Sitting of 30 November 1995

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

    QUEEN'S SPEECH (ANSWER TO ADDRESS)
    THE VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's answer to the Address, as follows:
    I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament.

Oral Answers to Questions
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Unlawful Actions
    Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions in the last two years his actions have been declared unlawful in the courts. [1351]
    Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Department on how many occasions his policies have been the subject of court decisions. [1356]
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what has been the cost to public funds since 1979 of judicial reviews following which his actions as Minister have been judged unlawful. [1358]
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): Hundreds of applications for judicial review are made each year. Detailed information on individual cases is not collected centrally. The vast majority of cases are judged by the courts to be without foundation. No information is available on the total cost of the applications.
    Mr. Banks: I actually asked how many of the Home Secretary's actions over the past two years had been declared unlawful. The answer is squillions, it seems to us. If the Home Secretary were not so smug, complacent and arrogant, he would not get turned over in the courts so often. Why does he not start listening to his own advisers and experts, and other people who know about such things? Or is he satisfied to carry on following his own prejudices? If he carries on like that, he will become known as the old lag of British politics.
    Mr. Howard: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be encouraged and much comforted to know that the
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    proportion of cases that succeed is not as high as it used to be. The difficulty is that the many cases that fail just do not seem to get as much publicity as the few that succeed.
    Mr. Skinner: Why does the Home Secretary not have the nerve to admit that he has persistently offended—nine times since he has had his present job? Is he aware that Government money is available for sending young children who are persistent offenders on safari trips? We would be prepared to fund one for him. Better still, he could go to California, where if someone persistently offends, not nine times but three times, it is "Three strikes and you're out."
    Mr. Howard: I had not intended to visit California in the summer recess, but now that I know that the hon. Gentleman will fund my visit I shall certainly consider going.
    Mr. Cunningham: The Home Secretary has demonstrated by his reply that he is a bad bookkeeper. Can he explain why, although the Prime Minister said that there would be an extra 5,000 police officers over the next two or three years, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, through the local authority standard spending assessments, has cut £80 million off local authority budgets—budgets that have to provide for the fight against crime?
    Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. The police settlement has increased by 4 per cent. for the forthcoming year, and that will include funding to pay for the extra officers that the Prime Minister announced to the party conference. We are making good the promises that we made.
    Mr. Charles Wardle: If the European Court of Justice feels able to make a mockery of his decisions on excluding foreign nationals on the ground of national security, what does my right hon. and learned Friend think that it will do with our internal frontier controls and the legally worthless 1985 declaration, which for years senior officials and legal advisers have told the Government has no protection in law?
    Mr. Howard: As my hon. Friend knows, we have made clear on many occasions our determination to maintain our frontier controls. As for this morning's decision, to which I believe my hon. Friend was referring, it goes not to the substance of the exclusion order-making power, but only to procedures. So far as I can see, the only likely effect is that those subject to it are likely to be detained in custody instead of being allowed to leave the country while the exclusion order is being considered.
    Sir Teddy Taylor: How on earth can the Home Secretary justify or explain the European Court's statement that this country unlawfully excluded people who were a threat or a danger to this country solely because we were contravening article 9A of the Maastricht treaty, bearing in mind the assurances which the Government gave to the whole House during the debates on the treaty that security matters were entirely for this particular Government and other democratic Governments? Is not this a terribly serious issue? Will we now have to give compensation from taxpayers' funds to those whom we excluded on the ground of national security?
    Mr. Howard: I have some sympathy with the views expressed by my hon. Friend, and I very much regret the European Court's decision. But it is a very narrow and

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    limited decision which does not deal with the substance of the exclusion order power. The decision deals only with the procedural aspects of that power, and we shall resist— I believe successfully—any claim for compensation that is made.
    Sir Ivan Lawrence: Is it not the nature of my right hon. and learned Friend's Department to be subject to more judicial reviews than any other Department? Has life not become impossible for Ministers, whose every administrative decision is challenged in the courts? Is he aware that the courts are spending much more of their resources on dealing with judicial reviews than they want to, bearing in mind the rest of the ordinary activities of the courts? Is it not time that we seriously started to consider reducing the scope of that remedy?
    Mr. Howard: It is certainly true that the number of applications for judicial review is increasing considerably. I am surprised at the enthusiasm which is shown for the process by Opposition Members. The shadow Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, recently warned against
    "greater activism in judicial review".
    He went on to describe some of the views recently expressed by judges as
    "contrary to the established law and usages of our country".
    I have never gone that far.
    Mr. Alex Carlile: Does the Home Secretary agree that this morning's decision by the European Court simply declares what is, in almost every case, the existing practice—namely, that prevention of terrorism exclusion suspects are given the opportunity to make representations, that those representations are made to an entirely independent person and that the Government recognise that judicial review is a remedy which is available to all who are affected by Government action if permission is granted by a court? Will he tell his hon. Friends who have been babbling about the effect of Europe on this issue that, in fact, the Government have no difficulty whatsoever with this decision, which does not undermine the provisions of the prevention of terrorism Act in any significant way?
    Mr. Howard: It is true that the decision does not undermine the provisions of the prevention of terrorism Act, and we would never allow the provisions of that Act to be undermined. But it is clear that the European Court takes a different view of the procedures that we follow.
    Mr. Carlile: It does not.
    Mr. Howard: Oh yes it does. We must consider the precise implications of that decision, which—as I have indicated to my hon. Friends—I very much regret. The only consequence of the decision appears to be that people who are suspected will have to be detained in custody, whereas now they do not have to be detained.
    Mr. John Greenway: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that this House—the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom—has, year upon year, made its view on the prevention of terrorism exclusion orders abundantly plain? Does he agree that the House has stated that the Home Secretary should have the power to exclude those people? We are now told that there is something wrong with that arrangement because of a directive agreed
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    31 years ago when we were not members of the Community. Is not the sovereignty of this House at risk because of the European situation?
    Mr. Howard: I would be more concerned if the effect of the decision was in any way to take away the powers of the Home Secretary to decide on exclusion, but it does not do that. The court has made a limited criticism of some of the procedures, but we can adapt our procedures without any difficulty. As I have stated, the only consequence of the decision is likely to be that people will have to be detained in custody while we consider their representations, whereas at present they can leave the country without being detained.

    Fire Service
    Mr. Jamieson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the original estimate of fire service spending for 1995–96; and by how much this exceeds the amount of the capping limit for England and Wales. [1352]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Tom Sackville): The estimate of revenue spending by fire authorities in England and Wales in 1995–96 is £1,324 million. One metropolitan fire authority—South Yorkshire—set a budget £640,000 above its provisional cap and this was accepted.
    Mr. Jamieson: Is the Minister aware that the local authority associations are saying that, nationally, there is an £80 million shortfall on fire service expenditure? Given the grim picture for public expenditure next year, do not we face a serious funding crisis in the fire service? When will the Government listen to the local authority associations, the Audit Commission and many others, and face their responsibility for funding a vital emergency service?
    Mr. Sackville: The hon. Gentleman mentions the Audit Commission, which said in its report that at least £67 million-worth of savings could be made if all fire authorities came up to best practice. I have no evidence to suggest that best practice is the maximum efficiency that can be reached. Extensive further efficiencies may be possible. The hon. Gentleman should remember that, in his county of Devon, the standard spending assessment for fire was increased by 9.5 per cent. this year.
    Mr. George Howarth: May I welcome the Minister to his new responsibilities? Is he aware that although the Audit Commission report, "In the Line of Fire", suggested where savings might be made, it pointed out that there were serious structural problems in the method of funding fire authorities? Is he also aware that, within the past two years, the chief fire officer commented on the serious possibility of a funding crisis for fire authorities throughout the country? Is it not time that the Government stopped hiding behind statistics and got down to sorting out the serious structural funding problems within the fire services? Are they prepared to stand by and let a vital emergency service drift towards being unable to fulfil its functions?
    Mr. Sackville: May I remind the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) that the responsibility for setting budgets for fire services lies with the fire authorities. They must satisfy themselves that they can

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    fulfil their duties under the Fire Services Act 1947. It is open to them to set a budget above the Government's capping requirements if they can justify it, and one metropolitan county that did that last year had its budget allowed. If the hon. Gentleman is asking for extra spending on the fire service and everything else, how will he fund his party's promised reductions in income tax?

    Crime, West Yorkshire
    Mr. Sutcliffe: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to visit West Yorkshire in the near future to discuss crime levels. [1354]
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): My right hon. and learned Friend has no immediate plans to visit West Yorkshire. However, we congratulate West Yorkshire police force on the 10 per cent. reduction in vehicle crime, the 3 per cent. reduction in other theft, and the 5 per cent. reduction in burglary recorded in the 12 months to June 1995.
    Mr. Sutcliffe: I congratulate the police, but will the Minister tell us how many extra police officers will be on the beat in West Yorkshire as a result of his proposals? Is he prepared to fund the pilot schemes like the one in my constituency, where two dedicated officers are funded by city challenge? Will he guarantee that, if those schemes are successful, they will receive long-term funding from the Home Office?
    Mr. Maclean: The hon. Gentleman is behind the times. He should know that we do not dictate to chief constables how many officers they may have. As a matter of interest, with the funding made available to West Yorkshire since the Government came to power in 1979, there has been a 7 per cent. increase in police officers and a 65 per cent. increase in police civilian staff, allowing more bobbies to go on the beat. This financial year, the chief constable of West Yorkshire plans to recruit more bobbies and hopes to have 135 more this year alone.
    Mr. Riddick: May I join my right hon. Friend in welcoming the chief constable's announcement of 135 new police officers by the end of this financial year? Is he aware that the chief constable has managed to achieve that by slimming down the bureaucracy in Wakefield and reducing the number of senior ranks? Does not that show that extra money from the Government is not always needed to put more police officers on the beat?
    Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend is right. That pattern is being repeated throughout the country. In nearly all police forces, chief officers have streamlined senior and middle ranks—particularly inspectors, chief inspectors and superintendents—and used the savings to recruit more constables. That means that more constables are out on the beat. They are available for operational duties and that practice has been encouraged by this Conservative Government. There is also the fact, of course, that the first thing that the Government did in 1979 was to recruit the 8,000 bobbies that that lot let slide.
    Mr. Straw: Is the Minister aware that over the three years since the last general election, the number of police officers in West Yorkshire has gone down by 107 and across the country, according to the chief inspector's latest report, by 823—wholly contrary to a pledge given at the last general election of 1,000 more officers on the beat?
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    Given that broken promise, what guarantee can the Minister give that the latest promise on police numbers of 5,000 over three years is going to be honoured or is that going to be yet another broken promise from the Tories?
    Mr. Maclean: With that statistic, as with all the others that the hon. Gentleman uses, especially when he tries to compare falling crime in Britain with crime in other countries, he gets stuck at a particular point in time. He does not like to take the latest, up-to-date facts. He should be aware that the chief constable of West Yorkshire is predicting that by the end of this financial year, he will have 135 more bobbies. If the hon. Gentleman does not understand that getting rid of senior ranks and recruiting constables instead puts more people on the beat, then God help this country if he were ever Home Secretary.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: When my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary visits West Yorkshire and meets the chief constable, could he suggest that when the chief constable deals with the case of PC Godber, the policeman who clipped a young thug round the ear, that police constable should be congratulated rather than disciplined?
    Mr. Maclean: I am sure the House heard what my hon. Friend said and no doubt those remarks will be drawn to the chief constable's attention. Neither my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary nor I interfere in these disciplinary matters. Cases such as this come to the Home Secretary on appeal once the procedures have been followed. I could not comment.

    Community Policing
    Mr. Rendel: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to improve community policing in the Thames valley. [1355]
    Mr. Maclean: The Government fully support community policing and I want to congratulate the chief constable of Thames valley on setting objectives in the Newbury area to prevent vehicle crime, to prevent burglary, and to prevent misuse of drugs by an active programme of partnership and community intervention.
    Mr. Rendel: I am delighted that the Minister congratulates the Newbury police force on its partnership with Newbury district council, which, as he knows, is Liberal Democrat-led. Given the fact that the violent crime record in the Thames valley is currently the second worst in the country and given the amount of money for new policing in the Budget for the next financial year, just how many of the much-trumpeted 5,000 extra police officers are going to be in place by the end of the next financial year?
    Mr. Maclean: The hon. Gentleman will have to wait. I am not going to announce at this moment the settlement on police funding. He will have to wait at least an hour for that. The chief constable of Thames valley has been very successful in tackling crime. In the past two years, burglary has come down 20 per cent. total crime 13 per cent. 25,000 fewer crimes have been committed in the Thames valley; and theft is down 17 per cent. Where a chief constable finds that any particular sort of crime is rising, I am sure that he will use the increased resources that we have made available to target that crime. If there

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    is an increase in robbery or violence, chief constables will use the resources to get those crimes down just as they have tackled other crime.
    Mr. Simon Coombs: Speaking from the head-waters of the River Thames, may I say how warmly welcomed in my constituency was the Chancellor's confirmation of the recruitment of an additional 5,000 police officers across the country over the next three years, following as it did the news of the 5 per cent. fall in crime in the county of Wiltshire in the previous year? Will my right hon. Friend bear it in mind that the ability of the chief constable of Wiltshire to deliver good community policing depends to a large extent on his ability to fulfil other responsibilities such as security in the county?
    Mr. Maclean: I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. When he studies the settlement that we have made available, not only for Wiltshire but for all the other forces in England and Wales for which my right hon. and learned Friend has financial responsibility, I hope that he will conclude that Wiltshire has been well satisfied and has had not only its ordinary policing needs met but those for its special security responsibilities.

    Europol
    Mr. Rathbone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to support the functioning of Europol; and if he will make a statement. [1357]
    Mr. Howard: We already provide substantial support to the existing Europol drugs unit. We shall build on that commitment when Europol comes into operation. We expect Europol to make a very valuable contribution to the fight against international organised crime, particularly drug trafficking, in the European Union and more widely.
    Mr. Rathbone: Although the House will welcome the Home Secretary's commitment to Europol, on which the British Government have given the lead right from its inception, I believe that there is general disappointment at the Government's inability to sign the convention supporting Europol. Can the Home Secretary inform the House that that difficulty will be overcome speedily?
    Mr. Howard: I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that the convention was in fact signed in July following the agreement on it reached at the Cannes summit. We intend to ratify it shortly, and I hope that other countries will as well.
    Mr. Henderson: As such matters must be dealt with at an intergovernmental level, does the Secretary of State accept that the House should be consulted more systematically on proposals, tentative agreements and agreements? Does he agree that there is a need for inter-country police co-operation to fight racist extremists in Europe? If he does agree, does he intend to conclude an agreement on these matters, and, if so, when?
    Mr. Howard: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, the Europol convention was the subject of an explanatory note sent to Committees on 22 February 1994; supplementary notes were submitted on 17 November 1994 and 31 May this year; and the final text was deposited on 28 July.
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    On the hon. Gentleman's second point, I agree that there ought to be intergovernmental co-operation on racism and xenophobia. That is a very different matter, however, from a legally binding document that would require us to consider changing the laws of the United Kingdom in a way which does not meet our circumstances. That was something that I was not prepared to go along with in Brussels last week. If the hon Gentleman thinks that he would go along with that and that the United Kingdom should have signed up, perhaps he would be clear and say so.
    Mr. Fabricant: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with me that racism must be fought wherever it happens, whether on mainland Europe, in the United Kingdom or, indeed, in Leicester? Will he join me in condemning the Opposition spokesman, who was reported on "Dispatches" last night, for his outrageous, disgraceful racist comments?
    Mr. Howard: We look forward to an explanation from the hon. Gentleman at the earliest possible moment.

    Closed Circuit Television
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many closed circuit television schemes are financially supported fully or in part by the safer cities initiative. [1361]
    Mr. Maclean: Forty-two CCTV schemes received funding under phase 1 of the safer cities programme, seven are being financially supported under phase 2, and of course 106 schemes were supported by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's challenge funding scheme.
    Mr. Pike: Will the Minister ensure that schemes such as that in Burnley, which are doing an excellent job, continue to have the necessary finances made available to them? Will he also give an assurance that steps will be taken to stop any illegal use of the tapes made in any of these schemes anywhere in the country?
    Mr. Maclean: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall have another round of challenge funding. We have in fact announced another round of funding, and this time we are putting up not just £5 million but £15 million. We are inviting bids from all around the country, from communities large and small. A key condition of the funding is that there will have to be a code of practice on the proper use of video tapes. We shall also insist that if any scheme that is up and running wants any top-up funding, it should have a proper code of practice as well. I condemn totally the irresponsible use of any CCTV images for commercial gain.
    Mr. Bellingham: Does the Minister agree that it is not just CCTV tapes which need to be looked at carefully, but police interview tapes? Will he look specifically at the bizarre and worrying case involving one of my constituents who bought, at a car boot sale, 20 police interview tapes marked "Essex and Cambridgeshire Constabulary", which contained highly confidential information, including an interview with a schoolmaster who was alleged to have interfered with a choirboy? That could have been highly damaging to individuals—[Interruption.] I do not know why Opposition Members

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    are smirking and laughing—it is a serious matter. Will the Minister ensure that such an incident never recurs and will he comment on it?
    Mr. Maclean: Inquiries are being made by the police. We must be careful about apportioning blame before the inquiries are completed. I understand from the reports that the police say that they have all their master tapes intact and it is likely, or certainly possible, that the tapes came from a solicitor—from the defence copy of the tapes, possibly from a practice from which a solicitor was eventually disbarred. I understand that to be the case and I would not wish to go further without having more information. I hope that when the facts are fully revealed we will not be blaming the police service.
    Mr. Michael: As the Minister knows, the Labour party has encouraged the effective use of CCTV in cutting crime. He will share, as he has suggested, my concern about the sale of films. Does he agree that it would be tragic if public confidence was undermined by people selling surveillance films, whether from the police, the public sector or the private sector? We are willing to help the Home Secretary to pass legislation through the House quickly in this Session to outlaw such activity by anyone in the public or private sector. Will he accept our offer?
    Mr. Maclean: I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman has said. We must be careful and I warn the House that we should not hype up the episode, which is probably just what the promoter of the film wants. We must not get the matter out of proportion. I condemn irresponsible use, but at times it is helpful for the police and others to release certain video tapes or for programmes such as "Crimewatch UK" to show them as it helps detection and prevention.
    We do not want to prevent, through hasty regulation, the sensible use of pictures because of a shoddy, poor-quality, over-hyped film. There is hardly any material on the film from public CCTV and the little that was released by the police for promotional purposes was mostly from private videos inside buildings. The quality of the film was worse than Logie Baird's first pictures in 1925—the public should rightly condemn such rubbish by not buying it.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend think that the safer cities initiative is helped by racist comments such as those uttered on the "Dispatches" programme last night?
    Mr. Maclean: I hope that the Opposition will respond quickly with a total denunciation of the comments and the colleague who made them. Racist comments of that nature are unacceptable from any quarter, particularly from Front-Bench spokesmen from a party which hopes one day to be in government.

    Bingo
    Mr. Hutton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has for deregulating the bingo industry. [1362]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope): We are at present reviewing the controls on bingo clubs as part of the Government's deregulation initiative.
    Mr. Hutton: Does the Minister accept the need to establish a level playing field on which all sections of the gambling industry are able to compete against each other fairly? How much longer will bingo clubs in my constituency and elsewhere, which perform a valuable social role in the community, continue to face petty and bureaucratic restrictions on advertising and on the number of coin-operated machines that they contain?
    Mr. Kirkhope: I am very pleased that the hon. Gentleman shares my concern and interest in the bingo industry; I have recently seen a number of groups representing the industry. I hope to be able very shortly to address the points that he has mentioned and help the bingo industry to achieve greater success in the future.
    Mr. Whittingdale: Does my hon. Friend accept that it is impossible to lose more than a handful of pounds in the course of an evening's visit to a bingo hall, unlike a casino, where literally thousands of pounds can be lost in a short time? Does he agree that there is no reason for bingo to be subjected to the same degree of regulation as the casino industry? Will he consider subjecting the industry to the deregulation process?
    Mr. Kirkhope: I shall certainly do so. My hon. Friend is right to refer to the difference between bingo and casinos and other forms of gambling. I am sure that the deregulation process can be selective in that way, but it is important to ensure that those who want to go about perfectly legitimate entertainment such as bingo should be able to do so with the minimum of regulation.

    Capital and Corporal Punishment
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to review the possibility of restoring to the courts the option of capital and corporal punishment. [1363]
    Mr. Howard: None. Capital punishment is a matter for the will of the House. I am not satisfied that corporal punishment would be useful in practice. It had virtually fallen into disuse some time before it was abolished.
    Mr. Winterton: I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend would not expect me to be happy with that reply. Does he accept that, as I believe, a decent and civilised society should be permitted to protect itself against an uncivilised, heinous and brutal act? I refer to the killing of women following rape, the killing of children following sexual molestation, the killing of police and prison officers in the course of their duty, killings resulting from terrorist bombs and bullets and killings resulting from premeditated armed robbery.
    Is it not right that a civilised society should be able to protect itself from those brutal crimes, and is not the only answer capital punishment? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with me, speaking as a grandfather and father, that the phrase, "spare the rod and spoil the child" is more applicable today than it ever has been?
    Mr. Howard: I tend to agree with my hon. Friend's last observation, and of course I agree with him that any civilised society must protect itself against barbaric behaviour of the type that he described. Where we differ is that I believe that there are other ways in which that protection can be provided, including the sentence of life imprisonment, but it is important that someone

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    accountable to the House continues to have a role in deciding how long someone sentenced to life imprisonment should actually serve, including the minimum sentence for those who are convicted of the murder of police officers.
    Mr. Soley: If the Home Secretary decided to support capital punishment, would he give an absolute guarantee to the House that he would first develop the scientific skills that were necessary to restore life to a person who had been wrongfully convicted?
    Mr. Howard: It is true that the danger of miscarriages of justice and the impossibility of remedying them is one of the strongest arguments against capital punishment.
    Mr. Hawkins: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is highly likely that, if there were a referendum on the re-introduction of capital and corporal punishment, voters would vote for it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) has said?
    Does my right hon. and learned Friend also agree that the Leader of the Opposition might consider corporal punishment for his Front-Bench spokesman on inner cities for his appalling racist comments reported on "Dispatches" on Channel 4 last night?
    Mr. Howard: We condemn and deplore racist comments, whenever they are made, wherever they are made and whatever quarter they come from. I hope that the Opposition will take seriously the observations that were made in the House this afternoon and take appropriate action.
    It is my impression that the Leader of the Opposition administers corporal punishment to members of his Front-Bench team almost daily.

    Crime and Unemployment
    Mrs. Anne Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the relationship between crime levels and unemployment. [1364]
    Mr. Maclean: A wide range of research studies, including those conducted by my Department, have failed to uncover any consistent causal link between unemployment and crime.
    Mrs. Campbell: There is no excuse for committing a crime—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—but does the Minister consider that Government policies that produce high youth unemployment, inadequate youth training programmes and cuts in benefit for the under-25s create conditions in which crime and law breaking can thrive? Are not the Government's policies responsible for the continuing high level of crime?
    Mr. Maclean: The admission in the first part of the hon. Lady's supplementary question will keep Alastair Campbell spin doctoring for the rest of this afternoon. If she does not want to believe Home Office research studies and studies from other independent researchers, perhaps she will believe the highly respected chief constable of Strathclyde who, last Saturday, poured cold water on her pet theories about unemployment and crime. If police chiefs throughout the country can see that, and we see it in our research studies, perhaps one day it will get through to the Opposition; but I am not hopeful.

    Drug Trafficking
    Mr. Spring: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to tackle the international trade in illegal drug trafficking.[1367]
    Mr. Howard: The Government are committed to vigorous action at home and abroad to tackle international drug trafficking and other serious organised crime. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister recently announced a series of measures to improve law enforcement in that field, including a role for the Security Service in support of the police. We are also pursuing, with our European partners, an international initiative to improve drug interdiction in the eastern Caribbean.
    Mr. Spring: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that if illegal drug trafficking is to be combated, a high level of international co-operation will be required? Is he aware of the success of Operation De Niro which, with considerable British help, resulted in 88 arrests world wide and the seizure of $52 million, $11 million-worth of paintings and 9 tonnes of cocaine?
    Mr. Howard: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am grateful to him for giving the House that example. The resources available to many of the organisations that are involved in international drug trafficking are far in excess of those available to a number of nation states. International co-operation, in which we play a prominent part, is essential if we are to combat the activities of those organisations effectively.
    Mr. Bermingham: Does the Home Secretary agree that one of the problems involved in fighting crime such as drug trafficking is the fact that Great Britain is an island? Does he agree that the fact that the Government have cut the number of drug enforcement and customs officers and the number of officers available to both coastguards and others, has not really helped to stop the importation of drugs?
    Mr. Howard: I entirely reject the hon. Gentleman's allegations. We are now concentrating on more effective measures—particularly the use of intelligence—so that we can target the offenders and deal effectively with this menace.

    Immigration and Asylum
    Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received regarding the problem of illegal immigration and bogus asylum applications. [1368]
    Sir Michael Neubert: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to tackle bogus asylum claims and illegal immigration; and if he will make a statement. [1369]
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Ann Widdecombe): I have received numerous representations on a wide range of asylum and immigration issues. My right hon. and learned Friend announced to the House on 20 November the further measures that he proposes to take to tackle the problems caused by unfounded asylum claims and illegal immigration.
    Mr. Bruce: Does my hon. Friend agree that, by speeding up the handling of applications by genuine

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    asylum seekers, we shall improve the position for those who are in real need and reduce the social security budget? Will my hon. Friend hammer the nail home once and for all and stress that that will improve race relations? The vast majority of bogus asylum seekers are now Europeans from the eastern bloc.
    Miss Widdecombe: My hon. Friend is right on every count. Nothing in our Bill is intended in any way to disadvantage the genuine asylum seeker. Britain has a proud record of looking after those in need of a place of safety, and we shall continue to maintain that record.
    The Opposition have consistently accused us of introducing a racist measure. That sits ill with what was said by their spokesman, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz). Before Opposition Members accuse us of racism, perhaps they will apologise for their spokesman.
    Sir Michael Neubert: Did my hon. Friend read the story, earlier this week, of a man from Zaire on benefit who defrauded the British people of £1 million while awaiting a decision on his application for asylum? Does that not make our right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's action on asylum applications and illegal immigration very welcome? Would not any political party that failed to support such measures—Labour, Liberal or Monster Raving Loony—be absolutely barmy?
    Miss Widdecombe: That is perfectly true. Moreover, only the Conservative party is prepared to tackle the problem. Indeed, the Opposition have not made up their minds whether to acknowledge that there is a serious problem. They say that, even if there is a problem, we should not get round to tackling it. It is true that our asylum procedures are heavily abused. It is also true that our social security system acts as a magnet for the unworthy, as does the ease with which people can work illegally in this country. We shall support British taxpayers, no matter what their ethnic origin. We shall ensure that those who are here lawfully are not taken for a ride by those who abuse our system.
    Mr. Timms: I welcome the assurance given by the Home Secretary last week that Nigeria is not now being considered for inclusion on the white list. Will the Minister now put the minds of many people at rest by giving a similar assurance in respect of Sri Lanka, where many thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in recent weeks because of the civil war?
    Miss Widdecombe: We have made it very clear that, at an early stage of consideration of the Bill, we shall give an indication of our thinking on which countries should be designated. I am not willing to anticipate that announcement, and the hon. Gentleman must possess himself in patience.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Nigel Griffiths: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1381]
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had
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    meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Griffiths: Why is the Prime Minister undermining the Post Office price freeze by increasing tax on the post, taking £1 million every working day and forcing up the price of stamps? Is not this yet another case of higher Tory taxes and the Government giving with one hand and taking away with the other?
    The Prime Minister: I can see that the hon. Gentleman was very carefully rehearsed for this week's soundbite. He should look at the record on the Post Office. If he does, he will see that stamp prices have been frozen for some time and that it is two and a half years since the last increase. That is the longest period of stability since the 1960s, and stamp prices continue to fall in real terms.
    Mr. Mark Robinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the extra resources for schools announced in the Budget are very good news? Will he also do everything in his power to encourage local authorities to ensure that that money is passed on to schools?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend touches on two important points. The increase in resources to schools through the local authority budget will be welcome. It is also important that it is clear to parents and to schools that the money provided to the local authority settlement for education should go to education.
    Mr. Blair: Before asking my question, may I tell the Prime Minister that, on Northern Ireland, we reiterate our congratulations to all involved in the peace process? The American President's visit to Northern Ireland today marks a moment of history in which we all rejoice. May I express the hope that these new and strong voices for peace can drown out the old cries of violence and allow everybody, not just there but here, to unite and put aside their differences and work for a common end?
    I do not know whether the Prime Minister remembers the Budget, but may I ask him to withdraw the remarks made by the Conservative party chairman, who has claimed that the Budget will make the average family in Britain £9 a week better off? Will he confirm that, of that £9, almost £7 has nothing to do with the Budget but has to do with the Conservatives' projection of wage increases next year? The real Budget figure is just over £2, and that does not take account of extra costs, charges and taxes. Is that right or wrong?
    The Prime Minister: I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman had to say about Northern Ireland. The President's visit to Belfast this morning was a spectacular success and everyone welcomes what he has had to say about terrorism.
    On the subject of withdrawing claims, the right hon. Gentleman, when he replied to the Budget statement, made a series of comments, the vast majority of which were specious, wrong or misleading. If he cares to examine them, he will find that those that were not wrong were misleading, and that those that were not misleading were wrong. My right hon. Friend said that people will be better off by £450 next year, and that is our expectation.
    Mr. Blair: We are entitled to an answer on this point. The claim was made that people are £9 a week better off as a result of the Budget, but £7 of it comes from earnings

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    rises next year as projected by the Conservative party. The true Budget figure is just over £2, and that is confirmed by the Treasury press release. Is that right or wrong? If it is right, does not it show how the Tories give with one hand and take with the other—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] They do not like it because it is true. If it is true, does not it also show that we can never trust the Tories on tax?
    The Prime Minister: It really is a rich day for the soundbites. After all that they have said about the Budget, it is interesting to hear that the Opposition will not vote against the Budget provisions. They cannot say yes and they will not say no; they have at best a qualified "maybe" about the Budget. My right hon. Friend said that, next year, the average family will be around £9 a week better off and that is our expectation.
    Returning to the issues of taxes and trust, does the right hon. Gentleman recall saying that he did not propose to put up taxes? Does he recall the deputy leader of the Labour party saying:
    "high income levels are going to pay considerably more"
    and that there would be a higher top rate of tax under Labour? There seems to be some difference of opinion between the right hon. Gentleman and his deputy. It does not matter if the deputy goes on shouting at me. It would be better if he stuck to the party line instead of behaving like the mouth of the Humber.
    Mr. Blair: I shall tell the Prime Minister what people will recall at the next election. He went into the election saying that he would never raise VAT, and he raised it. [Interruption.] They can shout, but they will never again be trusted.
    Madam Speaker: Order. I insist on the Leader of the Opposition being heard.
    Mr. Blair: They want a question. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister went into the election promising not to raise VAT and then raised it? Is that simple enough for them?
    The Prime Minister: I can tell the right hon. Gentleman what people will remember at the next election. They will remember a 33 per cent. rate of tax under a Labour Government and a 24 per cent. rate now. They will notice that interest rates have come down by 8 per cent. and that net disposable income is rising—and they will recall that that is not what happens under Labour Governments.
    Mr. Cash: Given the fundamental importance of NATO to Britain and western security and the fact that we are about to send 13,000 British troops to Bosnia, will my right hon. Friend consider vetoing the prospective appointment of Mr. Solana, the Spanish Foreign Minister, as Secretary-General of NATO as he has expressed views against NATO and nuclear deterrence?
    The Prime Minister: I understand from the information that I have received that that most certainly is not Mr. Solana's view. I do not know what he may have said in the past and my hon. Friend may have seen
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    quotations of which I am not aware, but it is my understanding that that is not his view on NATO or nuclear weapons.
    Mrs. Anne Campbell: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1382]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Mrs. Campbell: Will the Prime Minister unreservedly condemn the callous actions of Tory-controlled Westminster city council in moving 100 families with 150 babies and children into tower blocks riddled with the most virulent and dangerous form of asbestos? Are there any depths to which his party will not sink in order to hang on to political power?
    The Prime MinisterOn the subject of depths, the hon. Lady might address her question to the Monklands, Lambeth or Walsall councils, or to any one of many other Labour-controlled councils whose activity in local government is a disgrace.
    Sir Fergus Montgomery: Did my right hon. Friend read in the Sunday Express the article about the strange goings-on in the Sedgefield constituency, where the Hurworth comprehensive school is applying for grant-maintained status? Is he aware that the Labour party there is accused of campaigning on dirty tricks and misleading information to stop the Leader of the Opposition being embarrassed? If my right hon. Friend had a son at a grant-maintained school, would he feel that his constituents were entitled to the same opportunity?
    The Prime Minister: I did not read the article, but if what my hon. Friend said is correct, I am sure that the Opposition would wish to examine the matter, investigate it, condemn what has happened and ensure that such campaigning ceased immediately. Of course people have a right to a ballot on grant-maintained schools. They have a right also to have that ballot without undue hindrance, either from the local authority or from Labour Members. I very much hope that they will have that right.
    Mr. Madden: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1383]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Madden: As the Prime Minister is aware of the importance of prisoners in building still further confidence in the Irish peace process, will he support the early transfer, on humanitarian grounds, of Patrick Kelly and Michael O'Brien to prisons in Northern Ireland, and the repatriation of Irish prisoners to prisons in the Irish Republic—I hope before Christmas?
    The Prime Minister: I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that there is the question of the health of one of those prisoners. They have both been convicted, as he knows, of serious terrorist offences. One of the solicitors involved has submitted medical evidence in support of a transfer. That matter, under the normal procedures, is being examined.
    Mr. Deva: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, if a member of his Front Bench had made a statement such as

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    was made last night by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) in a public television programme, he would have fired him instantly?
    The Prime Minister: I regret any remark that has any connotation of the sort that I believe lies behind my hon. Friend's question. I hope that it is a matter that the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) will clear up.
    Mr. Mudie: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1384]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Mudie: The Prime Minister will be aware that many Yorkshire households are still facing the prospect of using standpipes and that many businesses are facing rotational water supply cuts. Given the obscene profits that were announced yesterday, will the Prime Minister join me and the people of Yorkshire in condemning the directors of Yorkshire Water both for their greed and for their incompetence?
    The Prime Minister: I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that I understand that Yorkshire Water plans to invest £2.5 billion over the next 10 years and that it will invest more than £200 million this year for its customers' benefit. I believe that that is double its half-year profits. I hope that that will go a long way to ensuring that the difficulties that have occurred after years of a nationalised water industry will not be repeated under private ownership.
    Mr. Sims: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1385]
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Sims: Is my right hon. Friend aware that thousands of pensioners will welcome the new 20p rate of tax on savings? Is it not clear proof that the Government are working towards a 20 per cent. basic rate, as distinct from the policies that the Labour party is espousing, which mean that it is heading for a 30p rate?
    The Prime Minister: Given the demands for extra spending that come from Labour Back-Bench Members, there is no doubt that a 30p rate might be exceeded were there ever to be a Labour Government. My hon. Friend is right; the 20p rate is particularly good news for thousands of people with savings, especially, perhaps, for many hundreds of thousands of pensioners with savings.
    I think that it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) who said a few days ago, when talking about Labour policy, that these days it amounts to little more than a marketing exercise. We saw that with the gimmick of a lop tax rate for the allegedly lower-paid. The reality is that we are proceeding towards a lower tax rate of 20 per cent. whereas the Labour party's spending plans add up to substantially more than the current level of taxation, whatever it may care to claim about them.
    Mr. Janner: Would the Prime Minister be good enough to look at the awful case of my constituent, Jasmine Sorabjee, aged three and a half, born in this country and ill, whom the Home Office has seen fit to deport to Kenya with her mother? Is not that a cruel, disgraceful decision, devoid of compassion that shows the disgraceful way in which the Government are abusing immigration rules and failing to exercise any compassionate concern in cases of real human suffering?
    The Prime Minister: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman knows that the Government are not bypassing any of the immigration regulations. He knows that that is the case and he really should not have indicated the contrary. There are strict ways in which these matters are examined. They are examined with compassion.
    Mr. Janner: They are not.
    The Prime Minister: They are examined with compassion. Without any shadow of doubt they are examined with compassion. I have no details of the particular case, but the person removed from this country would have been the parent who, presumably, was an illegal immigrant.

Local Government Finance
3.31 pm
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Gummer): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the local authority finance settlement for England for 1996–97.
In forming my proposals, I have listened carefully to the views of local authorities and their associations, and I have considered fully the demands which will be placed on local authorities in the coming year.
I have also given weight to the interests of the economy as a whole, and in particular the Government's objective of reducing the public sector deficit. Local government accounts for around a quarter of general Government expenditure and has been rigorously examined, as have all other spending programmes. It is clear that many authorities continue to have scope to increase their efficiency.
I have also taken into account our policy that increases in pay and prices within the public sector must be offset, or more than offset, through efficiency savings or other economies. Within available resources, our approach to public sector pay is flexible enough to allow pay to be set to reflect the circumstances of individual groups.
That is the background to the aggregate figures that I published on 28 November. The Government's view is that the appropriate level of revenue spending for local authorities in England—the total standard spending or TSS—in 1996–97 will be £44.92 billion.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will be making a separate announcement on resources for community care, which are included in the figures that I have just quoted. The figures also reflect the transfer of waste regulation to the Environment Agency from 1 April 1996 and certain other minor changes in local authorities' functions next year, and include provision of £100 million for the transitional costs of local government reorganisation.
The figures do not include resources to compensate local authorities for lost income from community care charges, arising from capital disregard changes announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday. A special grant report will be laid before the House in due course to authorise an additional grant in 1996–97 for that purpose.
My proposal, including provision for community care, reorganisation costs and the police, provides for a 3.3 per cent. increase in local authority spending year on year. In allocating these resources, we have reduced provision for capital financing to bring it more into line with authorities' need to spend.
The Government have to decide what local government expenditure the nation can afford, because the national taxpayer foots most of the bill. Last year, we decided on £43.5 billion. This year, it is £44.9 billion. Of course, every year some local authorities spend more than under this system. They have their own resources: council tax, interest, fees and charges. So every year, on top of what the Government allow for, they budget to spend more. That is what we all expect. However, every year they use that difference to try to confuse the electorate. They take this year's spending, which includes all their resources, and compare it with the Government's settlement, which,
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of course, excludes much of their resources. As a result, even though the Government provide for them to spend £1.4 billion more, they claim it as a cut.
I dwelt on that, because the confusion reaches even as far as the House of Commons. It is very important that at least we start by getting the facts straight.
I am comparing—[Interruption.] I am pleased that Labour Members think that, because it will be the first time—for any settlement under the Government—that they have bothered to think about the facts at all. I have to tell the House that the Labour party circulated a note before the Budget statement, saying that, whatever the settlement was, Labour Members had to say that it was inadequate. That shows how interested the Labour party is in the facts.
I am comparing the Government's settlement for last year with that for this year. Last year, local authorities spent more than the settlement, and they will do exactly the same this year.
As for local authority services, we have decided to give the main priority to education. My proposal is that, after adjusting for changes in function, education standard spending should increase by 4.5 per cent. I must emphasise that the amount spent on schools is a decision for the local authority concerned, but no doubt parents, governors and teachers will wish to ensure that the whole of that increased funding feeds through into school budgets.
The provision that I have announced for the transitional costs of local government reorganisation in 1996–97 will need to cover both a further tranche of transitional costs in the areas where reorganisation takes place on 1 April next year, as well as costs where reorganisation is not due to take place until April 1997. Orders have not yet been placed before Parliament to implement all the changes that the Local Government Commission recommended as part of its main county reviews. In addition, we must await the commission's final recommendations on the fresh district reviews; these are due later this year. We envisage a staging of the implementation of reorganisation in England which takes account of the resources available.
Central Government grant and the distributable amount of non-domestic rates in support of TSS will be £35.62 billion, a year-on-year increase of 2.8 per cent. I announced on 28 November that the distributable amount of non-domestic rates in 1996–97 should be £12.74 billion, and I am today publishing the detailed basis for the distribution. I propose that the revenue support grant for distribution should be £18 billion. In addition, some £4.88 billion of specific and special grants would be available. The total of revenue support grant for England, on which I am consulting, may need to be altered slightly if the balance of the police funding formula as between Welsh and English police authorities changes as a result of consultation.
I turn now to the means of distributing revenue support grant. At its heart is the standard spending assessment for each authority.
Standard spending assessments are never likely to be popular, but they must be fair. More SSA for one authority means less for everyone else, because the total is fixed. We are continually discussing with the local authority associations how the SSAs might be improved. I am sure that it would be helpful to the House if the Labour party also discussed that with the local authority associations. They certainly think that they are fair, even

1335
though the counties would like more for the counties and the metropolitan authorities would like more for the metropolitan authorities. It is very difficult, when one has an objective system, that the only people who do not think that it is objective are the official Opposition—in this House, but not outside. We share with the local authority associations all the detailed data and analyses that might form the basis of changing the SSA formulae.
The system is as open and objective as we can make it. Those who claim otherwise simply do not understand the SSA system. The formulae we use are not applied selectively to achieve a particular result for a particular authority—[Laughter.] If Opposition Members wish to press me, I will give them figures that will be very embarrassing to them. I shall be happy to show that the authorities about which they complain got more proportionately under Labour Governments than under Conservative Governments—[HON. MEMBERS: "Westminster."]—and one of them is the very authority they mention.
For each local authority service, the same formula is used for every authority that provides that service. If the formula specifies £2,000 per pupil or per kilometre of road, that is what the authority's SSA is.
All the local authority associations understand the need for a SSA system. The differences between them are about the indicators that they believe are important and the ways in which they should be weighted. We have no choice but to assess the strengths of the conflicting arguments when deciding what changes to make.
For 1996–97, we have brought up to date the data on SSA indicators, such as population and pupil numbers, wherever that is possible. It is right that we should reflect changing circumstances.
We propose only limited changes in the method by which we calculate SSAs. Authorities will generally welcome relative stability in their SSAs. We have, therefore, made changes only where we were satisfied that there is a sufficiently strong case for doing so. Most of the changes have been the subject of representations from authorities. The arguments for and against change have been discussed at length with the local authority associations.
There are, therefore, six main changes. We have responded to suggestions that the allowance for special educational needs and support services should be based on the number of pupils attending maintained schools, rather than the total number of children living in an area.
We have responded to requests that we make distinct provision for local authorities' contributions to the cost of rent allowances, over which they have limited discretion. We have also responded to those who wish a distinct element of the SSA to be allocated to authorities that pay the levies of the national parks and the Broads.
We have responded to those who believe that a larger proportion of the SSA for the police should be related to the cost of pensions and a lesser proportion to the police establishment.
We have followed up the Audit Commission's report entitled, "In the Line of Fire", introducing a distinct element in the formula relating to pensions and a new element relating to the work of the fire service on fire prevention and fire safety. And we have brought up to date the basis on which we allow for district councils providing some county council services and vice versa.
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One controversial part of the formula in which we have retained the existing methodology is the area cost adjustment. We have agreed with the local authority associations that we will set up an independent review, which will report in June 1996. The aim will be to identify a way of calculating the area cost adjustment that is conceptually sound, achieves a wide measure of acceptance among local authorities in all parts of the country and is practical to apply, year by year.
Meanwhile, the area cost adjustment for 1996–97 will reflect the narrowing of differentials in earnings between London and the south-east and the rest of the country. Compared with the adjustment made for 1995–96, SSAs in London and the south-east will be more than £150 million lower, and those in other parts of the country higher by a similar amount, through using the more recent figures on earnings.
I therefore propose that authorities should receive a special grant to damp the effects on council tax of changes in the method of calculating SSAs. I stress that that applies only to changes in the method. Changes in data have their full effect, without being moderated through damping, as is our usual practice.
That means that the change in the area cost adjustment, which I have just mentioned, comes through in full because it arises from changes in the data on earnings. That is even-handed; when the earnings data were changing in a way that was favourable for London and the south-east, London received the full benefit without damping.
The damping grant will operate at a threshold of 2 per cent., taking account both of the change in the SSA and of any damping grant being paid in the previous year as a result of earlier changes in SSAs. In the case of police authorities, the damping arrangements will also take account of the police grant. I know that that will be widely welcomed.
The council tax is now well established as an equitable means whereby local residents contribute to the cost of local services. Council taxes will vary widely, depending on the spending decisions of each local authority and its performance in collecting the tax, on the circumstances of each household, and on individual entitlement to exemptions or benefits.
However, I am required to identify notional taxes for each valuation band, for a standard level of spending—the so-called council tax for standard spending, or CTSS. My proposals incorporate a CTSS for band C of £505. I emphasise to the House that that is merely an element in the grant distribution formula. It is neither a prediction of individual council tax bills nor a national average.
I believe that we have now fully met our commitment to help those facing the largest increases above their community charge bills when the council tax was introduced. I therefore do not propose to continue the scheme of transitional relief in 1996–97. However, I do propose a scheme to protect council tax payers in areas to be reorganised from 1 April 1996 from unacceptably large increases in council tax if those are a direct consequence of reorganisation.
Local authorities need to make a full contribution to the control of public expenditure and to set budgets that their local taxpayers, and the country as a whole, can afford. I am today announcing my intentions for capping criteria.

