing that activity, or

(c) of disrupting that activity.

(2) Activity on any occasion on the part of a person or persons on land or in buildings is "lawful" for the purposes of this section if he or they may engage in the activity on the land or in the building on that occasion without committing an offence or trespassing on the land or in the building.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale, or both.

746

(4) A constable in uniform who reasonably suspects that a person is committing an offence under this section may arrest him without a warrant.

(5) In this section "lawful activity" and "land in the open air" have the same meaning as in section 52.").

The noble Earl said: I rise to move Amendment No. 80A, which stands in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Walton, and myself. We have rightly spent a lot of time this evening trying to establish the balance between the legitimate right of protest and the legitimate right of people to go about their lawful business. We have been talking about the countryside. There has been common ground throughout the Committee that it is a difficult balance to strike. We have not been talking about inside buildings because the Bill is framed specifically to exclude them. No doubt Members of the Committee will feel that on the whole the existing legislation adequately covers disruptive trespass or aggravated trespass inside buildings.
However, I believe that there has proved to be one specific area where that is not the case. I refer to where research laboratories, particularly those conducting medical or agricultural research and experiments that involve the use of animals, have been subjected to an unacceptable degree of disruption by animal welfare interests. I believe that that cause of concern is getting out of hand in this country. By any standards, the degree of aggravated trespass is well beyond that which one could reasonably be asked to put up with even in the interests of the balance of legitimate rights of protest.
The reason why it appears that the present law is defective is that one of the most common types of such raids on research laboratories sees an activist or activists in a group entering the premises during the working day and seeking to remove documentation—records, computer discs and the like—and bringing with them a document which sets out a claim that any papers or other material removed will be copied and returned. Since the law of trespass requires the intention to deprive permanently, that is not a crime, and it has proved a very successful defence. Time after time extremely unpleasant incidents have arisen in which research workers, conducting their own business in, I believe, the best interests of public service, have found themselves intimidated by that degree of trespass and, in a very distressing way, the law seems to have been ineffective.
I may be wrong about this. It may be that the existing laws could be used more effectively. I am fairly sure that these rather sweeping amendments are probably not the right way to settle the problem, but one thing as to which I am clear is that this is an opportunity to address the problem. I believe that Parliament should take note of the alarming increase in such incidents.
It is clear that documents are removed to disrupt research. Often personal documents are taken, such as staff lists, which are then used for intimidation. That is very frightening for the research workers involved. The provisions are precisely the same as the measures relating to the countryside with which we wrestled over such a long period this evening, but do not involve, I hope, quite such emotive issues. I think that there is clearly a need to protect research workers in laboratories who are conducting their business lawfully, and this the amendment aims to do.
I am certain in my own mind that this is an area that should be addressed in the Bill and I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to tell us how he would like to see this matter dealt with. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I express no view on the terms of the amendment, but I do express a view on the substance of the noble Lord's argument. There is a matter of concern here. Research workers have on a number of occasions been intimidated in the most distressing fashion. If there is a gap in the law here, I hope that the Minister will consider the matter because, speaking from my limited knowledge of the problem, it causes serious disquiet to many members of the scientific community.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior: I have pleasure in supporting the amendment on disruptive trespass, especially in buildings, moved by my noble friend Lord Selborne. That, as my noble friend said, pertains particularly to the actions of individuals who seek to disrupt the legitimate use of animals in medical and other research. They intimidate workers in scientific laboratories and disrupt scientific meetings and conferences. There have been many instances of that happening, of forced entry into buildings and of the theft of animals, some prepared for experimental purposes. There were 3,000 incidents in the period 1990 to 1992. More recently the offices and laboratories of certain institutes have been set on fire. One of those was the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine in Edinburgh and another was the Macauley Institute in Scotland.