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First, however, I shall draw attention to a technical change in the capping rules. Billing authorities have until now been required to include in their budget requirement, on which capping bites, a proportion of the income forgone in granting certain discretionary non-domestic rate reliefs. I propose to remove those reliefs from the scope of capping. I am sure that billing authorities will welcome that change. Decisions on the granting of relief are entirely for them, but I hope that the change will encourage greater consistency of policy in that area—for example, towards village shops suffering financial difficulties.
I am issuing today proposed notional amounts for authorities whose boundaries or functions will change from 1 April 1996, including the reorganised authorities in Avon, Cleveland, Humberside and North Yorkshire.
In addition, the provisional capping principles make allowance for a number of changes since last year, such as in the funding of rail services in metropolitan areas. That is necessary to allow a fair year-on-year comparison of budgets. Subject to those and other technical adjustments affecting individual authorities, my proposals for capping criteria are as follows.
As in previous years, when authorities set budgets 12.5 per cent. or more above their SSAs, the proposed criteria will not permit any increase over their 1995–96 base budget. However, I do not intend to seek reductions from the few remaining authorities that set budgets substantially above their SSAs.
In this year's settlement we have given priority to the police, to education, to personal social services, including care in the community and to the fire service. I propose to reflect these priorities in changes that I am introducing into the capping system; changes which will allow those authorities that are local education authorities, police, or fire and civil defence authorities, a greater measure of flexibility.
County councils and the Isles of Scilly, new unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, police and metropolitan fire and civil defence authorities will benefit from the new approach. For authorities budgeting up to 12.5 per cent. above their SSA, there will be two capping criteria. The increase in their budgets will be limited to whichever gives the greater increase.
Under the first criterion, the increase in an authority's budget will be limited to an amount calculated by adding together the increases compared with 1995–96 in the authority's SSAs for education, for personal social services, for fire and—in the case of police authorities—the increase in their police SSA and their principal formula police grant. The second criterion will limit an authority to a flat-rate year-on-year increase compared with its 1995–96 base budget.
The second criterion will give permitted increases as follows—for county councils and the new unitary authorities in Avon, Cleveland, Humberside, York, and the Isle of Wight, and for the Isles of Scilly, I propose that the year-on-year increase should be limited to 3 per cent. For metropolitan districts, outer London boroughs and the London and metropolitan fire and civil defence authorities, I propose that the increase should be limited to 2 per cent. For inner London boroughs and the City of
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London, I propose that the increase should be limited to 1.5 per cent. For police authorities, I propose that the increase should be limited to 3.5 per cent. These percentages will be used if higher than the figures arrived at by adding relevant SSA increases, as I explained earlier.
For shire districts, I propose that the criterion should be the same as last year. That is, any increase of 0.5 per cent. over last year will be considered excessive if it gives a budget requirement above an authority's SSA. These criteria are necessarily provisional, and I cannot take my decisions on capping until authorities have set their budgets. When I come to take those decisions, I shall of course take into account all relevant considerations.
The new approach that I have outlined will allow individual authorities greater flexibility to adapt their budgets to local circumstances. Authorities have repeatedly said that they would use such flexibility in a responsible way, and would not take this as a licence for a general increase in spending and taxes. The Government, and council tax payers, will watch with interest how authorities respond to the greater responsibility that this places upon them. We shall see where their true instincts lie.
Alongside this new approach to capping, the Government are also proposing an expansion of challenge funding in local authorities' capital programmes. Challenge funding is one of the greatest successes of this Government. Earlier this week, the Environment Select Committee reported that the single regeneration budget challenge fund has already demonstrated its potential to achieve excellent value for taxpayers' money. The SRB challenge fund supports the regeneration of cities, towns and smaller communities throughout England. It is also and increasingly promoting genuine community and private sector involvement, integration of different Government programmes and a new sense of partnership between local authorities, training and enterprise councils and others.
The challenge fund is therefore a proven concept, demonstrated by a substantial programme which is making a very noticeable impact. We are already building on it by applying the challenge approach to the housing investment programme and other initiatives, including the new deprived estates challenge fund.
The Government have been enormously encouraged by the imaginative and constructive way in which local authorities have so far seized the opportunities the fund presents. They have found that challenge funding stimulates a new approach to priority setting. Separate service departments come together to co-ordinate an approach which best suits the authority as a whole. The contributions levered in from the private sector enable them to increase the total spend to the benefit of local people, businesses and competitiveness.
We believe that we should build on that progress, and pilot approaches which would accelerate the drive towards challenge funding beyond the relatively small proportion of public spending to which it applies at present. I will therefore publish a discussion document shortly, which will set out options for a pilot scheme for introducing challenge funding for an element of local authority capital programmes. I want to hear from those with further experience of the benefits of challenge funding, and I hope that we will be able to move forward very quickly.

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My Department is today writing with the details of the settlement to every local authority in England. That package includes a consultation paper setting out how we propose to distribute central Government support among authorities, including my proposals on SSAs, for continuing to damp SSA losses and for the police authorities. It sets out my provisional capping criteria, illustrates them by calculations of the proposed cap for each authority and includes my proposals for notional amounts. Copies of this package have been placed in the Vote Office and the Library.
The proposals that I have outlined today represent a balanced and reasonable response to the conflict between the pressure to provide ever more resources for local government and the need to control public spending. They provide for a 3.3 per cent. increase in local authority spending, including police and the transitional costs of reorganisation. They incorporate significant improvements in how available resources are allocated, while continuing to protect people in those authorities that stand to lose most from changes in SSA methodology. They would allow council taxes next year to be set at reasonable levels, offering protection from excessive bills. They represent a package which the country as a whole can afford.
Mr. Frank Dobson: Today's statement shows that the Government are determined to force local councils to increase council tax and reduce the services that they provide for local people. Next year, as this year, local people will have to pay more and get less. [Interruption.] Madam Speaker, we kept quiet for 25 minutes. It would not be a bad idea if Conservative Members could keep quiet for five.
Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He will be heard in good order.
Mr. Dobson: On the basis of the Government's figures, council taxes could rise by as much as this year's average increase of 5.2 per cent. That council tax increase, combined with higher charges for local services like school meals, meals on wheels and home helps, and the cost of service reductions, will cost an average household £108 next year.
The Government's figures also show that they expect council tax payers to cough up an extra £3.5 billion over the next three years, which is about equal to an extra tuppence on the standard rate of income tax. That is just another example of the Government furtively taking away with one hand the highly publicised cuts that they have been making with the other.
The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister today, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday, claimed that the Government will provide more money for education next year. That is simply not true. According to their own figures, councils will spend less on education next year than they are spending on it this year. An extra 86,000 children will be at school next year. It they are taken into account and councils fall into line with the Government's published spending plans, the amount spent per pupil next year in our schools, far from rising, will fall by £40 per pupil.
Let us compare the Government's world of fantasy finance with what is happening in the real world. In the real world, there are more schoolchildren; hard-working schoolteachers expect a pay increase next year; inflation
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drives up the price of books and other school equipment; and councils or schools will have to meet the extra costs of measures like installing seat belts in school coaches.
A landfill tax will be levied on councils, costing them £77 million next year. That is a straight transfer from council tax payers to the Treasury. This morning the Secretary of State said on the radio that councils could save more money by putting services out to tender. As he well knew when he said it, councils are already obliged by law to put their services out to tender and, if a contract does not go to the Tories' friends in the private sector, it can be only because a council's own work force put in a lower and better bid. He also suggested that councils can increase charges to help keep up their current level of spending. Which charges does he want to see increased? Does he want parents to have to pay more for school dinners or pensioners to pay more for meals on wheels or home helps?
This mean-minded settlement will increase council taxes, push up charges for vital local services and cut those services for local people. It means that next year, like this year, the Government will force local people to pay more and get less.
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman is saying, on the one hand, that the settlement is inadequate and on the other that we are putting taxes up to pay for it. The curious thing is that those two ideas do not hang together. How much would he think was adequate? How much more tax would a Labour Government impose to pay for an adequate settlement? They cannot have it both ways. He wants more money without anybody paying it. That is the traditional Labour attitude.
When the hon. Gentleman works out how much the council tax, as he says, will go up, he is saying that every Labour council will put up its tax to the highest level that it can manage within TSS and therefore take that tax off its local taxpayers. In other words, he is proving what we have always said: that Labour councils tax people more, and that immediately they are given the chance to tax more, they take that chance. Yet what did the local authority associations, which are all run by the Labour party, say? They said that if we gave them more freedom they would deal with it responsibly, but Sir Jeremy Beecham has now told us that they will use every corner of that freedom to put up the council tax by 10 per cent.
Already the Labour party has halved that increase to 5 per cent. because it does not accord with the Blair rule, which was circulated around the Opposition Front Bench and was very clear. First, before the Budget was announced, Labour Members had to say that any settlement, whatever it was, was inadequate. Secondly, they could not promise any more money.
The questions of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) beg the question: how can people have more money to spend without any increase in taxation? The answer is that one cannot spend money one does not have. It is a simple answer, but it is one that Labour—new, old or indifferent—has never learned. We have heard today that the Labour party has not learned anything. Wherever it is in power, it intends to spend right up to the limit that it is allowed.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras went on to say that it was fantasy finance. How interesting. The hon. Gentleman was comparing what councils are

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spending this year with what their allowance from the Government is for next year instead of comparing like with like.
Mr. Dobson: That is not true.
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman did. I suggest that he looks at Hansard to see it. He knows that councils will have 4.5 per cent. more, on average, to spend on education and if that money does not get through to the schools, it will be the Labour and Liberal councils that have stopped it. The Government have given 4.5 per cent. to the schools. The only people who can stop it getting there are the Labour party and its local councils.
Lastly, we will be watching carefully the argument about going out to tender. The metropolitan authorities have gone out to tender and in well over 80 per cent. of cases, the in-house team has won but in the shire districts, only 40 per cent. of in-house teams have won. Does that mean that Labour in-house teams in metropolitan authorities are much more efficient than Labour in-house teams in shire districts or does it mean that it is almost impossible to win a contract in a Labour metropolitan district because the local council trade unionists make sure that they are the paymasters and that those local authorities therefore pay them with the council tax payers' money?
Sir David Madel: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the difficulty that Bedfordshire county council has had this year in relation to its school budgets. Can he confirm that his announcement will make it perfectly possible for Bedfordshire county council to put more money into school budgets in Bedfordshire next year?
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is perfectly right. If Bedfordshire county council does not increase significantly the money going to its schools—it has a permitted budget increase of 3 per cent., and more in terms of its education budget—it will be because the council has pinched the money to spend on something it wants more.
Mr. David Rendel: Will the Secretary of State confirm that if there is to be extra real spending by local councils next year in education and other spheres, which he has tried to pretend there ought to be, that money will have to come from an increase in council tax? According to the Department of the Environment's own figures, which were contained in a press release issued on Tuesday, the Government's central subsidy to local councils will be precisely the same in real terms next year as it is this year. There are no extra real resources from the Government. Moreover, is it not the case that a large proportion of the extra resources come from business rates, which are simply a transfer from businesses to the local community, while the amount coming from other taxation is actually falling considerably?
Mr. Gummer: First, it would be more helpful if the hon. Gentleman, when looking at the Red Book, could distinguish between British figures and English figures; otherwise we do not get the comparison right. His comparison is wrong. Secondly, I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has run a business, but most business men do not start off by saying that the only way to save
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money is by getting more. They start by asking themselves whether they can be more efficient and then use the money that they save. The Labour party and its annexes, the Liberals, have said the same thing: that the only way that we can find the money is to increase council tax. Sir Jeremy Beecham, who is of course supported on this matter by the Liberals, today let the cat out of the bag. He said that Labour and Liberal councils will spend every penny that the Government allow them to spend. Whether they need it or not, the council tax will increase by 10 per cent., and it will be a Labour and Liberal increase.
Sir Timothy Sainsbury: Will my right hon. Friend accept that the priority that he has given to education in the form of a 4.5 per cent. increase and the recognition of that in the capping formula will be very widely welcomed? Will he join me in condemning the irresponsible party political scaremongering in which East Sussex county council and a number of others led by Labour and the Liberal Democrats have indulged, frightening parents, teachers and governors by saying that their education budgets are going to be cut instead of increased?
Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend is perfectly right. His county council will have an increase of 3 per cent. It has been going around, as my county council has—it has been a nationally run operation—telling people that it would suffer a 5 per cent. cut. If I may use my own county council as an example, in Suffolk there will be an increase of 5.7 per cent. for education. The county council has been scaremongering and saying that there will be a cut of 5 per cent., which shows how the Opposition parties will use anything to try to get party political support.
Mr. Terry Davis: On the question of schools and the area cost adjustment, does the Secretary of State intend to continue the distribution of money on the basis that Birmingham should spend 20 per cent. less than Westminster on the education of a child?
Mr. Gummer: The area cost adjustment is something about which we argue with the local authorities. Of course, the hon. Gentleman could have used Tower Hamlets or any other inner London borough as an example because the position is the same for all the inner London boroughs and, indeed, the south-east in general. That is how the system works. There is a real argument between Labour, Conservative and Liberal authorities which get money from the area cost adjustment and the similar authorities which do not get the money. That is why, having tried with their help—they also tried, together and separately—we decided that the only way to proceed is to have an independent inquiry to see whether we can find a better method. But there is a fundamental difference: those who receive from the present system like it and those who do not receive do not like it. The trouble is that even the independent group will find that difficult to square.
Sir Dudley Smith: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the socialist and soggy Liberal councils will almost certainly say that that is not enough money? Does my right hon. Friend realise that anyone who studies the figures will welcome the 4.5 per cent. increase on the SSA for education? Will he encourage recalcitrant county councils such as Warwickshire to release more of their financial assets to

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which they still cling on in difficult times? Will he tell such councils that they should live within the inflation figure like everyone else has to?
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend makes a good point. If local authorities wanted to help people on the basis of inflation—if they tried to push inflation down—which would help them in future years, they would seek to live at least within the inflation figure, if not try to make savings. In my hon. Friend's case—in Warwickshire—there is a permitted increase of budget of 3.2 per cent., which will feed through into education more significantly. The concerns that both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) have pressed on me so often have been met this year by that change and will be met in the future by the agreement for an independent review of the area cost adjustment which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith) has often told me, is particularly difficult for Warwickshire.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: The Secretary of State has made great play of local authorities' ability to pass on the money that he says is being provided for education, presumably by way of the SSA. Does he agree that the SSA does not provide the money, which comes through the revenue support grant? For the past few years, with the best will in the world, Newham has been unable to pay its SSA in education because £6 million had to be spent on the homeless and another large sum had to be spent in respect of capital receipts, which it is impossible to pay out of the revenue support grant provided by the Secretary of State. How can Newham, with an increase of 2.5 per cent. in permitted budget—compared with Westminster's permitted increase of 11 per cent. for next year—afford the increase in the figure for education?
Mr. Gummer: The answer is simple. Newham has been overspending right at the top of the level and Westminster has kept its costs low. According to the independent assessment published in the Independent only a few weeks ago—
Ms Hilary Armstrong: It is yours.
Mr. Gummer: It is an independent assessment and has nothing to do with me. According to that assessment, Westminster is the fourth most deprived borough in London. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras will read the Independent newspaper to see where the statistic came from. That newspaper does not support, nor is it written by, my officials. The hon. Gentleman seems to want to discount those independent figures. Is he honestly saying that, in future, if there were ever a Labour Government, he would hand out money on the basis of his own—bottom—ideas? If he does that, he will be returning to the old Labour system which gave Westminster significantly more than the present system.
Mr. Barry Field: As my right hon. Friend has said that the review of district councils is nearly complete, will he promise the House that there will be an early review so that the people of East Cowes can have the parish council to which they have been looking forward? Is he aware that the Liberal Democrat-controlled Isle of Wight council published a leaflet only last week, on the front of which it said that there would be
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£630 million of Government cuts to local authorities? Will he condemn that and ensure that the money is used for education on the Isle of Wight? We had had an excellent budgetary record on the Isle of Wight—we drive round in our 25-year-old cars and are all over the age of 60—and we now have a local government settlement specifically for the Isle of Wight. I want the good news to get through to the people, not to be gerrymandered and tinkered about with by the wretched Liberal Democrats who want to spend the money, waste it and do anything with it but provide a decent education for the people of the Isle of Wight.
Mr. Gummer: The people of the Isle of Wight have a very good advocate in my hon. Friend. It is a great sadness that they have a Liberal county council, because that county council will, no doubt, having promised the people cuts, want to deliver on that Liberal promise. It will be the only promise that the Liberals ever made that they will deliver on, but that is the one that they will want to deliver on.
I hope that my hon. Friend and local governors and teachers will insist that the Liberal county council on the Isle of Wight passes back money that has been given to it by the Government from the taxpayers, to every school in the Isle of Wight. I am sure that my hon. Friend will ensure that we soon know if it does not.
Mr. Harry Cohen: Will the Secretary of State comment on the proposal to withdraw large amounts from the SSAs for the operation of the nursery voucher system? Are not the proposals that the Government are considering unfair, in that the withdrawals from SSAs would be on a per pupil basis, whereas the SSA is allocated on a needs basis? Will not that lead to those authorities with relatively little nursery provision having large amounts of SSA and those with a large nursery provision having very little SSA—perhaps even a negative SSA?
Mr. Gummer: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not noticed that the only people to whom that applies are the four volunteer councils, which do not include his local council. He should not be worried at all.
Sir Patrick Cormack: In thanking my right hon. Friend for concentrating on education, may I ask him whether Staffordshire will have its very significant problems solved? May I also ask him whether he will try to make the whole business of local government finance a little more intelligible to the ordinary man? Is he aware that the doctrine of the Trinity and the Schleswig-Holstein question are positively kindergarten subjects by comparison with:
"B+C+M-O+V, where B, C, M and 0 and V have the same meaning in subparagraph (1) above"?
Mr. Gummer: The matter is simple for my hon. Friend. His local council will be able to increase its budget by about 3.2 per cent. It should be able to get a significant amount of money through to the schools, and I am sure that he will ensure that it gets that money through to the schools. If the money does not go to the schools, it will be the Labour-controlled Staffordshire county council that will have failed.
Mr. John Heppell: Does the Secretary of State remember that last year, Nottinghamshire county council predicted a cut of £20 million and was told that it was scaremongering? In

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the event, it had to make cuts of £22 million. This year, it predicts cuts of £50 million. Even if the council is completely wrong about that and it has to make cuts of only £25 million, it is not scaremongering: it will mean fewer teachers and larger classes.
Mr. Gummer: No, because there are no such cuts. The only way in which the council can produce those cuts is by deciding how much it would like to have spent in the best of all possible worlds, placing that figure before the public and then saying that it is not receiving that full amount and therefore the bit in between is called a cut. That council could ensure that its local schools had more money, and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will ensure that it does.
Sir Peter Emery: Will my right hon. Friend drive home the fact that this year, for education in Devon, there is an increase of more than £17 million—10 per cent. more than the average increase of 5.3 per cent.—and that that means that, on a rough calculation, there is more than about £140 per pupil in Devon extra for the Liberal county council to distribute to the schools instead of keeping it, as the council did last year, to distribute elsewhere? Will he therefore consider whether certain councils should have the SSA ring-fenced to ensure that they get the money to the schools rather than keeping it for the county?
Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend is right. He will notice that Liberal Members are busy trying to pretend that that money is not coming to them, because Liberals want to do again this year what they did last year, which was to starve the schools in order to blame the Government and to use the money for something else.
We know how the Liberals operate. They will no doubt try to operate in that way again this time, but, with a settlement of more than 5 per cent., as my right hon. Friend says, if that money does not get to every school in Devon, I am sure that he in his constituency and his colleagues in other constituencies will ensure that every parent and governor knows that the reason why the money has not got there is the Liberals at Devon county hall.
Mr. Peter L. Pike: Does the Secretary of State accept that increasing the standard spending assessment for education by 4.5 per cent. does not give local authorities a penny more because Lancashire county council, for example, is already spending 108 per cent. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman said in the early part of his statement that the real increase in local government expenditure was only 2.8 per cent. Is that not the crux of the issue?
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman must face the fact that Lancashire county council can increase its budget by 3.2 per cent. By concentrating on education, which represents a significant part of its budget, the council can significantly raise the amount spent on schools. The hon. Gentleman knows that; any attempt by him to suggest otherwise demonstrates that he is in league with Lancashire county council—one of the least satisfactory county councils in the country—in trying to excuse the fact that the council has not given the money to the
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schools. We shall wait and see. If the council does not give the money to the schools, we shall know who to blame—and the hon. Gentleman will be one of them.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My right hon. Friend will be aware that I have frequently questioned Ministers on the Floor of the House about the allocation of resources to Cheshire—my constituency is in that county—especially in relation to personal social services and education. May I thank my right hon. Friend for the additional allowance of 5.1 per cent. for education—that is more than £17 million—and for the additional sum of £1.25 million for personal social services? I know that that will be welcomed by those who run Cheshire county council, and by my constituents.
Will my right hon. Friend clarify one point, however? The Minister of State has launched an inquiry into the area cost adjustment. When the committee or commission that conducts that inquiry has reported, will its recommendations be implemented without delay? If Cheshire is to benefit, will the adjustment be implemented retrospectively to cover the current year, or will it apply only to the next financial year?
Mr. Gummer: I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive words, but I should have known that there would be a sting in the tail. I fear that the adjustment will not be retrospective; but I promise that as soon as we have the report and are able to consider it, we shall seek to implement its recommendations as far as is possible, certainly in the next financial year. We are talking not about this year, but about the next settlement. This is the last settlement under the present system, given that the recommendations stand up and are different from the current arrangements.
Mr. Stephen Timms: Is it not rather misleading to concentrate on the increase in the education part of the revenue support grant? It is only one element in a larger single sum. What percentage change in the non-education element does the right hon. Gentleman propose?
Mr. Gummer: I hope that the hon. Gentleman has noticed that I have used the increase in the total budget in all the figures that I have given. Some hon. Members have referred to education, but I have given the total sum. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the increase in spending permitted in Newham will be more than 2 per cent.
Sir Michael Shersby: I am pleased to learn that Hillingdon's education SSA is to increase by £4,865,000, or 5.5 per cent., in the coming year. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that nothing in the capping arrangements which have existed in the past, and which have been revived this year, will prevent Hillingdon borough council from passing the money on, particularly to grant-maintained schools in my area?
May I also express my gratitude, on behalf of the Uxbridge police, for the element in the statement relating to pensions? That is a great improvement, which will he welcomed by the Uxbridge police.
Mr. Gummer: I thank my hon. Friend for his second point, and I can give him the assurance that he requires on the first.
Mr. Robert Ainsworth: Will the Secretary of State drop the smokescreen with which he

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has been trying to obscure the facts, and answer a simple question? Given the same level of service next year as this, does not the settlement impose a 5.2 per cent. tax increase? Is this not another Tory hidden tax—and not very well hidden at that?
Mr. Gummer: Only if every council decides to spend to the full increase in the SSA and nobody makes any savings whatever. In other words, Labour councils will no doubt force this upon their electorates, but sensibly run councils can make savings and start there. The hon. Gentleman is right only if he assumes a badly run Labour council.
Mr. Tim Smith: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the extra resources that he has announced for education are extremely welcome? What can be done to ring-fence that money to ensure that it actually reaches the schools? Will my right hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to publish a list showing each school in each constituency and how much their budgets would increase if the SSA percentage were passed on to them?
Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is here and will have heard my hon. Friend's comment. In his county, we will not have much difficulty in ensuring that the money goes to the schools, because he has a well-run council that seeks always to find savings in order to improve what it can do with education. Elsewhere, we will have to keep a beady eye on what happens.
Mr. Richard Burden: Does the Secretary of State accept that he cannot claim to be increasing the amount available for education when he is screwing down the overall level of support for local authorities in the way implied by his statement? Is he aware that every £1 million not allowed to Birmingham threatens 200,000 hours of home care; or four libraries and four community centres; or four elderly persons homes; or 100 places in special schools? Which would he cut—or would he put taxes up?
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. On the one hand, he complains about the settlement by saying that unless we can make savings, we might have to increase council tax. On the other hand, he says that he wants to spend more. The hon. Gentleman must answer the question that Opposition Front Benchers have not answered: if there were a Labour Government, by how much more would they put up taxes in order to make the settlement what they would call adequate? They will not answer that question because they have been told to say both that the settlement is inadequate, and that they would not increase taxes in order to meet the inadequacy.
Mr. Tim Rathbone: May I add my thanks to those already extended by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury) for the amount made available to East Sussex?
I wish to ask my right hon. Friend about manners in local government. How can he stop local government carrying on the sort of pseudo-consultation exercise that East Sussex county council has performed on the basis of an anticipated increase in education funding of 0.5 per cent., which was ludicrous months ago and has been proved absolutely ludicrous today?
Mr. Gummer: Although the rough and tumble of party politics is perfectly reasonable and most of us rather enjoy
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it, I think it is intolerable to frighten parents about the future of their children and old people about their future in council homes. That is part and parcel of most Liberal party politics. The Liberal party is the only party that stoops so low, and I exclude the Labour party from that.
Mr. John Gunnell: The Secretary of State has recognised that the change in capital disregards for people in long-term care will have a substantial effect on finances in local government, as we will hear later. Can he guarantee that the disregards will be taken into account for the capping criteria; and that the funds will be adequate? If the funds are inadequate, the Secretary of State will be responsible for the impact on services. What steps has he taken to mitigate the impact?
Mr. Gummer: There have been full discussions on this matter. The announcement and details will be given very soon. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can contain himself till then. If he has further questions, I will be happy to meet him and discuss them.
Mr. David Wilshire: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Surrey county council has not waited for today's announcement and has been busy telling parents in my constituency that schools in Surrey are likely to receive £8 million less next year? Now that he has announced that the schools will receive £8 million more, how does he rate my chances of an apology from Liberal and Labour councillors?
Mr. Gummer: The chance of getting an apology is poor. Perhaps my hon. Friend should ask his Liberal and Labour opponents to use the same mechanism to circulate to every parent and every school the fact they are getting £8 million more. If they did that, they would not need to apologise, but they might have to explain to parents why they tried to mislead them in the first place.
Mr. Paddy Tipping: Will the Secretary of State consult parents about the settlement? What will he say to parents in Nottinghamshire when they bring to his attention the fact that the county council currently spends 7.5 per cent. or £25 million above the Government guideline on education? The county council will receive, at best, £15 million from the settlement, leaving a budget gap of £10 million. There will be bigger class sizes and fewer teachers, so people will be paying more and getting less. How will he respond to them?
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman has to say that 3.3 per cent. goes on in addition—it goes straight through. However, he should point out to the leader of his county council that Nottinghamshire is one of the most profligate counties in the country and could give a great deal more to schools if it stopped spending as wildly as it does now.
Mr. Iain Mills: Does my right hon. Friend recall our conversation in a similar debate last year, when he admitted that the methodology of the SSA calculation was unfair to Solihull council? Does he now believe that he has corrected that in his statement today?
Mr. Gummer: I am pleased that my hon. Friend reminds me of that occasion, which was not a comfortable one for me because I had real sympathy with Solihull. As he knows, I cannot change individual arrangements as they are made by classes. Solihull is one of a class and the arrangements last year had a particular effect on

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Solihull. He will note that the budget can rise by 3 per cent. I have announced an independent inquiry into the way in which we deal with the area cost adjustment, which is particularly important to Solihull. I hope that when it comes through, my hon. Friend will be happier about the arrangements.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. Despite the fact that the statement has now taken more than a hour, I shall try to call all the Conservative Members who have been standing for so long. Perhaps we can have a reasonably quick exchange as there are two more statements.
Mr. Richard Alexander: Would it not be fraudulent of local authorities to use the money directly allocated for schools for some other purpose? Bearing in mind the fact that schools in Nottinghamshire were seriously underfunded last year, surely we should take steps to ensure that the money specifically allocated to schools goes to schools. It is not enough to say that it must be left to parents, governors and local Members of Parliament. We should take a closer interest in ensuring that the money goes to the right quarter.
Mr. Gummer: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment and I will certainly take a very close interest, but there is a difficulty. If one believes in local accountability, local councils must make such decisions for themselves. When I refer to governors, parents and local Members of Parliament, I am talking about local accountability. We have told people quite clearly that they can spend significantly more money on schools. Nottinghamshire can save money in many other ways and spend it on schools, but Nottinghamshire taxpayers will have to press to make sure that the money gets through to the schools. If my hon. Friend knows of any case in which they are not doing so, I shall look at it myself.
Mr. Nigel Forman: Although I warmly welcome the increase of the education SSA by 4.5 per cent. this year, which is generous, has it ever crossed the mind of my right hon. Friend when he was Minister for Local Government or now, as Secretary of State, that the two main weaknesses of the system that we are discussing are its excessive complexity and centralisation? Is it not time that the Government took a long, hard look at those aspects, particularly if my right hon. Friend is sincere—as I presume him to be—in saying that he favours local accountability? Is not the real answer to give local authorities more possibility to take their own spending decisions and then to be held directly to account by their local electorates?
Mr. Gummer: I have great sympathy with what my hon. Friend says, but there are two problems. First, if local authorities are spending a quarter of the spending of government as a whole, it must have an effect on the ability of national Government to spend. If local authorities were to push up spending, we, national Government, would have to reduce our spending on the national health service, for example, to keep the general economy in shape. There is a real difficulty.
Secondly, money does not necessarily come easily from a local community in the sense that the poorest communities may have the greatest needs but the lowest
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rate bases. We need a system that provides a real redistribution of income, which is what the SSA does. There will always be a significant amount of central Government spending, over which we need to have some control. A modest movement, however, in the direction of more money coming from the local community, would be reasonable. In that context I have gone some way towards the Labour party. Its latest policy document, entitled "Renewing Democracy", states that
"it would be far healthier for democracy if councils were responsible for raising locally a much higher proportion of the money they invest and spend".
I am interested that Labour Members are prepared to attack any move to increase council tax when they want a "much higher proportion" and we are suggesting a small proportion.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Has my right hon. Friend taken account of Labour councils such as Ealing, which have substantial reserves from previous Conservative administrations? Will he be pressing for those reserves to be used where that is needed? Does my right hon. Friend agree that following the education settlement for Ealing it will be indefensible for the council to continue its policy of refusing a travel grant to children who wish to travel to schools some way away from home, even if their parents are on income support, on the ground that they could choose a nearer school? Parents have a right not to do so under current legislation.
Mr. Gummer: I must declare an interest. One of my children attends the local Church school in Ealing. The education provided by that school is very good. I have noticed, however, since Ealing borough council changed hands, that a series of petty and vindictive steps has been taken by the new council, including a step to which my hon. Friend has referred. The council does not like the possibility of parents choosing. I hope that my hon. Friend will join me and other parents to ensure that the money that is provided for Ealing gets through to the schools.
Mr. Eric Pickles: Does my right hon. Friend remember a time when a 4.5 per cent. increase in education SSA would have been welcomed throughout the House? My right hon. and hon. Friends have done even better for Essex, where there will be an increase of 4.9 per cent. That will be worth nearly £26 million, a sum that is larger than some district councils' total budgets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that some of the alibis that we have heard this afternoon—it has been suggested that there will be no increases—will not wash with parents and head teachers? The councils that do not pass on the extra funding will be rightly brought to retribution.
Mr. Gummer: It is important for my hon. Friend to ensure that every head teacher, governor and parent in Essex realises that there will be a 4.9 per cent. increase in the funding that should be available for their schools. Essex county council, like Suffolk county council, sought to frighten people by talking about a 5 per cent. decrease. Against that background, Essex county council owes it to parents to write, "Sorry, the figure was not minus 5 per cent. but plus 4.9 per cent.", and to ensure that every penny of the increased funding gets through to schools.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Does my right hon. Friend recall that last

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year the Liberal-dominated Gloucestershire county council cut individual school budgets by between 4 and 7 per cent. Will he confirm that this year's figures will allow that council to set a council tax, if it wishes to, which will provide for a generous 5.3 per cent. increase in funding for education? Would not every parent, governor and teacher be able to regard it as a scandal if the county council did not substantially increase individual school budgets?
Mr. Gummer: It will he a scandal if school budgets do not increase in that way in Gloucestershire. It will not be a surprise, however, if that does not happen. Liberals in Gloucestershire have shown themselves willing to play party politics with children's education. They have done it in Gloucestershire and elsewhere. I know of nothing in the past that has been like that. I am sorry that the Liberals should have lowered themselves to that level.
Mr. Richard Tracey: I thank my right hon. Friend for the care that he has given to education in Kingston upon Thames. I reassure him that I will support any measure which ensures that the £1.25 million extra spending for schools in Kingston goes to schools and is not milked off by the local authority.
On a separate issue, will my right hon. Friend use the greatest caution in relation to the area cost adjustment as it affects London? Although my right hon. Friend represents a constituency elsewhere, he lives in London, so he will know that London is more expensive simply because of the number of tourists, the greater use of the roads, the increased use of the city because of the railway stations and the airports, and the increased cost of care for the elderly.
Mr. Gummer: As a Minister, I live in London during the week, but at the weekends and when Parliament is not sitting, I live in the country, so I am entirely independent on the matter. I can see both sides of the case, which have been adequately presented in the House. That is why I have decided that there should be an independent inquiry, which will no doubt look carefully at the points raised by my hon. Friend. However, it will also have to consider my county's concerns regarding sparsity, distance and the difficulty of paying for small schools which are necessary if adequate and proper education is to be provided for small communities. I cannot say that the argument is all on one side. That is why the argument is so difficult to get straight and that is why we have asked for an independent inquiry.
Mr. Ian Bruce: My right hon. Friend will know that the Minister of State, Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), has sent round a letter putting in layman's terms what the increases could mean to police authorities—for example, 66 additional officers for Dorset and a total increase of 6.2 per cent. Will my right hon.
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Friend ensure that his other ministerial colleagues do something similar, particularly with regard to education? Last year, when it came to ensuring that schools were adequately staffed, Dorset county council said that it was £5 million short, yet we have now discovered from the auditor that the county filched £10 million that it did not need to spend.
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend points to the generality. One could understand that being accidental if it occurred in one council, but when it occurs in almost every Labour or Labour-Liberal-controlled council, one has to recognise that there is a concerted effort, which goes as follows. People are frightened by the prospect of a cut which will not come; the council gets an increase but says that there has been a cut, and then the money is put into something else. In my county, money for schools has been put into road signs and red lines across roads. I hope that this time the county will ensure that every penny goes to the schools.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: People in Kent will be delighted to know that the Government are putting an additional 4 per cent. of funding into the county and into its schools. They will also be more than a little relieved because they were led to believe by a document produced with council tax payers' money that there would be no additional money for inflation or pay awards. Bearing in mind the fact that the schools were short-changed last year, what are the prospects for that money finding its way to the Kent schools?
Mr. Gummer: There is no doubt that Kent schools will be able to cover reasonably expected increases in expenditure and probably something rather better than that. But if Kent county council was more concerned about its priorities and spent its money in the schools, it could do even better. But I fear that we may have to wait for Kent county council to cease to be run by the alliance and return to sensible Conservative control.
Mr. Dobson: Rather than have a rant, which is the Secretary of State's usual response to questions from Opposition Members, will he simply confirm that none of the figures quoted by Conservative Members with regard to funds for education makes any allowance for the 86,000 increase in the number of school pupils, the expected pay increases, the expected level of inflation or the additional legal duties which the House has placed on local education authorities?
Mr. Gummer: Some of the money that has been given to the local authorities and some of their added spending will obviously have to cover their additions during the coming year, which is what always happens. But if this is an inadequate settlement, the hon. Gentleman might like the opportunity to say publicly how much would be an adequate settlement, and from where the money would come. The hon. Gentleman is incredible in the House.

Welsh Grand Committee
4.44 pm
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. William Hague): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the future proceedings of the Welsh Grand Committee. I have a number of proposals to make, which I hope will ensure that Welsh concerns are debated effectively in the House and which will bring the business of Parliament more effectively to Wales. With that in mind, I am proposing to seek to amend Standing Orders so as to extend and enhance the role of the Welsh Grand Committee.
The Welsh Grand Committee has for many years provided the House with a mechanism by which Members can give detailed consideration to matters relating exclusively to Wales. It is a mechanism which, in recent Sessions, has been relatively little used. In the past three years, there have been only eight meetings of the Committee, even though they have generally been held whenever requested.
I wish to change that disappointing picture. The Welsh Grand Committee has the potential to bring the business of the House to the attention of the people of Wales, and provide a more useful forum for discussion than at present.
First, I wish to introduce Question Time proceedings to the Committee. Interest in Welsh questions is considerable. On every occasion, there are many questions that cannot be reached, and I want to extend the opportunities for oral questions, to the Welsh Grand Committee.
I am therefore proposing that the Committee's Standing Orders should provide for an additional Question Time at some meetings, on dates to be specified in advance with the agreement of the House.
The normal arrangements for giving notice of questions would apply. Each member of the Committee would be able to table one question for answer on a specified day, and 10 sitting days' notice would be required. Questions will be taken at the beginning of sittings of the Committee, and could last for up to 30 minutes. Replies to questions not reached would be printed in the Official Report.
I hope that Members on both sides of the House will welcome this additional opportunity to put questions directly to me and my colleagues about the conduct of the Government's business in Wales, and appreciate that that will significantly increase their ability to raise issues of immediate concern.
I would like the Committee to be able to consider issues of current topical concern in more depth than is possible at present on the Floor of the House. I am therefore also proposing that the Committee will be able to hold short debates to allow more detailed consideration of a smaller number of specific questions.
Each member of the Committee will he able to give notice of a subject to be raised in a short debate on a specified day, with 10 days' sitting notice required. Proceedings on short debates will he allowed to continue for 30 minutes, which should be sufficient time to allow two or three subjects to be raised on each occasion.
In addition, and because I am aware that Members may from time to time wish to raise matters of particular concern to their constituents, I am proposing that in future
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the Welsh Grand Committee should be able to hold Adjournment debates on matters raised by Members, at the end of the Committee's normal business.
I am also proposing that in future any Minister in the House, whether or not he or she is a Minister for Wales, may take part in debates in the Welsh Grand Committee, enabling them to participate fully in discussion of matters relating to their United Kingdom responsibilities. Any Minister, whether or not he or she is a Member of the House, would also be able to make a statement and to answer questions arising from that statement.
That would represent a very significant and beneficial change in the Committee's procedures. It would enable Members representing constituencies in Wales to listen to and question a Minister with UK or Great Britain responsibilities that affect Wales. It will give the Welsh Grand Committee the scope to examine all aspects of Government policies affecting Wales, and not only on matters that are the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales. It will give Welsh Members a further opportunity to debate Welsh affairs while benefiting from their role in a United Kingdom Parliament.
I am pleased to be able to tell the House that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer have both said that they will be prepared to attend a meeting of the Committee if the amendments to Standing Orders are approved by the House.
All those changes will, of course, be in addition to the Committee's existing provisions, and the emphasis will still be on broad-ranging debates on issues of general concern about policy in Wales. Wales does not have a separate legal framework and I am therefore not proposing an additional legislative role for the Committee. I propose that there should be a minimum of four meetings of the Committee each year and that they should be timetabled in advance, allowing notice for the tabling of questions and subjects for short debates. In addition, I would expect it to meet on at least a further two or three occasions, as business permits and issues arise.
To date, two meetings of the Welsh Grand Committee have been held in Cardiff. I want to see it meet more frequently in Wales, and not just in the capital city. It is important to give people in other towns and cities the opportunity to witness the Committee's debates and thus to recognise that the business of the House and of the Committee is intimately concerned with the impact of Government policy on people in all parts of Wales. I appreciate that meetings outside the House place special demands on the House authorities, and officials at the Welsh Office will be ready to offer whatever assistance may be needed in establishing meetings of the Committee in suitable venues across Wales. I would envisage half the timetabled sessions of the Committee taking place in Wales each year, and up to half the additional meetings.
The new Standing Orders will be brought forward for approval shortly. Should the House agree them, I would expect soon thereafter to table a motion setting out a timetable for the rest of this Session.
I hope that the House will welcome my proposals to give the Welsh Grand Committee a more prominent and visible role in the consideration of matters relating to Wales. My proposals will greatly enhance the ability of Members to raise constituency matters and other issues in Parliament. They will help to ensure that discussion of

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Welsh business is made more accessible to the people of Wales and that our procedures better reflect the Welsh dimension.
Mr. Ron Davies: The statement holds out the tantalising prospect of the Prime Minister addressing a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee at Machynlleth, talking about the efficacy of the hill livestock compensatory allowance. It really would be an interesting experiment.
The statement itself is a welcome admission by the Secretary of State of the inadequacies of the current arrangements for the exercise of democracy in Welsh affairs. The greatest need, of course, is for the representatives of the Welsh people to control our own devolved affairs in Wales, in our own directly elected assembly. That is and will remain our priority, and no amount of tinkering with the existing procedures will divert us from that.
Does not the Secretary of State understand that the only meaningful change, short of devolution, would be to allow the Welsh Grand Committee to take decisions or to influence policy? Without such policies, the Welsh Grand Committee is and will continue to be nothing more than a talking shop. In his statement, the Secretary of State criticised the existing arrangements for being ineffective. Does he not realise that the House of Commons Standing Orders already allow for great discretion to be exercised by the Committee? It does not require to be given, as he suggested, an additional legislative role. It already has one, specified in Standing Order No. 98. The trouble is that the Government have always prevented the Committee from exercising those powers on, for example, local government reform or the Welsh language Act, by suspending Standing Order No. 86.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the only reason why he is not prepared to allow the Welsh Grand Committee a real role is that he realises how hostile the opinion of Welsh Members of Parliament is to the record of cuts, unemployment, social divisions and abuse of power, which are his Government's hallmarks? Nothing illuminated that better than yesterday's meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee, where he was forcibly reminded of the virtually unanimous opposition in Wales to the introduction of the nursery voucher scheme. Will he now acknowledge the weight of opinion that was expressed at that Committee and drop that petty and divisive scheme, if only as a sign that he is sensitive to the majority of Welsh opinion? Does he not realise that failure to do that would make a mockery of his pious statements about reforming and improving democracy in Wales?
We in the Labour party certainly want to see improvements. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he has received, through the usual channels, our own radical and constructive proposals for change? I also remind him that without the co-operation of Opposition Members, the Committee would not function, so I ask him now for his confirmation that the details of any changes will be implemented only after agreement has been reached via the usual channels.
The prospect of Ministers coming to introduce themselves to the people of Wales via sittings of the Welsh Grand Committee is a novel one and, presumably, is part of the strategy for the Conservative party rather than for the better government of our country. As the Prime Minister has never visited Wales as Prime Minister,
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except to fulfil the occasional party political engagement, will the Secretary of State confirm that the most appropriate subject for any debate involving the Prime Minister is the failure of the Conservative party to deliver economic prosperity, social cohesion and democratic government to Wales?
The Secretary of State's proposals are modest, but provided he is prepared to work with all the Opposition parties on the Committee, they can be made to work to bring about improvements in the way in which the House conducts its business. However, that will be for a short and experimental period only. These changes, if accepted, must and will be superseded by more far-reaching democratic reforms when the right hon. Gentleman's discredited Government are finally removed from office.
Mr. Hague: It is ironic that the hon. Gentleman should refer to talking shops when he wishes to set up an assembly in Wales that would be a highly expensive talking shop. It would be expensive to the taxpayer and damaging to jobs and investment in Wales, and it would diminish the role of the United Kingdom Parliament in Welsh affairs, whereas what we seek to do today is to enhance the role of the United Kingdom Parliament in Welsh affairs.
It is surprising that the hon. Gentleman describes my proposals as modest, as they go further than the proposals that he tabled two weeks ago, which, as he said, he communicated through the usual channels and which were published for public consideration in newspapers in Wales. My proposals go further: in involving Ministers with UK responsibilities, in bringing the work of Parliament closer to people in Wales, and in holding meetings of the Committee in different locations in Wales. None of those was contained in the proposals that he tabled two weeks ago. Nor was there any proposal about legislative consideration, to which he refers as the only meaningful change. I know about the provision in the Standing Order to which he referred. That is why I said in my statement that there would be no additional legislative role for the Grand Committee.
There is no question but that my proposals go further than those of the hon. Gentleman. I look forward to discussions about the proposals and am open to every idea and suggestion about developing them further, but the eventual decision about changes to Standing Orders is one for the House as a whole to take.
Mr. Alex Carlile: Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he has no intention of amending Standing Order No. 98, which gives the Welsh Grand Committee the right in certain circumstances to consider Bills that are referred to it, in other words, to have a legislative role? If he has no intention of repealing Standing Order No. 98, will he explain why he made no mention in his paltry, miserable statement of referring any legislation to the Welsh Grand Committee under Standing Order No. 98, and explain why the Government are so frightened of using it that we were not even allowed to consider the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 when it was presented by the Government to the House? Will he give us one example of a measure about Wales on which he is prepared to give those who are elected to be legislators for, among other places, Wales, the right to legislate for the country that we represent?
Mr. Hague: I do intend that we should amend Standing Order No. 98, but not in the way that the hon. and learned

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Gentleman fears; I have no intention of removing the provision to which he referred. But he will also know that Wales does not have the separate legal framework that exists in Scotland and that has enabled the Scottish Grand Committee to discuss particular measures. We are talking about something in a quite different context, and no specific Welsh legislation is coming before the House in the current Session. I can reassure him, however, that I have no intention of proposing the sort of change in the Standing Order to which he referred and which he would oppose.
Mr. Richard Spring: Does my right hon. Friend agree that his proposals to hold meetings of the Welsh Grand Committee in different parts of Wales will add locally to the interest and activities of the Committee and, indeed, the proceedings of the House in general?
Mr. Hague: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proposal was not put forward by Opposition Members, but I hope that they will welcome it. It is a procedure used by the Scottish Grand Committee and it has been well received in Scotland. There is no reason why people in Wales should not have the same opportunity to see their Grand Committee at work, and it will be widely welcomed throughout Wales.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: Does not the Secretary of State realise that, for the past 16 years, the Welsh people have seen the Welsh Grand Committee at work and they look on this proposal as yet another meaningless sop to the true aspirations of the Welsh people? But then, of course, we have seen a succession of Secretaries of State for Wales who do not represent Welsh constituencies or understand the Welsh people, and whose party will never represent the people of Wales. Does not the right hon. Gentleman understand that the real aspirations of the people of Wales are for a Welsh Assembly, with devolution and proper control over their own affairs, not the useless suggestion that he has made yet again today?
Mr. Hague: The hon. Lady will recall that those 16 years began with an emphatic rejection by people in Wales of the idea of such an assembly. I do not think that it is meaningless for the hon. Lady, under these proposals, to have additional opportunities to put questions to Welsh Ministers, raise Adjournment debates and have short debates about matters of constituency concern. Those are not meaningless matters—they are enhancing the ability of Welsh Members of Parliament to represent their constituents and to bring matters before the House of Commons. That is a long way from being a meaningless proposal.
Mr. Hartley Booth: In terms of the United Kingdom constitution, will my right hon. Friend confirm that having the Prime Minister and senior members of the Cabinet travel to Wales to meetings of the Grand Committee is a constitutional novelty? Rather than call it a talking shop, would it not be more appropriate to call it a listening channel?
Mr. Hague: My hon. Friend is right. It is a novelty and it will happen in Scotland and Wales. It will be a popular procedure, it will be widely appreciated and it will enable
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my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to point to the many successes of Government policy and the improving situation in so many aspects of the Welsh economy, to which Opposition Members are always determined not to refer.
Mr. Donald Anderson: Although he was a youngster at the time, the Secretary of State may recall that in 1979, after the referendum, the incoming Conservative Secretary of State, Lord Crickhowell, said that he would consult about various proposals, including a forum for Wales. It was assumed at the time that specific legislative proposals—institutional proposals—would follow. Sixteen years have passed; this is it. If it is a revamped talking shop, it is a peripatetic talking shop. Surely it will go down in the "Guinness Book of Records" as the longest recorded gestation period of a mouse.
Mr. Hague: What we are seeing is a genuine attempt to improve the workings of the Welsh Grand Committee. At present, its workings are not regarded as satisfactory by people on either side of the House or any party in it. We shall be able to make the proceedings of the Committee more meaningful and more topical, and to ensure that a greater variety of matters can be raised and that particular constituency matters can be raised. Those are proposals that deserve a warm welcome in the House.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that those changes in the Standing Orders of the Welsh Grand Committee mean that more subjects can be raised—indeed, all subjects to do with the United Kingdom? Perhaps more importantly, can he contrast the cost of that sort of Welsh Grand Committee with that of a directly elected Parliament, which would have no more powers than the Committee would have anyway?
Mr. Hague: My hon. Friend is right. A far greater range of topics can be raised, and they can be raised by Welsh Members of Parliament in their role as Members of Parliament in this House in the United Kingdom Parliament. Such proceedings will have an additional cost, but the cost of having a completely separate assembly for no obvious purpose would be vastly greater. The direct costs to the taxpayer would be vastly greater, as well as the costs to the Welsh economy in lost inward investment and jobs, from the people who would be frightened away by the prospect of a fracturing of the United Kingdom—or the Balkanisation of the United Kingdom, as one Opposition Member referred to it not long ago.
Mr. Ted Rowlands: Even in these modest proposals, is it not an assumption that there are distinctive policies that should be followed in Wales for the needs of Wales? If, as a result of all his listening, the Secretary of State finds out, for example, that nursery vouchers have no support in Wales, will he be willing to change the policy?
Mr. Hague: Of course, there is often a need for distinctive policies in Wales. I and my predecessors have pursued distinctive policies, which are different from policies for England in several respects. The Welsh Grand Committee is an additional forum for discussing what those differences should be.
Mr. Alan Williams: The Secretary of State's proposals are to be welcomed in the spirit that any

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change is bound to be preferable to what we have at the moment. In pursuit of his greater topicality, why is he introducing a system in which, unlike on the Floor of the House where questions can be tabled two days before, he will require 10 sitting days' notice, which is two calendar weeks?
In addition to the minimum four meetings that the right hon. Gentleman specified, will he consider the possibility of another four, to consider the reports of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, which are never debated? Finally, since he refuses to let the Committee have any legislative functions, does he recognise that, although legislation is not separate for Wales in most instances, there are Welsh dimensions, so the Welsh Grand Committee could provide a useful function as a Special Standing Committee? We could hear evidence from experts and others on the Welsh aspects prior to dealing with legislation on the Floor of the House.
Mr. Hague: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his constructive welcome for the proposals. On oral questions, the rule would be the same as it is on the Floor of the House, that is, 10 days' notice of an oral question. Written questions can, in any case, be submitted for answer in two days or more and the proposal will not interfere with that procedure. I envisage that there would be scope for supplementary questions at the meetings and not merely for the questions tabled on the Order Paper.
As to the other subjects that could be debated, for instance the Select Committee reports, there need be no restrictions, as there are no restrictions now, on the subjects that the Committee could discuss. That would be for discussion between the usual channels. Of course, members of the Grand Committee must have a say in what the business of that Committee should be. I envisage that the two, three or more meetings that will be additional to the four timetabled meetings would be used to discuss some of the matters to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Môn): Is not the Secretary of State aware that this timid little mouse of a statement is totally irrelevant to the needs of the people of Wales? He needs to address his mind to the enormous democratic deficit in our country, given that he is a member of a Government who have been rejected four times since 1979. Is not it right that the people of Wales, far from wanting a tarted-up talking shop like his proposal, are looking forward to the day when they can have a real Parliament in which real decisions are taken—a Parliament with legislative powers that will respond to the wishes of the people of Wales, not those of a Conservative Government who have been rejected by them?
Mr. Hague: The hon. Gentleman and I have an obvious difference of view: I believe in the United Kingdom and he does not. I believe that the Government of the United Kingdom are elected by the people of England, of Scotland, of Wales and of Northern Ireland, and that that should continue to be the position. I do not think that we shall be able to reconcile that fundamental difference of view, but I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman could have found it in himself to give a stronger welcome for what will be a distinctive improvement in the workings of Parliament for Welsh Members. They will be able to raise a wider range of issues and more
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constituency issues, and will be able to question Welsh Office Ministers and debate with other Ministers more often.
Mr. Paul Flynn: Has the Secretary of State noticed what happened on the two most recent occasions on which public opinion in Wales was measured? Conservatives managed to win 4 per cent. of the council seats, and at the Islwyn by-election they secured 3.9 per cent. of the total vote, narrowly beating the Natural Law yogic flyers and Lord Sutch's Loony party. Now that the Conservatives have established themselves as the prime loony party in Wales, how can they claim the right to dominate Welsh legislation—legislation that affects Wales alone? When 85 per cent. of Welsh Members signed amendments to Bills on the Welsh language and on Welsh local government, their opinions were swept aside by the dominance of Members from other parts of the United Kingdom, whose constituents were not affected in any way by the legislation. Is not that a travesty of democracy?
Mr. Hague: The hon. Gentleman knows that we all live and work in a United Kingdom Parliament. If he does not believe in a United Kingdom Parliament—and that is the implication of what he is saying—he had better say so.
Mr. Flynn indicated dissent.
Mr. Hague: I think that the hon. Gentleman does not believe in a United Kingdom Parliament; we have got that clear, because he is shaking his head. Those of us who believe in a United Kingdom Parliament—I happen to think that the great majority of the people of Wales believe in one—should be concentrating on ensuring that that Parliament works well. My proposals will ensure that it works better for Welsh affairs.
Mr. Peter Hain: Surely the announcement is a panic reaction to the overwhelming support for Labour's policy for an elected assembly in Wales. [Laughter.] Yes it is. Why does not the Secretary of State admit that he is adopting the same old English establishment approach to demands for constitutional reform? We have seen that reaction over votes for working-class citizens and over votes for women. First, people deride such demands as loony. Then, when the pressure keeps coming, they resist forcibly. Then they try to buy the protesters off, which is what this pathetic proposal is about. Finally they cave in, and when they have done so, nobody ever admits to having opposed the demands in the first place. Why does not the Secretary of State short-circuit that miserable process and grant the Welsh people's demand for an elected assembly now?
Mr. Hague: The hon. Gentleman knows why I do not want a Welsh Assembly. I have explained several times this afternoon. He also knows that when the opinion of the people of Wales was tested, they emphatically did not want an assembly either. Even if we agree to differ on the question of a Welsh Assembly, the hon. Gentleman knows that the Labour party published proposals for reforming the Welsh Grand Committee a couple of weeks ago and that our proposals go further than Labour's. The way in which the hon. Gentleman has characterised the whole process is highly inaccurate. We are making a sincere attempt to improve the workings of Parliament, and I think that it will succeed in that objective.
Mr. Alan W. Williams: Over the past 20 years, I have spoken to more people about devolution than

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almost anybody else in the House, while the Secretary of State has been in his post for only a few months. No one has ever put it to me that the answer to the problems of Wales lies in extending the powers of the Welsh Grand Committee, because 99 per cent. of the population of Wales are completely unaware of its existence. Did not the Secretary of State's statement underline how out of touch he and the rest of the Government are with the rightful demands of the people of Wales? We want the budget that he quite improperly controls to be administered democratically and accountably by an elected Welsh Assembly.
Mr. Hague: The hon. Gentleman is right to say that most of the people in Wales would not know about the Welsh Grand Committee or what it does. But that makes the case for changing its procedures, for breathing new life into it by revitalising and rejuvenating them. That is what the proposals are about. We strongly differ across the Floor of the House about the prospect of a Welsh Assembly. Conservatives believe that it would be a threat to the future of the United Kingdom, and an expensive talking shop. However, we should all be able to agree that the procedures of the Welsh Grand Committee need improving and that it needs to be made into a more topical and useful forum for discussion. That is what we propose to do.
Mr. Rhodri Morgan: Having listened to the Secretary of State's proposal, I fear that Mogadon man is proposing a Mogadon marathon of meetings all over Wales of a Welsh Grand Committee with zero powers. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman peaked as a speaker at the age of 16. We would not want to see any changes in the powers of the Welsh Grand Committee unless they were a lead-in to a genuine democratically elected body for Wales. By now. the Secretary of State must have the clear impression that that is our attitude.
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We do not want a talking shop, even a travelling talking shop, because it would still be toothless. The right hon. Gentleman talked about changing Standing Orders, but he must realise that we want a guarantee that the Standing Orders of the House will be respected in the future, in a way in which they have not been respected in the past. We want a guarantee that he will not use the Tory majority on the Floor of the House to remove the rights conferred by Standing Orders Nos. 86 and 98 for the Welsh Grand Committee to consider exclusively Welsh legislation.
Is not the Secretary of State attempting to parallel the meaningless gesture of Edward I, seven centuries ago, who promised that he would create a Prince of Wales who spoke no word of English, and then offered the young infant Edward II, who was only three months old and could not have spoken any language at all? The people want not meaningless futile gestures but a democratically elected body for Wales with real powers.
Mr. Hague: I am not sure whether to take it from the hon. Gentleman's remarks that he does not want the Welsh Grand Committee to travel to different parts of Wales, but that was the clear implication of what he said. I believe that that is an important part of the proposals and should be strongly welcomed throughout the House, as it will be in Wales.
The Labour party has one policy for Scotland, another for Wales and another for the different regions of England. It has a dog's breakfast of a policy on constitutional matters, which has not remotely been thought out with the interests of the United Kingdom at heart, but has been designed to do what Labour thinks will appease nationalist sentiments in each separate part of the kingdom.
Conservatives emphatically reject that approach. We want the United Kingdom Parliament to work effectively, so that Members from every part of the United Kingdom can use it to full and beneficial effect. I am surprised that Opposition Members have not been able to welcome more enthusiastically something that they will be able to use as much as Conservative Members will, to the benefit of their constituents and of wider public debate.

Business of the House
5.17 pm
Mrs. Ann Taylor: Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): After all that excitement, I shall make a statement about next week's instalment. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 4 DECEMBER—Continuation of the Budget debate.
TUESDAY 5 DECEMBER—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
WEDNESDAY 6 DECEMBER—Until about 8 o'clock, Second Reading of the Audit (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.
Remaining stages of the Chemical Weapons Bill.
Motion on the criminal injuries compensation scheme.
THURSDAY 7 DECEMBER—Debate on the European Union on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. Details of the relevant documents will be given in the Official Report.
FRIDAY 8 DECEMBER—Debate on the Government's policy against crime on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
The House will also wish to know that European Standing Committees will meet at 10.30 am on Wednesday 6 December, as follows:
European Standing Committee A, European Community Document 8962/94 and COM(95)434 relating to the fruit and vegetable regime.
European Standing Committee B, European Community Document 9554/95 relating to food aid.
In the following week, on Monday 11 December there will be the Second Reading of the Asylum and Immigration Bill. On Tuesday 12 December there will be the Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill. On Wednesday 13 December, there will be Government business, the nature of which has yet to be determined. I expect Thursday 14 December to be an estimates day, subject to the recommendations of the Liaison Committee at its meeting on 5 December. Friday 15 December is, I remind the House, a non-sitting day.
[Wednesday 6 December:
European Standing Committee A—Relevant European Community documents: (a) 8962/94, Fruit and Vegetable Regime; (b) COM(95)434. Relevant reports of the European Legislation Committee: (a) HC 48-xxvii (1993–94) and HC 70-ii (1994–95); (b) HC 51-i (1995–96).
European Standing Committee B—Relevant European Community document: 9554/95, Food Aid; Relevant report of the European Legislation Committee: HC 70-xxvi (1994–95).
Thursday 7 December:
Debate on the European Union—Relevant documents: The Twenty-fourth Report of the Select Committee on European Legislation, Session 1994–95, on the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference: the Agenda; Democracy and Efficiency; the Role of National Parliaments (HC
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239–1); Resolution of the European Parliament on the functioning of the Treaty on European Union (A4–0102/95); Report by the Commission on the operation of the Treaty on European Union (SEC(95)731); Report of the Council on the functioning of the Treaty on European Union (Cm 2866); Unnumbered Report by the Court of Auditors on the operation of the Treaty on European Union; Unnumbered Report of the Court of Justice on certain aspects of the application of the Treaty on European Union; White Paper on Developments in the European Union January-June 1995 (Cm 3130).]
Mrs. Taylor: I thank the Leader of the House for that information. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the exchanges at business questions last week, when the Leader of the House was asked about the BBC World Service, but said that he felt he could not respond because he could not anticipate the Budget statement? Will he look at the issue of the World Service again, because we now know that the Chancellor has slashed the World Service's capital funds by £5.4 million—a massive 20 per cent.? That tears up an agreement which was negotiated in good faith by the World Service and which was to have lasted for three years.
The BBC chairman, I understand, has expressed his concern about the impact of the cuts on the World Service, and I believe that there is widespread public support for the BBC World Service which is shared by Members on both sides of this House. Will the Leader of the House now consider a specific debate on this cost-effective service which has been struggling with a tough financial settlement and which may now have to reduce its—and therefore Britain's—voice in the world? Will he think again on that issue?
Secondly, we heard the Prime Minister today at Prime Minister's Question Time trying to defend the actions and record of Yorkshire Water in recent months. The latest figures show that while Yorkshire Water has been threatening thousands of families in Yorkshire—and West Yorkshire in particular—with rota cuts, it has been making record profits. That shows, as Yorkshire Waterwatch has said, that
"it is clear that the company has had enough cash sloshing about all Summer to have dealt with the underlying problems much more quickly".
There is also a danger that Yorkshire Water might seek to use the cost-pass-through mechanism to try to make sure that investment costs are passed to consumers. Is it not time that we had a full debate on the need for better regulation of the privatised utilities so that we can air our concerns that, time after time, the interests of shareholders are put before the interests of consumers? We have seen clear examples of the concerns that have been caused by that behaviour, especially in Yorkshire, and the House should have a full debate on the regulation of the public utilities.
Finally, is the Leader of the House aware that, in recent days, Resurgence Railways has been dropped as the Government's preferred bidder to take over the Great Western Railway because it could not offer adequate financial guarantees? Today we have learnt that the first part of the passenger railway service to be privatised, the special trains division, is in deep trouble as its new owners, Waterman Railways, is in bitter dispute with BR and Railtrack about charges for track access and other services. Given the scale and frequency of the difficulties

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arising with rail privatisation, surely we should have a full-scale debate in the House before this fiasco goes any further.
Mr. Newton: The hon. Lady was perhaps more political than she usually is on these occasions, and I shall not reply in quite those terms. I cannot give any commitment to provide time for debates on any of the matters that she has raised although, as always, I shall consider what she says. I have no doubt that there will be opportunities to raise those matters in various ways in the next few weeks.
In response to the hon. Lady's comments on the first subject, I would have thought that it would probably be in order to raise that matter during the Budget debate, since it arises from what she attributes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement on Tuesday. I shall bring all of the hon. Lady's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friends who have responsibility in those areas.
I thought that the Prime Minister made a perfectly sensible point at Prime Minister's Question Time today when he simply stated the fact that Yorkshire Water will, we understand, be investing more than £200 million this year—more than double its half-year profits. The fact is that money for investment clearly must come from somewhere, and the Opposition are always demanding more investment.
Mrs. Jacqui Lait: In view of today's statement on the revenue support grant, would it be in order to debate education in the Budget debate? We could then put under the microscope the behaviour of local education authorities such as East Sussex, which are scaring parents, teachers and governors into unnecessary concerns about potential cuts which prove to be totally wrong.
Mr. Newton: It is not for me to advise my hon. Friend about what is or is not in order during the Budget debate. But I understand that it would be in order to refer to the expenditure side of the Budget under the arrangements that we now have. I am sure that even if my hon. Friend is unable to participate in the debate, her remarks will be carefully studied.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: May I commend the Leader of the House for his noble efforts to give us as much information as possible as early as possible? Close study of the Order Paper makes it very clear that the fruit and vegetable document—a very important piece of European legislation that will have a direct effect upon a great many fruit and vegetable growers and customers in this country—is to be debated on Wednesday morning and immediately voted upon on Wednesday evening.
I did hope that the Government had got away from this cavalier attitude, which assumes two things—first, that European Standing Committee A will totally accept whatever it is told on Wednesday morning. and secondly, that there will be no dissenting amendment. I hope that this will not become a habit. If it does, Parliament will get a reputation for ignoring the interests of its constituents.
Mr. Newton: I am grateful for what the hon. Lady said at the start of her question. I am not absolutely sure of the background to the point that she then went on to raise,
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but I shall look into it. We try to avoid the occurrence of such matters, but sometimes it becomes inevitable because of the timing of business in Europe. I shall look into what may have happened on this occasion.
Mr. Bob Dunn: Will the Leader of the House provide time for an urgent and early debate on the future of selective schools in England? If those schools are not allowed to select their pupils—either by examination or by interview—they will become comprehensive schools. That is an important fact to advertise in the House and elsewhere in the nation.
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend has raised an important point, but I do not think that I can promise time for a dedicated debate, as it were. But it was clear from the Gracious Speech that there will be a number of opportunities to debate education matters during this Session.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Following on from the question from the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait), will the Leader of the House confirm that there will as usual be a debate before we rise for Christmas on the local government settlement pursuant to today's statement? Can he give an indication as to the dates of the specific supplementary legislative proposals to implement the Scottish and Welsh procedural changes announced by the two Secretaries of State yesterday and today?
Mr. Newton: On the latter point, I cannot at present give a specific time for the debates. We would like to get the changes agreed by the House as soon as possible in order that their beneficial effects should be felt as soon as possible. I have forgotten the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question.
Mr. Hughes: The local government settlement.
Mr. Newton: I am not sure if the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is normally a debate before Christmas. I shall look into it, but my recollection is that the matter is normally debated when the orders are brought before the House in the early part of the new year.
Mr. Anthony Coombs: May we have a debate next week on race relations, so that we can investigate the deplorable remarks apparently made by a prominent member of the Labour party from Leicester on "Dispatches" only last night? Regarding the deputy leadership of Leicester city council, he asked:
"Why should we have a white person?"
May we have a debate so that we can discuss whether such overt racist language is Labour party policy?
Mr. Newton: I did not see the programme, but I am aware of reports of it. In view of the serious nature of the allegations that have been made, I am sure that they will be carefully examined, not only by the hon. Gentleman himself but by the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr. David Winnick: In view of the excellent work being carried out by President Clinton, be it now in Northern Ireland or what he has done in Bosnia, and the excellent speech that he gave to us yesterday, will the Prime Minister make some sort of apology next week for how the Conservative party actively tried to stop

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President Clinton being elected and quite likely used Home Office records to try to prove that he dodged the draft?
Mr. Newton: Such a question contributes nothing to what we would all like to achieve. I endorse the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the quality of the President's address yesterday. Having been present at that speech and at some more informal exchanges between the President and the Prime Minister, I assure the hon. Gentleman that the relationship between them is very warm.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: May I support the call for a debate on the funding of the BBC World Service because it has an immensely high standing around the world, giving intensified stature to this country among listeners around the world? I would differentiate strictly between the World Service and the BBC's domestic service which is not of such a high standard. The advantage of such a debate is that it would show that Ministers have paid careful attention to the funding of the World Service. They could explain the split funding between grant through the Foreign Office vote and the possibilities for commercial income for the BBC.
Mr. Newton: I note my hon. Friend's suggestion. Like the representation of the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), I shall bring it to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: As a debate on the local government settlement has been called for, would not it be a good idea, as Ministers have lessons in French and German on the all-party Whip—I have never been—to hold arithmetic lessons for Ministers? We heard the story about £870 million extra for education. Along comes a Minister today and we find out that it is all made up of wage increases and inflation. The result in Derbyshire and many other authorities is that schools will be about £40 per pupil worse off this year than last. It is all a mirage. Let us get the sums done properly.
Mr. Newton: I do not, of course, accept the hon. Gentleman's suggestions. This is a substantial additional sum for education. One thing at least is clear: the hon. Gentleman needs no lessons in English.
Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend arrange for an urgent debate on early-day motion 3?
[That this House calls on the Government to acknowledge that over 3,000 people with haemophilia have been infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) as a result of NHS treatment with contaminated blood products; recognises that over 50 people with haemophilia are now understood to have died from liver disease contracted as a result; and considers giving similar financial assistance to those infected with HCV, who currently receive no additional help, as for those infected in the same way with HIV who have been compensated by the Government.]
He will be aware that the motion has been signed by 250 hon. Members from both sides of the House, which is almost a majority of those eligible to sign an early-day motion. The cost of such a concession would be relatively slight, and it would right a fundamental wrong.
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend knows of previous responsibilities that I have had in similar matters. I
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therefore have great sympathy with those who may inadvertently have been infected with hepatitis C through national health service treatment, but the patients received the best treatment available in the light of medical knowledge at the time. In the absence of negligence, I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has no plans for special payments.
Mr. Jim Marshall: When is the Leader of the House likely to proceed with the orders dealing with reorganisation of local authorities that are to have elections in 1997? I hesitate to mention my authority today in view of the criticism, much of it unfair. As the Leader of the House knows, Leicester has been a model for race relations in the United Kingdom for the past 20 years. However, there is increasing concern in my city about the delay in proceeding with the order. Will he seek to allay that fear and give a definite date?
Mr. Newton: I am afraid that I cannot give a definite date this afternoon but I shall bring the hon. Gentleman's question to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, who will be responsible for proceeding with the orders.
Mr. Max Madden: If we cannot have a debate on the water industry, particularly Yorkshire Water, will the Leader of the House encourage the Secretary of State for the Environment to make a statement to the House, I hope to announce a wholly independent public inquiry into the affairs of Yorkshire Water, which seems to combine breathtaking incompetence with awesome contempt for its customers?
On the Asylum and Immigration Bill, will the Leader of the House ensure that the so-called white list of safe third countries is published before the Bill's Second Reading, which is to take place a week on Monday?
Mr. Newton: I cannot be as helpful as I would naturally like to be on either point. I have already referred to the Yorkshire Water question, as did my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. On the latter point, I was present at Home Office questions earlier today when the Minister of State, Home Office commented on that subject. I cannot add to that this afternoon.
Mr. Paul Flynn: When can we debate the savings that could be made by replacing Select Committee trips abroad by techniques such as video conferencing? Not only would that be much more efficient and save a great deal of money, but it might produce much better reports. Has the Leader of the House noticed that many of the reports compiled in the House are much better than those delivered by Committees that travel far abroad? Does not that prove the Chinese proverb that the further one travels, the less one knows?
Mr. Winnick: I would not put it to the vote.
Mr. Newton: The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has been more helpful than I can ever remember him being before. I shall rest on his comment.
Mr. John Spellar: I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 134:
[That this House welcomes the visit of President Clinton to this country and looks forward to the continuation of good relations between the United Kingdom and the USA; believes, however, that this would

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be better served by good corporate behaviour of British firms in America; and deplores the attempts by Hanson to cut the wages and conditions of their employees in California.]
Will he arrange time for a debate on the behaviour of British corporations abroad? Should not they enhance Britain's reputation abroad rather than damage it, as Hanson is doing by cutting the wages and conditions of workers in California?
Mr. Newton: Just as the corporate activities of United States companies here would be a matter for them subject to United Kingdom law, the corporate activities of British companies in the United States are a matter for them as governed by US law.

BILLS PRESENTED
  RATING (CARAVANS AND BOATS)
  Mr. Secretary Gummer, supported by Mr. Secretary Lang, Mrs. Secretary Bottomley, Mr. Secretary Forsyth, Mr. Secretary Hague, Mrs. Angela Knight, Mr. David Curry and Sir Paul Beresford, presented a Bill to make provision about liability for non-domestic rates in England and Wales in relation to certain caravans and boats: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Monday 4 December and to be printed. [Bill 9.]
  HEALTH SERVICE COMMISSIONERS (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Secretary Dorrell, supported by Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew, Mr. Secretary Forsyth, Mr. Roger Freeman, Mr. Secretary Hague and Mr. Gerald Malone, presented a Bill to make provision about the Health Service Commissioners: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Monday 4 December and to be printed. [Bill 10.]
DELEGATED LEGISLATION

  PROBATION
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(4) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.),
  That the Probation (Amendment) Rules 1995 (S. I., 1995, No. 2622) be referred to a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.—[Mr. Bates.]
  Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day
  WAYS AND MEANS
  Order read for resuming debate on Question [28 November].

  AMENDMENT OF THE LAW
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That it is expedient to amend the law with respect to the National Debt and the public revenue and to make further provision in connection with finance; but this Resolution does not extend to the making of any amendment with respect to value added tax so as to provide—

  (a) for zero-rating or exempting any supply, acquisition or importation otherwise than by—

  (i) zero-rating or exempting supplies of goods which are, or are to be, subjected to a fiscal or other warehousing regime; or

  (ii) zero-rating or exempting supplies of services on or in relation to such goods;

  (b) for refunding any amount of tax otherwise than to persons constructing or converting buildings in cases where the construction or conversion is not in the course or furtherance of a business;

  (c) for varying any rate at which that tax is at any time chargeable; or

  (d) for relief other than relief applying to goods of whatever description or services of whatever description.—[Mr. Kenneth Clarke.]

  Question again proposed.

  Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
  5.38 pm
  The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian Lang): I welcome the opportunity of this resumed debate on the Budget to emphasise what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has made clear in each of his Budgets: that the single most important contribution that the Government can make to fostering growth and improving competitiveness—both of which are essential for business success and national prosperity—is to provide a stable macro-economic background. That means controlling public spending, achieving and sustaining low inflation and keeping Government borrowing and taxation low. Hence we have a Budget that works towards those objectives: Government borrowing falling to zero in the medium term; getting public spending to below 40 per cent. of national income; getting inflation down below 2.5 per cent. and keeping it there; and progress towards a 20 per cent. basic rate of income tax. The Budget that my right hon. and learned Friend delivered on Tuesday enshrined all of those objectives. It leaves people and business with more of what they earn and spends more on what they care about.
  The Budget reaffirms our overriding commitment to providing the framework and conditions under which enterprise and wealth creation can flourish. It cannot be said too often that businesses and individuals, not

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  Governments, create wealth. We need to encourage and reward their hard work and prudent savings, which are the foundations for future investment.
  All 26 million income tax payers will gain from the income tax cuts that my right hon. and learned Friend announced on Tuesday. Savers will benefit from the reduction, from 25p to 20p, of tax on savings income. The package of help for business announced by my right hon. and learned Friend addresses business concerns directly, which is perhaps why it was so warmly welcomed by the Confederation of British Industry.
  Mr. Peter Hain: On the concerns of business, why has the right hon. Gentleman reneged on the commitment given by his predecessor to reduce the Post Office's external financing limit and instead doubled it so that an extra £400 million will be taken out of the Post Office? That will increase prices for the ordinary customer and massively restrict the Post Office's ability to modernise and invest in new sorting equipment and so forth. Is that not just another hidden tax and an example of the Government giving with one hand and taking away with the other?
  Mr. Lang: My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister did not give the firm commitment that the hon. Gentleman suggests. He gave an indication of what the Government's aim would be and expressed the hope that it would be possible to make progress. We have indeed made progress with the arrangements that my right hon. Friend set out last May.
  We have abolished the capital expenditure limit with its associated scrutiny of individual projects. We have a new corporate planning process. We have said that we shall consider moves by the Royal Mail into adjacent markets and that we shall continue to build on that progress. It is surely beyond reason to expect that the Post Office, a major organisation, should be entirely exempt from the sort of budgetary pressures that afflict every other public service and Government Department. That is the approach that my right hon. Friend took.
  Mr. Hain: I am probably testing the right hon. Gentleman's patience, but may I remind him that his predecessor imposed an external financing limit for the coming financial year which the right hon. Gentleman has now increased by £120 million? The Post Office cannot borrow on the open market because the Government will not let it. It has to invest from its own resources. Why is the right hon. Gentleman denying it the ability to do so and therefore denying it the ability to compete in Europe and become the best Post Office in Europe, not just the best Post Office in Britain?
  Mr. Lang: We have an extremely good record on the performance of the Post Office. It is certainly not being starved of investment. It is an organisation which is spending, and should have the scope to continue to spend, at double the rate that it spent when the Government came into office. At constant prices, it spent a total of £800 million in the five years Labour was in power. Between 1989 and 1994, that figure increased to £1.7 billion. We have a good record on the Post Office and I am anxious to build on it as soon as circumstances allow.
  I shall now revert to the benefits for business that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor announced in his Budget. We have cut employers' national insurance
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  contributions by £500 million a year from April 1997 and we have cut the maximum real increase in business rates under the relief scheme by 2½ per cent. compared with last year's Budget, but the request that I hear most often from business is for low inflation.
  All the major business organisations called for the safeguarding of the stable macro-economic environment that the Government have put in place. We have set a firm target for underlying inflation and we remain resolved to drive it down and keep it down. Inflation has now been below 4 per cent. for more than three and a half years and below 3 per cent. for much of that time. That is the best performance for 50 years. We are breaking the inflationary culture that the policies of the Labour party did so much to engender.
  The stable and profitable climate for business that we are delivering is the surest way to encourage investment in our economy, but we have also been engaged in a programme of long-term structural change to the United Kingdom's economy. It involves reducing burdens on business, extending the scope of market forces, promoting competition at home and abroad and helping business to help itself.
  We have at all times been concerned to create an economic climate that encourages and rewards enterprise. We recognised long ago the importance to our economy of a thriving small business sector. It is the backbone of our economy and the engine of growth and new jobs for the future. Today, there are more than 1 million more small businesses than there were in 1979.
  Small business remains at the heart of our agenda, where it has always been. While the Labour party was opposing enterprise—or, as now, simply talking about it—we have, year after year, brought in measures to help small business. Through changes to PAYE, national insurance, income and corporation taxes, VAT, accounting and auditing requirements; and with loan guarantees, venture capital trusts and investment schemes and a host of other measures, we have shown our commitment to small business and we will continue to do so.
  We have invited small firms representative bodies to organise a series of conferences to involve small businesses more directly in generating future policies to help them. We are participating fully in that programme, which will culminate in a national conference to be held in London next March.
  We have established a new team of small firms Ministers across Whitehall. They are responsible for ensuring that the interests of the sector are taken into account in the development of all aspects of Government policy. The Budget contained a wide range of measures further to boost small businesses and enterprise. It cut taxes on profits. The reduction in the small companies rate of corporation tax will help 300,000 small companies, while the cut in the basic rate of income tax will reduce the tax burden on a very large number of unincorporated businesses.
  The Budget helped small firms with the cost of business rates following revaluation. More than 800,000 smaller properties will benefit from the maximum real increase being cut from 7½ per cent. to 5 per cent. It cut the qualifying age for capital gains tax retirement relief, thereby encouraging and rewarding entrepreneurship, and

  1373
  significantly extended the threshold before which assets will be liable for inheritance tax. It simplified the tax system and raised the VAT threshold.
  However, it is not just through the taxation system that we are helping small business. We are also putting in place the most extensive and effective infrastructure to assist small business that the country has ever had. Business Link is a central element in our strategy to help small firms. It is reaching out to companies with a will to grow by providing long-term support tailored to the needs of individual firms. For the first time, local firms have a simple route to a comprehensive range of high-quality, integrated business support services in areas such as export planning, finance, design, innovation and modern technology.
  More than 70 per cent. of the Business Link network is already in place, and by next April we expect some 250 outlets to be open, covering the whole of England. Scotland and Wales are developing similar networks known as Scottish Business Shops and Business Connect Wales.
  Mr. Max Madden: The President of the Board of Trade has been talking at some length about all the help that the Government are giving small business. Does he include in that the proposal to introduce substantial penalties on employers who employ illegal entrants? Will not the inevitable consequence of that measure be that many small business people, fearful of such penalties, will refuse to employ anyone who comes from abroad, particularly anyone from an ethnic minority?
  Mr. Lang: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, as with all the other measures that the Government introduce. the particular circumstances of small businesses will be taken into account.
  Business has already given Business Link an overwhelming thumbs up. More than 4,000 businesses a week are using the network, and 95 per cent. of customers surveyed have expressed satisfaction with the service. The Budget provided funding to enable the Business Link network to be completed. The Budget has also allowed me to increase the funding for its services so that it can meet the demand from business for integrated, world-class business support services.
  Bad regulation bears down disproportionately on small firms. Business men and women must be free to concentrate on creating wealth rather than filling in forms. We have sought out unnecessary regulations which raise prices, destroy jobs and stifle innovation and choice. Business has been brisk. We have found more than 1,000 such regulations and we shall have amended or repealed more than half of them by the end of the year, but we are by no means content to rest there. We are determined to continue to look positively at deregulation, particularly where regulation impinges on small business.
  We shall continue to oppose the imposition of new burdens on small business. The policies of the Labour party—the national minimum wage, the social chapter and its payroll tax—would place intolerable new burdens on small business. It is clear that the needs of small business are the last thing on Labour's mind.
  Deregulation and our policies to encourage enterprise have been essential elements of our long-term agenda to transform the competitiveness of the British economy.
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  The Government's privatisation programme is also a part of that agenda, Privatisation and liberalisation have revitalised huge swathes of the economy that lay moribund under state ownership. The success of our policies is reflected by the increasing number of countries of all political persuasions which are now following our lead. It is only in the British Labour party that abject short-termism and socialist dogma still prevail.
  What is the Labour party's response to the growing success story? Its response is to seek revenge in the form of a windfall tax. At the time of the utilities' privatisation, the Labour party claimed that they were doomed to failure. Now that they have achieved greater efficiencies and success than Labour thought possible, Labour will penalise them with a windfall tax—which would be unfair, capricious and penalise success. It would also be retrospective.
  Retrospective taxation destroys incentives to improve performance and make profits. If there are no profits, there are no funds for investment. If there is no investment, the quality of services in the utilities will be under threat and consumers will end up facing price increases rather than continuing to enjoy the downward trend in prices. Consumers would suffer as the quality of services fell and their cost rose.
  Mr. Michael Clapham: The Secretary of State mentioned that the utilities had forced down prices. Is he aware that the price of electricity to large users has not changed at all? Can he tell us what he intends to do about that, as it clearly affects British competitiveness?
  Mr. Lang: I shall provide figures on prices in a moment. For the moment, let me continue on the topic of the windfall tax to which the Labour party is so committed. Indeed, it is one of the few identifiable commitments that we have managed to get out of the Labour party.
  The Labour party implies that the windfall tax is a free tax and that no one will get hurt. There is no such thing as a free tax. I have already mentioned the cost to consumers of the tax, but it would also be a betrayal of all the investors in the privatised companies, because they would have to pay for it. It would be a tax on millions of small individual investors. It would be a tax on the pension funds and the life assurance companies on which individuals rely for their future security. They are the people who would be betrayed by the Labour party, and all because Labour needs to find money to finance its desires for higher spending. A windfall tax has nothing whatever to do with fairness.
  A windfall tax is by definition a one-off tax. It cannot be used for recurring spending programmes, yet the Labour party plans to spend the proceeds of the tax not only year after year, but on 10 separate policy commitments. The Labour party's sums simply do not add up.
  Let us examine the successes of the privatised industries, which Labour policies would put at risk. The regulatory system has turned the past profits of the utilities into price cuts for consumers. Telecommunications prices are down more than 35 per cent. in real terms since privatisation. With liberalisation and growing competition, customers can expect to continue to benefit from lower prices. Domestic gas

  1375
  prices, excluding VAT, are down more than 23 per cent., and industrial gas prices are down 40 per cent. since privatisation. The deregulation of the gas market, which comes on stream next year, will mean that customers can expect prices to fall further still. Domestic electricity is down by 7 per cent. Next year, through tighter new price controls, the flotation of the National Grid and the phasing out of the nuclear levy, customers can expect, on average, about £90 off their bills.
  Our telecommunications, electricity and gas prices for industry are among the lowest in Europe, and they are helping industry in this country to win. The privatised companies are delivering not only lower prices but better services. More than 95 per cent. of British Telecom's telephone boxes now work, and there are 50 per cent. more of them. Before privatisation, 250,000 people were waiting to have a telephone installed; now there are no waiting lists. Utilities now guarantee standards of service, and their guarantees are backed up by compensation. They have codes of practice on the services that they deliver to elderly and disabled customers.
  The taxpayer has also enjoyed benefits from privatisation. Under the Labour party, nationalised industries cost taxpayers £50 million a week, which was more than £120 a year for every household in the country. Today, the privatised utilities contribute £55 million a week to the Exchequer.
  Mr. Paddy Tipping: The President of the Board of Trade has not mentioned the privatised water companies. What would he say to Severn Trent Water which, the day before the Budget, announced an increase in profits of 75 per cent. to £160 million, but offered its customers a rebate of only £4 a year? That is not value for money for the customer.
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman seems to overlook the fact that the water industry has for a long time needed increased capital investment. Like all publicly owned utilities and nationalised industries, it has been starved of resources over the years. It is now in a position to raise the necessary money through the private sector and in the market. Yorkshire Water plans to invest no less than £2.5 billion over the next 10 years. Such an upgrading of the system could not have been contemplated under the previous arrangements, but can be now.
  The privatised utilities have benefited not only consumers, shareholders and the Exchequer, but the economy. The privatised industries are investing in modern infrastructure that will benefit Britain for decades to come, and they have had an unparalleled record on investment since privatisation. More than £25 billion has been invested by BT on modernising the network and installing new technologies, and more than £4.5 billion was invested in telecommunications last year. Fifteen billion pounds has been invested in water to date, which answers more specifically the question asked by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping). Our water companies are now delivering some of the cleanest water in Europe. By comparison, under the Labour Government, capital investment fell in electricity, gas, telecommunications and water.
  Against that background, it can be said with certainty that independent regulation of the utilities. operating at arm's length from the Government and with competition introduced wherever possible, has worked well. It
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  provides incentives for companies to improve their performance and mechanisms to ensure that customers benefit from the improvements. The regulators have also required the utility companies to meet demanding new standards of service. As a result, customers have benefited in respect of price and quality of service.
  There is never a shortage of ideas for changes to the regulatory system. Where those changes would help the regulators with their job and improve public understanding of what is being done, the regulators themselves are quick to respond.
  The regulators have wide powers under existing legislation to introduce changes to regulation, but they are all putting increasing emphasis on consultation before taking major decisions. They actively encourage public debate through consultation papers, explanatory reports and discussion at conferences and other open occasions. The wider involvement of interested parties raises the quality and integrity of decision making as the regime develops.
  Some of the regulators have appointed, or are considering the appointment of, groups of advisers to help with specific issues or for continuing advice. That is a sign of a flexible and responsive regulatory system. In addition, as competition develops—for example, in the telecommunications market—the regulator seeks to remove detailed interventionist rules. That will allow companies to respond more flexibly and innovatively to customer needs and market developments.
  The current structure is highly adaptable, so there is at present no case for fundamental change. As I said, the regulatory system is in an evolutionary phase. The process will no doubt continue, and rightly so. The Government will certainly continue to keep the system under review to ensure that it reflects the developing market.
  As the system evolves, however, it will build on a record of solid achievement. Independent regulators and increasingly tight price formulae, with an incentive element built in, have been delivering impressive results to customers and developing impressive utility companies at the same time, but competition rather than regulation is the key to even greater improvements.
  There is no doubt that there is scope for more competition and, therefore, more consumer choice, especially in the energy and water sectors. Competition between suppliers is already a fact of life in telecommunications and for medium and larger users of electricity and gas. It has produced clear benefits, which are important for the international competitiveness of British industry.
  We are determined to press ahead with the further opening up of the markets. The first phase of the introduction of competition to the domestic gas market will take place next year, with full competition in 1998. 'The electricity industry is also preparing for full competition in 1998. Also in 1998, all users of electricity and gas will have the opportunity to benefit from competitive choice—on top of the large reductions in energy prices which they have already experienced or which are in the pipeline.
  There is also scope for extending competition in the supply of water and waste water services, in the first instance for larger users. Consequently the Government are working on proposals with the Director General of Water Services and will publish a consultation paper early

  1377
  next year. This all shows that, as a result of the Government's policies, we have a dynamic evolving utilities sector which is increasingly delivering, at lower cost than before, the services that customers want.
  We have not restricted our efforts to deregulate and increase competition to the private sector.
  Mr. Tim Smith: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his announcement that electricity customers are likely to benefit from reductions of, on average, up to £90 in their bills next year is extremely welcome? What effect does he expect that and, in particular, the £50 National Grid rebate, to have on the retail prices index?
  Mr. Lang: I can, with confidence, say that it will drive the RPI downwards. It is more difficult to calculate the precise effect that it will have on the RPI. In the long term, the price reductions that have been coming through in all the utilities that I have mentioned will undoubtedly be of great benefit in reducing the cost of living.
  The public sector has also been opened up to the rigours of the marketplace through the private finance initiative. The PFI brings together the public and private sectors to the advantage of both. It brings the enterprise and discipline of the private sector into areas which have, until recently, been regarded as the domain of the public sector. The state cannot and should not try to do everything. We need to find new, innovative and more efficient ways of delivering public services and major capital investments. The PFI enables the Government to move away from being the provider of services to being an intelligent purchaser of services for the taxpayer.
  The PFI will generate increased investment in infrastructure and public services. The Government are on course to let contracts worth £14 billion over the next three years—£5 billion this year alone. Substantial progress has already been made across a range of Government activities. For example, a deal was signed earlier this year with GEC Alsthom to supply a new train service for the Northern line. The first tranche of contracts for design-build-finance-operate road projects is due to be signed shortly. A further £500 million-worth of privately financed road schemes was announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor on Tuesday. The net result will be the better and more efficient delivery of services.
  Sir Michael Grylls: I am listening carefully to what my right hon. Friend is saying about the PFI, which is a marvellous innovation that should be useful. To help it work more efficiently and speedily, will my right hon. Friend consider bringing in outside business men and women to advise Government Departments as they negotiate contracts? Experience seems to show that, generally, civil servants are not very good at negotiating. If people were brought in from the private sector, the PFI might get going much faster.
  Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend makes a positive suggestion and I am glad that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor is sitting on the Front Bench to
  1378
  hear it. We share the objective of wanting to ensure as substantial and effective a take-up of existing PFI opportunities as possible.
  As for the issues that we are considering in the Budget debate, we listen and wait in vain for any sign of the Labour party's policies. The Labour party does not have a view on any issue that arises in the debate. It has no view on taxation; it has no view on the level of interest rates; it has no view on inflation.
  Perhaps the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) will enlighten us all today. We know that, in general terms, the Labour party wants to raise spending and introduce more policies that would cost money but, although it generally wants lower taxes, it abstains on my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget when it comes to resolving the issue. What a wonderful posture of high-mindedness and principle the Labour party adopts to seek to persuade the electorate that it represents their interests.
  We know that the Labour party wants to raise spending, but we know that it is not prepared to face up to the issues of funding; we know that it wants to reduce taxes, but when we introduce proposals to reduce taxes across the board it abstains. Its sole interest is in party political advantage instead of the national interest. Why else would it take every opportunity to talk down the country? I should like to offer it a few facts that will help it to stand up for the country for a change.
  Our gross domestic product per head is 10 per cent. ahead of that of Europe as a whole. During the past 15 years, our growth has been faster than the average growth of the European Union. Our living standards have risen by 40 per cent. since 1979, whereas they rose by only 1 per cent. under the Labour Government. This year's Budget will help further to increase that figure of 40 per cent. With the fastest productivity growth rate, we have closed three quarters of the gap in manufacturing productivity with France and Germany since 1979—a gap that widened under the Labour Government.
  Since 1979, total investment and total investment in the business sector have risen faster than in France, Germany or Italy. The 1980s were the first decade since the second world war in which our economy grew faster than those of Germany and France. The UK now has a higher proportion of its population of working age in work than any other major European Union country.
  Those are some signs of the progress that has been made in recent years under this Government. We have achieved success through the huge structural changes that we have made to our economy—making it more competitive and freeing up enterprise. Britain is now well placed to build on the significant progress that has been achieved.
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has delivered a good Budget for business. He has delivered a Budget that furthers the competitive gains that we have made during the past 16 years. He has delivered a Budget that reinforces the Government's commitment to permanently low inflation and sustained economic growth. He has delivered a Budget that reduces taxes and provides incentives for saving.
  The Budget provides support to small firms, both through taxation and through resources for practical assistance. It reflects the long-term economic strategy of