Should one stand up and speak against those individuals, one's house may be daubed with paint and other graffiti or one's family may be jostled or even abused in public. I was the victim of such public abuse at a conference in Brighton. My wife was spat upon by those individuals as we walked the gauntlet from the hotel to the conference room. Despite that type of distress, and it is distressing, as I am sure the Committee will recognise, the more serious threats are those of letter bombs and bombs placed under cars with the intention of maiming or even killing.
The intimidation that results from the efforts of those individuals is very real. It leads at times to an unwillingness, by young people in particular, to attend scientific conferences and to publish scientific data because the authors feel that they might be pilloried in public by members of the Animal Liberation Front or even by newspapers, as has happened recently in relation to the Animal Health Trust at Newmarket.
There is a widespread sense that the activists of the ALF fail to be checked and prosecuted by existing legislation, as my noble friend said. Their disruptive and intimidatory activities seem to go unchecked and unchallenged. While the points contained in the amendment would not cover all the aspects that I have briefly described, nevertheless some legislation to deal with disruptive trespass in buildings and its application to individuals who wish to disrupt the legitimate
748
business of medical and other research would go some way towards deterring such activities. They are widely drawn, except that they now refer to:
"disruptive trespass … other than in the open air".
They are as widely drawn as other clauses to which we have objected for that reason. I hope that the Minister will be able to say either that they are not necessary and that there are powers to deal with this undoubted abuse or that the Government are prepared to introduce more limited specific powers which will deal with any defects in the law as it exists.
12.15 a.m.
Earl Russell: It is common ground on all sides of the Committee that Her Majesty's subjects have a right to go about their lawful business and that that right is not in any way diminished if other of Her Majesty's subjects happen to disapprove of that business.
The question here is: what are the appropriate powers? Indeed, are the powers already on the statute book put to a sufficiently appropriate use? It is also a question of whether it is always appropriate to deal with a new mischief by piling up a mass of new criminal statutes, as was done in the criminal legislation of the 18th century. As one historian put it, MPs proposing a criminal offence of stealing their turnips never thought that the misfortune that happened that year to their turnips might happen next year to their potatoes.
In particular, we should pay attention to the powers which remain in the common law. There is one which is particularly appropriate to the case that the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has put before us. It is the common law offence of sedition. It is defined in law as endeavouring otherwise than by lawful means to alter any matter in church or state by law established. Prosecutions are rare, but there are clear precedents. It is designed to deal with exactly this type of case where there is a systematic campaign to prevent the carrying on of a lawful activity.
I hope that among the other points that the noble Earl will consider is the question of whether that offence may provide the appropriate remedy in this case.
Earl Ferrers: I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for drawing the Committee's attention to the law of sedition. It is not one to which I had directed my mind, but I shall do so. I cannot comment on the effects that it does, might or would have.
We all feel a great deal of anxiety about researchers and the intolerable way in which animal rights activists and so forth behave towards them. My noble friend Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior said that he had experienced graffiti and his wife had been spat on. And all for what? Because one is undertaking research which is on the whole for the benefit of the country and often for the benefit of human beings.
We all have great sympathy with what lies behind the amendment. However, the new clauses seek to extend to buildings both the offence of aggravated trespass, which is contained in Clause 63, and the associated police power to direct persons to leave land, which is contained in Clause 64. The new offence of disruptive trespass, which the amendment proposes, is no different from aggravated trespass save for where it can be committed.