  1379
  the Government: low inflation; incentives for enterprise; firm control of public expenditure; and a climate for sustained growth. I commend it to the House.
  6.6 pm
  Mrs. Margaret Beckett: Every Member of Parliament now knows that this is a dishonest Budget. We do not need a sophisticated analysis of the detail to show us that—we have a simple parliamentary litmus test. There have been six statements in two days and two Budget debates that have barely started before 6 pm. If the Government were really so proud of the Budget, they would not be trying so hard to hide it.
  What we needed on Tuesday was a Budget for Britain, a Budget to secure our country's future, a Budget to promote and sustain investment in that future. What we received was, unfortunately, what we feared: a Budget, the main—probably sole—purpose of which was to secure the Conservative party's future. The Budget reinforced our criticism of the Government's lamentable record on investment.
  The Budget reveals that the Conservative party is beginning to resemble a clapped-out old car. Its steering has gone and it can only lurch to the right, the tax has run out and it has been burning oil, North sea oil, for years—£128 billion worth of oil, to be exact. It is no wonder that the Tories cannot flog the old banger to the people of Britain. We can imagine the advertisement in the paper: "16 years old; one not-too-careful lady owner; split down the middle; none of the seats is safe."
  The Budget shows, yet again, a Government praising themselves for their aspirations and ignoring their record. How do we judge the worth of those aspirations? First, in the light of the Government's past record and secondly, in the light of their present intentions as revealed in the Budget. The Chancellor told us several times in his speech that he wanted to make Britain the enterprise centre of Europe. This week, the Government's efforts to promote enterprise, of which the Secretary of State has just been bragging, have produced some interesting effects. I think that we would all agree that it takes enterprise and flair to run out of water in Yorkshire. It takes unbelievable acumen to be involved in a business that supplies only one product, to fail to provide that product and still to increase profits by 50 per cent. Is that what the Government mean by "the enterprise economy"?
  That is not, of course, the only example of the Government's record on enterprise. The National Engineering Laboratory was recently privatised. What did the sale raise to help fund the Government's programme? It appears to have raised less than nothing—to be precise, minus £1.5 million. Far from raising money from that sale, the Government appear to have paid someone to take the NEL away.
  Another money loser, as well as a vote loser, is the privatisation of Railtrack. It now appears that Railtrack, with assets estimated at £6 billion, might be sold for as little as £1.5 billion—£1 billion less than was anticipated—in the rush to get it on to the stock exchange by April 1996, a rush that almost certainly has far more to do with the need for it to contribute to the Government's accounts than with sound business management of the sale.
  1380
  A recent analysis of Railtrack's accounts by the Independent suggests that the company may have set aside more than £1 billion from its investment budget to repay debt and boost the balance sheet before privatisation—yet more evidence of the Government's failure on investment, to put alongside the use of £1 billion of public money to meet the costs of privatisation, money which could have been used for investment.
  Then there is the privatisation of the nuclear power stations. Some disquiet has already been expressed about the general safety aspects and implications of that privatisation, and about whether the timetable might be somewhat tight, being driven by the Government's need for funds rather than the public interest. Now, that already tight timetable is rumoured to have been further curtailed because Railtrack's privatisation will not raise the sums anticipated, thus creating fresh doubts about safety.
  That is probably also the privatisation that most evidently blows out of the water the Government's claim to be, and to be uniquely, the party that understands about how business should work, because that is the privatisation in which, most evidently, the Government are selling the assets and keeping the liabilities. It also blows out of the water their claim to be good stewards on behalf of the British people, because those are liabilities that, through their electricity bills, people have already paid to cover. Thanks to the Government's business acumen, we shall end up paying, not once, not even twice, but three times.
  Before the original privatisation, the Central Electricity Generating Board held assets that more than offset its liabilities.
  Mr. Michael Stern: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Beckett: Not at the moment.
  However, when those assets were sold, the money was used to contribute to tax cuts and Nuclear Electric was left with £10 billion of unsecured liabilities. The non-fossil fuel levy was invented entirely—
  Mr. Stern: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Beckett: Not at the moment. I am right in the middle of an argument. I know that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to interrupt it. The non-fossil fuel levy was invented entirely to cover those liabilities, again at the electricity customer's expense. It was in effect another tax. Nuclear Electric chose to invest much of the income from that tax, saying that it needed to ensure that it had future cash flow and assets to cover those liabilities. Those assets are now, in turn, to be sold again and the cash again used as a contribution to, and justification for, tax cuts, leaving the Magnox company once more with the unsecured liabilities.
  Customers will have paid three times: first, through the earlier price levels to build up CEGB assets, secondly, through the non-fossil fuel levy used to rebuild them after privatisation and thirdly, to cover the liabilities that the Government said that those assets were twice supposed to meet.
  Mr. Stern: The right hon. Lady has summarised the letter that many of us received from power unions to good effect. May I remind her, however, that when the Select Committee on Energy reported on exactly the matters to

  1381
  which she now refers, it pointed out clearly and with factual backing that it was not the case that the CEGB had provided for those liabilities, and that it was because the CEGB had not even calculated, let alone provided for, those liabilities that the nuclear power stations could not be included in the privatisation?
  Mrs. Beckett: I understand that the Select Committee continues to examine those matters. I take the hon. Gentleman's point when he says that he would argue that the assets of the CEGB would not wholly have covered those liabilities, although I believe that, as it is so difficult to calculate, it is hard to say whether that is wholly true. However, that does not alter at all—as I believe that the hon. Gentleman conceded—my basic argument that the CEGB did have assets that would have contributed towards meeting those liabilities, and those assets, like the ones that replaced them, have been destroyed by the Government, leaving the liabilities in place. I repeat the main point of those observations, which is that that is a clear sign of what we should think of the Government's business acumen.
  However, the Government's appalling record in protecting and advancing the interests of the people is, in its own way, wonderfully consistent. Alone among the G7 countries, alone in Europe, the Conservatives formed the Government who had the windfall benefits of North sea oil—benefits that they used to cover the consequences and costs of their failure and incompetence.
  I listened today to the President of the Board of Trade going on about the Government's investment record, as Conservatives so often do—usually not very accurately, but never mind—and comparing it with the investment record of the last Labour Government, which was, of course, hit by a fourfold or fivefold increase in the price of oil, something that the present Government have not yet sustained. What I never hear the Government mention, and what the President of the Board of Trade slid over today, is the fact that the Conservatives have had benefits worth £128 billion at today's prices from the North sea alone. That is the equivalent of about £22 million a day for every single day of the 16 years that the Conservatives have been in office.
  In addition, the Conservatives have had, and squandered, the proceeds of privatisation—what the late Harold Macmillan called "selling the family silver"—£80 billion in today's prices. That is the equivalent of a further £13 million a day for every single day of the 16 years that they have been in office. The Conservatives have had £35 million a day for every day that they have been in power for 16 years; £35 million a day that no British Government will ever have again because they have squandered it; £35 million a day that they could have invested in Britain's future if, for 16 years, they had not put the future of the Conservative party first.
  That process of squeezing public assets and squeezing the public's purse goes on. I was very interested in the observations that my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) made about the attack on the Post Office. He drew attention to the fact that the Treasury will double the amount of cash that it will take from the Post Office—an additional £400 million during the next three years—making a total of £1 billion during that time.
  1382
  The President of the Board of Trade implied that that was not especially unexpected; at least he disputed with my hon. Friend the Member for Neath the statement of the then President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), on 11 May 1995. I just happen to have a copy of statement about my person. The then Secretary of State said:
  "I am prepared to agree that in future we shall aim to set the EFL at about half the Post Office's forecast post-tax profit. I hope to make progress in that direction this autumn."—[Official Report, 11 May 1995; Vol. 259, c. 885.]
  Mr. Lang: Hope.
  Mrs. Beckett: The Secretary of State draws to my attention the word "hope"—and no doubt also the word "aim". I believe that it is clear to all of us that words in the mouth of Ministers in the present Government mean nothing, and that is one of many examples—as is the word "promise".
  However, one thing that is also clear is that that further impost on the Post Office, taking as much from it in the next three years as the Government have taken in the past 10, will have two effects. First, it makes an early increase in postal charges almost inevitable—a Tory stamp tax on the ordinary people and the businesses of the country. Secondly, it means that much-needed investment in the Post Office will have to be shelved. It also probably renders the Post Office open to competition from elsewhere in the European Union.
  Most commentators say that this year's was a neutral Budget. Some give the Chancellor a feeble cheer for not going more blatantly for cosmetic tax cuts, but it was a cheer that he did not deserve. We know that, on the latest Red Book forecasts, the total tax burden as a proportion of gross domestic product continues to be planned to increase until the end of the century. We all know that in April next year a typical family will continue to pay £670 a year more in tax than it did when the Conservatives were re-elected in 1992 on a platform that promised overall tax cuts. They did not aim, they did not hope, they promised tax cuts, and then delivered 21 tax increases, equivalent, as the Chancellor has acknowledged, to 7p in the pound on the basic rate of tax.
  It is forecast that the public sector borrowing requirement, the deficit in the Government's finances, will be down to about £22 billion next year. Last year, the Chancellor said that it would be below that by now. Growth was forecast to reach 2.75 per cent. this year and 3 per cent. next year. Last year, the Chancellor promised that it would be higher than that by now. Meanwhile, back in the real world, year-on-year growth is running at around a meagre 2 per cent. Last year, the Chancellor forecast investment growth at 5.75 per cent.; now he says that it will be 1 per cent. Growth is down on his forecast, and so is investment. What is up on his forecast? Inflation, the trade deficit, the balance of payments deficit and the deficit in public finances—the public sector borrowing requirement. That is all part of the Government's record.
  What are the Government's present intentions? Before the Budget, the CBI said that we needed a Budget for investment—a Budget to promote investment in industry, and to sustain investment in education and training. It also

  1383
  said that what we did not need was a Budget in which cuts in income tax were offered at the expense of investment in infrastructure.
  Mr. Tim Smith: The CBI welcomed the Budget.
  Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman says—from a sedentary position, no doubt exercising due caution—that the CBI welcomed the Budget. Indeed, the CBI put out a very balanced press release. I think the Secretary of State said that it had given the Budget a warm welcome; that is going a bit over the top, although it does use the words "we welcome". It also says:
  "Public borrowing is higher than we had hoped for … We will need to see the details to assess this"—
  the public capital expenditure cut, that is—
  "in full."
  The CBI also says:
  "it is vital that the resources available for … transport … education and training and export support are at least maintained … the Private Finance Initiative is coming on stream too slowly to make up for the cuts in public capital spending in the Government's present plans."
  I would not call that a warm welcome.
  The Minister for Trade (Mr. Anthony Nelson): What are the Opposition's proposals?
  Mrs. Beckett: I would be grateful if the Minister for Trade would be quiet. He knows perfectly well what our proposals are; in fact, the Secretary of State spent some time attacking them in his speech.
  Mr. Lang: The right hon. Lady has missed out one or two points in the CBI's press release. It welcomed
  "the fact that the Government has broadly stuck to the prudent economic line"
  that it had recommended. It was
  "pleased that the Chancellor appears to have limited tax cuts to reductions in spending and resisted the temptation to go for excessive tax cuts."
  As for public borrowing, the CBI was
  "satisfied that it still appears to be on a downward path."
  It welcomed
  "the priority the Chancellor gave to education spending".
  In the tax reductions, it was
  "pleased to see some specific measures such as help given to small businesses".
  As for personal taxation, it stated:
  "we welcome the raising of thresholds and the broadening of the 20 per cent. band."
  I think that that is a pretty warm welcome.
  Mrs. Beckett: The Secretary of State is unduly defensive—perhaps revealingly defensive. I made the very point that this was a balanced press release that welcomed many elements in the Budget; I then drew attention to the reservations expressed by the CBI. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well which are the most important points. I am dealing with the measures that the CBI called for—and the right hon. Gentleman is well aware that it was given none of those measures.
  Last year, bodies such as the CBI, the chambers of commerce and the Engineering Employers Federation called on the Chancellor for significant capital allowances to stimulate investment in new plant and machinery. This
  1384
  year, those bodies called on him again for such capital investment. They got zilch. The Secretary of State was too busy telling the CBI that it was its duty to come to the rescue of the Conservative party—to remember whose side it was on, as he so gracefully put it—to worry about helping it to come to the rescue of a faltering economy.
  Both the Chancellor and the President of the Board of Trade are fond of quoting figures to the effect that investment has increased substantially over the past year; but that one-year increase is quoted to disguise how low is the level to which investment has been flattened under the present Government. In fact, total investment in 1994 was more than 10 per cent. below its level in 1989, before the recession.
  The share of the economy taken by investment has fallen for six years in a row. The average level of investment between 1979 and 1993 as a share of the economy has been the lowest in all the 18 countries of the G7 and the European Community. As the Bank of England pointed out this summer, investment is 20 per cent. below the level that it reached in previous recoveries. I refer to investment in general, to support for investment of the kind sought by the CBI and to investment in education. The Budget told us that funding for education would be as much as local authorities are spending this year, and that there would be cuts in funding for further and higher education and training, including funds for training and education councils.
  Nor have the Government protected investment in infrastructure, as the CBI requested. They have savagely cut their own investment, public sector capital spending, with cuts amounting to £3.9 billion by 1997–98. With typical sleight of hand, they have implied that the private finance initiative will fill the gap. It has not so far, and unfortunately it probably will not do so in the future. The Government have already cut their own investment by about £2 billion, and over the same period the private finance initiative has raised only about £500 million. Already, we have a net reduction of £1.5 billion in investment in infrastructure.
  Mr. Nigel Forman: It seems a long time ago, but I seem to remember that the right hon. Lady was a Minister in the last Labour Government. I believe that she was there at the time when the Labour Government cut various forms of public sector capital expenditure by more than any other post-war Government. Does she repent?
  Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman was clearly not awake when I gave the figures for the investment funds that have been available to the present Government. Yes, I do regret the fact that the last Labour Government could not proceed with all their capital spending programmes—although what the Government say about that, like so much of what they say, is often completely untrue. The Secretary of State said, for example, that investment in water had been cut. That is not true. The plans that we hoped to implement were not entirely fulfilled, but investment was not cut; indeed, it rose under the last Labour Government. I suggest that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) check his facts.
  Let me repeat a point that I am happy to repeat—a point that I intend to repeat at every opportunity that I get between now and the next general election. As the Secretary of State did, and as they all do, the hon. Member

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  for Carshalton and Wallington compared the record of the last Labour Government, who were hit by an oil price increase—[Interruption.] As recently as Tuesday, the Chancellor said that the reason why inflation had gone up a bit this year was an increase in commodity prices. If that excuse is valid for the Chancellor, it must have some relevance to what happened to the last Labour Government. What we never had, and what no Government will ever have again—thanks to the profligacy of the present Government—is £35 million a day of investment to put into the economy.
  Mr. Richard Spring: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Beckett: No.
  To compare the investment record of the last Labour Government with that of the present Government—even truthfully—is ridiculous. It is not comparing like with like.
  Mr. David Congdon: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Beckett: I should like to make progress. I shall give way later if I have time.
  What the Government intend is all too clear. I was not able to trace the quotation before today's debate, but I think that I am right in saying that they have implied that the private finance initiative was first introduced to promote the programme of capital investment. It would be used to supplement and extend that programme; the Government denied that it would be used to replace it, and to make up for cuts in Government capital investment. Not only has the latter happened; it has been explicitly advocated—in the Red Book, and in the Chancellor's speech on Tuesday—that the PFI should replace, rather than supplement, public capital investment. That, too, is something that business and industry have sought to avoid.
  The Government claim—as they have today—that economic success is already ours, boasting about our trade performance under them. Indeed, that performance has been record-breaking. In 1983, we saw the breaking of an outstanding historical record, with the appearance of the first trade deficit in manufactured goods since the industrial revolution—a record that the Government have managed to maintain every year since then. The trade figures for October reflect another record-breaking Government economic performance—a £1.2 billion non-EC trade deficit. That is the worst figure since the series began.
  The balance of UK visible trade in 1994 was a deficit of £10.5 billion, and the balance of trade in manufactured goods showed a deficit of £7.5 billion. We currently have a trading deficit with France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Incidentally, under the last Labour Government we had an average £4 billion surplus on trade in manufactured goods.
  It is hard to see how all that leads the Government to claim that they are making Britain the enterprise centre of Europe. We are down to 18th in the world prosperity league, behind our main European competitors; we are bottom of the league in growth and investment since 1979 among the G7, and 20th out of 24 OECD countries in job
  1386
  creation. It all flies in the face of what the Government say about our economic record, and what they say about jobs—such as the Secretary of State's comment that job insecurity is a state of mind, and that the reality is different. As we pointed out a few days ago, more than 8.5 million people or 26 per cent. of the work force have directly experienced unemployment since the last general election.
  Today, we have issued a regional breakdown of those figures that shows that the highest level of unemployment for men was in Greater London at 41 per cent., followed by the northern region at 37 per cent., and then the north-west. Even the best figure, for the south-east excluding London, is 27 per cent.—more than one in four. That is a truly shocking statistic.
  The denial of the existence of job insecurity, like the Government's record on tax and public spending and like the Budget, is further evidence of what people are now seeing with greater clarity than ever before. The Government's record is one of dishonesty and sleight of hand. We can see that in the way that they give a little with one hand, but take much more with the other—7p up and 1p down. We can see that in the Government's policies on investment and industry and commerce. We can also see that in what the Government have said about small businesses.
  (The Chancellor of the Exchequer) Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The right hon. Lady has returned to the question of taxation and public spending and she has taken the subject rather broadly. Can she give an example of a tax proposal that I have made which the Opposition intend to vote against? Is there an area of public expenditure that the right hon. Lady proposes to increase? If so, will she identify it and say by how much?
  Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) may be in a position at the end of the Budget debate to say how we shall vote on the different resolutions. I have not studied them myself. We shall vote against the overall impact of the Budget. [Interruption.] The Chancellor knows that decisions have to be taken on individual resolutions. [Interruption.] Does the Chancellor want to hear the answer to the question? We do not intend to vote against the cut of 1p in the rate of income tax, because we think that the public have suffered enough thanks to the Government's incompetence and deceit. We intend, however, to vote against the Budget overall.
  The Chancellor asked me to identify an area of public spending that should be increased and say whether I would make a commitment to that increase. No, I will not. The Chancellor must know—he always says so himself—that such decisions can be made only in the full knowledge of the facts. The Opposition are able to judge the facts only through the prism of what the Chancellor chooses to tell us. We would be unwise to take his word for anything, as the President of the Board of Trade has demonstrated today by telling us that what his predecessor as President of the Board of Trade said in May and June was absolutely meaningless. That does not encourage anyone to rely on what a Minister says.
  Mr. Spring: Answer the question.
  Mrs. Beckett: I have already answered the question. The hon. Gentleman is too busy heckling to listen.

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  The Chancellor raised the VAT threshold for small businesses by only £1,000, less than half the rise necessary to keep pace with inflation. He did not mention that that rise means that 14,000 more small businesses will be drawn into the VAT net over the next three years. He also reduced employers' national insurance contributions by 0.2 per cent., saying that that would
  "make it cheaper for businesses to create new jobs."—[Official Report, 28 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 1064.]
  However, the savings are so small that only a firm that employs more than 500 people will be able to employ a single extra person. The measure, therefore, does not do anything for small businesses and that is particularly sad because both sides of the House agree that small and medium-sized businesses have the most potential for job creation.
  Although the capping of business rate increases for small businesses at 5 per cent. is welcome, the increases are still above the rate of inflation. As always, the best advice for small business people as for everybody else is to read the small print—the Government have a record of giving with one hand and taking back with the other.
  The central boast of the Budget is that the Government will make us the enterprise centre of Europe—by cutting investment in infrastructure, and cutting investment in people. That is enough to make a cat laugh, but it will make anybody who cares about our future cry. The Government have betrayed the trust of the British people, robbed them of their inheritance, and jeopardised their future. History will not forgive them, and nor will the people whom they have betrayed.
  6.35 pm
  Sir Terence Higgins: No Budget debate would be complete without reference to Iain Macleod's most famous dictum that Budgets that are well received on the day often look different on Second Reading of the Finance Bill; conversely, those that are not well received look rather good by Second Reading. My right hon. and learned Friend's Budget may well be a classic in the second category.
  I confess that I was astonished by some of the headlines about the Budget. The Budget is complex and involves many measures, so I think that the press simply did not realise what much of the Budget was about. I feel that the Budget was excellent and well balanced.
  The Chancellor was severely limited in what he was able to do. The move towards the 20 per cent. rate of income tax is very important and was approached in three separate ways: by widening the band far more than necessary to keep pace with inflation; by reducing the basic rate—1p off was quite enough, and I have not received a single letter suggesting 2p off; and by the important reduction of the rate of tax to 20 per cent. for people with savings income. That is particularly important for pensioners.
  If the Chancellor had gone further, the reaction in the City would have been such that he would not have been able to hold out any prospect of a cut in interest rates, which is likely to be more important to the recovery than anything that appears in the Budget. Despite the stringent attitude that he has taken on public expenditure, a further cut would have had damaging effects. In particular, if the road building programme had been chopped any more,
  1388
  programmes that have already advanced past the public inquiry stage would have been cut, with the consequent waste of nugatory public expenditure. That would be absurd.
  The schools programme has provoked great concern in Sussex. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) referred to it earlier. I have had many letters about schools expenditure in West Sussex, rather overlooking the fact that the allocation of resources is for the county council to decide. The Chancellor said:
  "The Budget allows for spending on schools to rise next year. We have already increased spending per pupil by some 50 per cent. in real terms since 1979. We devote a higher proportion of our public spending to education than Japan, Germany or France."
  He continued, in a crucial passage:
  "The plans that I am publishing today allow for an increase in spending on schools of £878 million. Within that, over £770 million will be channelled through the local authority settlement"— [Official Report, 28 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 1058–59.]
  Parents will rightly expect local authorities to carry that funding through to school budgets. They should ask their local authorities how the extra money for schools will be spent on their children. West Sussex county council, which is Liberal controlled, has been diverting money from education to its particular hobby horses and has then asked people to write to me to ask why education spending has been cut.
  The expenditure side of the Budget is thus well balanced and it should be welcomed by the whole House.
  When the Leader of the Opposition spoke after the Budget statement, his catch phrase was that the Government were giving with one hand and taking with the other—by contrast with the Labour party, which would take with one hand and give with the other. However, it would be a very strange Budget that took with one hand and did not give anything, or vice versa. Why the Opposition have latched on to that extraordinary catch phrase is mystifying.
  I was intrigued by the emphasis that the Leader of the Opposition put on the fact that Conservatives are now writing to him. I had an extraordinary experience on my interview night the Friday before last when a constituent told me, "I wrote to the Prime Minister and got a reply from the Leader of the Opposition." I looked into the matter and that is what happened. I am still trying to get the letter back from the files of the Leader of the Opposition.
  Mr. Donald Anderson: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in so as far as the Leader of the Opposition had a catch phrase, it was, "7p up and 1p down"? Will he comment on that?
  Sir Terence Higgins: The Leader of the Opposition should look at the entire period of Conservative government and, in particular, at what has happened to the real incomes and take-home pay of various individuals in different categories. One has to look at the Government's performance and, in terms of raising living standards—allowing for tax changes, inflation and everything else—it has been a remarkably good record. If I may say so, the catch phrase that has been bandied about is rather silly.
  Let me refer also to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). The gimmick of a 10p tax band is totally divorced from the width of the band. Would it

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  apply to the first £1 of income or the first £60,000? The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) is muttering to herself. Perhaps she can tell me how wide the band is. Without that information, it is a totally meaningless statement. It does not mean anything to promise a 10p band of income tax at the starting rate. In any case, that is not an efficient way of reducing tax. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has done more to help people at the bottom end of the scale by raising the basic allowance.
  I happened to catch the tail end of the Budget broadcast by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East last night. He stressed the importance of honesty in tax policies. He floated a remark about cutting VAT on fuel, but made no reference to the fact that under European legislation, the most he could cut VAT is from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent. His so-called honest broadcast gave the impression that there would be a massive cut or probably the abolition of VAT on fuel, so that did not seem very honest.
  Mr. Stuart Bell: We are interested in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman as he is a former Chairman of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) said not that he would reduce VAT from 8 per cent. to zero, but that he wished to reduce VAT on fuel from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent.
  Sir Terence Higgins: Quite so. If that is what the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East said. I accept it as I heard only the end of the broadcast. If that is so, I apologise.
  Having said that, I believe that the basic arrangements that were made for pensioners and those on social security benefit when we put VAT on fuel were beneficial. Unless the hon. Gentleman wishes to go further than he went last night and promises to reduce the rate of VAT on fuel and retain the compensation that the Conservative Government gave to those on low incomes and pensioners, his proposals were not entirely clear.
  I now come to that old-fashioned expression, the Budget judgment, which has not been dealt with adequately. The PSBR has declined rather more slowly than we had hoped, because there has been some slow-down in the economy and consequentially, revenues have not risen as fast as they might have done and unemployment has not fallen as fast as we had hoped. That being so, the action that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has taken in regard to the PSBR is not inappropriate at this stage in the economic cycle. The rate of growth in the economy was lower than we had expected, so there is a case for running a level of PSBR that stimulates the economy. Therefore, I view the present level of the PSBR with relative equanimity. Inflation is clearly well under control and it is important to strike the right balance between controlling inflation and economic growth. Again, my right hon. and learned Friend got that pretty well right.
  I return to my earlier point about the rate of interest. Had my right hon. and learned Friend increased interest rates, as the Governor of the Bank of England appeared to advocate some while ago, the PSBR would have been larger, so my right hon. and learned Friend was right to resist that and to emphasise the rate of interest as well as fiscal policy.
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  We have to put the Budget in a European context. In respect of the PSBR, I am worried about the enormous pressure to meet the convergence criteria under the Maastricht treaty. 'There are some real problems as they do not take into account the stage of the economic cycle in any particular country and it seems dangerous to say that it is suddenly all right at any particular moment. If the criteria are to mean anything at all, they have to be at a sustainable level, when the PSBR is consistent with moving a further stage towards economic and monetary union.
  Mr. Stern: Does my right hon. Friend agree that another difficulty is that the Maastricht criteria for borrowing take no account whatever of the national assets against which the borrowing is undertaken, so in comparing borrowing rates in different countries, they totally ignore the capacity to borrow?
  Sir Terence Higgins: Yes, indeed. It may well be that borrowing is an appropriate response at certain stages in the economic cycle, depending on the level of capital expenditure on which the Opposition are so keen.
  The general pressure now being exerted in Britain and throughout Europe is extremely dangerous because it may well have a recessionary effect. Again, one has to balance the difference between the size of the deficits and the state of the cycle. I view with relative equanimity the action that my right hon. and learned Friend has taken. Of course, he is right to seek to reduce the public sector deficit. That must be appropriate, but perhaps the sense of urgency in some quarters has been somewhat overdone.
  Overall, this is a well-balanced Budget, which should result in greater appreciation as the weeks go by and we debate the Finance Bill. It is a particularly good Budget from my constituency point of view. It is a good Budget for pensioners, for Worthing, for the economy and for Britain.
  6.47 pm
  Mr. Donald Anderson: I shall give just a few reflections. I concede in a fairly broad-brush way on the Budget, and I hope that I follow in the spirit of the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins). who is a distinguished former Treasury Minister and who gave a balanced view of the Budget speech.
  Clearly, all Budgets are not simply exercises in economics, otherwise we would have simply a conclave of learned professors who would give us of their views. Different Budgets have different admixtures of economics and politics. I suspect that the fear of this year's Budget was that, as we approached a general election season, politics would he even more paramount than they' are in most Budgets. This year's Budget has to be viewed more than most in the context of its timing, the state of the country and the state of the Government.
  The Budget speech. which now seems so long ago, met with rather different receptions on both sides of the House. I concede straight away that the dominant response among the Opposition, including myself, was relief because we have a keen appreciation of the Chancellor's political skills and, right until the end, we assumed that something dramatic would he pulled out of the hat, which might rescue the fortunes of his party and begin to restore a feel-good factor, even at this relatively late stage.

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  Our relief was expressed by, "Is that all?" There was certainly a feeling of relief on the Opposition Benches. We have, of course, respect for the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a political animal. We recognise also that he is a moderate man in a party that is becoming increasingly immoderate. The Conservative party is becoming increasingly hostile to Europe. We know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has great experience and relative wisdom and seeks to avoid the essays in populism that the Home Secretary is wont to take.
  I suspect that there was disappointment on the Government Benches. There was probably a feeling of great gloom. Drowning men and women were hoping that a lifebelt would be thrown to them. At the end of the Chancellor's statement, they realised that it would not be forthcoming.
  In reality, we were presented with a relatively prudent Budget. Perhaps that was necessarily so. However great the temptation to be reckless, the Chancellor was mightily boxed in by economic realities. He was, for example, boxed in by the less buoyant revenues that he had not anticipated. He was boxed in also because the public sector borrowing requirement was greater than had been forecast and anticipated. His room for manoeuvre was far less than he would have wished at this stage of the political cycle.
  It is only fair to say that there were a number of positive elements in the Budget. For example, it was relatively green in that it was to some extent environmentally friendly. Some of the key concerns of the average citizen were at least recognised, if not addressed. I am thinking of the priorities of public expenditure, including education, to which the right hon. Member for Worthing referred. On the basis of, "Now you see it, now you don't," I suspect that much of the so-called increased expenditure on education will evaporate rather rapidly when the figures are examined in detail.
  We know that there is a crisis within the national health service. Only about 10 days ago the local newspaper in my constituency, which is not a traditional Labour party supporter, carried a headline to the effect that there is such a crisis. The article set out a series of major failures in health provision. The people know that and they recognise it. We know, of course, that there are some objective factors and increased pressures, which we all face. Many of the problems, however, result from the Government's ideological frolics.
  Most Members recognise that law and order comes high on our constituents' agenda. We ignore the issue at our peril. It is suggested that an additional 5,000 police officers will be made available. That increase is only to be welcomed. Training will take some time, however, and there will be no immediate effect. There will be no political effect, apart from the declaratory effect, before the next election. There will he no fifth cavalry appearance out of the sunset to help the Government.
  The Budget statement contained the recognition at last that something had to be done about the costs incurred by those who move into long-stay residential homes. Most of our people recognise that there is gross unfairness in the system. The Government's recognition of the problem must be welcomed.
  Unfortunately, there were several regressive elements in the Budget. I have in mind the overall impact on the richest 10 per cent. of the population and on the poorest
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  10 per cent., and the punishing of victims in our society—for example, the swipe at single mothers and the reduction in housing benefit payments for those under 25 years of age. It is clear that the Government are labouring under a misapprehension. It seems that they think that youngsters leave their homes because they want to or because there are bosoms of families to which they can return if housing benefit is reduced.
  The reality is that we live in an increasingly fragmented society. Much social distress will be caused by the reduction in housing benefit for the under-25s. I do not make the dramatic claim that we shall see a great expansion of cardboard cities. It is true, however, that young people at a vulnerable age, suffering from a lack of job opportunities, will find it increasingly difficult to find the few jobs that are available if they do not have steady addresses. The Government's action is deplorable. They may try to justify it according to their preconceptions, but their action does not tally with social and economic realities. I hope that they will reflect on the way in which the vulnerable are being penalised.
  There are evasions within the Budget. It is clear that council tax will increase. The Government will seek to throw the blame for policy failures on local councils. After the previous round of local elections, councils are under the control of the Labour party or Liberal party, or in some instances there is mixed control that has resulted in Lib-Lab coalitions.
  The electorate will not fall for the blame that the Government will throw on councils. The Government may wish to make local councils unpopular by causing them to increase council tax in the next settlement. That is the assumption in Wales, but there is hardly a Conservative councillor left in Wales. A few years ago, Cardiff city council had a Conservative majority. It now has only one Conservative councillor. Swansea has only one Conservative councillor, as has Newport. If, as is assumed, council tax had to be increased by about 11 per cent., it would be easy, with an unsophisticated electorate, to point the finger of blame at the councils. The Government will not succeed in that approach, however hard they try.
  The Budget contains wrong priorities. I shall not repeat what I said yesterday about the World Service. It is a unique service. Its capital budget has been reduced by 20 per cent. It is clear that the Government have not appreciated the value of the service. Not too many years ago, I was sitting on a one-to-one basis with the President of a major African country. He told me that he listened to the World Service for his news. He relied on the service for that information. So many opinion formers, people whom we need to address and cultivate, rely on the quality of the service. The Government's cutting of capital provision is bound to have an adverse effect on quality of service at a time of much greater competition.
  The Government say that there will be a 20 per cent. reduction in funding, but that that may be compensated by the private finance initiative. They say that the private sector may be able to move in to fill the gap that has been left by the withdrawal of public expenditure. That is no more than a hope. It may happen or it may not. Everything depends on the private sector's response.
  That same hope is found in a number of other areas, such as the NHS and the assumption that the private sector will be prepared to make up the shortfall in the public provision of capital for the NHS. That may or may not be so, but it savours of a sleight of hand.

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  The inheritance tax measure is another wrong priority. It may be that the threshold should have gone up marginally, but for it to go up by almost £50,000 is excessive, particularly when something in respect of VAT on fuel would have been a proper priority. Even a reduction from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent., which is permissible, would have relieved poverty, targeting those who most need the reduction.
  Sir Terence Higgins: That is the point that I was making. For pensioners and people in need, the amount of compensation in many cases, and perhaps even overall, has more than compensated for the tax.
  Mr. Anderson: Of course, there is a compensation scheme for certain elements, but there are those at the margins whom, in other contexts, the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues would seek to support, who will lose out as a result of the failure to reduce the current 8 per cent. to 5 per cent.
  I shall not go over the missed opportunity on the windfall tax. But the way in which the leaders of the privatised utilities, doing largely the same jobs as they did before, imagine that their saleability, their market worth, in the private sector has been so mightily enhanced, must be an embarrassment to the Government. It is an affront to the great mass of reasonable people in Britain, and the Government are, in essence, doing nothing about it.
  I end on this note. Historically, the Budget will he seen largely as a non-event. The Conservative party is really two parties. It is a highly divided party. The Government have been drifting ever since they were forced out of the exchange rate mechanism. We recall the bitter speech of the then retiring Chancellor, in which he talked of a Government in office but not in power. The Government have been in office, enjoying the fruits of office and exulting in the trappings of office, since that time, but they are not in power because of those divisions. The resulting drift is bad for the country. We saw that in the Queen's Speech in 1994. Once Post Office privatisation was taken out of the equation we, as legislators, had perhaps the easiest year in my memory in the House.
  This Queen's Speech, apart from the scattering of populist elements, such as the asylum Bill, is, relatively, a non-event. I can think of no historical precedent save the staleness of 1819, when Shelley, in his poem about the state of the nation, wrote about
  "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king".
  That is the only precedent for a Government who have run out of steam, who are tired, who have no vision, who are drifting and who should go.
  7.2 pm
  Sir John Cope: It would be nice at this stage of the Budget debate to be able to compare and contrast the proposals of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the Opposition's proposals. Unfortunately, we cannot do that, because there is none, apart from the windfall tax which, as far as I could gather from the speech of the hon. Member for
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  Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), was somehow a response to executive share options, and so on, in the privatised utilities, which seemed rather surprising.
  I welcome the Budget although, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), I was rather surprised by the press reaction to it. I read in the paper that Tory Members of Parliament were disappointed and thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have gone further. In many conversations with colleagues around the House since the Budget, I have not found that to be the case. It was a steady Budget and right for the economy, and will help the country to continue the steady expansion that we are enjoying.
  I welcome the Budget particularly from the point of view of small businesses. They are, as my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade said, crucial to the country's economy. They are the dynamic sector of the economy, they fill niches all over the marketplace, they are generally very flexible and they are, crucially, where jobs come from these days.
  There are some specific measures in the Budget for small businesses, to which my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade referred, which I welcome—for example, additional relief for business rates. The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) seemed rather to dismiss that, but it is worth £300 million over three years and so should not be dismissed. There were also retirement relief and inheritance tax measures and another small lift in the VAT threshold.
  I would like to see the VAT threshold higher. I am glad to say that when I was in the Treasury the threshold was considerably increased by a large jump. We are inhibited in the amount by which we can increase it further as a result of our agreements in the European Community, but that is desirable.
  The most important thing for small businesses is not so much the specific measures, important as they are, but the overall effect of the Budget. Small businesses need an increase in demand, in consumers ready to spend money in order to increase their turnovers. The Budget will help with that to some extent by encouraging growth.
  But the Budget also looks as though it will mean lower interest rates. I gather that at least three building societies have lowered their interest rates and more are likely to follow. That too is important.
  Crucially for small businesses, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor also outlined in his Budget speech several measures aimed at simplification and deregulation. They are part of an important series of initiatives to which my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade referred. I know well from my experience in government how difficult simplification of the tax system and deregulation are in practice. But they are of fundamental importance and so worth the great effort that is required.
  Every business has to deal not only with the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, which we are mainly discussing in the Budget debate, but with a series of different Government and local government departments and agencies. I counted a total of 23 regulatory agencies covering one small ordinary business, not at all in a specialist line.

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  The Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise are only two of those, although a business often, indeed usually, has to deal with more than one part of, for example, the Inland Revenue. It has to deal with PAYE for its employees, and with corporation tax and the calculation of profits, and so on, which involves another part of the Inland Revenue. In effect, the Inland Revenue is two bodies.
  'Therefore, one of the most valuable sentences in the Budget speech occurs, appropriately enough, in column 1066. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor said:
  "The Inland Revenue will shortly be publishing a report on tax simplification."
  That was not news; it is under an obligation to do so next month, as we know from the last Finance Act. My right hon. and learned Friend added:
  "We shall propose that the Revenue tax code is to be rewritten in plain English".
  When I was responsible for Customs and Excise, I am glad to say that it won some plain English awards for some of its leaflets, which was very good. We also started a drive to make VAT more taxpayer friendly—if that is not an impossible task. My right hon. and learned Friend went on to say:
  "We in the House will need to look at our procedures, to see how that tax rewrite can be sensibly handled."—[Official Report, 28 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 1066.]
  In that sentence I saw a reflection of the work that has been done by the tax law review committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which published an interim report a few days ago. It is a most interesting report and it deserves the closest study. It reinforces strongly the complex web that constitutes our tax legislation now; I admit at once to having contributed to that as a Treasury Minister, with some of the longest Finance Bills that there have been. But I also know how difficult it is for the professions—let alone the small business man trying to understand what is required of him—to deal with the tax legislation. The report makes it clear how difficult the problem is, both in what it says and in the solutions that it proposes, but nevertheless that only increases its importance in my view.
  The passage on parliamentary handling of such changes is of interest to us, but particularly to me because I am now on the Procedure Committee. The simplification that is required is partly of language, but it cannot he done without at least some changes to the substance of the legislation itself, and so our consolidation Bill procedures cannot be used as they are now in the Standing Orders of the House. In any case, of course, they were not designed for that purpose and would not really be appropriate. The volume of tax legislation is now so huge that to rewrite it would require a mammoth Finance Bill or, more realistically, a set of them. We need to think carefully about the parliamentary angle and desirable changes in the tax law before we get much further. The IFS report discusses it all and is most valuable, but it is important to keep up the momentum, so I welcome very much column 1066 of the Budget speech.
  I wish to discuss another matter that is related in a sense. One way in which my right hon. and learned Friend might have gone—and was urged to go by many people—was down the road of reintroducing investment allowances. There was a lot of prompting for him to do that, from many sources—indeed, I passed on some of it to Treasury Ministers myself—but I believe that it would
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  be a retrograde step and would not help investment. Investment allowances are a political flag to wave, a way to say that something is being done about investment without having a significant effect on investment itself, and with the great drawback of adding further complications to the tax system, which is something that I wish to avoid.
  My generation of accountants was brought up on very elaborate capital allowances, which altered almost every year as Chancellors of the Exchequer—of all parties—tried to encourage investment in particular assets. Over the years, we had initial allowances, investment allowances, free depreciation, investment grants and so on, all coming in and out of operation in different years. They varied between different assets: industrial buildings, plant and machinery, motor cars, ships with refrigeration equipment, ships without, all that sort of thing. Drawing offices counted as industrial buildings provided that they were attached to a factory, but not if they were not. Retail premises or showrooms were not allowable as an industrial building unless they were under 10 per cent. of the square footage. The rules always varied, not only from year to year but from place to place, as Chancellors tried to help the areas of high unemployment.
  All that caused a great deal of activity for junior accountancy clerks like me, but I do not believe that it made a significant difference to the total investment, although it succeeded in moving the investment around the country in some cases. I believe that it also had some unintended side effects, for example, on the sale of agricultural tractors, which, for some years, was enormous and not really justified. The fact is that businesses invest when they can afford to do so, and in projects that they think worth while. I believe that they are the best judges of whether it is better to invest in a new machine, showroom, both, or something else. Interest rates and the examination of what they will be during the life of the asset or investment concerned have a big effect on whether they can afford it, because a lot of investment is done on borrowed money. In that respect, the Budget is helpful from the investment point of view as well as otherwise.
  Expectation of demand is the biggest factor in whether the proposed investment is likely to be worth while. That, too, is helped by the Budget. Both factors mean that it is a good Budget for investment, and it is far better than it would have been if we had gone back to the complicated system of investment allowances, which would have been a big step backwards in the simplification of the tax system that I want to see.
  Overall, I think that it is a good Budget, which I very much welcome.
  7.15 pm
  Mr. Nick Harvey: If I said that the Budget was a missed opportunity, I would mean something very different from the many Conservative Members who might share those sentiments, judging by the picture of their faces as the Chancellor sat down at the end of his speech. I noted with interest that two Conservative Members declared surprise at the reactions in the newspapers the next morning, but if they had had the advantage of viewing the body language, faces and expressions of hon. Members on the Government Benches as the Chancellor sat down, and had been able to contrast those with the expressions on the faces of hon. Members on the Opposition Benches, they

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  would have understood only too clearly why the editors the following morning also saw it as a missed opportunity for the Conservative party.
  But my meaning is rather different. The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), who spoke for the Opposition, rightly and with great precision outlined the vast sums that have been blown by the Government in recent years. In particular, she catalogued the proceeds of the privatisations and added them to the North sea oil revenues, quoting both at current day prices and pointing out that they had not been used in a prudent way or to invest in the longer term. I find it remarkable that the Conservative party, which has often lectured us about the merits of good housekeeping, has found it fit to squander that money, not on capital expenditure, not on investment for the future, but on an orgy of current expenditure, most notably in the consumer boom of the late 1980s and also to fund tax cuts, which time and again have been reversed afterwards by one means or another.
  When one looks at the overall state of the nation's finances, as quoted in the back-up figures to the Budget, one can see that public sector borrowing is vastly higher for the current year and for the next than the level that was quoted just a year ago in the Budget. The Government are borrowing more heavily, not to invest in the future, in capital expenditure, but to pay for the tax cut that they have used as a gimmick, which they had hoped would be of some political benefit and a salvation to them.
  Another disappointment of the Budget is that some of the areas of expenditure that have been cut—which, perhaps, have not yet been highlighted to the extent that they deserve, but which will emerge over the coming weeks and months—will in some cases prove very damaging. I should like for a few moments to highlight new house building. It can be seen from the Budget that new house building will be cut in the coming year. The Government originally promised that there would be £1.5 billion for new homes next year. That has now been cut to less than £1.1 billion. So the number of new homes that will be started will drop by more than half—from 76,000 to 41,000. When one looks at what the Government's own figures suggest will be the need for new housing during the coming year, one can see that the total number of lettings that housing associations will be able to undertake—both the new build and the other forms of housing that they are able to make available—will be around only half of what the Government acknowledge could be needed in the coming year.
  Of course, as well as the impact on housing provision, it is well known to all hon. Members that the number of people out of work in the construction industry remains alarmingly high. It is down somewhat from the high of 500,000, but is still unacceptably high. All those people have to be paid benefits and are not contributing anything back in the way of tax revenue to the Government. That is costing the nation a great deal at a time when there is a need for new housing.
  In my region, the south-west, the number of houses that housing associations can start next year will fall from nearly 7,000, as the Government first promised, to
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  about half that figure—3,500. Not only will unemployed construction workers in mine and the neighbouring constituencies not be given the opportunity to get back to work and do something useful, but many of my constituents who are in need of housing will not have that need met. That is not unique to my area or to north Devon. A survey of Members of Parliament showed that housing was singled out as the biggest issue in Members' postbags. Two thirds of Conservative Members and all Labour Members agreed that there was a shortage of available rented accommodation in their constituencies.
  A heaven-sent opportunity to deal with that serious problem is being wasted so that money is available for a tax cut in the Budget. That is very nice for those who are in a position to enjoy it, but it is not of much benefit to those on low incomes who do not even pay tax and are without homes. The Budget could have done something concrete to promote house building and tackle that problem.
  Much has been said about the private finance initiative. House building is one of the areas in which it has been deemed to be a success. It has been possible for housing associations to attract private funding to match pound for pound the public moneys that they have been putting into new house building. In addition to the £450 million of public funding that will be lost, a further £450 million of private funding, which could have been attracted through the PFI, will also be lost. That is nothing short of a scandal and it is one of the several stories that will emerge after time and after people have had the opportunity to look at the finer print of the Budget and see some of the real damage that is going to be done in many parts of the economy to pay for the 1p tax cut.
  This afternoon, there have been discussions about measures to help businesses and small businesses. There have been some in the Budget and it would be churlish not to acknowledge them. None the less it remains a fact that all those referred to are too modest. It is welcome that employers' national insurance is down from 10.2 per cent. to 10 per cent., but this hardly seems to be the occasion to raise the flags and celebrate. It needs to go a good deal further than that.
  Further relief against the increases in business rates for small businesses is welcome, but even after that many small businesses in the south-west and elsewhere will find the rate that they are expected to pay cripplingly high and a major problem as they try to steer their way out of the recession. There can be few regions of the country that have suffered quite as badly on the business rate as the south-west.
  The fact that small firms will also face a lower corporation tax bill in the coming year is also welcome. While the small increase in the value added tax threshold is welcome, however, many small businesses are desperate for fundamental reform of the VAT system. I do not pretend for one moment that a magic wand can be waved to put that right automatically, but some acknowledgement by the Government that much further reform of the system is necessary would be welcome.
  The right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) chose to refer to the moneys which, during his speech on Tuesday, the Chancellor led everyone to believe

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  would be available for education in the coming year. Education should be a top priority for investment because it is unquestionably investment in the future. If we are to tackle the long-term spiral of decline, there can be no better way of setting about that task than bringing about real improvements in our education system and in the facilities in which those working and learning in the system find themselves trying to cope every day.
  On hearing the Chancellor's remarks, I like many others genuinely thought that he was making £878 million of new money available to education, of which £770 million would be channelled through the local authorities. Like everyone else, on studying the finer detail of the Budget, I was surprised to find that the central Government settlement to local authorities for the coming year is to increase by a mere 3.3 per cent., which is broadly in line with inflation, and that the money that was supposedly being earmarked for education does not exist.
  Local authorities are invited to spend that additional money on education, but are not given the means to do so. They have to make a choice. They either cut other services that they are responsible for providing, which means that they will have to cut road repairs, libraries and personal social services, which are already strained to the limit as they struggle with the task of implementing the community care programme; or, if they cannot find any way of cutting other services, they will have to raise the council tax to pay for the education package.
  It is interesting to find in the Red Book that the Government anticipate as part of this Budget that councils will have to increase council tax by three times the rate of inflation. When councils set their budgets next April and May and find themselves driven to do so, one can confidently anticipate the cries from Conservative Members who receive letters from constituents complaining about the rise. They will say, "Look at this. Liberal Democrat and Labour councils are increasing the council tax." They will not be able to point to any Conservative councils doing it because there is none left.
  People must understand that that is what the Conservatives have been anticipating from the word go. The whole thing is an elaborate deception. They have given the impression that the money is there, but it is not.
  Mr. Stern: The hon. Gentleman claims, with what justification I am not sure—my hon. Friend the Minister will make that clear in her reply—that it is assumed that the council tax will rise by a rate three times higher than inflation. As a citizen of Bristol, I can tell him that if the council tax were to rise by a mere three times the rate of inflation, it would be a blessed relief to the citizens of that city.
  Mr. Harvey: I am not sure whether other citizens of the city would, necessarily agree with the hon. Gentleman's blase attitude. I do not think that council tax payers will find it remotely acceptable that they are asked to pay three times the rate of inflation. When they remember that the Chancellor promised this great sum for education, it will be interesting to be able to tell them that the very Budget that included the supposed provision of that extra money had assumed
  1400
  all along that the increase in council tax would have to be three times the rate of inflation and that only by means of such a rise were the Government able to quote that notional figure in the first place.
  If the Government had simply said that they were giving local authorities a settlement for next year of 3.3 per cent., which is broadly in line with inflation, there would have been relatively little argument or cause to demur. Of course, there would have been some proper but predictable complaints about higher pupil numbers, the extra tasks that local authorities were being asked to undertake and the fact that they had not been taken into account in a settlement that was only in line with inflation. But, broadly speaking, everybody would have found such a settlement more or less reasonable.
  Apparently, however, the Government could not confine themselves to making such a statement. They had to pretend that a vast extra sum was being made available for education, which is not the case. It was an elaborate piece of deception, but I do not believe that they will succeed in pulling the wool over the eyes of council tax payers.
  The Government suffered bad bruising last year in the battle over local authority finance, which resulted in many Conservative councillors losing their seats in last May's local elections. Some of those councillors had given many years' good service to their communities and did not deserve to lose their seats, but they were driven into that situation by the cavalier and tack-handed manner in which central Government administer local authority finance.
  Exactly the same will happen next May. I predict with confidence that there will be massive casualties on the Conservative side in the local authority elections. And Conservative councillors will know exactly whom to blame—the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for the Environment. They are the people who pulled that ridiculous scam that will fool nobody, and which will not only have a devastating effect on our education services but will result in catastrophe for the Conservatives next May.
  One thing above all else distinguishes our party's position from that of the Government: we have said all along that we believe that the equivalent of 1p in the pound in income tax should be spent on education. That is real money—£2 billion, three times the sum the Government pretend they are making available.
  Mr. Spring: Does the Liberal Democratic party propose to ring-fence the much vaunted 1p increase in income tax to ensure that the money is spent on education, or will it simply be paid through the block grant to local government?
  Mr. Harvey: It is certainly our intention that that money will be an extra grant on top of the block grant that is paid in the normal way, and that it should be available specifically for spending on education.
  Polling evidence has found that that was the single most popular policy of any party at the general election. That is why we shall say again to the public next week that we have been consistent, and that we still believe that the equivalent of 1p in the pound on income tax should be spent on education. We do not believe it right or proper at this time for the Government to borrow yet more heavily in order to give out a 1p tax cut.

  1401
  In the Lobby next week we shall have no hesitation in voting against that wholly irresponsible, uncalled for, unwarranted cut in income tax when there is such a demand and such a need for investment in our future, and for making our children's education a top priority. That would avoid the terrible scenes that we saw last winter as well as the situation this year, when most local authorities have had to start the autumn term with higher pupil numbers but, in many cases, with hundreds fewer teachers.
  7.32 pm
  Mr. Michael Stern: I start, as so many of my hon. Friends have done, by congratulating my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor and his Treasury colleagues on the prudence of the Budget.
  The day before the Budget, there was great concern, largely whipped up by the media, that there would be a huge giveaway. Indeed, it was the Conservative supporters to whom I spoke who said that they hoped that the Budget would be not the sort of Budget that they were reading about in the media, but the sort of prudent Budget that they would expect from my right hon. and learned Friend—and that was what they got. Certainly a Budget that matches the necessary tax cuts with equivalent reductions in public spending cannot be described as other than prudent.
  My concerns about the Budget go a little further than those of many of my hon. Friends in that, although I accept that it was the right shape, I wonder whether it was prudent enough. When a nation is borrowing more than £1 billion every fortnight to finance public spending, there is a strong argument for saying that further cuts in public spending should have been found, and that the Chancellor should at least have presented more strongly the case that the cuts that had been found should have gone directly into reducing the public sector borrowing requirement.
  It is not so long since the years between 1987 and 1991—four years in which the public sector outturn was £3.5 billion, £14.7 billion, £8 billion and £0.6 billion. Having given those figures, I am afraid that I must admit to cheating a little in one respect—they were not public sector borrowing requirements but repayments of public debt.
  In those four years, a Conservative Government succeeded in doing what few if any other Governments have succeeded in doing in the past 100 years—they managed public sector finances so as to repay national debt. That not only reduced the burden on future generations in terms of repayment requirements, but reduced annually the burden of interest on future annual current accounts.
  I am therefore a little worried that the Chancellor's announced plans for management of the public sector balances over the next few years tend only towards a balance in the medium term. That worries me not only because I am an accountant, and practised full time as one for many years before I entered the House, but because I know that, for any business to attempt to break even, it must aim firmly at making a profit.
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  If the Chancellor is attempting to reach break-even on the public sector finances by 2000, I should like more strenuous attempts to be made, by reducing public expenditure further, to achieve public sector debt repayment, which the Government achieved in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
  The right public sector borrowing requirement at any particular time is a matter over which economists can argue—and frequently do. It cannot be arrived at simply by comparing one country with another. It is not, perhaps, surprising that our achievement last year in terms of public sector net borrowing as a percentage of GDP was considerably worse than Germany's—I suppose that that is what one would have expected—but it was considerably better than that of Italy. That, too, is probably what one would have expected, but I was a little surprised to find that our performance was quite a bit worse than that of France.
  Compared with our non-European Union competitors, the situation is a little more worrying. As a percentage of GDP, the general balance of United Kingdom finances was considerably worse than those of both the United States and Japan. Even that is only a guide, because to work out how much a country should borrow in any year, one must take into account the financial position of that country at that particular time and, as I said during the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), the asset base against which the borrowing has been made.
  In the 1980s, it was frequently said—with considerable justification—that Britain's borrowing capacity, and the reason why Britain's currency was so strong during the height of our borrowing in the 1980s as well as when we were repaying the national debt, was the strength of British assets abroad, against which, effectively, the world's financial markets were judging our borrowing. I wonder whether the same would be true today. While our borrowing is coming down—and will continue to come down in the next few years—it is considerably higher than it was in the 1980s. As the mobility of international privately owned assets has become greater and as more and more of the world's economies have become market economies rather than controlled economies, the skip to and fro of assets has become easier.
  I suspect that a banker running his eye over the balance sheet of United Kingdom plc would come to two conclusions. First, there is a great danger of the United Kingdom—to use an accounting phrase—over-trading at current levels in relation to its asset base. Secondly, that asset base might in any case have been significantly eroded in Government terms since the 1980s, when it was last measured.
  The effect is considerable worry in two respects. First, the current plan is for the PSBR only to reach a balance. In other words, on the declared plans of my right hon. and learned Friend, not 1p of what we are now borrowing is intended to be repaid in the medium term. It is all there as a burden for future generations. Secondly, we have not abolished the world's economic cycles. We all know that what turned our public sector debt repayment of the late 1980s and early 1990s into the PSBR was the world recession, which forced us to increase public spending on cyclical items such as unemployment benefit and income support. The recession resulted in our previously sound public finances falling into the worrying position in which we now find them.

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  If one talks to those in the business community—they are currently enjoying reasonable growth and have been doing so for the past couple of years—there is little doubt that the next world recession will come. What frightens me is the growing consensus among economists and business men that, as the world's trading nations have increased, the vulnerability of the world economy has also increased. The economic cycles are also speeding up.
  Most of the economists and business men who are being asked to put a date on the visible start of the next world recession are plumping for a date around the turn of the century. That, of course, is the period during which—under the Chancellor's present plans—it is intended that British public sector finances will get closer to balance.
  My fear is that, as we approach a worse position in the public sector than we had in the 1980s, we shall enter another recession. That recession will cause us to start increasing public sector borrowing again without having had any opportunity to repay what we have borrowed. Inevitably that will have an impact not only on the vulnerability of the British economy to future world cycles, but on the debt burden and interest burden that we are leaving to subsequent generations. In the long run, it will have an impact on the expected life styles and standards of living of the generations for whom we are now providing in our management of the public sector.
  The conclusion that I have reached reluctantly—which I have been considering for some time—is that, in our broad pattern of public sector spending, we have in many areas developed champagne tastes on what remains a beer income. In the next few years, we need to start putting before the public the possibility that a number of what appear to be permanent public spending programmes might need to be looked at again.
  A banker looking at the British balance sheet—but not taking into account other factors such as social acceptability—would probably advise a reduction in expenditure of about £30 billion on permanent programmes over the lifetime of this business cycle. That is a far larger reduction than has been contemplated either in this Budget or in alternative budgets such as those put forward by the Conservative 2000 Foundation.
  Such a measure would involve reducing many programmes which people regard as foundations of the welfare state. It would involve, for example, looking seriously at whether we can continue to pay child benefit above income support levels. It would involve looking seriously—as I believe the Government should—at the range of exemptions from prescription charges and at the level of those charges. It could be possible both to lower the level and to increase the exemptions while saving a considerable sum in public spending. It might even involve—to howls of protest—looking at whether a non-funded basic state retirement pension should be paid to those on upper incomes.
  Such a measure would involve looking at the scope of the NHS to see whether it is capable of taking on the demands that are currently made of it, and the demands that will inevitably be made of it in the future in the light of shifting scientific research, the availability of medical treatments and the demands that people inevitably make once they know that such treatments are available. This and many more areas are not currently being looked at.
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  There is an absence of any realistic alternative from any other party in the House because—let us face it—there is no point in discussing public expenditure reductions with the Opposition because they do not even understand the meaning of the term. I believe that the British nation will, in the next few years, look to the House and the Government to consider matters of this nature. It is not sufficient simply to solve the financial problems of today by pushing them on to future generations.
  Clearly it will be necessary to look at this Budget in the context of my right hon. and learned Friend's next Budget which he will deliver, in my view, in November 1996. I believe that it will be necessary to consider what scope there is in the long term for public expenditure reductions, because only if we can begin to educate the British public about the need for public expenditure reductions of the order that I have outlined will we be able to set up for the future a sound public sector financial system that does not leave unacceptable burdens for future generations.
  7.48 pm
  Mr. Paddy Tipping: I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern), and I was struck by his simile "champagne tastes on a beer budget". I hope that he will forgive me if I say to the House that I think a more correct simile from him would have been "caviar on a fish and chip income". The hon. Gentleman will recall the occasion to which I am referring.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) touched earlier upon one aspect of the Budget that has not been given much attention—the environmental sensitivity, or greenness, of the Budget. I am struck by the Budget proposal to take the income from the landfill tax while reducing national insurance. It is a switch from a tax on labour to a tax on pollution, which is a significant move. I look forward to future Budgets, perhaps introduced by a different Government, that will treat that move as a touchstone because we could do more of this.
  The Budget maintains the difference between leaded and unleaded petrol, which is an input tax. I am more interested in output taxes. I am confident that, with increasing technology, we shall soon be able to measure the pollution from vehicles. I want the pollution from vehicles to be taxed as an alternative.
  VAT on fuel has been discussed tonight. Hon. Members will remember that, in the discussions and arguments on that subject in the House over recent months, one justification for VAT on fuel was that it drove down consumption and thus helped save the planet. But it does not because VAT on fuel takes no recognisance of the fact that electricity comes from different sources. We should consider that fact as another future Budget measure. I find it amazing that at Drax and Radcliffe power stations, for example, flue gas desulphurisation equipment has been fitted. The cost at Drax was £700 million. The consequence of generating electricity at those retro-fitted plants is that the cost of electricity is slightly higher. Moreover, the added costs at those stations reduce the stations' competitiveness in the pool to such an extent that, at certain times of the year, dirtier polluting stations come on line before them. That

  1405
  is clearly crazy. A Budget measure that we should strive for in the future is to give a green premium—a credit—for green electricity.
  These are challenging and difficult arguments and I look forward to working on them and making environmental taxation a way of enhancing the environment and, as my children would say, saving the planet.
  The Budget contained other environmental issues. We have been constantly challenged to say where the Opposition would make savings. Let me give one example. I note that the countryside stewardship scheme, which is designed to protect wildlife and enhance the countryside, is to be transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on 1 April next year. That budget will increase next year by £5 million.
  I am a strong supporter of countryside stewardship as it lifts the landscape and protects the countryside, but I ant unhappy about one aspect of it: the payment to landowners for allowing public access, which is part of the scheme. I have done some research on this and I acknowledge the work that the Ramblers Association has done. It found that 44 per cent. of the sites that receive public access money already have access or a footpath running through them, so we are paying landowners for something that we already have. Those access payments amount to £6 million over 10 years. The issue should be looked at because we are not receiving value for money from the access element of countryside stewardship.
  An example of where more money could be saved is the common agricultural policy. I was disturbed to see that the Budget increases our contribution to the CAP next year by £60 million. Families pay around an additional £20 a week because of CAP contributions, so we should look carefully at that budget head. We should look particularly carefully at the arable areas scheme, which pays grants to farmers for producing certain products, principally cereals. In the last year for which figures are available—1994—English farmers received £1.2 billion. As part of that, they received £189 million for set-aside—effectively doing nothing. Nobody likes set-aside. On pursuing the matter, I found that in 1994 more than 2,000 farmers received payments of more than £75,000 under the arable areas scheme. It is disturbing that such large sums of public money have been paid. We should scrutinise and perhaps cap the amount that individual farmers can receive from the scheme.
  I was even more disturbed to find that, in 1994, a small group of farmers received more than £1 million each under the arable areas scheme. I am disturbed that the Government, for reasons of confidentiality, will not say how many farmers received more than £1 million. Nor will they give the top payment made in 1994 under the arable areas scheme. That is big public money, to which poor families in my constituency contribute in terms of higher food costs. They have a right to know who receives that money and how much is received. I invite members of the Treasury Bench to look at the matter.
  We should have some return for such payments. We have a right to tell landowners that we want a return for the money that they receive for set aside. We want them to lift the landscape and enhance the environment by creating wildlife habitats, working on hedgerows, planting
  1406
  more trees, creating ponds or putting back the walls that are in disrepair all over the country. If farmers are to receive that kind of money, we have a right to expect a return—a green premium.
  I shall now deal with some more familiar themes of the Budget, which other hon. Members have discussed, such as the need to create prosperity and jobs, and reduce unemployment. That is what people in north Nottinghamshire want. They pay for it and they know that they have experienced tax increases. They have had broken promises: there have been 21 tax increases, and a typical family now pays £800 more. Income tax may have gone down by 1p in the pound, but the average family is still £670 worse off under this Budget. People expect and deserve some return.
  The Nottinghamshire coalfield has had a tough time and Nottingham miners feel that the Government have betrayed them. I remind the House that, in 1979, 40,000 miners worked in the coal industry in Nottinghamshire whereas today, only some 3,000 work in it. Unemployment is therefore a real problem. In October 1992, the then President of the Board of Trade announced that he would close most of this country's coal industry and unemployment went up in coalfield areas. In small pockets, against the national trend, unemployment is still increasing. In general terms, unemployment is going down.
  Since October 1992, unemployment nationally has gone down by 17 per cent. In the Mansfield travel-to-work area, which covers a great deal of the Nottinghamshire coalfield, unemployment has gone down by only 7.1 per cent. That highlights the increasing gap between the affluent and the poor. Certainly that is how it is perceived in the Nottinghamshire coalfield.
  I think that people in Nottinghamshire would look askance—in fact, I know it—at the Budget proposal to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £200,000. They know that they could buy a pit house in a place such as Bilsthorpe or Boughton in north Nottinghamshire for £11,000. For those people, £200,000 is beyond the moon. It rings hollow. They are also astonished that the budget for social housing has been cut—and cut severely. The Red Book makes it clear that £500 million has been taken away from housing associations and local authorities this year on top of cuts in the previous two years. For people who live in former National Coal Board houses that now belong to housing associations, there is no prospect of getting a renovation grant through moneys from the Housing Corporation because that was blocked at the time of sale. People live in intolerable circumstances. There is no prospect now of those houses being improved.
  To talk about people being allowed to leave £200,000 rings hollow when we consider people who live in a pit house in Bilsthorpe. It rings hollow because the Nottinghamshire coalfield, and coalfield communities across the country, are crying out for investment in education, training, infrastructure and, most of all, in the future.
  The Budget cuts investment and capital spending. The people of Nottinghamshire want to see the road to recovery—the road that we want to see is a link between the M1 and the A1 across north Nottinghamshire and, as part GC it, the Rainworth bypass.
  I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Transport is on the Front Bench. I have noted the cuts that have been made in the trunk road programme. It will not be

  1407
  long before local transport capital expenditure is announced—before Christmas, I believe. We want that road for recovery. We want the Rainworth bypass; it will open up development land in the area and it has the potential to bring new jobs into the area. Nottinghamshire county council has bid for £10 million over the next two years for that. I hope that that bid will be considered not only in terms of traffic and highways but as a bid for a road that can regenerate part of the Nottinghamshire coalfield.
  I hope that the Secretary of State for Transport will come again to the Robin Hood line—he was there recently. The county council is in active discussions about the funding shortfall of phase 2 of the line. There is a gap of £4 million. I hope that some compromise can be reached. About £1 million of that £4 million gap results directly from rail privatisation and the increased charges that Railtrack has made.
  We want to go forward and extend the line right through the coalfield to Worksop and Retford. Phase 3 is covered in the council's bid and I hope that it will be considered. I hope that the railway transport element of the Department of Transport's budget will be protected, as it has been so far, and that local authorities will get their fair share, especially in the case of the Robin Hood line.
  I also want fair shares for English Partnerships, a body set up to help bring regeneration to the coalfields. I note with some alarm that its budget is being cut. We need to clear up derelict sites. There are pit tips and derelict land all over north Nottinghamshire. We need derelict land grant to bring that land back to life. We need to attract factory units, create new businesses and provide homes for new businesses. I am extremely worried that with the cuts in grant aid to English Partnerships all that will be put at risk.
  I also note that the training and enterprise councils are to have their budgets cut by 5 per cent., on top of the drop in coalfield money that came to TECs covering the coalfields. Most of all, people in coalfield communities need skilling and reskilling. They need to be competitive in a changing world and investment in training could be a lifeline for them.
  I note, too, that the money available to colleges of further education is to be cut. Such colleges are expected to take more students but at a lower cost. I am disturbed about what is happening at some colleges of further education, not only in Nottinghamshire but across the country. The standards of teaching, of courses and of qualifications are dropping. I suggest that some of these CFEs will drop soon. Some are technically bankrupt. It will not be long before the first CFE goes into receivership. That path will be progressed and enhanced by the Budget cuts in their funding.
  The windfall tax has received a good deal of criticism. I was surprised on Monday, the day before the Budget when Severn Trent Water, our local private water company, announced increased profits of 75 per cent. or £160 million. I note, too, that all it did for its customers was offer them a £4 cash-back per year. That does not seem to be a great benefit from privatisation. I would have no hesitation in examining the profits and dividends of companies such as Severn Trent and East Midlands Electricity, looking at what they have put back into their capital plans and making a judgment about a windfall tax.
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  Young people are our future. I believe strongly that we ought to offer young people quality routes to training. Money from a windfall tax should be applied in that way.
  I note, too, that the civil service is going to be cut by 12 per cent. I was staggered this week to find that European money that could come to Nottinghamshire coalfield communities is being held up because there are not enough civil servants in the Government office for the east midlands to process the application. We paid that money into Europe and we want it back. The stumbling block appears to be a lack of civil servants locally, in the office in Nottingham, to deal with those claims. It is even more astonishing that the local office should have written to local authorities asking for staff to be lent to the Government office to process the claims. Frankly, it is an insult to people in Nottinghamshire.
  It is disturbing that no effort has been made in the Budget to get the construction industry going. I remember the private finance initiative being described as additional to Government capital spending. All that now seems to have gone out of the window. I suspect that it will not be long before national lottery money is used in the same way, as a substitute for Government money.
  Local authorities have also faced cuts. I have looked carefully at the settlement announced today. Is it not the case that next year local authorities will receive £6.3 billion for capital projects? That is a cut of £700 million—or 0 per cent.—on this year's sum of £7 billion.
  I should draw attention to the problem of crumbling schools in Nottinghamshire. Some of the money that has been cut could be used to renovate and refurbish them. There are £85 million-worth of repairs outstanding in Nottinghamshire's schools. In the Chancellor's own constituency of Rushcliffe, there is £6.7 million-worth of work outstanding. I draw attention to Rushcliffe comprehensive school, which has £1.5 million of outstanding repairs, and to Brookside primary school in East Leake, where £105,000-worth of repairs are outstanding.
  I know that the governors of those schools, as well as the teachers and parents, would be delighted to see the Chancellor there. They would argue with him about the consequences of the capital cuts to local authorities. I believe that the cuts are shortsighted. We should be investing in capital projects to create jobs and to put down seedcorn for the future.
  I deal briefly with the local government finance settlement that was announced today. I am delighted that the Chancellor gave an exclusive interview yesterday to our local paper, the Nottingham Evening Post. He told it that there was a "Cash bonanza for Notts". I think that the Chancellor may play it differently at home from down here in London. Back in Nottinghamshire he has been giving the impression that there is loads of money, boys. The reality, however, is quite different.
  If one looks at the financial settlement and focuses especially on education, it is apparent that, this year, local education authorities are spending £797 million more than their standard spending assessment, which is the Government's yardstick. Next year, the pledge of extra money—4.5 per cent. growth in education spending—will bring in £770 million. That promised and lauded extra money does not fill this year's gap.

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  The people of Nottinghamshire know those figures only too well. They know that the current year's settlement was tight, as the Secretary of State said. In Nottinghamshire's schools, there are 350 fewer teachers now than there were before the summer holidays. That leads to larger class sizes. In north Nottinghamshire, three out of four primary schools have classes of more than 30 pupils, and I believe that there is worse to come. Despite the settlement and the promised cash bonanza from the Chancellor, I do not think that the gap is going to be cut.
  In the current year, Nottinghamshire county council is spending £25.5 million, or 7.5 per cent., more on education than the Government yardstick. At best, the settlement announced today brings an extra £15 million into Nottinghamshire schools. That still leaves a budget gap of £10 million.
  I anticipate that there will be further cuts in the number of teachers this year, possibly in the region of 300. I find it very hard to understand that, while the number of teachers is being cut and class sizes are getting larger, we, the council tax payers of Nottinghamshire, are being asked to pay more. I think that 300 teachers' posts may go and class sizes will get larger. For that privilege, I anticipate that the increase in our council tax next year will be about double the rate of inflation. We shall pay more and get less in Nottinghamshire.
  I do not think that the Chancellor can hurt the people of Nottinghamshire any more. He should listen to the people he meets and respond to those who have written to him. I expect that he has had 25,000 letters about local authority cuts from his constituents. They want better and I want better.
  In the future, I want a Budget that is green and clean. I want a Budget that enhances the environment and lifts the landscape. I want a Budget that puts investment for prosperity at its core—investment in education, training and infrastructure and—most important—a Budget that invests in the future of Nottinghamshire children.
  8.16 pm
  Mr. James Cran: I thoroughly enjoyed the speech made by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. Unlike the relatively few contributions of Opposition Members, it was factual. The speech made by the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), who led for the Opposition, did not contain one fact. Of course, she attacked us—I do not complain about that—but it would have been novel to hear just a little about what the Opposition propose to do to make up for what they consider that we have not done.
  The right hon. Member for Derby, South also had a rattling good cheek in suggesting that the Government had arranged for so many statements to be made today to reduce the time for debate on the Budget. The irony was that, at that moment, there were hardly any faces to be seen on the Opposition Benches. Had the Government done as she suggested—of course, I do not believe for a minute that they did—then one would have to say, "Thank goodness" because we would have had precious few contributions from Opposition Members.
  I was interested to hear what the Liberal Democrat spokesman had to say. He said that, on Budget day, he and his colleagues noticed how glum we—the Conservative
  1410
  Members—were looking. That is odd, because we were looking at them and thinking how glum they were. I think that they realised that there might be a great deal more in the Budget than they were able to take in on the day.
  Mr. Spring: Does my hon. Friend recall that the Liberal Democrats looked most glum after the speech made by the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown)?
  Mr. Cran: My hon. Friend makes a telling intervention.
  I support the Budget. As I look back at various Budgets, but without mentioning one in particular, I would have to admit that I found it less easy to say that I supported some of them, but I certainly support this one. Like many of my colleagues, I have been astonished by the publicity surrounding the Budget, which implies that Conservative Members are opposed to it. That is not the case. If I achieve nothing else, I should like to say that I and many of my colleagues support the Budget. Opposition Members may be worried that it is a two-stage exercise. The Chancellor would not say that—he would say that it is merely the latest Budget, and I understand that. However, I expect it to be a two-stage exercise and I am afraid that Opposition Members will have to wait for another Budget in November 1996. The smiles on the faces of Opposition Members may be fewer then than they appear to be now.
  My first reason for being enthusiastic about the Budget is that it is fiscally sound. It introduces tax cuts, but there are also cuts in expenditure. I might have wanted rather more in the way of tax cuts than were introduced and I might have wanted a few more cuts in public expenditure, but that is a matter of judgment. Whatever else might be said, there is no doubt that the Budget has impressed the marketplace. That fact was not taken into account by any of the contributions that I have heard from Opposition Members.
  I like the fact that there are no gimmicks in the Budget. What is a gimmick? We can all look up the word in the dictionary, but one gimmick that we kept on hearing about from Opposition spokesmen was kick-starting the housing market. I am delighted that the Chancellor did no such thing. There are low interest rates and price discounting in the housing market, which is enough to get the market moving eventually. I invite all Opposition Members to come up to Beverley, where the housing market is beginning to move. I have the impression that that is happening in other parts of the country—therefore, there is no need for gimmicks.
  I am also delighted that the Government have resumed the tax-cutting propensity—that is what Conservative Governments are rightly concerned about in the medium and long term. I am delighted at that resumption because I have always believed, and I expect I always will, that the state—even under prudent Conservative Governments—has spent too much of other people's money. That was brought home to me by the social security budget which, I well remember, stood at £37 billion when I was first elected to Parliament in 1987 and next year will be about £94 billion or £95 billion. Conservative Governments have done much to add to that total, which is why I am supportive of the present Government's efforts to examine critically what the state spends and what the individual spends. I would like that debate to be encouraged among not only

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  Conservative Members, but Opposition Members. I do not think, however, that it is taking place among Opposition Members.
  I like the Budget for another reason which was never mentioned by Opposition spokesmen—it encourages business, industry and the City. Undoubtedly, the reaction to the Budget from business generally has been better than the right hon. Member for Derby, South was prepared to admit. She merely took the tepid view of the Confederation of British Industry—an organisation that I admire less and less, even though I was once employed by it. One has to look less at what the CBI says and more at what individual business men say, which gives a different picture. Business men have given the Budget a much more enthusiastic response and if I have time I shall tell the House what one or two business men have said.
  Finally, I am enthusiastic about the Budget because it encourages savers. I am not only a Scotsman but an Aberdonian and we are famous for our capacity to save money, which I do. I am delighted that the Government are now giving the community another impetus to save because the savings ratio of late has not been nearly good enough, although it is improving. Many within the community will wake up to the fact that there have been reductions in tax for those of us who save money in building societies, banks or wherever. Moreover, I note that even my hon. Friends are forecasting cuts in the interest rate. Of course, the business community wants interest rate cuts, but we must remember that what benefits industry does not benefit the saver. I shall, however, leave the Treasury team to deal with that conundrum.
  Direct taxation is thankfully resuming its downward trend. The Labour party—not particularly tonight, but on radio, television and in the newspapers—states that it is now the low-tax party. My constituents in Beverley should treat that statement with extreme caution. My neighbour, the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), said that such promises as the Labour party would make—we do not have the details—would be for one year only. The electors of Beverley and elsewhere had better remember that.
  In addition, Opposition Members in private also tell me, "Well, you will see what happens when the boot is on the other foot." We all know what that means: the Opposition will enjoy the ability to take more money out of people's pockets. I warn the taxpayers of this country to look out. The Labour party would introduce more bands for direct tax because that would take out more money from other people's pockets. The upper rate band would undoubtedly be increased to between 50 and 60 per cent., if not more.
  The other issue that I never hear mentioned by Opposition Members, except in private, is that of unearned income. I do not have any unearned income; I have had to earn all my capital—a distinction not made by the Opposition. Under a Labour Government, unearned income will undoubtedly be plundered because they will need the cash.
  I am pleased about what the Government have done in relation to inheritance tax. I was delighted last June to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister make a commitment to the Conservative party that inheritance tax should be progressively abolished. It is a monstrous tax.
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  I caution Opposition Members to look at how many people in the community have to pay inheritance tax. In some cases, tax has been paid throughout the lifetime of the capital and the Treasury and the Government take the final cut on one's deathbed. That is simply monstrous and I am delighted to hear what my Government intend to do. I welcome the increase of the exempt amount to £200,000 and I look forward to the abolition of the tax.
  I have mentioned reducing tax on savings. Clearly, many people have not cottoned on to the fact that they will retain more of the interest than they receive on their accounts. I applaud that measure.
  I was pleased that the Budget contained very few references to VAT which, as we know, is an unpopular tax. It is not as had when it is levied on luxuries—although I never know what a luxury is these days—but it is a different matter when it is levied on essentials. It is, however, far too easy to raise VAT. It encourages spenders in Government. We must have one or two spenders on the Conservative Benches—although not too many—but there are certainly a great many on the Opposition Benches.
  I warn the community again. A tax that is too easy to raise encourages spending in Government Departments. I say to my Conservative colleagues that we must be careful and recognise the public resistance to that tax. I am resistant to VAT. I have always bought new cars until now, but I have no intention of doing so in the future, as I am not prepared to pay the valued added tax on a new car. I may even reach the stage of buying second-hand suits, if I have to, to avoid that tax. However, I am idiosyncratic on that subject and I expect that the House will bear with me.
  On long-term care, I am delighted that my Government have recognised what were undoubtedly the beginnings of a minor scandal, which occurred as a result of the developments in community care. I am pleased that the first step has been taken. I do not regard the first step as being especially generous, but it is a move in the right direction. I look forward to quick initiatives that will come out of my Government to ensure that we do not have the position that exists in my constituency—the same can be said of others—where people find it necessary to sell houses to pay for the fees for long-term care that they receive alongside some people who did not save, although some people were simply unfortunate and could not save. I fail to understand why I, and many of my constituents, should forgo consumption to pay for that care whereas others do not.
  I finish with one or two comments about what the Budget has done for industry. Having been associated with the Confederation of British Industry, I know that industry is the boiler house of wealth creation. Industry and business create wealth. They create the cake and we divide it. Therefore what we should do, which is better done by a Conservative Government, is ensure that we encourage industry, but not with hand-outs. Too often, the Opposition say that industry needs help in the form of a hand-out. Industry wants no such thing. It wants what the present and the preceding Government have done—which is to provide a deregulated background in which it can operate. Usually, business men ask Governments to keep out of their hair. I believe that Conservative Governments have done that, in the case of inflation, and I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor on the fact that he continues to bear down on that evil.

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  I well remember all the industrialists I used to speak to in the period 1975–79, who repeatedly mentioned the fact that the inflation rate was increasing. It reached about 26 per cent.
  Mr. Spring: Twenty-seven per cent.
  Mr. Cran: I am corrected, and I am happy to be so. What did that do for the competitiveness of British industry and individual companies? It completely destroyed the former, and it destroyed the prospects of many good companies. Therefore, the Chancellor is absolutely correct to bear down on inflation.
  The Chancellor was equally correct not to impose a windfall tax. In that regard, I do not understand why the Opposition do not understand why a windfall tax would not be beneficial to the British economy. It would be beneficial to the extent that a Labour Government would use the proceeds in some way for one year, but what signal does that send out to inward investing companies? I venture to suggest that they would be less interested in coming to the United Kingdom than has heretofore been the case, when I believe—I am open to being corrected—that more than half the inward investment of the European Union has come to the United Kingdom. I am also delighted to notice what my Government have done on uniform business rates.
  I have referred to the tepid—it is tepid—judgment of the CBI. I can therefore throw that away. However, I read in the Financial Times that the chief executive of Asda Group, Mr. Archie Norman, said:
  "We are delighted. It is a bullseye."
  That was not mentioned by the right hon. Member for Derby, South, was it? Sir David Simpson, chairman of British Petroleum, said:
  "It is good to see that the Government intends to continue reducing its spend as a proportion of GDP and that it has reaffirmed its aim to balance the Budget"—
  and so on. He is obviously delighted.
  Sir John Banham, a former director-general of the CBI, and chairman of Tarmac, says:
  "The Chancellor is on the right track and the measures he has put in place provide the best prospects for the UK building industry."
  The right hon. Lady should have balanced her remarks by telling us about that.
  What does the City say?
  "He's taken the prudent path"
  says the head of bond research from Yamaichi international bank. I could go on, but I know that other hon. Members wish to speak. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I shall therefore bring my remarks to a close—reluctantly, because I should like to say an awful lot more on that subject. However, I hope that my colleagues will allow me to ask one question. After 16 years of Conservative Governments, one would suppose that the United Kingdom was in tatters. Why, therefore, is it the case that the City of London—I just happened to pick up a document at random the other day—appears to go from strength to strength? It should not he so, if the Opposition's comments are justified.
  What do I read?
  "London is the world's largest international insurance market"—
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  not the second or third, but the largest—
  "with net premium income of £9.9 billion … There are over 540 foreign banks in London".
  Would they come if the UK was as the Opposition portray it to be? Of course they would not. Moreover,
  "The London foreign exchange market is the largest in the world, with a daily turnover of $464 billion—more than the turnover of New York and Tokyo combined."
  I know that other hon. Members wish to speak, but they will, I know, allow me to say that London is the world's second largest fund management centre, after Tokyo, with more than $750 billion of institutional equity holdings.
  I might go on and on, but I cannot. By public demand—I should say by popular demand of my colleagues—I shall sit down. I simply finish by saying, it is a rattling and a damned good Budget. It has the whole-hearted support of Conservative Members and I fear that the Opposition will live to regret what they said before the Budget. If I remember rightly, they said that it would be a giveaway and would be recognised by the British people as such. It was no such thing; and just wait for the next one.
  8.37 pm
  Mr. Michael Clapham: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Beverley (Mr. Cran) and I shall discuss some of his arguments later.
  I very much enjoyed the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) and the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping), who spoke about several issues, and suggested ways in which the green tax might be developed.
  In my estimation, the Budget has hit the most vulnerable people the hardest, to achieve a 1p reduction in income tax. It has hit the unemployed, single parents, the under-25s on housing benefit and disabled people on long-term hospital stays—all to achieve a reduction in income tax of only 1p.
  The Budget has once again widened social divisions. I wonder where the Prime Minister's stated objective of achieving a classless society has gone. It certainly was not referred to in the Budget.
  There is little cheer for little England in the Budget, because the typical family will pay £670 more per year in tax. They certainly will not be cracking open the champagne in Barnsley. My constituency, which comes into Barnsley, has a great deal of unemployment. Calculated on a narrow base over the travel-to-work area, unemployment in Barnsley is 18.1 per cent. of males. There are pockets in some mining villages where unemployment is much greater. It is as high as 40 per cent. in some mining villages.
  The Chancellor talked of an enterprising Budget that would motivate entrepreneurs and the unemployed alike. That theme was echoed by the Secretary of State today, but I do not expect the Budget to make the economy more robust.
  One factor overlooked by the Secretary of State when he spoke of the advantages that deregulation was bringing is its potential to act as a drag on the economy. That is particularly true following the abolition of the wages councils. A study carried out recently by the Low Pay Network showed that Barnsley had been severely affected

  1415
  by that: for instance, 79 per cent. of relevant vacancies advertised in the town's jobcentre offered lower rates of pay than could have been advertised before the abolition of the councils.
  The position is similar in a number of northern towns. According to a summary of the survey's findings, 69.2 per cent. of jobs advertised in Rotherham's jobcentre could not have been advertised at the same pay rates if wages councils had been in existence. In Walsall the figure was 66.1 per cent., and it was 60.7 per cent. in Halifax and Wigan. It is clear that a minimum wage should be introduced.
  Opposition Members have long advocated such a move. If we are to lift people out of poverty, it is essential to give a greater stimulus to those who are looking for work. A minimum wage would also stimulate industry. It would do two things that Conservative Members never mention when they talk about the minimum wage. First, it would lead to innovative action by employers: that would boost the capital goods market, which in turn would require skilled labour. It would have a ripple effect throughout the economy. Secondly, it would free more labour for education and better training. In my view, a skills shortage is a significant barrier to competition. The availability of higher-level skills would, for example, enable manufacturing industry to use more capital-intensive processes. Taken together, those moves would nudge the United Kingdom's economy towards the higher-value end of the market—and that is where the United Kingdom must be if it is to survive in a ferociously competitive world market.
  Low pay has proved to be a drag on the economy in the mining industry, for example. In 1913, before the first world war, we reached the zenith of mining production with 1,197,000 miners, but in Britain only about 13 per cent. of coal was cut by machine. In Germany, almost a third of coal was cut by that process. By the end of the war, two thirds of coal in America was cut by machine; in this country, we had hardly advanced since 1913. That was because of the availability of a glut of cheap labour. It took nationalisation after 1945 to bring technology into the mining industry. Cheap labour can hold back innovation.
  Training and education—along with investment, of course—are major ingredients of prosperity, but the Government do not take that too seriously. Since 1979, the United Kingdom has slipped from 13th to 18th position in the world prosperity league table. If that statistic shows anything, it shows the Government's abject failure. It shows that we have not been directing enough money into investment, and that in that way we have allowed many of our industries to lag behind those of our competitors.
  It is because education and training are so important that the Chancellor should have introduced a windfall tax. I know that the hon. Member for Beverley is opposed to that, but I believe that, since the privatisation of the utilities, local monopolies in electricity and water have made billions of pounds on the backs of their customers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood pointed out, Severn Trent admitted yesterday that its profits were up by 75 per cent. on last year. Even Yorkshire Water, whose pipe network is leaking at least a third of water supplies every day, announced that its profits were up by 50 per cent. The Secretary of State said that investment in the
  1416
  water industry was increasing, but over a five-year period it has fallen by £282 million. That is an enormous loss of investment as a result of privatisation.
  The Chancellor should have seized the opportunity to use the excessive profits of the utilities to invest in education and training. That would have given young people a chance to acquire the skills that would help them to secure jobs. Is there any better way in which to use those excess profits than to invest them in the nation's future?
  No doubt the Chancellor will have had his eye on the proceeds that are likely to result from the sale of the nuclear generating industry next summer. That, too, is a privatisation too far. It is estimated that the price will be about £2.6 billion, which is less than the cost of building the Sizewell pressurised water reactor. The Chancellor talked of competitiveness and competition, but the sale of the nuclear industry will further neither objective. Energy prices are one of the elements that increase competitiveness, but since the privatisation of the electricity industry—contrary to what the Secretary of State told us—the cost to large users has not fallen. In fact, the cost to large users in the United Kingdom is much higher than that in most of our European competitors. It is far in excess of the cost in France, for example.
  The creation of the two new nuclear companies will not help competitiveness. Magco will take on the Magnox stations, and will go over to British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., and British Energy will own the five advanced gas-cooled reactors and the pressurised water reactor. Between them, they will supply between 25 per cent. and 29 per cent. of the United Kingdom's electricity needs. As all that is base-load electricity, there is bound to be a stream of revenue following privatisation. After the privatisation of the nuclear generating industry, it is more likely to diversify into gas. Once the gas stations are on stream they will not compete with nuclear capacity, whose base-load electricity is bid into the pool at zero. So the new gas capacity will compete with other gas stations or with coal. It is therefore likely that the coal stations will be pushed off the grid.
  Privatising the nuclear industry is folly. It will not help to diversify our fuel mix, and it will not improve our competitiveness. Indeed, prices in the energy market may rise thereafter.
  It is accepted even by Conservatives that we invest much less than do our competitors. Japan invests twice as much as we do; America invests £863 per person more; and Switzerland a massive £2,766 more. Conservative Members like to talk about 1979. In 1979, Portugal invested £177 per head less than did the United Kingdom. Now it invests £312 more than we do.
  Furthermore, the Budget, besides not increasing investment as required, did not sufficiently encourage investment in the areas that need it. The Government had the opportunity to create an arms diversification agency to harness expertise and capital from the armaments industry as it adapts to civil production. But Conservative Members seem to find that idea anathema.
  What is more, this country needs more research and development. We have cut back dramatically our investment in clean coal technology, an area in which we once led the world. The danger is that the same could happen to the nuclear industry after privatisation.

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  Research and development are the seedcorn for the future, and the Chancellor should have provided much more encouragement for them—but chose not to.
  Research and development need to be focused on civil, not military production. That would allow spin-offs from civil R and D to the military, instead of the other way round. Germany and Japan have shown what can be achieved when research and development are focused on civil production, with spin-offs for military production.
  Overall, the Budget did nothing for unemployment. The Government have put taxes up by 7p and lowered them by 1p, still leaving the typical family paying £670 more in tax. The Chancellor has failed to come up with a Budget for investment, to increase prosperity and to ensure the UK's competitiveness in world markets.
  8.53 pm
  Mr. Richard Spring: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the chance to say a few words.
  I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) that a Budget that is cheered to the rafters often looks less appetising six months on. The headline in The Sun confirmed for me that this Budget will be the opposite sort, in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has introduced some sensible tax cuts, targeting key spending areas and producing a number of important innovations.
  Bryan Gould, who has now left us for New Zealand, used to talk about the Labour party's lack of any sort of macro-economic policy in the key areas of interest rates, exchange rates, taxation and monetary policy. He said that Labour had no such policies. It was thoroughly disappointing again this evening to hear the speech of the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), which contained no policies, ideas or opinions: just criticisms. Her performance served to show the vacuum in Labour party policy.
  My right hon. and learned Friend sought to deal with many challenges in his Budget. I should like to examine two of them, the first of which is not essentially a party political issue. Ours is an aging population. An ever smaller percentage of the population works to support an ever larger element in retirement. There is no escaping that fact. The implications for fiscal policy and for public borrowing are critical. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security is paring back the increases in the billowing social security budget from 3 per cent. to 1 per cent. a year.
  It has become something of a cliché to talk about global markets and communications, but the fact is that Governments' ability to control events outside their borders, if markets do not like the policies that they are pursuing, is strictly limited. We live in a time of open markets and of ferocious attacks on currencies. As an older, mature economy, it is our duty to ensure that we run a low-inflation, low-tax economy if we are to compete with the emerging economies in the far east and elsewhere. We have no option in the matter if we are to face up to the changing demographic balance in this country and in other industrialised nations.
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  In this respect I welcome the announcements affecting the problem of long-term health care for the elderly. Many elderly people have been very worried about the thresholds, which have now been raised from £3,000 to £10,000 and from £8,000 to £16,000. That represents a serious move on the part of the Government, who, like Governments in all industrialised countries, have had to face up to the problem and to lay the foundations for long-term care provision. That involves creating the right sort of fiscal programme.
  The Government and the Chancellor have sought successfully to encourage savings, with the introduction of PEPs and TESSAs and the extraordinary increase in the number of personal pension arrangements that help people sensibly to plan for major demographic change—in this country and across the industrialised world. In that respect this Budget marks a watershed.
  Investment is crucial to our survival in this competitive world. There has been a huge improvement in manufacturing productivity and in inward investment to the UK from outside Europe. That has enabled us to compete well by attracting scarce capital. It is creating jobs, new technologies and industries that are extremely beneficial.
  Since the end of the second world war, every time there has been economic recovery, we have had a sterling or balance of payments crisis. So many of the nationalised industries that were damp hands on the economy in the 1970s are now leading our export effort and showing the rest of British industry the way forward by creating employment, producing taxes and helping to ensure that our export performance is excellent by the standards of the past 30 or 40 years. It is interesting to see the transformation that has taken place in that respect.
  To achieve our aim of being the enterprise centre of Europe, we have to continue to cut tax as a percentage of GDP. I am pleased that Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is projected to fall to 40 per cent. in 1997–98 and to 38 per cent. two years later. Let us aim for 35 per cent.—the levels that apply in Japan and the United States. If we continue to reduce that percentage, we shall bequeath a vibrant and dynamic environment in which business will prosper.
  I very much welcome the private finance initiative, which will address the enormous pressures on the social and transport infrastructure of Britain and all other mature industrialised countries.
  I welcome the further expansion of the 20p tax band, which means that 200,000 lower-paid people will be taken out of taxation altogether and one quarter of all taxpayers will now pay only 20p. I applaud the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend set a clear marker to a 20p tax rate. There are no gimmicks; we are on our way to achieve that.
  Those policies have produced quite exceptional results in Britain. Unlike the other industrialised countries in Europe where unemployment is growing, in Britain it has fallen by 700,000 in the past three years. In my own constituency, the unemployment rate is now 4.3 per cent, having dropped by 8.4 per cent. in one year and 35 per cent. in three years. That success is reflected in the lives and aspirations of my constituents and I look with pleasure at the effect of Government policy in the part of west Suffolk that I represent.