749
I do not believe that an extension to include buildings is necessary. The offence of aggravated trespass was designed to deal primarily with the various specific circumstances where trespassers in the open air behave so as to create public order problems. Experience has shown that that is where the real difficulties occur. If the protesters are in the open air and those who are protested against are in the building or, rather less likely, vice versa, not only is the risk of disorder reduced but the immediate effect on the victims is considerably less simply by virtue of the fact that there is a substantial barrier of bricks and mortar between the two groups of people.
I turn now to the point to which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, drew our attention. He wondered whether it was right to deal with new mischiefs by piling up new offences and whether the common law does not provide a number of remedies. We have looked frequently at the problem and we have reached the conclusion, rightly or wrong, that the existing criminal law provides very substantial protection where the protesters and victims are inside buildings. In that respect the amendments seek to widen the law more than we believe to be necessary. For example, where the animal rights protesters protest and misbehave against researchers, there is protection in the criminal law. There are offences of burglary, breaking and entering and theft. It is difficult to see how one can set about a building, a person or somebody's possessions without breaking and entering or committing a burglary or theft or an aggravated offence, grievous bodily harm or, indeed, industrial espionage.
My noble friend Lord Selborne referred to people taking discs or papers, copying them and then returning them. I should have thought that that would have been covered by the criminal law. I was surprised when he said that that did not constitute theft. I should think that it would be breaking and entering or that protection may be available under the laws of copyright. I should not care to give a definitive answer on a generality, but when we have looked at the problem we have reached the conclusion that the offences which are created—and they are terrible offences —are provided for already in the criminal law. The difficulty may be to gather sufficient evidence which is sustainable in court. If an offence is covered by the criminal law, then it would seem unnecessary to add a new offence and fall into the trap to which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, referred of piling up new offences.
Of course I shall take note of what my noble friends Lord Selborne and Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior and other Members of the Committee have said and I shall consider it. However, that is the position as the Government see it at present.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I indicated when I spoke before that I did not necessarily accept the precise language of the amendment and partly for the very good reason given by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey.
But there is a real difficulty here, as I am sure the noble Earl recognises. Many years ago when I held the office that he holds, this matter was drawn to my
750
attention by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. This problem has existed for 20 years. He pointed out that the raids were being carried out on laboratories where animals were being subjected to various forms of scientific experiment and the consequence of that could lead to a very serious public health danger which was not appreciated by many people outside the scientific community. I did then speak to the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police with a view to seeing what could be done to step up the police response to deal with the problem.
That situation has escalated over the past 20 years. I do not believe in using extravagant language, but some of the people involved are on the fringe of committing a form of terrorist offence. In reality, that is what we are talking about. The character of some of the operations carried out by some of those rather deranged people raises a very serious threat to the life of many of our fellow citizens. There have been substantial police operations aimed at dealing with the difficulty. All I can say at this late hour is that I very much hope that the noble Earl will reflect on the matter. I am quite sure that the language of this amendment is not at all appropriate. As to whether there is any weakness in the existing law, perhaps between now and the Report stage we can have discussions with the crime committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers to see whether it has any views on this matter. That might be helpful.
Earl Ferrers: I think that the point which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, makes is a valid one. Many of these offences are now being carried out and they are becoming wicked. People poison food and set fire to lorries and blow things up. I believe that the noble Lord said that they are nearly as bad as terrorist activities. That may well be true but those actions are already crimes and just altering the law will not enable one to catch the people committing them. That is the difficulty and that is what makes us believe that the criminal law is right; the difficulty is being able to locate the people, identify them and bring sufficient evidence to prosecute them. However, as I said, I shall consider what has been said.
The Earl of Selborne: May I say at the outset how grateful I am for the recognition of the problem from all parts of the Chamber. I must make it quite clear—I think I did when I was introducing this amendment—that I was not in any way expecting the format, as proposed, to be acceptable. I am sure that it is not and that it would be far too all-embracing. Nevertheless it was clearly a device to try to demonstrate that there is one essential difference which has to be highlighted—that one can or might have a trespass which is not at the moment adequately covered by the law. '
The only part of this short debate which has disconcerted me is that I do not think I have entirely persuaded my noble friend the Minister that the existing law is, or has, proved inadequate. I am bound to admit I have not considered with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, whether the laws of sedition might be brought to bear on this problem. But leaving that aside—I shall have to think about it a bit more carefully —it is the case that on a number of occasions documents have been removed