  1419
  I should tell my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary that I personally welcome the vehicle tax exemption on 25-year-old cars. I have a 1973 Rover 3.5 litre coupé. The car looks forward to being two or three years older and escaping that taxation.
  I thank my right hon. and learned Friend and the other Treasury Ministers for addressing the problem of general betting duty. I have the great pleasure of representing the world's headquarters of racing in Newmarket. The national lottery has had a serious impact on prize money in the racing industry. The cut of 1 per cent. in general betting duty will stimulate the employment gains that are already developing in the industry as a result of the VAT registration concessions given in the Budget three years ago. On behalf of my constituents, as the racing industry is the largest employer in my constituency, I thank the Treasury team for that important concession which will be highly valued in even further reducing the already low rate of unemployment in Bury St. Edmunds.
  Finally, my right hon. and learned Friend has produced a coherent, sensible and restrained Budget. In 12 months' time it will be possible further to extend tax cuts to produce a lower rate of inflation in a growing economy. The Budget is a watershed as we have turned the corner from a recessionary era into a period of sustained growth and low inflation. I welcome it and congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on presenting it so well.
  9.3 pm
  Mr. David Congdon: It is a pleasure to be able to take up the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring), who serves with me as a member of the Select Committee on Health. I echo his comments about the growth of the elderly population and the proposals in the Budget, which I welcome, that are designed as a first stage to deal with the difficult problem of providing long-term care for the elderly.
  I warmly welcome the Budget as a whole. I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer got it right. Some difficult decisions had to be taken, especially given the state of public finances.
  The key to economic success is the achievement of sustainable growth. There is no doubt that in 1994–95 and beyond we have and will achieve that growth. One of the judgments of the Budget is whether we shall continue to achieve sustainable growth. I believe that we shall do so, and I think that most economists would share that judgment.
  What do businesses ask of the Government in managing the economy? The answer is that they want stability. They do not want the old days of stop-go, when they boosted their production only to find that it had to come to a halt as the economy went into recession as a result of overheating. Businesses want stability. They want stable inflation, stable growth and stable interest rates so that they can plan sensibly. The Budget is prudent in its judgment on public finances because tax cuts are balanced by reductions in public spending. Surely that is the way in which to proceed.
  It is important that tax cuts put money back into the pockets of the public. The cuts will have a significant impact on consumer expenditure. Despite the comments of Opposition Members, the public know better than the Government how to spend their money.
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  There is a danger that Budgets can be over-hyped. We heard so much nonsense before the Budget about the level of tax cuts that would be achieved. As I have said, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor got it right with cuts of £3.25 billion, which were balanced by cuts in public spending. More important, does the Budget pave the way for reductions in interest rates, which would be much appreciated by businesses and mortgagees throughout the country? I believe that it does, and I urge my right hon. and learned Friend, in his meetings with Eddie George, to adhere to the tough line that he has adopted and go for interest rate cuts.
  It is my view that the Governor of the Bank of England has been wrong about interest rates over the past year. The issue is crucial to understanding why my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor had limited room for manoeuvre this year. I spoke in the Budget debate last year, when none of us knew what growth rate would be achieved in 1994. We now know that we achieved a growth rate of 3.9 per cent. There was concern about whether the economy would overheat and whether inflation would get out of control. We have seen some increases in interest rates. If my right hon. and learned Friend had followed the Governor's lead, we would have higher interest rates.
  What have we seen? In the Red Book, growth for 1995 was predicted to be 3.25 per cent. That was only a forecast. In the summer forecast it was scaled down to 3 per cent. It is now forecast to be 2.75 per cent. We know that in the third quarter it was down to 2.1 per cent. In other words, interest rate cuts have had an effect, along with the slow-down in the world economy, on the growth rate of our economy.
  What has been the effect of that slow-down? Tax revenue has been reduced significantly. I understand the exact reasons for the reduction in tax revenues. It is a problem that affects other countries. We know for certain, however, that a slow-down in growth will have an impact on tax revenues. We know also that £7.5 billion is an enormous sum. The Government have had to face difficulties with the public sector borrowing requirement, but we have been extremely successful in keeping spending under control. That is a key achievement.
  What better position would we have been in if tax revenues had held up? My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor might have been able to introduce further tax cuts. My message and plea to the Treasury Bench is that we should not be too cautious over the next 12 months. Let us see growth in the real economy. There is little sign of inflation taking off. Wage increases, for about the first time in our history, are below the rate of inflation. That is extremely good news.
  At the same time, the slow-down in wage increases has had an effect on growth. In other words, there are some difficult balances. We must ensure that we achieve at least the levels of growth that are predicted in the Red Book. I would hate to have to say next year that we achieved not 3 per cent. but 2.5 per cent. I do not accept the argument that the underlying trend rate of the economy, which some say is 2.75 per cent., while others claim that it is 2.5 per cent., is fixed in stone for ever and a day. It depends on the improvements in productivity that industry is achieving, and there is no doubt that in recent years industry has become much more productive and successful. That should be borne in mind.

  1421
  The debate has been fascinating. We hear a lot about new Labour and how the party has changed its ways, but listening tonight, particularly to the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), I thought that I must be in a time warp. The hon. Gentleman had some quaint ideas about a minimum wage encouraging investment in capital equipment. It might well do. That is not quaint. But it would have a disastrous effect on unemployment.
  We also had a revelation that I have heard on previous occasions, again from the hon. Gentleman but also from other hon. Members, about Government directing investment. What a disaster it would be for Britain if the Government were to decide where investment should go. Government would never get it right when it came to deciding in which industries to invest. The only people who can judge where to invest are those in the businesses themselves.
  We hear a lot about underinvestment. Investment is up, but the Opposition concentrate on public sector investment, as if that constituted the greater part of investment. I looked in the Red Book earlier to see whether my understanding of investment was correct. In broad terms, investment in Britain is running at about £100 billion a year. Of that, only about 20 per cent. is public investment. The vast bulk of investment is decided by businesses and industries throughout the land. They invest only when there is a stable macro-economic framework and they can see a demand for their product. That is why the Government are so right to have the sound economic policies that they have.
  Listening to Opposition Members on public expenditure, I sometimes wonder whether they are being honest with the electorate. Earlier this afternoon we were told that we had squandered our oil revenues and privatisation receipts. But what have they been "squandered" on? They have been spent on essential public services. Since 1979, an extra 70 per cent. has been spent on the health service. Spending on education is up 50 per cent. per pupil. There has been a £70 billion increase in real terms in public expenditure since 1979. I do not recall hearing Labour Members say that we should not put more money into health or education. Therefore, it is dishonest of them to try to pretend that that money has been squandered.
  To return to the specifics on public spending in the Budget, I applaud strongly the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend has found room for extra spending on essential services. I am particularly pleased to see the £1.3 billion extra—1.6 per cent.—for health, as well as the £878 million for education. Surely those are the right sort of priorities to have. We should cut out waste and inefficiency and spend money on essential services.
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has the Budget strategy right. It is a prudent Budget. I urge my right hon. and learned Friend to keep an eye on the ball of interest rates in order to ensure that we have the growth that the economy needs in the coming year. We must aim to ensure that we achieve at least the 3 per cent. set out in the Budget statement so that we are on target for the sustainable growth that the country wants and demands.
  9.12 pm
  Mr. Jacques Arnold: When my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor sat down on Tuesday, we all heard a somewhat strangled cry of, "Is that all?" It came in jeering tones from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and in anguished tones from the Press Gallery. The gentlemen of the press had already written their headlines and articles. Those headlines read, "Panic-stricken Tories wreck Government finances and shatter recovery". They went on to long articles about scorched earth and things of that sort, assuming that the Conservatives would throw in the sponge and give up on the Government.
  That just proves that the gentlemen of the press do not understand the Conservative party. Not only do we intend to win, but we want to carry out our patriotic duty and, in so doing, we will regain the support of the public because they will respond with the respect that has led us to victory after victory at the polls.
  The appropriate headline for the Budget is, "Boring but responsible". It is clearly tackling the deficit. It is continuing the tight control on inflation. It is tightening up the control on borrowing. Indeed, it is creating the conditions for the interest rate reductions that we want to see. I am frustrated that we have not yet seen them, and that, of course, is because we handed over the decision to the Governor of the Bank of England. I ask my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor to give Eddie George his marching orders and get those interest rates down, because they will accelerate growth and will cut unemployment. Indeed, in my constituency, unemployment is already down to the level of April 1991 and is continuing to drop steadily.
  A drop in interest rates would also bring about a recovery in the property market. It would be good for business and for home owners, but not quite so for savers, and that was one of the more significant aspects of the Budget. It did not escape our notice that my right hon. and learned Friend created a 20 per cent. tax band on savings, which would offset the effect on savers of the reduction in interest rates that the economy, home owners and the public wish to see.
  The Budget is good for education, good for health and good for the police. This afternoon, we heard that there was an extra 4 per cent. for schools in my constituency. But those very services sowed the seeds of our current conditions, because we have just been through the worst recession since the 1930s, and any financially responsible Government would have responded to a drop in revenue by cutting their expenditure. Yet the Conservative Government continued to increase expenditure on health to the extent that today it is up 70 per cent. in real terms on the figure left behind by the previous Labour Government. We continued the increase in spending on education, which is now up by 50 per cent. We protected the pensioners.
  Contrast that with the Labour Government who preceded us. Let us remember the Labour Government in the recession of 1976, when they slashed the hospital building programme. They cut the pay of nurses. They cut the pensioners' Christmas bonus. But even that did not work and they carried the begging bowl of this proud country to the International Monetary Fund to queue up behind the sub-Saharan countries for a loan. We did not have to do that. Why? Because the Conservative Government have a reputation for sound finance. The

  1423
  trouble is that one does not keep that reputation if one continues to borrow heavily. That is precisely why, during the past three very difficult years, we had to borrow and, above all, taxes had to be increased.
  Mr. Harvey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Arnold: No I will not, because I am short of time and the hon. Gentleman has just walked in.
  I shall press on by saying that we have now got through the difficult period. We are now in the great period of getting off the backs of the taxpayers. It is interesting to note where we have done that. We have got off the backs of the less well-off. We have the 1 per cent. cut in the basic rate. The personal allowance is up by £240 and we have the extension of the 20 per cent. band, all of which will help the less well-off into jobs and help them and their families to greater prosperity.
  I would argue that that it is not enough. But where are we to make the cuts? We have seen thoughtful proposals from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), with his proposals for £5 billion of cuts, which should be handed back to the public.
  The Budget is intellectually honest, but what is not, however, is the approach of the Labour party, particularly the speech of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) the shadow Chancellor. He was jeering over tax. Would he cut tax more? If so, what would he cut to finance it? He would not answer. His comments about the poor taxpayer of Britain are just like the devil worried about sin. What a nerve. In the debate on Wednesday, he was asked question after question. He did not answer. I asked him how he would finance the cost of his 10 per cent. rate. No answer. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) asked him what would be the impact of the social chapter and a statutory minimum wage. No answer. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) then went on to ask him about the 20 per cent. band extension at a cost of £800 million and asked whether the hon. Gentleman would support it. He did not answer then, any more than we will get an answer yes or no from the official Opposition to the Budget.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mr. Coombs) then asked the shadow Chancellor what target he had for inflation, referring to the 27 per cent. inflation that the last Labour Government achieved. Again, no answer. This is the person who would run our economy in 18 months' time, if one believed him and some of the pundits.
  One of the most interesting parts of the Budget was the private finance initiative. It is thoroughly new and a great departure. Let us remember that this reforming Government progressively introduced local financial management to schools, which progressed to grant-maintained schools, which are very effective in delivering the goods. In the national health service, the Government introduced fundholding practices and NHS trusts, which again are delivering the goods. I find it a matter for great optimism that we Conservatives are still coming up with the new projects.
  On the private finance initiative, I will cite the example of the NHS in my constituency. We have been waiting year after year for our brand new general hospital at Darenth park at a cost of £100 million. We have not go
  1424
  tit. Why? Because the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot sign a cheque for £100 million. The Treasury keeps saying, "How about sticking the hospital on a ropey old site?" We combine the ropey old facilities with the phased development of our hospital. Now that the project has been put out to the PFI, what does the private sector opt to do? It says, "We would build it all in one go, on the better site at Darenth park and we can do it on the following financial conditions." The PFI is a major departure and will get the massive new capital projects that we need in the NHS and elsewhere.
  I strongly support the Budget. It is a step on the road. At the next Budget, when we have much more scope for tax cuts, let us make it a Budget for the family.
  9.20 pm
  Mr. Mike O'Brien: This has been a good debate—there have been some interesting contributions from both sides of the House—and I welcome the opportunity in this, my first speech from the Opposition Front Bench, to welcome it.
  I should declare an interest. I have been the parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation for the past two years. I shall cease to have that role at the end of the month, but it is right that hon. Members should be aware of it.
  Perhaps I might begin on a positive note. I have always taken the view that it is not in the interests of an Opposition to criticise and oppose. We should also support and encourage a Government, where that is possible. Mere party political posturing does nothing to enhance the public's view of politicians. I want to make it clear that the Labour party welcomes aspects of this Budget.
  The raising of the benefit threshold for pensioners in long-term care is a positive move. The previous levels were low and the increases from £3,000 to £8,000 and £8,000 to £16,000 respectively will spare some pensioners a bill for long-term care, especially since the Government had frozen the thresholds since 1988, thereby making the problem worse.
  Nevertheless, £16,000 will not prevent the sale of the matrimonial home. Long-term care is a serious issue with enormous implications, as the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) and for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon) said. It is difficult for any Chancellor easily to resolve that issue, but the Government have taken a step forward. I suspect that there will be many further debates on the issue before we get it entirely right.
  The Labour party also welcomes the proposals to help and clarify the position on share ownership. We too believe that employees should be encouraged to take a share in their firm. We shall consider with care the proposals that the Chancellor details in the Finance Bill and, if we can, we shall be supportive.
  The call for a simpler and more coherent tax regime is also welcome. Indeed, it is something for which Labour has called for a long time. I seem to remember that, in the Standing Committee debate on the Finance Bill last year, our votes, with those of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith), pushed through a resolution. Although we must ensure that the detail of the legislation is simplified, we must also ensure that we do not create new loopholes. Nevertheless, the wording of tax law tends

  1425
  to be incoherent to the ordinary person at times and it is good to see a real attempt being made to come to grips with the issue.
  I was amused by the confession of the right hon. Member for Northavon (Sir J. Cope) that he contributed so much towards the great detail of our tax laws, although I am not sure how advisable it was to confess it to the many small business men in his constituency who no doubt have had great trouble working out their tax bill. I bet that he will get the accountants' vote.
  My Scottish colleagues have campaigned long and hard to bring the duty on whisky down, and the 4 per cent. cut in whisky duty will be helpful. The issues of cross-border sales—bootlegging—are complex, as the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee agreed in its recent report. What the Chancellor has done is not a solution to the problem but merely an interim measure and the Treasury must now explore all the options. I hope that the Minister will be able to set out how the Government seek to achieve some of the aims and conclusions identified in the Select Committee's report.
  The right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), as befitted a former and much respected Chairman of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, gave a balanced speech. He supported the Budget but conceded that it had not been well received, especially in the press, and hoped that it would be better appreciated in the months to come. He may live in hope—but it will be in vain, I suspect. The right hon. Gentleman was right to draw attention to the slowing of the economy and to say that unemployment had not fallen as much as the Government had hoped. I shall return to the subject of unemployment later.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) made a valuable contribution. He expressed his concerns about some spending and questioned several spending programmes, especially the countryside stewardship programme and the arable areas scheme for set-aside. He raised the disturbing issue of the Government's refusal to answer questions about the number of farmers who receive more than £1 million, and about what was the highest sum received. I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury will be able to reassure my hon. Friend on those subjects. If she cannot do so today, perhaps after she has had the opportunity to read his speech she will make inquiries about the matters that he raised and deal with them in correspondence.
  My hon. Friend also made a strong plea for help in his constituency to deal with transport issues. I was pleased to see that a Minister from the Department of Transport took the trouble to listen to him, so I hope that the Secretary of State for Transport will do something about those problems.
  It was interesting that the hon. Member for Beverley (Mr. Cran) described the Confederation of British Industry's response to the Budget as tepid and somewhat dismissive. That is not what the President of the Board of Trade said earlier. I wonder whether the Government are divided not only on Europe, but on the size of the tax cut and on their attitude to the CBI.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), in a strong speech, described the low wages that were on offer in his constituency as a
  1426
  result of the abolition of the wages councils. He said that the Government had promised much in the way of extra jobs, but that the jobs had not come.
  The hon. Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey) raised a number of issues. He called the Budget a missed opportunity, said that unemployment in the construction industry was especially high, and called for something to be done about that. He also pointed out that the increases in council tax would probably be three times the rate of inflation.
  The hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) made a learned contribution, and as he is an accountant he used his considerable knowledge of balance sheets. He warned that the Government had champagne tastes but a beer income and called for more stringent cuts than those delivered in the Budget. In defence of the Chancellor, let me say that I fear that the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West sounded like the quiet cold voice of the man from a warm office who makes decisions about people's lives without balancing logic and calculation with the need for humanity.
  I shall now consider the Budget as a whole. It was a give with one hand and take with the other, something and nothing, a 7p up, 1p down Budget, and it left the typical British family £670 worse off than when the Tories were returned to office in 1992. It followed news that Britain had fallen from 13th to 18th place in the league of international prosperity since 1979. After the Budget, Britain is 18th and still falling.
  The Budget did nothing to tackle unemployment, to deal with job insecurity, or to heal the wounds of a divided society. It did nothing to tackle the fundamental problems of the British economy, such as the failure over 16 years to encourage long-term investment. It did nothing to provide incentives for the people in the one in five non-pensioner households with no wage earner to move from welfare to work.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood also made a strong plea for Britain's young people, one in six of whom are out of work. They are Thatcher's children, and too many of them have been left disillusioned, impoverished and without prospects. What are we here for if not for them? Our young people want jobs, hope and opportunity. They want to make a contribution, but the Chancellor's message to them is that he is restricting the amount of housing benefit for single young people. His hope is poverty, his opportunity is the dole queue and his reward will be the further conviction that the Government do not care for younger people and, perhaps, their future alienation from the political process.
  The Chancellor complained that housing benefit should not induce young people to leave their families before they need to. Did it not occur to him that what young people want is jobs, skills and training? If he enabled them to have those things, they would be able to support themselves sooner and would not need to look to their parents or the state to provide financial support.
  It is because our young people are important to the nation that Labour made its key spending pledge a new deal for Britain's under-25s. We are not prepared to see a generation of young people abandoned. Already in our inner cities—in Glasgow, Merseyside and inner London—one in three young people are without a job. In London, six out of 10 young black men are jobless. Some

  1427
  280,000 young people have been unemployed for more than six months while 200,000 young people have never had a job.
  Labour proposes to give young people jobs, not schemes. We offer each young person a number of options: an employment option, with a job and a real wage; a voluntary sector option; an option to contribute to our environmental task force; and a full-time education option if the young person lacks basic educational qualifications. To pay for that programme, Labour would impose a windfall tax on the excess profits of the monopoly utilities.
  We have seen the size of the profits that those companies are declaring. On Tuesday, Severn Trent admitted that its profits were up by 75 per cent. last year. Yesterday, Yorkshire Water—the company responsible for a third of the country's unplanned and unwarned interruptions in water supplies in the past two years—announced that its profits were up by 50 per cent.
  Contrary to what the President of the Board of Trade said at the start of the debate, soaring profits have not encouraged the increased investment needed by those privatised utilities. In the five years since privatisation, capital investment in the water industry has fallen by a total of £282 million. In the same period, profits in the water industry have risen by some £755 million. When it was privatised, the water industry received a £6.5 billion hand-out from the taxpayer in debt write-offs and green dowries. While profits have risen, investment has fallen and, on average, the bills of customers have gone up by 40 per cent. in real terms since privatisation.
  Higher water bills are just one example of how families are worse off under the Tories—higher bills, higher charges, higher taxes. That is why a windfall tax would make a contribution to putting Britain's young people back to work. Such a policy would help to reduce benefit bills in the long term and restore hope to our young people.
  This Budget was never about Britain or its people, young or otherwise. It was about the Tory party and its divisions. The Chancellor is a one-nation Tory presiding over the fag end of a Government who used to believe in Thatcherite economic policies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) said in a good and balanced speech, the Chancellor knows that the public services are overstretched. I do not doubt that he would like to do something about that, but he knows that he must deliver cuts in the basic rate for the right wing of the Tory party, which worries that the Thatcher legacy is going down the tubes.
  Trying to balance the two, the right hon. and learned Gentleman ended up with a package with no overall strategic direction on the economy and no sense of vision for society. It was an attempt to shore up the dissipating Tory vote by scattering alternatively small token tax cuts and shifts in thresholds. Conservative Back Benchers hoped that the Chancellor would buy them votes with tax cuts, but even they know that the vote of the British people is not for sale any more.
  I must confess that I have a sneaking regard for the Chancellor. I recall attending this place as a student in the early 1970s and watching the right hon. and learned Gentleman cross swords in an education debate with—if I remember rightly—Shirley Williams, and he appeared very able then. When I was elected to this place, the right
  1428
  hon. and learned Gentleman was Home Secretary. I was put on the Home Affairs Select Committee and I had an opportunity to see him in action. When he became Chancellor, it so happened that I was moved to the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee. I always thought that the Chancellor was an able performer, and I told my colleagues in the shadow Treasury team that he would come up with something creative, new, innovative or bold, but he disappointed me—almost as much as he disappointed many Tory Back Benchers.
  The story of the Budget was told on the glum faces of Tory Back Benchers who filed out at the end of the Chancellor's speech. They had been led to expect flair and imagination; instead, they got a weary, dead-end, dead-beat, dead-loss Budget.
  The hon. Member for Beverley sits there with a grin on his face. He denies that Tory faces were so glum at the end of the Budget statement. I recall their looking glum, but I bet those who did not realise that they had every reason to be glum did so when they read the Daily Mail and The Sun the next day.
  The economic recovery is so precarious that the Chancellor had little room for manoeuvre. He ended up with a combination of 1p off income tax while putting £9.5 billion on borrowing next year. What price this Chancellor as a sound money man now? The public sector borrowing requirement forecast for 1995–96 has been revised upwards from £23.5 billion in the Treasury summer forecast and from £21.5 billion in the last Budget. It is now £6.5 billion higher than expected in 1995–96, at £25 billion. It will be £9.5 billion higher than expected in 1996–97 and £10 billion higher than expected in 1997–98. That is because the economy is in a mess. Throughout the past 16 years, the Conservatives have neglected investment, squandered the proceeds of North sea oil and, in a display of boom-and-bust economics, put us into the two worst recessions since the war. That in turn has damaged industry's ability to respond to recovery.
  The Budget forecast for investment growth in 1995 is now just 1per cent. The recovery, such as we had, is now precarious and in danger. It was based on an export-led drive, fuelled by a 20 per cent. devaluation of the pound following our ignominious withdrawal from the exchange rate mechanism. But there is a limit to how long we can run the economy on devaluing our currency. This Budget has not dealt with some of the long-term problems of the British economy. It has simply put off resolving them until after the next election, when Labour will be there to deal with them.
  It is the ordinary families of Britain whom the Government have really let down: the workers on the assembly line or in the office. For them, right-wing economics have too often meant little or no wage increases in the name of competitiveness, job insecurity to make labour flexible, and the fraying of the safety net. Middle and lower-income people spend more hours working and less time with their children, and they bring home an income that is inadequate to meet housing and other costs. In 1992, many of them voted Tory on promises of lower taxes and opportunities to get on in life. They now feel that the Government have failed them and betrayed their values. For them, Tory promises of opportunity have often meant increased opportunity to lose their jobs.

  1429
  The failure to reduce unemployment since 1979 has left people paying for big welfare bills of £20 billion, the equivalent of £20 a week for each family. People have seen tax breaks for the very wealthy go unchecked. Their experience of the services that they use, such as schools and hospitals, is of increased commercialisation and financial restraint. They see the immorality of a Government who stand by while a tiny elite prosper and our economic base erodes. They question the fairness of sacrifices made by middle-income families, who must pay higher taxes while, at a time of high dividends, some corporations have paid little tax by taking advantage of tax loopholes that the Government have failed to plug.
  The damage done to British families determines Labour's stand on the reduction by 1p of the basic rate of income tax. We cannot vote for it because it does not tackle the fundamental problems of the British economy: lack of investment and lack of jobs. It does nothing to create an incentive to move from welfare to work for the one in five non-pensioner households that have no wage earner. We shall not vote against it because the Tories have damaged British taxpayers enough. They have imposed the biggest tax hike this century—in the year after the 1992 election—beating even Geoffrey Howe's 1981 Budget when personal allowances were not indexed.
  Even now, the overall tax burden will be 36.5 per cent. next year, up from 34.75 per cent. in 1992. That is more than when Labour left office. It is forecast to rise each year until the end of the century, reaching 37.5 per cent. by 2000. That is the Tory burden of failure paid by the British people. Labour will not vote to make it worse. Poorly aimed as it is in economic terms, the 1p off the 7p at least gives small relief from the Tory tax rises and broken promises of the past few years.
  The Chancellor hoped that his Budget would give the Government the chance to start to build up momentum for the general election. In that judgment he was unsound. He has no clear view of where he is going. He has not addressed the fundamental problems of the economy and he presented no solution to them. The Government are still playing at the game of trying to extend the policies of the 1980s, the me decade, into the latter half of the 1990s. No matter that a crude free market policy and trickle-down economics, which were supposed to lift all the boats, have instead lifted only the yachts and damaged the harbour.
  Labour rejects all such economics. We want to move from the me decade policies and make the 1990s the we decade, where the whole country moves forward together. Unless the many prosper, none will really benefit. It is for that reason that the electorate will not be conned by the Tory promises in the Budget or at the next general election. The Government have got it wrong too many times. They have got it wrong this time, too and the electorate know it. That is why, when the time comes to make a decision, they will reject the Government.
  9.40 pm
  The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mrs. Angela Knight): First, I congratulate all those hon. Members who are still here late on Thursday night when Parliament is not sitting tomorrow. We certainly had some
  1430
  interesting contributions in the debate, some considerably more factual than others. I thank my hon. Friends for their factual contributions.
  The Government's overall economic objective is to promote sustained economic growth and higher living standards. This Budget concentrates on securing Britain's healthy, lasting recovery. It reduces unemployment, continues to reduce borrowing, lets people keep more of the money that they earn and spends money on the things that are important to them. It looks particularly to the education of the young, the job prospects of the working population and security and safety in old age. It continues to offer the best prospect that British people have faced for decades, which is to enjoy the benefits of growth. It is a Budget of substance.
  My right hon. Friends the Members for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) and for Northavon (Sir J. Cope) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) expressed concern about some of the headlines in the newspapers the day after the Budget. They should not worry about that. Headline writers will always have a field day. They have had one with this Budget, but a headline in the newspaper is like a soundbite from the Leader of the Opposition; it lasts 10 seconds, but for content we have to look elsewhere.
  The debate was opened by the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), with what I felt was a snippy little speech. She went through her normal arguments against privatisation. She argued against the £90 electricity rebate that customers will get. She forgot to tell people that when those industries were nationalised, they cost the taxpayers £50 million a week; now, they contribute £55 million a week into the public purse. She forgot to say that when British Steel was nationalised, it was one of the biggest loss makers of all time; now, in private hands, it is profitable and a world leader. She even gave us a harangue against North sea oil. She did not mention the fact that Rolls-Royce in Derby has won a contract for over £1 billion for engines.
  The speech of the right hon. Member for Derby, South, I submit, in no way represented the views of industry. Let us look at some of the views of industry. Mr. Archie Norman of Asda said:
  "We are delighted. It is a bullseye."
  One of the major construction companies said:
  "The Chancellor is on the right track and the measures he has put in place provide the best prospects for the UK building industry."
  An assistant in a clothing and footwear shop said:
  "The Chancellor has listened to the small people …it's brilliant news."
  The chairman of ICI said:
  "I welcome the direction of the Chancellor's policy in reducing public spending and cutting taxes in a fiscally responsible way."
  That is what industry said of this Budget. It has given the Budget a very big thumbs-up.
  We heard criticism in the Chamber tonight of the private finance initiative. However, Labour seems to have little knowledge of the PFI and does not know what to think about it. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) said:
  "Labour believes that the initiative has to be given fresh impetus",
  but the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) said that the PFI is

  1431
  "a raft for a sort of ramp for privatising".
  The Leader of the Opposition says:
  "We would get public and private finance working together in transport, in housing, in health and education",
  but the right hon. Member for Derby, South says:
  "Market testing represents creeping privatisation. As does the Private Finance Initiative."
  Labour is one party with two faces and two voices, and it is facing in different directions at the same time. Before Labour Members say one word more about the private finance initiative, I suggest that they go and look it up, find out what it is and see the projects that have been signed up.
  The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) made a thoughtful speech. One of his concerns was that council taxes would go up. There was something extraordinary about his argument, because he seemed to forget that he and so many members of his party are in favour of no capping at all on local government. His party's proposal would simply result in people paying far more than they do now for local services.
  I enjoyed the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Northavon. He is an experienced accountant and we all found very interesting the convolutions that he highlighted. I look forward to his contributions to the report on tax simplification, which I am sure will serve the Government and other accountants well.
  The hon. Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey) made a number of points, and I should like to pick up on two of them. He expressed concern about social housing. I assure him, however, that housing continues to benefit from substantial public capital investment. We are planning to spend more than £1 billion a year through the Housing Corporation and on housing association properties and, indeed, through the private finance initiative, which will bring new opportunities to housing and the construction industry as a whole. The Government have a target of a further 1.5 million home owners in the next 10 years. I hope that he is satisfied by those comments.
  The hon. Gentleman's second point related to education. Education is the cornerstone of much of the Budget, and spending on schools is a top priority. The additional cash will be channelled through local authorities. My colleagues and I expect the local authorities to pass the money into the schools.
  Having spent some years in local government, I am well aware of the complexity of the formulae that many local authorities use and of how they use that complexity to frighten parents. Many parents have been greatly worried about their schools' budgets. Many local authorities talk about cuts, but to give an example, it works like this: the reality is that it is a cut in a wish list. Thus, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you, for example, wanted a salary increase of £500 and received only £250, you would have a pay increase of £250. A local authority, however, would say that it had a £250 cut. That is the fallacy of the local authorities' argument. That is why their language is so wrong and why parents get so upset. It is why every hon. Member must get all the parents to ask their local authorities how they propose to spend the extra money for schools on their children.
  I know that the hon. Member for North Devon at least has a policy. His party has a policy for a 1p increase in taxation for education. However, we have looked at his
  1432
  shadow Budget, which contains about £6 billion of extra expenditure. That is apparently going to be paid for by tax changes—they are not called tax increases—of £1.1 billion. Another item is tax reform to the tune of £900 million. In his shadow Budget, the hon. Gentleman has £6 billion of extra spending, which is to be financed by £2 billion from extra taxes, all brought about by a 1p increase in the basic rate. It is as confusing a mess as I have described it. We therefore have to take what he had to say with a great pinch of salt.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) spoke about the PSBR and made a number of detailed and complex points. Would he care to come and talk them over with me at a later date rather than in the Chamber tonight? I understand only too well his concerns about the need to reduce the borrowing requirement, and I agree that we should pull it back as fast as possible. He should not compare us too harshly with many of our European competitors, as we are the only country that has dealt with the pension problem properly. The finances of Germany and France show that if they do nothing about their pension schemes, their national debts will be about doubled. He should not have too many fears, as we are taking the right and prudent steps.
  I apologise to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping)—I nearly called him my hon. Friend, as more often than our respective Front-Bench teams would like, we agree with each other on our local radio station—for not being present when he made his speech. I understand that he talked at some length about green issues. The Budget contains a 15 per cent. reduction on duty on road fuel gases. I hope that that will at least go some way to meeting his concerns about green issues.
  The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) spoke about unemployment. I looked at the figures for his constituency, where unemployment has fallen by 11 per cent. compared with this time last year and by more than 20 per cent. compared with the end of 1992. I am sure that he, too, welcomes the general fall in unemployment in this country and the fact that the number of people in employment is now higher than it was in 1979.
  In an enthusiastic speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley (Mr. Cran) touched on many important points, of which the housing market was one. I am grateful for his comments. Average mortgage repayments are now about £180 a month. I do not think that many people would be able to rent a similar property at that price. My hon. Friend also mentioned the considerable need to look at long-term care issues. I hope that he feels that the changes that we have introduced in the Budget relating to the increase in disregards, the assistance for elderly people in general and, specifically, the tax relief on care insurance will go a long way to meeting not just his concerns, but those of prudent, elderly savers.
  I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) is the owner of a vintage car, a betting man and no doubt likes a glass of whisky. I am therefore not too surprised that he had so much praise for the Budget. He rightly said that we are in a global economy, and he strongly supported Britain's aim to be the enterprise centre of Europe—a point also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon). He also mentioned lower interest rates—his views will probably have been heard by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor. But if my right hon.

  1433
  and learned Friend missed them, I shall pass them on to him later—I am sure that they will also be passed on to the Governor of the Bank of England.
  Low inflation and sound public finances are not an optional extra; they are necessary for a successful, expanding economy. Low inflation is essential because when inflation was high, it was the saver's enemy, the silent thief who stole the value of the pension. High inflation closed factories and took away jobs. That is why we have the 2.5 per cent. target. Underlying inflation has not been so low for so long since I was 11 years old. Compare that with 20 years ago, when inflation was running at 26 per cent. and it wiped out my grandfather's pension. That is why it is essential that inflation is low, and that is why it is one of our overriding aims.
  We have a strong economy. Exports are good, business investment has picked up, consumers' expenditure is on a steady upward trend and unemployment has decreased by more than 700,000. No wonder Opposition Members always appear so unhappy.
  In its recent report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development praised the British economy. It spoke about the importance of the British economy and its strength. I compare that report with the so-called world prosperity league table that Opposition Members have been running round with. I can presume only that the reason why they go round with that bit of paper is that it is a fig leaf to cover the bareness of their economic policies.
  Mr. Jacques Arnold: They do not have one.
  Mrs. Knight: We are the party which did a competitiveness audit, not last week or last month, but some time ago. We are the ones who have put in place measures such as those in the Budget, to ensure that our companies can compete better, that we get people back into work and that more people enjoy the fruits of their labour. However, when one considers the league table that the Labour party has been running round with, it is evident that it is one small corner of a much larger picture.
  I return to the OECD report. It says that the UK's economic performance in 1994 was impressive. It says that our economy has been made more flexible and competitive and less inflation prone. It goes on to say that monetary policy is working well. It says that economic prospects are good.
  If we are to continue discussing league tables, let us draw attention to the following facts. We are at the top of the G7 growth league table. We are at the top of the EU job creation league table. We are at the top of the European productivity league table. We are at the top of the European league table for exports. We are at the top of the European employment league table. That is where we are. When will the Labour party stop running the country down?
  1434
  It is always interesting to note that, whenever we ask the Labour party what its policies are, we get no answers. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham reminded us of some of the questions that we asked yesterday and to which there was no reply.
  Let us have another go now. When will Labour Members give us their inflation target? When will they decide what they will support in the Budget? When will they decide whether they support a 20p tax on savings? When will they finally confess that adoption of the minimum wage and the social chapter would destroy jobs and investment?
  The Opposition are sitting tight today, exactly as they have sat day after day when we have asked them questions. Either they do not reply because they do not know, or they do not reply because they will not reply.
  In a letter that the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith), sent to his colleagues, which was reported in the newspapers today, he told them that they must not imply that they will
  "manipulate public spending rules to smuggle through extra spending".
  The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said:
  "Gordon can say anything he likes if he thinks it is going to win the Election … when Labour is in power"
  it
  "will be looking for other priorities"
  apart
  "from tax cuts."
  There we have it. Labour smuggles through public expenditure, but does not tell anyone about it. In reality, Labour Back Benchers know what they want, and that is more spending, which means more taxation.
  While the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) was studying for his law degree and lecturing in universities, I was working in industry. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I worked in industry throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and during the 1970s Britain had a record that reads as follows. British industry was underinvested; we had an appalling strike record; we sold goods that no one wanted to buy at prices that rose weekly; the British Leyland work force was not buying the cars that it was making; inflation was rampant; in exports, we were losing our share of the world market. That was Labour's record. I say, "Never again!"
  Interestingly, at that time when everything was wrong with the British economy, the political platitudes from the Labour party were exactly the same as they are today. That is the reality: it is an empty shell. As for the "7p up, 1p down" slogan, what nonsense! Not prepared to make difficult decisions—
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed on Monday 4 December.

PETITION

  Joyriders
  10 pm
  Mr. Peter Mandelson: I beg leave to present a petition signed by 25,000 of my constituents, requesting urgent action to curb the crime of taking and using cars without the owners' consent, which has resulted in injury and death in our town. It states that the petitioners are
  "outraged by the death of Neil Wright caused by joyriders and youths who take vehicles without the owners' consent."
  They feel that tougher penalties must be introduced
  "to prevent further death and tragedy."
  The law in general must be reassessed. I hope that urgent consideration will be given to the petition.
  To lie upon the Table.

  Police (Information Technology)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Burns.]
  10.1 pm
  Mr. Walter Sweeney: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about this subject.
  Since 1979, the Conservative Government have increased the number of police by 13,000, and have substantially improved police pay, conditions and equipment. Despite that, crime has risen—seemingly inexorably—for most of that time. The public say, "We want to see more police on the beat." Despite the best efforts of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, that is still the cry today.
  I warmly welcome the Government's commitment to providing a further 5,000 police officers over the next three years. That will help to sustain the reduction in crime that has taken place over the past two years. We shall never be able to afford a police constable on every street corner, but the more that our police are visible to the public, the more the criminal will be deterred by the prospect of being caught and the more the public will be reassured.
  In an age when criminals are equipped with fast stolen cars and mobile telephones, the police must spend much of their time in cars so that they can respond quickly. Each time that an arrest is made, the suspect must be taken to the police station and must then be laboriously processed in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which takes at least one extra officer off patrol or the beat for a long time. It is vital to the efficiency of the police that we make full use of information technology to improve detection and the rate of conviction and to reduce the amount of time spent on administration. That will reassure the public, deter the criminal and help to prevent crime.
  Of course, the Government and the police are to be congratulated on many new initiatives. The first national computerised DNA data-base went live in Birmingham on 10 April this year, and represents a huge step forward. Phoenix, the criminal justice records service, will enable the police to enter directly on the police national computer the criminal record information that is currently provided on paper forms. The new Holmes system for the administration of major crime investigations should be available next year, and various other exciting information technology applications are undergoing trials in various police forces.
  Less successful has been the attempt to achieve a national computerised fingerprint service. I shall not detail the problems that have arisen, particularly as litigation is still in progress, but it is important for those problems to be overcome so that a truly effective, easily accessible national fingerprint service can be provided for every police force.
  The introduction of closed circuit television in many areas has been a great step forward, and I welcome the Government's commitment to increasing the number of CCTV schemes. In my constituency, the town of Barry benefits from a CCTV system, covering much of Holton road and Broad street. The system was purchased by

  1437
  Vale of Glamorgan borough council with the help of a grant from the Welsh Office. It is operated by civilians at the civic offices.
  Ideally, such systems should be bought and operated by police forces, not local authorities. That would have two advantages. First, the public would be reassured that there would be no abuse of their civil liberties. I understand that in the recent well-publicised case of a CCTV video being marketed and then withdrawn from sale the material used was from a private system operating in a shop, not from a public system. Still, it is important that the doubts of people who are genuinely concerned about an invasion of civil liberties be allayed. I therefore believe that CCTV should be under the exclusive control of the police, who must be responsible for storing and eventually erasing the tapes.
  The second advantage of the police controlling the cameras would be ensuring minimum delay and avoiding any breakdown of communications in transmitting information from the person viewing the screen to the police officers required to attend the scene. Police officers, police cars and police stations need to be equipped with the latest technology.
  Last year in the United States of America I was lucky enough to go out on patrol with a police officer in Seattle. His on-board computer system was linked to a national database covering all 51 states. He could instantly call up full details of a suspect vehicle, including where and when purchased, whether subject to hire purchase—and if so, how much—and who the registered owner was. That information made it easy to check whether the driver was the registered owner or was driving with his consent. The police officer could also call up details of any previous convictions of the registered owner and information about whether he was in breach of bail in any of the 51 states.
  In our own comparatively small country our police patrol drivers should be given similar ready access to information. Furthermore, improved personal and vehicle radios should be introduced as standard equipment, with encryption systems in control rooms and individual sets so that criminals cannot listen in to police messages.
  The equipment for processing suspects at most of our police stations is poor. At present, when a suspect is interviewed and charged, much valuable police time is wasted. In my experience as duty solicitor at Barry police station before I was elected to this House, I saw experienced police officers typing out charge sheets with two fingers on ancient manual typewriters. I understand that the system has slightly improved since my day, with word processors now in operation.
  What is really needed is a national computer network. Standard software should be stipulated by the Home Office to enable an officer to retrieve a particular section of the Theft Act and then simply type in the relevant details, before producing a perfect and legible charge sheet every time. That would not only save the officer time; it would reduce subsequent problems and delays in amending charges. Information such as charge sheets, lists of previous convictions and advance disclosure could be transmitted to the court, the Crown Prosecution Service, the defence solicitors and the
  1438
  probation service—as necessary—electronically and at the touch of a button, thereby avoiding delays and reducing the need for court adjournments.
  A great deal of time is currently spent by police officers and typists transcribing the relevant sections of recorded interviews. Entire interviews could be transcribed automatically using voice recognition systems, and then checked for accuracy against the tape. That would stop disputes about whether all the relevant sections of a tape had been transcribed; and it would usually avoid the need to bring tapes to court.
  Computerised charge sheets and transcription facilities would help to put the interviewing officer back on the beat or on motorised patrol more quickly. The Home Office should also liaise with the Lord Chancellor's Department to ensure that court lists, warrants, witness summonses and production orders relating to prisoners are electronically transmitted and accessible to all who need them. The days of a prisoner not being produced at court at the right time because a production order has gone astray, or of a prisoner being bailed when he is already in breach of bail at another court, should be over.
  My last and most important point is that the Home Office should take action to ensure that all police forces adopt the same computer system for the retrieval of central criminal records and the collection of local data. I am a strong supporter of local police forces rather than a national police force. However, it is plain crazy to allow forces to operate different computer systems which may be incompatible with those of neighbouring forces. In a huge murder hunt such as that for the Yorkshire Ripper, data collected in crimes in one area should be equally accessible by all police forces in case a pattern emerges that hastens the apprehension of the criminal.
  Thanks to improved roads and cars, the criminal is more mobile than ever before. Much has been done to meet the increased threat. On 1 November last year, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary launched the first national blueprint for police use of computer technology, which stressed that police forces must act in partnership with each other and with other parts of the criminal justice system when using and buying new technology. That was certainly a big step in the right direction, but I would like the Home Secretary to go further.
  The Home Office needs to consult all police forces, evaluate all the available equipment, commission new equipment where necessary and then initiate a central, standardised purchasing policy for all the equipment that I have mentioned. That would be expensive initially, but would save many hours of police and civilian time thereafter. It would lead to much greater efficiency and enable the police to spend more time out catching criminals, deterring crime and reassuring the public.
  A central equipment purchasing policy operated by the Home Office would achieve economies through bulk purchase discounts and would guarantee compatibility between police forces. The pressure on local police budgets is such that only a central purchasing policy can ensure that all our police officers have the equipment they need to preserve the peace and maintain the reputation of the British bobby as the best in the world.
  10.11 pm
  The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney) for initiating tonight's debate on police information technology. He has long had an interest in this important subject. I am grateful also to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth), who has been present throughout the debate. I know that he is also keen on this particular subject, hence his presence here tonight.
  Immense opportunities are offered by technology in the ever more sophisticated fight against crime. The Government are committed to ensuring that the right technology is available to the police where and when it is needed. All forms of technology are being brought to bear in the constant fight against crime, and one area in which British technology is showing the way is the application of DNA techniques to crime detection.
  The national DNA database went live in April 1995. The database is revolutionary. It is the first of its kind anywhere in the world and relies on leading-edge technology and up-to-date DNA techniques. I am delighted to announce that more than 100 hits have been made in the early months of operation, matching DNA profiles from individuals to profiles from traces left at scenes of crime, and profiles from traces left at one scene with those from another. The number of samples sent in by the police and the high number of profile matches already achieved bode well for the continuing success of the database.
  Rapid access to information is the life-blood of operational policing and one of the key challenges facing the police service is how to take full advantage of the information technology revolution. The police are not newcomers to information technology. This year, the police national computer marks 21 years of service to the police community, and never has it been more relied on or more frequently used than it is now. In 1994, more than 47 million transactions were processed and 98 per cent. of customers considered the service to be either good or very good. However, the pace of change is quickening, and, even in the past year, several important milestones have been achieved.
  Police effectiveness depends on the accuracy of the information that is available and also on how quickly it can be obtained and subsequently updated. To this end, Phoenix, a new database on the police national computer, became operational in May 1995. It allows the police to enter and retrieve records of arrests and convictions for all reportable offences directly rather than having to rely on the microfiche collection held at the national identification service. Phoenix will eventually be linked directly to the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service and the rest of the criminal justice service. That will ensure that records of convictions are promptly updated and that the judiciary has immediate access to the information on previous convictions which it requires for sentencing purposes.
  The extremely complex task of transferring the microfiche records held by the NIS to Phoenix is now under way, and when complete it will form the kernel of a database of immense operational value to the police. I was delighted that we were able to invite forces to begin to enter records of cautions on to the system from
  1440
  1 November. Until now, records of cautions have mainly been kept only by the force which issued them. In future they will also be available nationally.
  We have a substantial programme of enhancements for Phoenix, which has been agreed with the police service. The first and most important of the enhancements will be QUEST, a database analysis facility that will allow investigators to search the collection for all offenders meeting particular descriptions. It will be a real advance in the investigation of serious crime.
  Within a few more years, Phoenix will be linked to NAFIS, the national automated fingerprint identification system, which will provide the forces of England and Wales with a world-class system for the identification of offenders. NAFIS will incorporate the national fingerprint collection of over 5 million records, including those from cautioned offenders. It will be rolled out to the national identification service and eight pilot forces from the middle of 1997 and will achieve national coverage, replacing all existing fingerprint matching systems, by the year 2001. NAFIS will be a distributed system that will use police national network services for data communications. Common data and system services will be co-located with the police national computer.
  What is the police national network? It is already in place as the communications backbone for the new developments to which I have referred. It provides a telephone network in addition to a data packet service and is tailored, as is Phoenix, to the needs of the police and to those of the wider criminal justice community. Provided by Mercury, the PNN is an excellent example of the way in which co-operation between the public and private sectors can work to the benefit of all.
  Improved radio communications are a must for busy operational offices. The public safety radio communications project has been created to replace existing police service radio systems with the latest state-of-the-art digital technology and common European standards. It is envisaged that the systems will use new frequency bands reserved for public safety organisations throughout the European Union. After consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers, the project will proceed to the next phase and directly involve the private sector via the private finance initiative.
  The new systems will offer many advantages. Harmonised European frequencies will substantially reduce continental interference and high-grade encryption will see an end to illegal monitoring of police broadcasts. Mobile data facilities will allow access to remote databases such as criminal records and vehicle information. My hon. Friend the Minister for Vale of Glamorgan will be pleased to know that trials are already taking place in which radios in police vehicles are being linked to the police national computer. These developments will lead to more efficient and effective management of police resources. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester will be interested to know that video cameras in police cars could be linked to the police national computer.
  In addition to these centrally provided services, a wide range of computing applications are already installed in forces. We must ensure that the overall investment in police information technology, which is running at some £150 million a year, is used as effectively as it possibly can he. In this new technological age, the somewhat

  1441
  artificial boundary between the centrally provided systems—the PNC, NAFIS and the PNN—and all the local systems will disappear. We now need to think about links between systems as much as the systems themselves if the full benefits are to be realised. That is why, at the end of last year, the Home Secretary launched the first ever national strategy for police information systems—unfortunately nicknamed NATSPIS. This blueprint will ensure the development of cost-effective standard systems which meet the needs of all forces and will communicate with each other whenever necessary. That strategy is fully supported by chief constables and police authorities and is being driven forward by lead forces, which will develop standard systems with support from the centre.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan will be pleased to know that work on the top five priority applications—command and control, custody, management information, case preparation and crime reporting—is already under way. The case preparation application to be used by all forces will be linked to case management systems within other criminal justice organisations, such as the courts and the Crown Prosecution Service. Information fields available will include details of the availability of police officers and witnesses. That should help to reduce the number of adjournments and delays caused by the lack of relevant information in the courts. On a wider front, the initiative on co-ordination of computerisation in the criminal justice system—CCCJS—seeks to improve communications throughout the criminal justice system through the use of appropriate technology. Recent pilot projects involve links between the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Swansea, and Reading magistrates court and links between the DVLA and Dyfed Powys police for the direct provision of driver information and electronic mail links between various agencies in Suffolk and Hampshire including, on a test basis, solicitors and banisters in private practice.
  My hon. Friend mentioned that improved methods for transcribing tape-recorded interviews should be considered. A working party comprising representatives of ACPO, the CPS and the Home Office is currently examining a number of alternative methods of passing details of police interviews to other agencies in the criminal justice system. That will include consideration of the feasibility of voice recognition computer technology. Independent research commissioned by the Home Office has demonstrated that records of taped interviews prepared by trained civilian summarisers cost less, are more accurate, and of a higher overall quality than those prepared by police officers with two fingers and the old Remington, which my hon. Friend mentioned. Following this research, the efficiency scrutiny which was published in July recommended that all forces should prepare and implement a programme to employ civilian summarisers.
  I come now to the new police information technology organisation—PITO. There can be no doubt that the strategy heralds a new era in police computing and it demands some business process re-engineering to the way we do business in central Government. That is why we are considering proposals to set up a new police information technology organisation to take over from the current science and technology group in the Home Office. That will be the new centralised purchasing organisation, but the police will be in the driving seat, not the bureaucrats or me.
  1442
  That new organisation will bring the police into the centre of decision making and allow both local and national developments to be looked at as an integrated whole. We propose to set up PITO next year on an interim basis with its own chief executive and advisory council on which the police service and police authorities will be represented, and then to move it on to a fully independent executive non-departmental public body as soon as we can find time for the necessary legislation. Those changes in strategies and structures will help us to maintain and co-ordinate momentum in a rapidly changing world. Division between police departments, forces and criminal justice agencies have to be transcended. Only if we are all working to a common end will we be able to turn the strategy into a reality.
  In addition, as the whole House must agree, to this impressive set of computing and communications developments, other forms of technology are making a huge contribution to police effectiveness and public safety. Nowhere is technology moving faster than in the world of closed circuit television. There cannot he many people who have not noticed the recent spread of those watchful guardians. High streets, shopping centres, industrial estates, schools, villages, community centres and other areas have all benefited from the presence of the cameras. The police have embraced the new technology enthusiastically, sometimes running their own systems, but more often working in partnership with others such as local authorities or town centre management committees. CCTV is overwhelmingly popular, with the operators, the police and the general public.
  I have seen the video that was issued earlier this week, "Caught in the Act". I can tell the House that it is of poor quality and hyped up by the producer to try to whet the appetites of a gullible public to buy it. I totally deplore the misuse of any CCTV material for unauthorised purposes, even poor-quality stuff like that, which will strain one's eyes if one tries to watch it. We strongly recommend that every CCTV system should have a code of practice. The bidding guidance for the CCTV competition, which was announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary recently, with £15 million of taxpayers' money to be bid for, makes it clear that each scheme must have a code of practice to guard against unauthorised disclosure of material.
  There is no doubt that CCTV helps to prevent crime. It helps the police to detect crime. It assists with the investigation of crime. It gives the police extra, incontrovertible evidence to help prosecute and convict more criminals and—I know that my hon. Friends are particularly concerned about this point—it reduces the fear of crime among the general public. It also has other, less serious social benefits, such as finding lost children, spotting fires in the early stages and identifying people who have been taken ill on the street.
  The results speak for themselves. My hon. Friend has already mentioned how the town of Barry benefits from CCTV. There are examples of crime reductions from all over the country. I shall give just a few of the most up-to-date cases. In the four years since the Newcastle scheme has been running, in the city centre there have been 6,200 fewer crimes. There have been 800 arrests due to the cameras, and in only six cases did the suspects plead not guilty. They were still found guilty.

  1443
  In Swansea, in the year up to August 1994, there were 147 instances of taking from a motor vehicle. After the cameras were installed in December 1994 and up until August 1995, there have been just 10. In Northampton, there has been a 57 per cent. reduction in crime since the cameras were installed. In Berwick-upon-Tweed, a small town with a small-scale, four-camera system, burglary is down 69 per cent., criminal damage is down 41 per cent., and theft is down 24 per cent.
  I could go on, but I will not. Everywhere that CCTV has been installed can give similar reports. CCTV works. As John Stevens, the excellent chief constable of Northumbria said recently:
  "We are leading the world in CCTV technology and its use. In every case where cameras have been installed, crime has dropped and the number of arrests increased."
  We in the Government are doing our bit to help. Last year, we initiated a CCTV challenge competition, which eventually distributed £5 million to help fund 106 additional schemes throughout the country. That levered in £13.8 million of private and local council finance. Now
  1444
  we have announced another competition. This time we are offering a total of £15 million and we hope that we can fund at least 300 schemes.
  Individually, each of those systems and services is impressive and offers the police service many benefits, but, taken together, the contribution that the whole portfolio of information technology projects will make to operational policing will be much greater than the sum of its parts. The police service is spending £750 million on IT over the current five-year period. We are committed to helping the service to gain the maximum value from that huge investment, and to ensure that it will play its full part in the vital task of making our communities safer places.
  I thank my hon. Friend once again for enabling me to tell the House tonight of the exciting developments that are taking place in the British police service, the finest service in the world.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock till Monday 4 December, pursuant to Order.

ENVIRONMENT

  Building Research Establishment
  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what considerations have led him to set out the timetable for consultants to complete their tasks set out in the privatisation options study outline requirements; and if he will make a statement. [2433]

  Mr. Robert B. Jones
  The timetable for consultants to complete the study of privatisation options for the Building Research Establishment was set to be demanding but feasible for the completion of a wide-ranging and thorough project. It is in the interests of BRE's customers and staff for any uncertainty about the organisation's future to be kept to as short a period as practicable. All the consultants who were invited to submit tenders were able to comply with the maximum duration specified.

  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what date he has specified for the return of bids by consultants on the Building Research Establishment privatisation options study. [2408]

  Mr. Jones
  The bids for the consultants invited to tender for the study of the options for transferring the Building Research Establishment to the private sector were returned by 20 November.

  The Department is today appointing P. A. Consulting to carry out the study.

  Mr. Raynsford
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whom he proposes to appoint to the advisory group to which consultants will be expected to report on options for the privatisation of the Building Research Establishment. [2402]

  Mr. Jones
  The advisory group for the study on the options for transferring the Building Research Establishment to the private sector will be chaired by the deputy secretary housing and construction. The members will include three senior industry representatives, an official representing the Treasury, the chief executive of BRE and the departmental team responsible for the consultancy project.

  Executive Agencies (Overseas Travel)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by agency staff(a) the costs of the travel, (b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff concerned. [2290]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The information can be provided only at disproportionate cost.
  798

  Small Rural Businesses
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the timetable for proposals from his Department in respect of small rural businesses; and what joint initiative he proposes in conjunction with the Department of Trade and Industry. [2575]

  Mr. Clappison
  The White Paper "Rural England" published in October by my Department and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food outlined a number of measures intended to help small businesses in rural areas.

  We expect to publish before the end of this year a guide for local planning authorities to promote good practice in planning for rural diversification. In the new year, we will be consulting on proposals for a rural business use class and on a draft revision of planning policy guidance note 7, "The Countryside and the Rural Economy".

  In my role as departmental Minister for small businesses, I will continue to work closely with colleagues in other Government Departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry, to ensure that our policies benefit all small firms, including those in rural areas.

  Council House Sales (Durham)
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much has been raised from the sales of council homes in the City of Durham constituency to date; and how much the City of Durham council has available in capital receipts from these sales. [2496]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The total cash receipts from the sale of all council dwellings in the City of Durham between April 1980 and March 1995, as reported by the authority, is almost £37 million. In addition, authority loans of almost £1 million were issued to finance council house sales. At 31 March 1995, the authority had £0.3 million in accumulated usable capital receipts from all assets. The level of outstanding debt of the City of Durham at that date was £49 million.

  Rural Homelessness
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the extent of rural homelessness and the measures he will be introducing to tackle it. [2647]

  Mr. Clappison
  The data which my Department collects from local authorities about households accepted as statutorily homeless do not differentiate between households from rural and non-rural areas.

  The Housing Corporation's approved development programme funds new social housing in rural and non-rural areas. In 1995–96, some 6 per cent. of the corporation's new development programme is providing social housing in rural areas—defined as settlements with a population of 3,000 or less.

  My Department has commissioned research into the nature of demand for housing in rural areas. The results are expected in 1996.
  799

  Parish Councils
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to devolve more power from local authorities to parish councils and to ensure accountability for parish councils. [2646]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The rural White Paper states our intention to legislate for a formal consultative framework between principal and local councils. It also proposes that certain crime prevention powers which principal authorities have under existing legislation should be extended to parish and town councils, and that they should be given additional powers relating to community transport. We are currently consulting interested parties about those proposals.

  A consultation paper has proposed regulations which strengthen accounting and audit requirements for the majority of parishes. Like other local authorities, parish and town councils are independent elected bodies, accountable to their electorate, their auditor and, where necessary, to the courts for the conduct of their business.

  Rural Regeneration
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what recent discussions he has had with his counterparts across Europe to discuss strategy for a Europe-wide rural regeneration scheme. [2639]

  Mr. Clappison
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State keeps in regular contact with his European counterparts to discuss matters of mutual interest.

  Rural Areas (Essential Services)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what guidelines his Department gives to local authorities in relation to safeguarding essential services in sparsely populated rural areas. [2648]

  Mr. Clappison
  The Department is acutely aware of the need to ensure adequate service provision in sparsely populated rural areas. The Department's standard spending assessment, which calculates the revenue support grant for local authorities, already allows for the additional cost of delivering some services in sparsely populated rural areas.

  The rural White Paper "Rural England" recognises that local authorities have a significant impact on the quality of life in rural areas and therefore encourages them to prepare rural strategies that identify local rural needs and develop policies to meet. Guidance and advice is provided by the three countryside agencies sponsored by this Department.

  The recently launched rural services checklist which was announced in the rural White Paper encourages service providers to take account of the particular needs of their customers. Prepared in consultation with service providers and circulated to local authorities, it helps service providers meet the various needs of their rural customers.

  The Department provides guidance to local authorities on housing strategies, stressing the need for those local authorities with a significant rural population to develop specific rural housing policies as part of their housing programme. The Department also issues guidance to local
  800
  authorities on the administration of the non domestic rates hardship relief scheme for village shops and post offices. This will be reviewed shortly and further guidance issued.

  Environmental Technology Manufacturers
  Mr. Thomason
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what account he will take of the cost to environmental technology manufacturers in terms of lost business and the international competitiveness of the four year revision of all chief inspectors guidance notes and process guidance notes. [3112]

  Mr. Clappison
  Manufacturers of environmental technology have benefited significantly from the introduction of the systems of integrated pollution control and air pollution control under part I of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

  The chief inspector's guidance notes and process guidance notes are produced as part of the process of following developments in technology and techniques for preventing or reducing pollution of the environment required by the Act. They are reviewed at least every four years. The Environmental Industries Commission is consulted as part of this review process.

  Homelessness
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many people on housing benefit were(a) re-housed by local authorities following eviction by private landlords and (b) moved to a lower category of accommodation by local authorities because of rent arrears, in the last 12 months. [2868]

  Mr. Clappison
  The data provided by local authorities on homelessness acceptances include information on the main reason for the homeless households' loss of last settled home.

  There were some 1,150 households for which local authorities in England accepted responsibility to secure accommodation, under the homelessness provisions of the 1985 Housing Act, as a result of private sector rent arrears, in the 12 months ending June 1995. It is not known how many of these households were in receipt of housing benefit.

  Information is not available in the Department on the numbers of people on housing benefit who were moved to a lower category of accommodation by local authorities because of rent arrears.

  Mr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to improve housing facilities for homeless people. [2869]

  Mr. Clappison
  The latest homelessness statistics collected by my Department from English local authorities show that the number of households in temporary accommodation has been declining since September 1992. The "Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities", to which authorities must by law have regard, makes clear that all temporary accommodation must meet acceptable standards.
  801

  Ribble Valley (Pollution)
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution is taking following Ribble Valley council's recent vote in respect of the inspectorate. [2912]

  Mr. Clappison
  I regret the council's vote, but HMIP must complete its consultations on health issues before announcing a decision.

  Cemfuel
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the implications for the use cemfuel of the distinction made by his Department between waste and fuel; and if he will make a statement. [2874]

  Mr. Clappison
  In so far as cemfuel constitutes waste, the provisions of the hazardous waste incineration directive (94/67/EC) will apply by 30 June 2000, which is the date specified in the directive. In the meantime, HMIP is applying equivalent controls to the use of wastes in cement kilns and waste incinerators.

  Waste Regulation Service
  Mr. Walden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what minimum standards will apply to ensure that the waste regulation service under the new Environment Agency will be delivered locally and to a standard not less than that achieved by the existing waste regulation authorities. [2891]

  Mr. Clappison
  The agency will have the same statutory responsibilities as the existing authorities for regulating the management of waste so as to prevent pollution of the environment or harm to human health. The Secretary of State will issue guidance to the agency on the discharge of these functions. It is for the Environment Agency to determine its geographical structure in line with its management statement, and reflecting the need for the efficient delivery of all its services. The management statement states that the agency should develop a close, responsive relationship with local communities.

  National non-domestic rates—calculation of distributable amount

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  1996–97

  Final outturn £ million

  Provisional outturn £ million

  Provisional outturn £ million

  Estimated in-year contribution £million

  1. Income from Local Lists

  Multiplier (p)

  41.6

  42.3

  43.2

  44.9

  Gross Rate Yield

  12,423

  12,269

  12,763

  13,355

  (i) Reliefs

  (a) Net Transitional Relief

  -540

  -117

  -460

  -419

  (b) Empty properties

  -1,224

  -1,172

  -1,072

  -1,145

  (b) Charitable

  -387

  -4l3

  -430

  -478

  (d) Discretionary

  -21

  -21

  -24

  -28

  Net Yield after reliefs

  10,251

  10,547

  10,777

  11,285

  (ii) Collection Costs/Reductions to Contributions

  (a) Costs of collection

  -67

  -69

  -75

  -77

  (b) Losses on collection

  -181

  -186

  -190

  -205

  (c) City of London offset

  -25

  -7

  -1

  -7

  802

  Cement Industry Working Party
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will include in membership of the cement industry working party a person of independent standing to offer advice on pollution limits from industrial processes. [2913]

  Mr. Clappison
  Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution does not use working parties to draft guidance on pollution limits from industrial processes. Consultants are appointed to provide an independent international overview of up-to-date pollution control techniques. This forms the basis for HMIP guidance which is then subjected to wide consultation across a broad spectrum of consultees, many of which are independent of the industry concerned, before publication.

  The guidance does not set statutory pollution limits, but provides benchmarks of current best practices within the industrial sector.

  Local Government Finance
  Sir Irvine Patnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what meetings he proposes to hold with representatives of Sheffield city council following the local government settlement statement. [3202]

  Mr. Curry
  It is open to all authorities, including Sheffield, to request a meeting with Ministers during the consultation period which follows the provisional settlement announcement.

  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will set out the basis of his calculations of the distributable amount of non-domestic rates for 1996–97. [3698]

  Mr. Curry
  The distributable amount of non-domestic rates in England for 1996–97 will be £12,736 million. This is based on non-domestic rate multiplier of 0.449 and includes an allowance of £429 million for an Exchequer payment to the non-domestic rates pool, to compensate for the shortfall which would otherwise occur as a result of regulations to be made under section 58 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 to further phase in the effects of the 1995 revaluation on rate bills.

  The calculation for 1996–97, and the prior-year figures on which this is based, are set out in the table:

  803

  National non-domestic rates—calculation of distributable amount

  1993–94

  1994–95

  1995–96

  1996–97

  Final outturn £ million

  Provisional outturn £ million

  Provisional outturn £ million

  Estimated in-year contribution £million

  Total contribution in respect of year

  9,979

  10,285

  10,506

  10,996

  (iii) Adjustments

  (a) Repayments/interest payments

  -891

  -1,635

  -556

  -154

  (b) Revisions to contributions at outturn (95–96 only)

  -86

  Total adjustments

  -891

  -1,635

  -642

  -154

  Net Local Yield

  9,088

  8,649

  9,864

  10,842

  2. Income from Central List

  Net Central List Yield

  1,095

  1,114

  1,192

  1,258

  3. Income from Crown Contributions in Aid

  Net Crown Yield

  445

  548

  541

  525

  Total NDR Yield

  10,628

  10,311

  111,597

  12,626

  4. Exchequer Contributions

  (a) Local List Transition

  591

  425

  600

  419

  (b) Central List/Crown

  42

  20

  20

  10

  Total Exchequer contributions

  633

  445

  620

  429

  Total NNDR Pool payments (1+2+3+4)

  11,261

  10,756

  12,217

  13,055

  5. Adjustments

  Surplus brought forward

  -954

  -1,252

  -1,182

  -319

  Combined total

  10,307

  9,503

  11,035

  12,736

  Distributable amount

  11,559

  10,685

  11,354

  12,736

  Surplus carried forward

  -1,252

  -1,182

  -319

  Notes:

  1. Item 1: The gross calculated rate yield represents the total value of non-domestic hereditaments on local rating lists times the multiplier. For the years to 1994–95 the yield is the amount recorded in the post-end year (NNDR3) returns. For 1995–96 it is the amount underlying authorities' provisional contributions to the non-domestic rating pool including the prescribed amount for Enterprise zones.

  2. Item 1(i)(a): The transitional decrease adjustment includes the estimated amount of rates that will not be recouped locally due to the revised transitional arrangements under the provisions of the Non-Domestic Rating Acts 1992, 1993 and 1994.

  3. Item 1(i)(b): The empty property relief adjustments include voids and partially occupied hereditaments. Figures up to 1995–96 are as reported by authorities. The 1996–97 figure includes an allowance for the increase in the gross rates yield.

  4. Item 1(i)(c): Charitable rate relief. As for empty property relief.

  5. Item 1 (I)(d): Discretionary relief granted to charities, non-profit making organisations and for other reasons. As for charitable rate relief, with a further adjustment to allow for increased relief following the move to take these reliefs outside capping.

  6. Item 1(ii)(a) and (b): The allowances for the costs and losses incurred by local authorities in collecting non-domestic rates from ratepayers, including the latest estimates of additional billing an software costs arising from the Non-Domestic Rating Acts.

  7. Item 1(ii)(c): City Offset—a preliminary estimate for 1996–97 (£6.5 million of the amount which the City of London will not be required to pay into the non-domestic rating pool on account of the local rate in the City. It is the amount which will be retained by the authority to meet its own expenditure.

  8. Item 1(iii)(a): Net adjustment in respect of appeals an other amendments to the rating list affecting liability for previous years rates settled in that year.

  9. Item 1(iii)(b): The revisions to contributions line applies only to estimated outturn revisions to the provisional contributions for 1995–96. For earlier years all figures are already based upon the outturn contributions.

  10. Item 2: The rateable value of non-domestic hereditaments on the central rating list times the multiplier, and adjusted for appeals and other changes in respect of previous years. The 1996–97 figure is calculated as the estimated rateable value times the multiplier, less the effect of the transitional arrangements.

  11. Item 3: The 1996–97 figure for crown properties includes an allowance for the effect of transition.

  12. Item 4(a) and (b): The contribution from central government to offset the amount of the Secretary of State's estimate of income foregone arising from the provisions of the Non-Domestic Rating Acts 1992, 1993 and 1994.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2975]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The Department committed itself to achieving investor in people status in 1992. The Department has recently concluded a wide-ranging review of its structure and ways of working, including a staff attitudes survey, and a target date for obtaining the investor in people award will be linked to progress on its implementation.
  804

  Bathing Water, Norfolk
  Mr. Garrett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment which Norfolk beaches were tested in 1995 for enteroviruses under the EC bathing water directive. [2968]

  Mr. Clappison
  The National Rivers Authority sampled the following identified bathing waters in Norfolk for enteroviruses during the 1995 bathing season:

  Cromer

  Great Yarmouth Pier

  Great Yarmouth South

  Gorleston Beach

  805

  Urban Development Corporations
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the areas for which urban development corporations have been established since 1979, indicating in each case which are also covered by a unitary local authority. [3383]

  Sir Paul Beresford
  The urban development corporations and related unitary local authorities, where applicable, are listed in the table.

  UDC

  Covered by unitary local authority

  London Docklands

  Yes

  Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets

  Merseyside

  Yes

  Liverpool, Sefton, Wirral

  Black Country

  Yes

  Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton

  Teesside

  No

  —

  Trafford Park

  Yes

  Trafford, Salford

  Tyne and Wear

  Yes

  Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland

  Bristol

  No

  —

  Sheffield

  Yes

  Sheffield

  Central Manchester

  Yes

  Manchester, Trafford

  Leeds

  Yes

  Leeds

  Birmingham

  Yes

  Birmingham

  Heartlands

  Plymouth

  No

  —

  Nitrate Vulnerable Zones
  Mr. Jenkin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Environment what progress has been made on the establishment of action programmes in respect of the proposed nitrate vulnerable zones; and if he will make a statement. [3907]

  Mr. Gummer
  My right hon. Friends the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Secretary of State for Wales and I issued today a consultation document giving details of the action programme to be established under the terms of the EC nitrate directive, and which will apply in nitrate vulnerable zones. It also gives details of the draft regulations which transpose the formal requirements of the nitrate directive into domestic law. This is the latest of several rounds of consultation about implementation of the directive. The document is being sent to farmers in parishes or communities affected by the proposed zones, farmers' representatives, environmental and consumer groups, and to the water industry.

  The draft action programme contains measures on use of inorganic fertiliser and organic manure, and on storage of slurry in nitrate vulnerable zones, in accordance with the directive. The proposed measures are those described in the brief outline of the action programme included in the May 1994 consultation document on the boundaries of proposed zones. In developing the measures, we have made use of experience and knowledge gained from other Government initiatives to reduce agricultural nitrate pollution. The measures should bring about reductions in nitrate leaching in vulnerable zones.

  I am placing copies of the consultation document in the Library.
  806

DEFENCE

  Nigeria (Arms Trade)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what has been the value of the arms trade to Nigeria to the United Kingdom economy since 1993. [2877]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:It is not Government policy to reveal details of the value of defence exports by country. Information on the value of exports, by region, is contained in UK defence statistics—a copy of which is in the House Library.

  In December 1993, European partners introduced a series of measures against the Nigerian military. All applications for new licences to export defence equipment to Nigeria were reviewed, on a case-by-case basis, with the presumption of denial. On 11 November 1995, the Prime Minister announced a full United Kingdom arms embargo against the Nigerian military and on 20 November, the European Union announced the adoption of a common position on the extension of measures in three areas; including an EU-wide embargo on arms supplies.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2973]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  The principles of investors in people are strongly supported by the Ministry of Defence.

  Given its size and complexity, the Ministry of Defence has taken a strategic decision to work towards the IIP standard through its management units rather than as a single entity. Over the last 18 months, the Department has put in place management systems which demonstrate its commitment to the good management and development of people and, in September, published its commitment to the principles of the investors in people standard in its personnel policy statement.

  Activity in the Department towards the standard is increasing. Two units have achieved recognition as investors in people and a further nine have made a formal commitment to working towards it. We intend to increase the number of units making formal commitments.

  Damages Claim (Tornado Aircraft)
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 23 November,Official Report, column 272, what is the amount of the claim presented to Bricom. [3353]

  Mr. Arbuthnot
  Details relating to the claim are confidential between my Department and Bricom.

  Vessel Replacements
  Mr. Hutton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects to award a contract for the construction of replacements for HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid. [3448]
  807
  Mr. Arbuthnot
  We are currently in negotiation with VSEL to replace HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid. The timing of any order will be subject to the satisfactory outcome of these negotiations.

  Departmental Property, Somerset
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many empty residential properties for service personnel his Department currently has in(a) Yeovil and its environs and (b) Somerset. [3345]

  Mr. Soames
  My Department currently owns 53 vacant service families quarters in Yeovil and its environs and an additional 25 elsewhere in Somerset. Of the vacant quarters, 24 at Ilchester are awaiting demolition as part of a larger plan for the redevelopment of the area. The remainder are either already allocated to service families due to move in shortly or form part of the management margin needed to ensure that accommodation is available to house entitled service personnel.

  Dr. Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) how many residential properties for service personnel his Department is currently building in Yeovil; [3347]

  (2) how many residential properties for service personnel his Department intends to build in Yeovil; [3348]

  (3) what is the cost to his Department of the residential properties for service personnel currently being built in Yeovil. [3349]

  Mr. Soames
  My Department is not currently building any residential properties for service personnel in Yeovil. However, we intend to build 120 properties to accommodate service personnel moving from Portland in late 1997 and 1998. We also plan to demolish 72 substandard properties in Ilchester and replace them with 84 new houses. It is not our practice to give estimated costs as this could prejudice the tendering process which is due to take place early in 1996.

  Army (Trained Strength)
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what will be the total trained strength of the British Army in April 1996. [3350]

  Mr. Soames
  The total trained strength of the Army will be some 104,000 at 1 April 1996, based on recent assessments of recruiting and retention rates. This includes Gurkhas, but excludes members of the Royal Irish Regiment (Home Service).

  Reservists
  Dr. David Clark
  to ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many letters have been sent to reservists in the last two weeks advising them to be prepared for possible full-time deployment within Her Majesty's Forces. [3351]

  Mr. Soames
  Some 1,322 letters have been sent to members of the Army Reserve and the Regular Army Reserve of Officers inviting them to be called out for service with the implementation force in former Yugoslavia. Members of the Territorial Army have been trawled through the chain of command and those 808
  expressing an interest have then been handed a letter giving further information. There is no central record of the number of letters which have been distributed to members of the TA.

  Service Housing
  Mr. David Martin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what further steps he intends to take to improve the quality and management of service housing. [3423]

  Mr. Portillo
  Earlier this year, the Government created a specialist housing division within MoD, the Defence Housing Executive, to undertake the management and maintenance of the married quarters estate on behalf of all three services. That has provided the estate with a unified, professional housing management organisation which we intend should offer a more responsive and efficient housing service to our personnel and their families. There is a great deal to be done in this area, and the executive has some challenging targets to meet. Over 90 per cent. of its budget is already spent on buying maintenance and other services from the private sector. But further improvements in cost-effectiveness are both possible and necessary.

  The DHE will continue in its current form, as a unit within MoD, for a guaranteed period of at least three years. That will enable it to focus on the management improvements we expect it to deliver. I pay tribute to the DHE and its chief executive for the progress already made.

  Beyond that, the Government have been considering, with financial and other advisers, possibilities for transferring ownership of the married quarters estate to the private sector. I am satisfied that we should take this forward.

  The main points of our proposal are that the MoD should transfer the ownership of the married quarters estate in England and Wales to the private sector on a series of very long leases, renting back the accommodation which is needed to meet service housing needs. To that end, we would enter into detailed agreements governing the maximum and minimum levels of MoD occupancy, allowing sufficient flexibility to cater for inevitable uncertainties about our long-term accommodation needs. Several thousand surplus properties would be transferred on a freehold basis immediately—and future surpluses would similarly be returned to the new landlord. Special arrangements would allow the MoD to share in the enhanced value where the subsequent disposal of such properties was particularly successful. The MoD would retain, through the Defence Housing Executive, responsibility for maintenance and the allocation of housing. It is intended to include the bulk of the official service residences in the sale, where it is possible and sensible to do so.

  Our fundamental requirement is to be able to provide our services with the housing that they need and deserve. That requirement flows from operational circumstances which demand mobility of service families, and from the imperative to deal fairly with our personnel and their families, upon whose commitment, dedication and forbearance we so heavily rely.
  809
  Meeting that requirement, however, is not dependent upon retaining ownership of the married quarters estate. Indeed, it is inappropriate for Government to own a large estate of this kind if they can avoid doing so. As far as possible, I want to place the business of owning married quarters, and disposing of them when they are no longer required, in the private sector, where significant efficiencies can be expected. Accordingly, I have decided to take forward the transfer of the married quarters estate to the private sector.

  I am confident that this proposition will meet the services' housing needs, in a manner consistent with operational and security requirements, and will safeguard the welfare and interests of our personnel and their families. We will also be able, if such a transfer is successfully achieved, to fund additional investment in upgrading the housing stock where necessary. Much of the married quarters estate is in good condition, but there are areas where improvements are overdue, and this sale offers the opportunity to put this right more quickly. It also offers the prospect of real progress in dealing with the current empty homes problem. At present some 20 per cent. of our housing stock is unoccupied; even allowing for the unique requirements of service housing, and the particular difficulties associated with the changes and redeployments of recent years, that is unsatisfactory. By involving the dynamism and expertise of the private sector in dealing with surplus properties, I believe we can help to put that right and improve the supply of housing to the public.

  I therefore intend to test the market. If a good price is available, the Government will transfer the stock. Such a transfer would depend upon reaching agreement on terms which satisfy the interests of the Services and on a price which properly reflects the public interest.

  The Government will in due course publish a preliminary information memorandum, which will set out the proposals in greater detail, and invite interested parties to prequalify for the opportunity to tender for the estate.

  Morocco (RAF Deployments)
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the dates, numbers and types of aircraft involved, numbers of sorties flown and minimum permitted altitudes, for Royal Air Force deployments to Morocco during(a) 1994 and (b) 1995. [1280]

  Mr. Soames
  There were no deployments to Morocco in 1994. Between 21 and 28 April 1995, six Tornado GR1 aircraft flew 32 sorties. The minimum permitted altitude was 300 ft above ground level.

  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what agreements have been reached with the Moroccan Government for low flying training facilities in that country. [1281]

  Mr. Soames
  In September 1993 the United Kingdom signed an accord on military co-operation with the Kingdom of Morocco. In July 1994 we completed technical arrangements to facilitate bilateral exercises, including exercises involving RAF low flying training in Morocco.
  810

  Tornado Training Establishment
  Mr. Foulkes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what discussions he has had with the German and Italian authorities concerning the future of the Tornado tri-national training establishment; and what plans he has to move RAF Tornado training from Cottesmore. [1288]

  Mr. Soames
  The RAF has regular meetings with its German and Italian counterparts on all issues relating to the Tornado tri-national training establishment.

  Former Yugoslavia
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement concerning the further deployment of British troops to the former Yugoslavia as part of the international peace plan. [2446]

  Mr. Portillo
  [pursuant to his reply, 27 November 1995, c. 482–83]:On Monday, 4 December, some 380 British personnel should begin deployment to the former Yugoslavia as our contribution to pre-positioned troops for a NATO peace implementation force. These will include communications, logistics and engineer units together with advance headquarters elements. Their job will be to help prepare for the arrival of the main forces who will follow as soon as possible after the final signature of a peace agreement, the necessary UN Security Council resolution and an agreed balance of forces committed to the implementation force.

SCOTLAND

  Agricultural Allowance Schemes
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) when the beef annual premium was paid to farmers in Scotland in(a) 1993, (b) 1994 and (c) 1995; [2805]

  (2) when the sheep annual premium was paid to farmers in Scotland in (a) 1993, (b) 1994 and (c) 1995; [2808]

  (3) when the hill livestock compensatory allowance was paid to farmers in Scotland in (a) 1993, (b) 1994 and (c) 1995. [2809]

  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  Payments under the sheep annual premium scheme, the suckler cow premium scheme, the beef special premium scheme, and the hill livestock compensatory allowances scheme are made over a considerable period of time, depending on the kind of payment and when eligibility for payment is established. Payments for the scheme years commenced in the months shown in the table.

  Scheme

  1993

  1994

  1995

  SAPS

  October 1993

  October 1994

  August 1995

  BSPS

  November 1993

  November 1994

  October 1995

  SCPS

  November 1993

  December 1994

  —

  HLCA

  February 1993

  February 1994

  March 1995

  Sheep Quota Allocations
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he proposes in respect of the position of those sheep producers refused sheep quota allocations from the developer category of the 1993
  811
  national reserve following the decision not to appeal against Mr. Justice McPherson's ruling; and if he will make a statement. [3164]

  Mr. Raymond S. Robertson
  Sheep producers in the less-favoured area ring fences who had their applications to the developer category of the 1993 national reserve rejected together with those who were deterred from applying will be offered a chance to apply again for assessment under new guidelines. The Scottish Office Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department will write to producers to let them know what action they need to take. The Department is maintaining close consultation with industry representatives in drawing up the revised guidelines.

NATIONAL HERITAGE

  National Lottery
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what plans she has to extend lottery funding to grant aid individual sporting competitors. [2500]

  Mr. Sproat
  I am keeping the national lottery distribution arrangements under review.

  "Raising the Game"
  Mr. Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what is the value of the extra resources that the Government are planning to commit to fulfil the pledges contained within "Raising the Game"; and on which vote the cost will fall. [1555]

  Mr. Sproat
  The Sports Council will be making available an extra £1 million to enable trainee and serving teachers to obtain coaching qualifications and setting up a £2 million challenge fund to promote formal links between clubs and schools. These additional funds will be made available as a result of savings on administration following the restructuring of the Sports Council. Sportsmatch will also be earmarking £1 million of its funding for schools projects. Most significantly, the national lottery provides sport with an unprecedented opportunity to expand its stock of facilities and equipment and provides the means of fulfilling the Government's aim that, by 2000, all young people will have access to quality facilities, including playing fields.

  Departmental Targets
  Ms Armstrong
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what is the published recommended response time within which her Department is expected to reply to letters from the public. [3008]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  My Department has set a target of 18 working days to reply to letters from the public.

  New Palace Yard (Archaeology)
  Mr. Dalyell
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will make a statement on the archaeology being carried out during the current digging within the confines of New Palace Yard. [3106]
  812
  Mr. Sproat
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:An archaeological excavation in New Palace Yard was completed in 1994 as part of those being undertaken in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament by the Museum of London archaeology service on behalf of London Underground Ltd.'s Jubilee line extension project. The current Jubilee line extension work in New Palace Yard comprises engineering operations only.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what steps her Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if she will make a statement. [2988]

  Mr. Sproat
  The Department of National Heritage is currently developing a human resource development strategy based on the four key principles required for investors in people accreditation. A staff development adviser was appointed in August this year and she is working closely with the Central London training and enterprise council and a diagnostic study will be carried out to assess the exact requirements to achieve IIP status. As soon as that diagnostic study has been completed, I will be able to give a target date for achievement of the award.

  Under-age Gambling
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of - State for National Heritage what research her Department has undertaken into the problems of under-age gambling; and if she will make a statement. [1968]

  Mr. Sproat
  My Department has not undertaken any research into under-age gambling. I welcome yesterday's announcement by the Director General of the National Lottery about tough new action designed to stamp out under-age lottery sales. As part of this action, Oflot and the lottery operator will also commission research on UK and overseas experience in relation to ticket sales to children.

  Royal Palaces
  Mr. Alan Williams
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what grace and favour accommodation in which occupied royal palace is allocated to(a) the private secretary to Her Majesty the Queen, (b) the Keeper of the Privy Purse, (c) the Master of the Household, (d)the Comptroller, the Lord Chamberlain's Office (e)the Crown Equerry and (f) the Director of the Royal Collection. [2431]

  Mr. Sproat
  This information is provided on page 33 of the Committee of Public Accounts minutes of evidence for 24 April 1995, which is available in the Library of the House. None of these officials occupies accommodation on a grace and favour basis as all have abatements to their salaries in recognition of their occupying official accommodation.

  Undertakings to Indemnify and Contingent Liabilities
  Mr. Waterson
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what was(a) the number of undertakings given by her under section 16 of the

  813
  National Heritage Act 1980 during the six-month period ended 30 September 1995 and (b) the amount of value, expressed in sterling, of any contingent liabilities as at the end of that period in respect of such undertakings given by her under that section at any time as remain outstanding at the end of that period. [3910]

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The information my hon. Friend requests is as follows:

  In the six-month period ended 30 September 1995 the following undertakings to indemnify were given by the relevant Departments for items on loan to national and non-national institutions.

  Number

  Department of National Heritage

  470

  Scottish Office Education Department

  78

  Welsh Office Education Department

  37

  Department of Education for Northern Ireland

  16

  The value of contingent liabilities in respect of such undertakings given at any time and outstanding at 30 September 1995 are:

  £

  Department of National Heritage

  1,975,720,233

  Scottish Office Education Department

  137,926,172

  Welsh Office Education Department

  35,201,147

  Department of Education for Northern Ireland

  4,333,303

  Tourism
  Mr. Tyler
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will set out the forecast Exchequer grant for the promotion and support of tourism for 1996–97 and 1997–98, at 1979 prices and expressed per head of population, for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. [2166]

  Mr. Sproat
  [holding answer 29 November 1995]:The planned Government grant to the English tourist board and the British Tourist Authority for 1996–97 and 1997–98, expressed in 1979 prices, and per head of population for the countries covered by the boards, is set out in the following table. It is not possible to give figures for other parts of the United Kingdom as I understand that my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have still to announce the allocation of the overall settlements for their Departments announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 28 November.

  British tourist authority

  English tourist board

  GIA £million (1979 prices)

  £ Per head population

  GIA £million (1979 prices)

  £ Per head population

  1996–97

  13.4

  0.23

  3.8

  0.08

  1997–98

  13.1

  0.23

  3.7

  0.08

  Source:

  Population Estimates Unit (OPCS) 1979–1994, Government
  Actuaries Department 1995 (1992—based projection).
  814
  The British Tourist Authority is responsible for marketing Great Britain overseas. The grant per capita for BTA has therefore been calculated using the total population of England, Wales and Scotland.

  Greenwich Park
  Mr. Deva
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will make a statement on the recommendations made by the Royal Parks review group in its report on Greenwich park. [3909]

  Mr. Sproat
  I have now considered the group's report in detail. As with the two previous reviews—on Hyde park and Kensington gardens, and on St. James's, Green and Regent's parks—the review group, chaired by Dame Jennifer Jenkins, examined a wide range of issues relating to the role and management of the park, consulting widely with individuals and interested organisations. The conclusions were discussed at a one-day conference, and were well received. The conference delegates supported the majority of the recommendations, but made a few alternative suggestions.

  The group's recommendations focus on the opportunities to provide for changing demands and pressures without losing sight of the park's prime function of providing a green open space, close to the heart of the city, where local residents and tourists alike can enjoy themselves in the open air, amidst examples of London's finest built heritage. We have been looking positively at the group's proposals, and I confirm that I can accept them in principle. I set out the action we have taken, and my proposals for taking matters forward, including the necessary consultations which will have to be carried out before some recommendations can be implemented. The availability of financial resources will of course determine the timing of some.

  The principle recommendations of the group are to nominate a world heritage site at Greenwich, and to open up the great axis, leading from the Isle of Dogs across the Thames to the Royal Naval college and the Queen's house, up the park's escarpment to the Wolfe monument, and on to the spire of All Saints church in Blackheath.

  I endorse the world heritage site proposal. I have sought preliminary advice from English Heritage, and my Department is pursuing discussions with the London borough of Greenwich, and other interested parties. If all goes well, I hope to put Greenwich forward by the end of this year for inclusion in the United Kingdom's tentative list of world heritage sites, with a view to making a formal nomination by July 1996.

  I endorse the proposal to open up the great axis, and my Department will be taking this forward in respect of the Royal Naval college site, in consultation with the relevant parties. The document, inviting expressions of interest in the future use of the Royal Naval college buildings, confirms the Government's wish to see greater public access to this site. The proposal concerning the axis, as it unfolds through the area leading from the Queen's house, up through the park, and as to how a less divisive boundary between the National Maritime museum and park can be achieved, will be the subject of detailed discussion between the two organisations. The Royal Parks agency will commission its landscape architects, in co-operation with the museum, to look at the

  815
  landscaping issues in detail, including the escarpment, and will put forward recommendations. Consultations will then take place with all concerned.

  As in earlier reports, the Jenkins group considered that there was a need to curb traffic and parking, to improve the safety of pedestrians and the atmosphere of the park. They recommended that this could be achieved by banning through traffic, and closing St. Mary's gate, at the north end of the park, and redesigning the layout of Blackheath avenue to create more space for pedestrians. The closure of St. Mary's gate will require discussion with the London borough of Greenwich, the Minister for Transport in London, the Traffic Director for London, and local interested groups. Discussions are in hand, and subject to the outcome, we are thinking of introducing a six month trial ban next year. The Royal Parks Agency will also commission a design study of Blackheath avenue in due course as funds permit.

  On the group's recommendations to bring into the park additional areas, from which the public are now excluded, the agency has begun discussions with the London borough of Greenwich about the Old Orchard, and with Thames Water about the reservoir. The agency has commissioned a feasibility study of how best to use the former nursery site, with a view to retaining two glasshouses and the contractor's yard, and incorporating the remainder into the deer enclosure. Any programme of works resulting from the study would not begin until full consultations had taken place. The works would be phased over a number of years, and would be dependant on available financial resources.

  The group made a number of other recommendations to improve the ambience of the park, including improvements in planting and pruning, banning dogs from sports areas, and continuing with the current sports provision. These have already been implemented. Work is about to begin on improving surfaces in the children's playground, and costs will be met from existing budgets. The costs of other recommendations, to improve paths and upgrade benches, will be met from current and future maintenance budgets of the Royal Parks Agency. For proposals such as the provision of shelters and cycle tracks, the agency will be seeking sponsorship and private finance.