751
from laboratories at a time when the laboratories might otherwise be open to access (that is during working hours) so it has been difficult to prove trespass. The documents have been thrown into the bags of waiting motor cyclists who have driven off with them. Some 43 activists were arrested by police when this happened to Boots research laboratory in November 1990, and there was no difficulty with identification, as my noble friend the Minister seemed to think there might be; but in practice because the documents were returned the charge of theft was apparently incapable of being sustained. As the people concerned refused to be bound over to keep the peace, nothing whatsoever happened.
That seems to me an extremely worrying situation. I agree entirely with all who have said that, before one rushes into making laws, one should look carefully at whether one can operate the criminal laws more effectively. But before I withdraw this amendment I ask my noble friend the Minister to reflect once more as to whether he thinks that there might be here a lacuna in the law which should be addressed at a later stage. Perhaps he will tell me whether he can give me any hope that he will look rather more constructively at the possibility that the law of theft, the law of copyright and the other laws we have referred to all might not adequately address the problem which seems to have been successfully evaded up till now.
Earl Ferrers: I gave the undertaking that I would certainly look at what has been said; and in so far as that covers the points which my noble friend has just made, of course I will look at that.
The Earl of Selborne: With that assurance, I thank the noble Earl and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 80B not moved.]
Clause 65 [Trespassory assemblies]:
[Amendments Nos 81, 82, 83, 83A and 84 not moved.]
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 85:
Page 51, line 11, at end insert:
("(11) In relation to Wales, the references in subsection (1) above to a district and to the council of the district shall be construed, as respects applications on and after 1st April 1996, as references to a county or county borough and to the council for that county or county borough.").
The noble Earl said: I have spoken to this amendment with Amendment No. 64. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury moved Amendment No. 85A:
Page 51, line 25, leave out ("imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or").
The noble Lord said: I only rise to mention that this is the fifth occasion on which criminal offences have been created under this Bill. Before anybody reminds me, I should say that I recognise that the amendment was grouped with some others. However, it is not the same as the others because it relates to a different type of offence. The fact that the three months' imprisonment is the same as in the earlier clauses does not make me any happier about the multiplication of offences under this Bill.
I simply record the fact that this is the fifth occasion on which an additional offence has been created, to my mind unnecessarily, under this piece of legislation and under this part of the Bill alone. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: I am so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, reminded us that this is the fifth, sixth or seventh time on which he has spoken on this group of amendments. I shall not bore the Committee by rehearsing the answers.
Lord Avebury: I knew that if I had not reminded the Committee that it was the fifth time that I had raised the matter the noble Earl would have done so. In view of the fact that his answers have been very much the same on each occasion, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 85B to 85D not moved.]
Clause 65, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 66 [Trespassory assemblies: power to stop persons from proceeding]:
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers moved Amendment No. 86:
Page 52, line 4, at end insert:
("(3) A person who fails to comply with a direction under subsection (1) which he knows has been given to him is guilty of an offence.
(4) A constable in uniform may arrest without a warrant anyone he reasonably suspects to be committing an offence under this section.
(5) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (3) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.").
The noble Earl said: I spoke to the amendment with Amendment No. 67. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will be glad to know that I do not propose to make another speech on the subject. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 66, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Annaly: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes before one o'clock.

  THE PALESTINIANS: AID
  THE PALESTINIANS: AID
  NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT IN EUROPE
  NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT IN EUROPE
  ASHEHAM HOUSE
  ASHEHAM HOUSE
  WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION: ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS
  WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION: ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS
  DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS: SUPPORT
  DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS: SUPPORT
  SEWERAGE NETWORK: THIN WALL PLASTIC PIPING
  SEWERAGE NETWORK: THIN WALL PLASTIC PIPING
  SPEED LIMITERS: FUNCTIONALITY CHECKS
  SPEED LIMITERS: FUNCTIONALITY CHECKS
  SECURE TRAINING CENTRES: OPERATING SPECIFICATION
  SECURE TRAINING CENTRES: OPERATING SPECIFICATION
  THE HYDROGRAPHIC SERVICE
  THE HYDROGRAPHIC SERVICE