  The report also refers to the prime meridian in the context of the millennium. I accept the recommendation that there should be no new millennium building in the
  816
  park, but welcome the suggestion of marking the meridian line in some way. The Royal Parks Agency will be inviting proposals of how this might be achieved.

  The full cost of implementing the recommendations is not yet known, as further studies are required in many instances. It will also be necessary to consider the royal parks requirements alongside other demands on my Department's budget.

  I am most grateful for the contribution and time Dame Jennifer and her group have given to the review, and for their comprehensive report and constructive recommendations. I look forward to their final report on the remaining royal parks—Richmond and Bushy.

  Television Licence Fees
  Mr. Coe
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will announce the television licence fees which will take effect from 1 April 1996. [3911]

  Mr. Sproat
  The Government announced on 4 November 1993,Official Report, columns 309–10, that they had decided to link increases in the television licence fee to the retail prices index for the remaining three years of the BBC's current royal charter.

  Licence fee increases are based on the annual RPI figure as at the previous September, in the same way as pensions and other state benefits. Application of the RPI figure of 3.9 per cent. for the year September 1995 to the current unrounded licence fees produces new rounded totals of £90.00 for a colour licence and £30.00 for a black and white licence. The necessary regulations to bring these fees into force will be laid before the House in due course.

  Scratchcards
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage if she will estimate the number of national lottery outlets selling scratchcards to under 16-year-olds. [1970]

  Mr. Sproat
  My Department cannot estimate the number of national lottery outlets selling scratchcards to under 16-year-olds. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has, under section 11 of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, issued a direction to the Director General of the National Lottery, that no licence should be granted which authorises the promotion of any lottery, which does not allow for sufficient controls to prevent persons who have not attained the age of 16 from participating. I have therefore asked the director general to write to the hon. Member, placing copies of his response in the Libraries of the House.
  817

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  BBC World Service
  Mr. Robert McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the performance of the BBC World Service against its remit to explain, inform and educate those outside the United Kingdom of the affairs and nature of the United Kingdom. [3169]

  Mr. Hanley
  We have regular discussions with the World Service about its performance. The World Service is aware that informing overseas listeners about the United Kingdom is an important aspect of its remit. The content of programmes is a matter for the World Service.

  Mr. McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make it his policy to require the BBC World Service to broadcast the "Today", "The World at One", "PM" and "The World Tonight" programmes. [3170]

  Mr. Hanley
  It is for the BBC World Service to decide which domestic BBC programmes are suitable for international broadcasting.

  Mr. Faulds
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he plans to meet the managing director of the BBC World Service to discuss funding proposals for the next triennium. [3163]

  Mr. Hanley
  Detailed discussions on the next triennium will begin early next year.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2976]

  Mr. Hanley
  The personnel and security command of the diplomatic wing is committed to seeking investor in people recognition and expects to be able to do so in April 1996. We regard this as a pilot project which, if successful, might lead to investor in people status later being sought by other commands and divisions of the diplomatic wing.

  The aid wing is committed to achieving investor in people status, has completed initial diagnostic work and engaged an adviser.

  Indonesia
  Mr. Gapes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the pro-democracy groups in Indonesia which have been 818
  funded in the last five years; and how much each group received. [3145]

  Mr. Hanley
  We provide no funding to any Indonesian political group, but we maintain contact with a range of groups in Indonesia through our embassy in Jakarta and have invited on occasion representatives to visit the UK under our sponsored visit scheme.

  Angola
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the peace process in Angola. [1494]

  Mr. Hanley
  [holding answer 29 November 1995]:We are encouraged that, a year after the signing of the Lusaka protocol, the ceasefire in Angola continues to hold and that the quartering of UNITA troops has now begun. However, there is still much to be achieved before the Lusaka protocol is implemented in full. We urge both parties to fulfil their obligations.

  Nigeria
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer of 21 November,Official Report, column 71, on what dates in 1995 Ahmed Abdullahi, a senior member of the Nigerian Provisional Ruling Council, was in Britain.

  Mr. Hanley
  [holding answer 29 November 1995]:General Abdullahi made two visits to the UK in 1995. In February, he was given, exceptionally, a visa on compassionate grounds to receive urgent medical attention. He made a further private visit in September, having acquired a visa through misrepresentation. Procedures at the visa section of our high commission in Lagos have been reviewed.

  World Conference on Women
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs which aspects of the Beijing programme of action he is prioritising. [2911]

  Mrs. Gillan
  I have been asked to reply.

  The Government attach a great deal of importance to the world conference on women, and we are fully committed to implementation of the "Platform for Action", its outcome document.

  I have outlined a plan for implementation which includes a short, accessible public report of the conference, which will be available shortly; an invitation to non-governmental organisations to submit their views on priorities for implementation by 1 February 1996; and a report on progress on implementation one year after the conference. We await the outcome of the consultation exercise before setting any specific priorities for implementation.
  819

  Rwanda
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action has been taken by the international community and the Rwanda Government to improve conditions at Kigali prison. [2556]

  Mr. Hanley
  The international community provides food and medical treatment for prisoners in Kigali and other prisons in Rwanda. Over 500 women and children have already been transferred from Kigali prison to new facilities or to a new wing within the Kigali prison, built with international funding and the co-operation of the Rwandan Government. Adolescent prisoners and 1,500 adult prisoners are to be transferred to new facilities shortly.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Land Registration
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what is the estimated cost to public funds of moving to mandatory land registration within five years. [2246]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The question concerns a specific matter on which the chief executive of HM Land Registry Executive Agency is best placed to provide the answer. I have accordingly asked the chief executive to reply direct.

  Letter from John Manthorpe to Mr. Gordon Prentice, dated 30 November 1995:
  I have been asked by the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, to reply to your recent question concerning the estimated cost to public funds of moving to mandatory land registration within five years.
  Land Registration is compulsory on sale throughout England and Wales for all conveyances and transfers of freehold land and all leases for a term of more than 21 years. Over 15.7 million titles are already registered and it is estimated that, under existing legislative provisions, approximately 18 million titles will be registered by the year 2000.
  If the remaining unregistered titles were to be brought onto the public land register within five years by new, mandatory, compulsory registration provisions there would be no direct cost to public funds as the Land Registry is required to cover all its expenditures from fees paid by those who use its services. However, under existing legislation, public authorities, in their capacity as landowners, would be required to pay fees for registering their titles.
  In September, a joint report by the Law Commission and the Land Registry (Law Com No 235; Cm 2950) was published which proposes extending the circumstances in which a disposition of unregistered land must be completed by registration, thereby bringing forward the time when all land in England and Wales would be brought onto the public land register. The report also recommends the introduction of a new fee structure to enable reduced fees to be charged to encourage voluntary registration. A draft Bill to give effect to these (and other) recommendations is included in the report and a suitable opportunity is being sought to bring this forward for consideration by Parliament.

  Mr. Prentice
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department which countries in the European Union limit the acreage of land to which any one owner may have title. [2245]
  820
  Mr. Evans
  The question concerns a specific matter on which the chief executive of HM Land Registry Executive Agency is best placed to provide the answer. I have accordingly asked the chief executive to reply direct.

  Letter from John Manthorpe to Mr. Gordon Prentice, dated 30 November 1995:
  I have been asked by the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, to reply to your recent question concerning which countries in the European Union place limitations on the acreage of land that may be held by any one owner. In England and Wales registration of title is the responsibility of Her Majesty's Land Registry. The Land Registration Acts place no such limitation on ownership. Since the repeal by the Charities Act 1960 of the old Mortmain and Charitable Uses Acts, the general law of England and Wales has imposed no such limitation on ownership. 1 am not aware of any restriction elsewhere in the European Union.

  Mental Incapacity
  Mr. Khabra
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department when he expects to publish a response to the Law Commission's report on mental incapacity. [2138]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The Government set up an interdepartmental working group, chaired by the Lord Chancellor's Department, to consider the Law Commission report on mental incapacity. The group was asked to produce an initial report for consideration by Ministers by 1 September 1995, and has met this timetable. Ministers are now considering the report of the working group together with that of the Law Commission. The Government will make an announcement of their initial view on the Law Commission's report once Ministers have had the opportunity to consider the implications of the proposals.

  State Papers
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will list those countries of the European Union that do not release state papers until a specified period has elapsed; and if he will give the period in each case. [2720]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The definition of "state papers" differs throughout the European Union, as do the periods for which such papers are withheld. The different provisions in the 12 then member states are set out in chapter 4 of the 1994 report of the group of experts on the co-ordination of archives,"Archives in the European Union".Copies of the report are available in the Libraries of both Houses.

  Executive Agencies (Overseas Travel)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by agency staff(a) the costs of the travel(b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff concerned. [2285]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The Court Service became an executive agency on 3 April 1995. Hence, for the financial year in question, the Lord Chancellor was responsible for three executive agencies—the Public Trust Office, Her Majesty Land Registry and the Public Record Office. The
  821
  question concerns a specific matter on which the chief executives of those agencies are best placed to provide the answer and I have accordingly asked them to reply direct.

  Letter from John Manthorpe to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995:
  I have been asked by the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, to reply to your recent question requesting details in respect of overseas travel within the last financial year. I can provide the following information:

  (a) In the year 1994/95 the total expenditure on overseas travel by Land Registry staff was £8,084.

  (b) The countries visited were Switzerland, France, Belgium and South Africa.

  (c) The posts held by the six staff concerned were: Chief Land Registrar (Switzerland), Solicitor to HM Land Registry (France), Director of Information Technology and Head of Services, Computer Services (Belgium), Director of Corporate Services and Head of Development & Support, Computer Services (South Africa)

  I do hope that this answers the points raised with the Parliamentary Secretary but please contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

  Letter from Julia C. Lomas to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Parliamentary Secretary has asked me to reply to you as part of the Lord Chancellor's Department's response to your Parliamentary Question, listed on 22 November 1995, regarding the cost of overseas travel made by agency staff in the last financial year, including the posts held by the staff concerned and the countries visited.
  There was no overseas travel on official business by any member of the Public Trust Office during 1994/95.

  Letter from Sarah Tyacke to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995:
  I have been asked by the Lord Chancellor's Parliamentary Secretary to reply for the Public Record Office to your question about (a) the costs of travel, (b) the countries visited, and (c) the posts held by the staff concerned, in respect of overseas travel by agency staff for the last financial year.
  The answers are:

  (a) £7708.

  (b) Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and the United States of America.

  (c) The Keeper of Public Records; the Director of Corporate Services; the Manager of the NewPRO programme and two of his staff; the Head of Preservation Services; a Government Services Inspection and Documentation Officer; the Publications Manager; a Reader Services Department Team Leader and the Head of Map Section.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2979]

  Mr. Jonathan Evans
  The constituent parts of my Department are approaching the investor in people initiative separately.

  The Court Service, established as an agency in April this year, is committed in principle to achieving the investor in people standard within the lifetime of the current corporate plan, that is by April 1998. A scoping study, begun earlier this year, will shortly recommend to
  822
  the chief executive when the process should begin and what the time scale should be for the action plan and assessment phase. The chief executive will make a public announcement once these decisions have been taken.

  The Public Trust Office began to work towards investor in people in April this year and has completed the diagnostic stage to determine the readiness of the office for assessment against the standard; surveys and interviews of staff have been carried out and the findings were recently presented to the management board. A decision has been taken to pursue a commitment to achieve accreditation for the PTO by April 1997 and the action plan is being drawn up.

  The headquarters of my Department began active consideration of the investor in people initiative in the summer and is currently examining the options for completing the diagnostic stage of the process, with a provisional target date of April next year. Decisions on a target date for committing to IIP and on timing of an action plan will follow thereafter.

  ATTORNEY-GENERAL
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Attorney-General what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2980]

  The Attorney-General
  The Law Officers' departments are committed to the principles of the investor in people initiative. The Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office are actively considering the options for the implementation of IIP. The CPS is pursuing with a training and enterprise council the possibility of a pilot exercise in one of its offices. The Treasury Solicitor's department envisages taking a decision to work towards the IIP standard after 1 April 1996, once it has assumed agency status. The Government Property Lawyers has already decided to seek IIP accreditation: much of the groundwork has been carried out and the agency is in contact with a TEC with a view to making progress in the near future. The legal secretariat to the Law Officers is a small office, the staff of which are almost all on loan from other Departments, and thus there are no immediate plans to implement IIP in its case.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Onshore Oil Licensing
  Mr. Ainger
  to ask the President of the Board of Trade what advice he received from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Countryside Council for Wales before inviting applications from oil companies for blocks in watery areas in the latest onshore oil licensing round. [2854]

  Mr. Page
  Previous practice regarding onshore licensing has been to offer all unlicensed onshore areas, including watery areas, in each licensing round. Watery areas have attracted very few applications, none in the last two rounds, and environmental and other bodies interested in these areas were consulted only after applications had
  823
  been received and on a case-by-case basis. It was felt that to consult over areas that were—on the basis of previous experience—unlikely to be the subject of applications would place an unnecessary burden on the organisations consulted. For this reason, neither the Joint Nature Conservation Committee nor the Countryside Council for Wales was asked to advise on the watery areas before the invitation to apply for licences in the seventh round of onshore licensing was announced.

  After the announcement, it became clear that a number of companies were interested in exploring in the watery areas and the views of the JNCC, and CCW were therefore sought. Consultation with these bodies over blocks on offer in the seventh round continues.

  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the organisations that have communicated their objection or concern about the latest onshore oil licensing round covering watery areas. [2851]

  Mr. Page
  The DTI consulted over 90 organisations following the offer of watery areas in the seventh onshore oil and gas licensing round. Those on the following list have either objected or expressed varying degrees of concern. Applications were received for three of the areas, the Solway firth, the Minches and the Ribble estuary, and 12 of the organisations listed have expressed an interest in these.Organisations that have communicated their objections or concern about the latest onshore licensing round covering watery areas.

  Argyll and Bute Council

  Carmarthen Bay Forum

  Cefn Sidan Community Council

  Countryside Council for Wales

  Cumbria County Council

  Cumbria Wildlife Trust

  Dumfries and Galloway Regional Council

  Dyfed County Council

  Dyfed Wildlife Trust

  Eastern Sea Fisheries Joint Committee

  Essex County Council

  Essex Wildlife Trust

  Friends of Cardigan Bay

  Friends of the Earth Cymru

  Fylde Borough Council

  Gwent Wildlife Trust

  Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust

  Highland Regional Council

  Humberside County Council

  Isle of Wight Council

  Joint Countryside Advisory Service

  Kent Trust for Nature Conservation

  Lancashire County Council

  Lancashire Wildlife Trust

  Lincolnshire County Council

  Llanelli Borough Council

  Lothian Regional Council

  Merseyside Development Corporation

  Metropolitan Borough of Sefton

  Metropolitan Borough of Wirral

  Norfolk Wildlife Trust

  824

  Pembroke, Carmarthen and West Glamorgan Green Parties

  Port of London Authority

  Royal Society for Nature Conservation (The Wildlife Trusts)

  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

  Shetlands Islands Council

  South Pembrokeshire District Council

  South Wales Sea Fisheries Committee

  Strathclyde Regional Council

  The Clyde Fishermen's Association

  The Fishermen's Association Limited

  The Lincolnshire Trust for Nature Conservation

  The National Trust (Whiteford Burrows Advisory Committee)

  The Scottish Fishermen's Federation

  The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust

  Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts

  Departmental Targets
  Ms Armstrong
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the published recommended response times within which his Department is expected to reply to letters from the public. [3004]

  Mr. Lang
  The published targets for letters for ministerial reply are as follows:

  Substantive reply sent within 10 working days: 77 per cent.

  Substantive reply sent within one calendar month: 98 per cent.

  For other letters, individual management units and agencies within the Department are free to set their own targets and performance measures as part of the MINIS process. There is no recommended standard, but all performance measures and targets are monitored and reviewed annually in MINIS to ensure that they are challenging and will lead to continued improvements in output and performance.

  More detailed information about individual management units, performance measures, including timeliness targets for responding to correspondence from the public are published annually in the Department's MINIS documents. Copies of MINIS 94 and MINIS 95 are available in the Library of the House. Agencies' targets are also published in their annual reports.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2984]

  Mr. Lang
  The Department announced its formal commitment to working towards investor in people accreditation in May 1994. This was followed by a full diagnosis of the relevant procedures and attitudes within the Department. A draft action plan was produced which is now being extended to cover staff who joined the DTI from the Cabinet Office and the former. Employment Department in the latest machinery of Government changes. The revised plan will be submitted to Central London training and enterprise council for approval within the next few weeks, although the key changes in procedures are already being put in place. A trial IIP
  825
  assessment is planned for the summer of 1996. The timing of the final assessment will be decided in the light of the results of the trial.

  "Realising our Potential" Awards
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many applications were received for responsive mode (non-ROPAS) grants by the(a) the Medical Research Council, (b) the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, (c) the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, (d) the Particle

  1994 responsive mode1 (non-ROPA) grants Analysis of applications and awards by Research Council

  Research Council

  Number of applications

  Number x- rated

  Number of awards

  Number of ineligible

  Number rejected

  BBSRC

  1,107

  775

  313

  —

  794

  EPSRC1

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  ESRC

  925

  562

  178

  47

  747

  MRC

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  NERC

  486

  275

  115

  —

  371

  PPARC1

  412

  353

  294

  0

  118

  1995 responsive mode1 (non-ROPA) grants Analysis of applications and awards by Research Council

  Research Council

  Number of applications

  Number x-rated

  Number of awards

  Number of ineligible

  Number rejected

  BBSRC

  1,121

  879

  253

  —

  868

  EPSRC1

  1,036

  —

  417

  —

  619

  ESRC

  834

  522

  225

  18

  609

  MRC

  987

  790

  217

  —

  770

  NERC

  524

  346

  101

  —

  423

  PPARC1

  259

  221

  181

  0

  78

  1For EPSRC and PPARC readily available grants data does not distinguish responsive and non-responsive proposals. The figures shown are therefore for all non-ROPA grants.

  BBSRC: the council does not record the number of ineligible applications received.

  ESRC: 'ineligible' applications include those rejected by the office as unsuitable for processing on technical grounds (outside Council's remit or insufficiently specified). Also includes applications withdrawn by candidates, the ESRC have supplied two sets of figures for the 'rejected' category;

  the figures shown are for all applications not funded which includes unfunded alphas;

  the alternative figures are 363 (1994) and 312 (1995) for all non-alpha applications not funded which is the category which ESRC regards as 'reject'.

  EPSRC: the new EPSRC grants system began on 1 January 1995. The period 1 April 1994 to September 1994 was spent dealing with applications made to SERC and Phase 1 ROPAs. This was followed by what was essentially an inter-regnum during which responsive applications received and grants awarded were insignificant and mainly related to maintaining support for existing groups;

  the EPSRC does not have closing dates for its grant scheme;

  readily available grants data does not distinguish responsive and non-responsive proposals;

  the data relates to responsive mode proposals (excluding ROPAs) received and fully considered between 1 January and 31 July 1995.

  MRC: the figures relate to the 1 August 1994–31 July 1995 grant round;
  826
  Physics and Astronomy Research Council and (e) the Economic and Social Research Council in 1994–95; how many were turned down because of ineligibility; how many were x-rated; and how many were (i) accepted and (ii) rejected. [2991]

  Mr. Ian Taylor
  The information requested is set out in the following tables. Because of the differing ways the research councils organise their grant schemes it is not possible to provide all the information precisely as requested.

  Particular attention should be paid to the explanatory notes.

  MRC do not keep statistics on ineligible applications.

  NERC: figures are for academic years 1993–94 and 1994–95; ineligible applications are sifted out at an early stage and are therefore not sent for peer review or considered by the Research Grants Training and Awards Committee. As a consequence no applications fall into the ineligible category.

  PPARC: PPARC have been unable to identify responsive and non-responsive grants separately; figures therefore reflect the whole of the grants portfolio;

  it is not yet possible to provide a full picture for '1995' because PPARC is part way through a grants round.

  Royal Cornish Consols United Tin Mines Cost Book Co.
  Mr. Harris
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on factors leading to the Department of Trade and Industry discharging the receiver appointed to investigate the activities of the Royal Cornish Consols United Tin Mines Cost Book Co.; and if he will publish the receiver's report. [2580]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The receiver was appointed by the High Court as part of injunctive proceedings designed principally to bring an end to a misconceived tax avoidance scheme. That receiver has obtained his release from the court, and has not produced any report for this Department.
  827

  Steel
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what action has been taken during the last six months to reduce state aid for steel production within the EC. [2962]

  Mr. Eggar
  The Commission ordered the repayment of illegal state aid to a steel producer in Germany. Formerly, state-aided companies in Spain, Portugal and Italy have been privatised. At the November 1995 Industry Council, the Commission, while proposing an exceptional derogation for Irish steel, reaffirmed its commitment to avoid putting forward any future requests for derogation from the steel aid rules. The UK Steel Subsidies Monitoring Committee has played a part in maintaining the pressure to end steel subsidies in Europe.

  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the current order book of the British steel industry; and what it was in each of the last three years. [2964]

  Mr. Eggar
  Information on orders outstanding is not available. Figures of total orders booked in each of the last four years are in the table.

  UK steel industry products

  Total orders booked

  12 months ending September

  Million tonnes

  19921

  13.8

  1993

  14.0

  1994

  14.9

  1995

  14.5

  Note:

  153 week period.

  Source:

  1SSB Ltd.

  Life Funds
  Mr. Hinchliffe
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade what approaches have been received from Australian Mutual Providence regarding the proposed release of surplus moneys from the life funds; and what reasons have been given for such a proposal. [3354]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  The Department does not comment on its contacts with individual companies.

  The Department's view on the balance between policyholders' and shareholders' interests in the long-term funds of life insurance companies was set out by my predecessor my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans) in his reply to the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) on 24 February 1995, Official Report, columns 362–63.

  Gas Measurement Branch
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list the annual income of the Gas Engineering Meters and Quality Laboratory arising from(a) fees, (b) charges and (c) fines; what was total number of staff employed (i) part time and (ii) full time; and what contribution his Department made towards the annual running costs in the past three years. [3255]
  828
  Mr. Eggar
  I assume that this question refers to the work of the gas measurement branch of the oil and gas division of my Department. The income from fees and charges for Gas Act 1986 work in the three financial years, 1 April 1992 to 31 March 1995 is as follows:

  Financial year

  Fees £

  Charges £

  1992–93

  2,292,549

  1,001,715

  1993–94

  1,718,997

  912,304

  1994–95

  1,518,188

  967,804

  There was no income from fines. Any fines would be paid into the magistrates court in respect of any criminal proceedings.

  The number of staff in post in April of the relevant years carrying out Gas Act work is also as follows:

  Staff in post

  Part time

  Full time

  1992

  4

  62

  1993

  3

  61

  1994

  2

  58

  1995

  4

  46

  Apart from total expenditure over the three years of about £6,000 for Gas Act statutory work for which there was no power to make a charge, all of the gas measurement branch's annual running costs were recovered by relevant fees and charges.

  Medicine Sales
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what information he has as the basis of the investigation currently being undertaken by the Office of Fair Trading into the resale price maintenance of medicines; and if he will make a statement; [3013]

  (2) what estimate he has made as to the likely savings to the National Health Service from the abolition of the resale price maintenance scheme for medicines; [3015]

  (3) if he will support the abolition of the retail price maintenance of medicines. [3019]

  Mr. John M. Taylor
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:In 1970, the restrictive practices court exempted medicaments from the general prohibition on resale price maintenance. The exemption can only be ended by the court. The Director General of Fair Trading has a duty to monitor and regularly review existing goods exempted from the prohibition. The Office of Fair Trading's current review is to establish whether there is a prima facie evidence of material change in the relevant circumstances since the exemption was granted. If the DGFT concluded that there was a material change of circumstances he could apply to the court to seek leave for review of the exemption. It would be premature to speculate about the DGFT's conclusions.
  829

  Asbestosis
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many coal miners and former coal miners diagnosed to be suffering from asbestosis since 1983 have received a payment under the 1974 pneumoconiosis compensation scheme. [2726]

  Mr. Page
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:This is a matter for the British Coal Corporation. I am asking the chairman to write to the hon. Member.

  Business Links (Rural Areas)
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the President of the Board of Trade how many business links in rural areas will be operating by the end of 1995; and if he will indicate their location by county. [2643]

  Mr. Page
  Most business links have within their boundaries a variety of locations—urban, suburban and rural. It is not possible therefore to enumerate business links operating only in rural areas. By the end of 1995 business link services will be available to around 85 per cent. of all VAT-registered companies in England.

PRIME MINISTER

  Engagements
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1653]

  Sir Peter Tapsell
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 30 November. [1654]

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

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Prime Minister what steps his office is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2972]

  The Prime Minister
  For this purpose, my Office is part of the Cabinet Office. In February 1993, the Cabinet Office registered commitment to achieve investor in people status. The formal commitment relates only to the Office of Public Service part of the Cabinet Office and the establishment officer's group. However, the whole Department is participating in the process of change and will share in the benefits. An action plan for the Department was produced following consultation with staff and was formally accepted by the Central London training and enterprise council in July 1995. Work is in hand to take forward the action required to bring the Department to the necessary standard. The Department is seeking to achieve accreditation by the end of 1996.
  830

  Crown Act 1707
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make it his policy to bring forward legislation to amend the Succession to the Crown Act 1707. [3378]

  The Prime Minister
  No.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

  Charter Mark
  Mr. Nigel Jones
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many firms have withdrawn from the charter mark award scheme; and if he will make a statement. [2908]

  Mr. Willetts
  Only one. British Gas withdrew from the charter mark scheme earlier this month when its charter mark was under review.

  Executive Agencies (Overseas Travel)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by agency staff(a) the costs of the travel, (b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff concerned. [2284]

  Mr. Willetts
  As this concerns a purely operational matter, I have asked the chief executives of the agencies concerned to write direct to the hon. Member.

  Letter from R. N. Edwards to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 22 November 1995:
  There has been no overseas travel on behalf of the Chessington Computer Centre by any of its staff during the last financial year.

  Letter from Craig Muir to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 29 November 1995:
  "To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by agency staff (a) the costs of the travel, (b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff concerned."

  (a) £579.34

  (b) United States of America

  (c) Director of Business Development.

  Letter from Mike Devereau to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 27 November 1995:
  I have been asked to reply, in respect of the Central Office of Information, to your question to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about overseas travel.
  COI staff of all grades make many visits in the course of providing services to other departments from whom costs are recovered. For example radio technicians support overseas visits by senior ministers, film marketing specialists attend sales conferences and managers travel with touring exhibitions.
  The cost in 1994–95 was £65.078. The countries visited were:

  Albania

  Azerbaijan

  Austria

  Bangladesh

  Belgium

  Bosnia

  831

  Brazil

  Croatia

  Czech Republic

  Denmark

  Egypt

  France

  Germany

  Greece (Corfu)

  Holland

  Hong Kong

  India

  Italy

  Japan

  Luxembourg

  Norway

  Oman

  Poland

  Russia

  Saudi Arabia

  Serbia

  Singapore

  South Africa

  Sweden

  Switzerland

  Taiwan

  Turkey

  Ukraine

  United Arab Emirates

  USA

  Letter from Mike Lynn to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 27 November 1995:
  I have been asked to reply, in respect of HMSO, to your question to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about overseas visits. I should explain that HMSO is a trading organisation which buys and sells outside the UK, and participates in international conferences and exhibitions associated with our goods and services. The details requested are as follows:

  (a) The recorded cost of overseas travel during the last financial year was £66,000.

  (b) Countries visited

  Turkey

  Luxembourg

  Norway

  Sweden

  Thailand

  Malaysia

  Philippines

  Italy

  Belgium

  Poland

  Cyprus

  Sri Lanka

  Singapore

  Spain

  USA

  832

  Germany

  Austria

  India

  Holland

  Japan

  France

  (c) Staff concerned

  Chief Executive

  Deputy Chief Executive

  Export Sales Manager

  Export Sales Executive

  European Liaison Manager

  Translator

  International Security Print Executive

  Press Manager

  Technical Director

  Research Analysts

  Sales Executives

  Senior Buyer

  Designer

  Director Purchasing

  Head of Paper Purchasing

  Paper Negotiator Manager

  Distribution Director

  Research Manager

  Letter from S. H. F. Hickey to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 27 November 1995:
  The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has asked me to reply for the Civil Service College to your Question about overseas travel by Agency staff.
  The cost of overseas travel and subsistence in the 1994/95 financial year was £92,078. The countries visited are listed in the annex to this letter. The staff concerned were myself, Business Group Directors and teaching and consultancy staff.
  There was some travel to international conferences, often to present papers, but the large majority of the expenditure was in connection with fee-earning business, primarily in the area of promulgating the UK experience of public sector reform. For example, we have had major contracts for supporting public sector reform in Southern Africa and Eastern Europe.

  Countries visited by CSC Staff in 1994/95

  Belgium

  Canada

  Cyprus

  Eire

  Finland

  France

  Germany

  Holland

  Hungary

  Italy

  Lebanon

  Luxembourg

  Namibia

  Norway

  Oman

  Poland

  Rumania

  South Africa

  Spain

  The Czech Republic

  USA

  Zimbabwe

  833
  Letter from E. C. McCloy to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 24 November 1995:
  Your written question to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has been referred for me to reply on behalf of this Agency.
  During 1994/95 there was no expenditure on travel overseas by any member of Agency staff.

  Civil Servants (Contact with the Opposition)
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will list the guidelines and timings for meetings of permanent secretaries with Opposition Front Bench Members, and for the undertaking of contingency work by civil servants in preparation for a change of Government; and if he will make a statement. [3268]

  Mr. Heseltine
  The convention has been that, by authority of the Prime Minister, towards the end of a Parliament or when a general election has been called, Opposition parties may arrange, with the authority of their party leaders and through the head of the civil service, contacts with senior civil servants. These arrangements are designed to allow briefing on factual questions on departmental organisational changes which Opposition parties have in mind or which may result from Opposition party policies. Any exchanges would be confidential. Following the last general election, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the leader of the Opposition that he would be content to authorise confidential exchanges between senior civil servants and Opposition spokesmen from January 1996.

OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

  Nigeria
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what has been the involvement of the Crown Agents in the export of military, security or police equipment to Nigeria since June 1993; and if he will make a statement. [2074]

  Mr. Hanley
  Crown Agents has had no involvement in procurement of military equipment for Nigeria. Under contractual arrangements entered into before 1993, a Crown Agents subsidiary company acted as shipping agent for one company exporting military equipment under licences granted before EU measures were imposed in December 1993. This involvement ceased in January 1995.

  Mr. Jon Owen Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the police training for Nigerian police officers in the United Kingdom and Nigeria since 1990 has involved(a) instruction in crowd control techniques and (b) the use of firearms. [2479]

  Mr. Hanley
  Training has not included instruction in either crowd techniques or the use of firearms.

  Mr. Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs which towns or cities in Nigeria United Kingdom personnel have visited to provide training to Nigerian police forces in each year since 1990. [2480]
  834
  Mr. Hanley
  United Kingdom personnel provided training in Jos between 1991 and 1993, and in Enugu between 1993 and 1995.

  Children
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will obtain reports from Her Majesty's ambassadors stationed in countries currently or recently suffering from war and armed conflict on the degree to which children have been pressed into direct military action; and what is Her Majesty's Government's policy on aid or expedient support for Governments permitting children to be trained for military service. [2734]

  Mr. Hanley
  We receive regular reports from our representatives overseas. As part of our good governance policy, we always take account of a Government's level and use of military expenditure when deciding our allocations of bilateral aid.

  We take every opportunity to urge those countries which have ratified the UN convention on the rights of the child to comply fully with the relevant sections of article 38 of the convention, which deals with children in armed conflict.

  Mr. Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what programmes or projects are currently supported by the overseas aid budget to establish post-conflict trauma aftercare for children in developing countries which have suffered from civil war or other armed conflict. [2736]

  Mr. Hanley
  The most effective interventions to assist children who have been affected by conflict are those which seek to provide a normal, stable environment for child development. We adopt a holistic approach to post-conflict situations through normal economic and social rehabilitation activities, supplemented by more targeted programmes, such as child tracing or family reunification. For this purpose, we have supported Save the Children programmes in Gaza and the west bank, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire, Serbia and Montenegro, Red Cross services in Angola and UNICEF programmes in Burundi and the former Yugoslavia.

  Sri Lanka
  Miss Lestor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has received about the delivery of humanitarian aid to Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka; and if he will make a statement. [2515]

  Mr. Hanley
  Food and non-food relief is reaching the displaced people in the north, including the Jaffna peninsula. The main requirement is for shelter materials, household goods and the provision of safe drinking water. We continue to channel our relief and rehabilitation support through the non-governmental organisation CARE, Oxfam and Save the Children, and through the International Committee of the Red Cross. All these organisations operate in co-ordination with the Government of Sri Lanka.
  835

TREASURY

  Investors in People
  Mr. Buyers
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2986]

  Mrs. Angela Knight
  The Treasury made a formal commitment to work towards achieving the investor in people standard in April 1994, when it agreed a departmental action plan with the Central London training and enterprise council. A mid-term assessment of the Department's progress is planned for early 1996, the outcome of which will determine the target date for accreditation.

  Public Interest Immunity Certificates
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list all those in his Department who have authority to issue public interest immunity certificates; how many such certificates have been issued in each of the last five years; and what were the main reasons for them. [1427]

  Mr. Kenneth Clarke
  A claim to public interest immunity relating to departmental records or information is normally made by the appropriate Minister, or in the case of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise by the chairman. No PII certificates have been signed by Treasury Ministers during the last five years.

  In order to protect in proceedings confidential information provided by taxpayers about their personal affairs or the identity of informers, the chairman of the Inland Revenue may swear affidavits, rather than sign PII certificates, claiming on public interest grounds that disclosure of documents should not be made. As far as can be ascertained, one such affidavit has been signed in the last five years—in 1991—and was for use in civil proceedings.

  The chairman of Customs and Excise also claims PII by affidavit and not by certificate. There have been three affidavits in the last five years—one each in 1992, 1994 and 1995. Each was used in civil proceedings in order to protect informant and intelligence information.

  Value Added Tax (Blood Products)
  Mr. Heppell
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what consultations his Department held with the Department of Health in respect of the imposition of value added tax on the recombinant factor VIII product Kogenate; [3130]

  (2) on how many occasions he has considered the imposition of value added tax on the recombinant factor VIII product, Kogenate; what was his decision in each case; and if he will make a statement. [3129]

  Mr. Heatcoat-Amory
  Customs and Excise advised Bayer in September 1994 that Kogenate could be relieved from VAT as it appeared to fall within the exemption for human blood or products derived from human blood. Customs subsequently discovered that other supplies were treating recombinant products as outside this exemption and to ensure equity reviewed the position. On the basis of 836
  scientific advice from the Department of Health, Customs ruled that since these products were not derived from human blood, they were taxable at the standard rate of VAT. Bayer was advised of the new ruling on 25 September 1995.

  This ruling brings the VAT liability of these products into line both with that applied in other member states under the EC sixth VAT directive and with that of other drugs and therapeutic products. Plasma-derived human factor VIII remains exempt from VAT.

  Departmental Targets
  Ms Armstrong
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the published recommended response times within which his Department is expected to reply to letters from the public. [3002]

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  The recommended response time within which the Department is expected to reply to letters from the public is between 10 to 15 working days.

  Low-risk Ports of Entry
  Mr. Cann
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list those ports of entry into the United Kingdom which are regarded as low risk by the Customs and Excise. [3186]

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  All ports of entry into the United Kingdom are subject to Customs controls. It would not be in the public interest to disclose the Customs assessments of risk arising at individual ports.

  Private Finance Initiative
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many officials with responsibility for the private finance initiative formerly within his Department have been transferred to(a) the Department of Health or (b) the NHS Executive. [3093]

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:No permanent officials have been transferred from Her Majesty's Treasury to the Department of Health or NHS Executive to work on PFI matters; however one member of staff seconded to Her Majesty's Treasury is working on private finance matters within the NHS executive.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Cold Weather Payments
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will give a breakdown of the numbers of pensioners refused cold weather payments by region over the last five years; and if he will make a statement. [1092]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The administration of the social fund is a matter for Mr. Peter Mathison, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency and he will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Peter Mathison to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 November 1995:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking for a breakdown of the number of pensioners refused cold weather payments by region over the past five years.

  837
  Cold Weather Payments are paid to people receiving Income Support whose benefit includes a disability or pensioner premium or who have a child under aged 5 in their family. Payments are made automatically to those eligible without the need for a claim form to be completed.
  I hope you find this helpful.

  Incapacity Benefit
  Mr. Bradley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many claimants of invalidity benefit were(a) medically examined and found (i) capable of work, (ii) capable of alternative work and (iii) capable of undertaking their usual occupation in each of the quarters ending December 1994 and March 1995 and (b) without examination were found (i) capable of work, (ii) capable of alternative work and (iii) capable of undertaking their usual occupation in each of the quarters ending December 1994 and March 1995. [1748]

  Mr. Burt
  [holding answer Friday 24 November]:The administration of incapacity benefits is a matter for Peter Mathison, the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Keith Bradley, dated 29 November 1995:
  The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about how many claimants of invalidity benefit were (a) medically examined and found (i) capable of work, (ii) capable of alternative work and (iii) capable of undertaking their usual occupation in each of the quarters ending December 1994 and March 1995 and (b) without examination were found (i) capable of work, (ii) capable of alternative work and (iii) capable of undertaking their usual occupation in each of the quarters ending December 1994 and March 1995.
  Information is not available in the format requested. The figures below are for the number of medical opinions given, following examination, that a customer is capable of work. Such opinions are not given without a medical examination. Decisions as to whether or not a person is found capable of work for benefit purposes is made by independent adjudication officers.

  Number of opinions given following examination

  Number of opinions given following examination

  December 1994

  March 1995

  Capable of work

  Alternative work

  26,534

  26,150

  Usual occupation

  4,269

  4,096

  Total

  30,803

  30,246

  Incapacity Benefit replaced Invalidity Benefit from April 1995. For Incapacity Benefit purposes, the examining doctor does not give any opinion on a person's capacity to work, rather an assessment is carried out of the individual's functional limitations and restrictions which is then scored by the adjudication officer, along with the customer's own assessment, in order to reach a decision on capacity for work.

  I hope you find this reply helpful.

  Child Support Agency
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what percentage of the Child Support Agency's assessed case load was not paying regular maintenance immediately prior to take on by the agency. [2066]
  838
  Mr. Andrew Mitchell
  [holding answer Monday 27 November 1995]:The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive, Miss Ann Chant. She will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Ann Chant to Ms Liz Lynne, dated 29 November 1995:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about the Child Support Agency assessed caseload.
  In the first year of the Agency it was estimated that just under 60 per cent of all the cases taken on were not already receiving maintenance. This proportion has increased to an estimated 77 per cent since April 1994.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many absentee fathers the Child Support Agency has traced since its introduction. [2217]

  Mr. Mitchell
  The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive, Miss Ann Chant. She will write to the hon. Member. [2217]

  Letter from Ann Chant to Mr. Jim Cunningham, dated 29 November 1995:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security on how many absentee fathers the Child Support Agency has traced since its introduction.
  The number of absent parents traced by the Child Support Agency from its launch until 30 September 1995 is as follows:

  1993/94: 28,240

  1994/95: 49,632

  1995/96: 25,164

  Total to date: 103,036

  You may wish to know that this information is already available in the Child Support Agency's statistical information which is placed monthly in the Library.

  Mr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how much money has been recovered as a result of intervention by the Child Support Agency. [2220]

  Mr. Mitchell
  The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive, Miss Ann Chant. She will write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Ann Chant to Mr. Jim Cunningham, dated 29 November 1995:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about money recovered by the Child Support Agency.
  Between April 1993 and September 1995 the Agency has been involved in the payment of new maintenance arising from child support assessments of over £330 million.
  I hope this is helpful.

  Mr. Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what were the running costs of the Child Support Agency during each year since 1992–93. [2218]

  Mr. Mitchell
  The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the chief executive, Miss Ann Chant. She will write to the hon. Member.
  839
  Letter from Ann Chant to Mr. Jim Cunningham, dated 29 November 1995:
  I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about the running costs of the Child Support Agency during each year since 1992/93.
  From launch on 5 April 1993, the Agency's net cost of operations during 1993/94 was £139 million as published in the annual accounts on 28 November 1994. The net cost of operations during 1994/95 was £192 million as published in the annual accounts on 18 July 1995. Expenditure statements in both annual reports are prepared on an accruals basis. I hope this is helpful.

  Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema
  Mr. Tipping
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many claims have been made in each region for industrial injuries disablement benefit for chronic bronchitis and emphysema up to 31 October; how many were(a) successful and (b) unsuccessful; and on what grounds. [3023]

  Mr. Roger Evans
  The information is not available in the format requested. The available information is set out in the tables.

  Claims in respect of chronic bronchitis and emphysema (PD D12) between 13 September 1993 and 31 October 1995 analysed by Benefits Agency Area Directorate

  Area

  Claims received

  Successful claims1

  Claims disallowed

  Southern England

  AD1 Anglia

  27

  3

  19

  AD2 Chilterns

  22

  4

  13

  AD3 South London and West Sussex

  0

  0

  0

  AD4 West Country

  155

  6

  76

  AD5 East London and Essex

  43

  1

  4

  AD6 South East

  499

  33

  451

  Analysis of claims disallowed between 13 September 1993 and 31 October 1995 and reason for disallowance by Benefits Agency Area Directorate

  Area

  Failed 20 year rule

  Reg 22 (Up to 2 Oct 1994)1,2

  Disablement assessed at less than 14 per cent.

  PD-D12 not diagnosed(Upto 2 Oct1994)2

  Failed FEV1 test(From 3 Oct 1994)3

  Failed x-ray test(From 3 Oct 1994)3

  Southern England

  AD1

  7

  1

  0

  9

  0

  2

  AD2

  6

  0

  0

  6

  0

  1

  AD3

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  AD4

  12

  0

  0

  55

  5

  4

  AD5

  3

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  AD6

  42

  0

  0

  380

  20

  9

  AD7

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Southern England total

  70

  1

  0

  450

  26

  16

  Wales and central England

  AD1

  161

  17

  2

  4,572

  206

  178

  AD2

  33

  0

  0

  555

  3

  6

  AD3

  236

  3

  3

  2,941

  72

  59

  AD4

  696

  9

  34

  6,409

  452

  315

  AD5

  37

  1

  0

  412

  13

  13

  AD6

  19

  1

  0

  279

  3

  1

  AD7

  163

  0

  4

  1,741

  48

  32

  Wales and Central England totals

  1,345

  31

  43

  16,909

  797

  604

  840

  Claims in respect of chronic bronchitis and emphysema (PD D12) between 13 September 1993 and 31 October 1995 analysed by Benefits Agency Area Directorate

  Area

  Claims received

  Successful claims1

  Claims disallowed

  AD7 Wessex

  1

  0

  0

  South East total

  747

  47

  563

  Wales and Central England

  AD East Midlands

  6,093

  718

  5,136

  AD2 Midlands South West

  669

  56

  597

  AD3 West Mercia

  3,834

  407

  3,314

  AD4 Wales

  10,113

  1,481

  7,915

  AD5 Merseyside

  531

  49

  476

  AD6 Greater Manchester

  349

  32

  303

  AD7 Lancashire and Cumbria

  2,346

  160

  1,988

  Wales and Central England total

  23,935

  2,903

  19,729

  Scotland and Northern England

  AD1 Tyne Tees

  7,454

  634

  6,579

  AD2 South Yorkshire and Humberside

  6,891

  844

  5,827

  AD3 North and West Yorkshire

  2,909

  446

  2,277

  AD4 Glasgow and Paisley

  249

  8

  165

  AD5 North, Central and West Scotland

  1,939

  64

  1,801

  AD6 East Scotland

  2,465

  104

  2,186

  Scotland and Northern England total

  21,907

  2,100

  18,835

  Grand total

  46,589

  5,050

  39,127

  1 Successful in this context means claims that have resulted in payment of benefit.

  Not all claims will have been decided by 31 October 1995.

  841

  Analysis of claims disallowed between 13 September 1993 and 31 October 1995 and reason for disallowance by Benefits Agency Area Directorate

  Area

  Failed 20 year rule

  Reg 22 (Up to 2 Oct 1994)1,2

  Disablement assessed at less than 14 per cent.

  PD-D12 not diagnosed(Up to 2 Oct 1994)2

  Failed FEV1 test(From 3 Oct 1994)3

  Failed x-ray test(From 3 Oct 1994)3

  Scotland and Northern England

  AD1

  159

  7

  4

  6,147

  143

  119

  AD2

  192

  3

  4

  5,218

  210

  200

  AD3

  104

  10

  3

  2,012

  97

  51

  AD4

  21

  0

  0

  122

  9

  13

  AD5

  102

  0

  0

  1,654

  31

  14

  AD6

  90

  2

  0

  2,025

  25

  44

  Scotland and Northern England totals

  668

  22

  11

  17,178

  515

  441

  Grand total

  2,083

  54

  54

  34,537

  1,338

  1,061

  Notes:

  1Where chronic bronchitis and emphysema is already covered in assessment for pneumoconiosis (Regulation 22).

  2Cases failing on FEV1 test or x-ray test up to 2 October 1994.

  3Figures not collected by Area Directorate prior to 3 October 1994.

  Source:

  Benefits Agency BREM system and Central Data Unit, 100 per cent. count and subject to amendment.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2983]

  Mr. Burt
  The Department is committed to the principles of investor in people and uses the IIP standards to underpin all personnel policies throughout the Department. Individual business units are, however, free to approach the achievement of the standard in ways which best meet their business needs. The Benefits Agency began the process of IIP accreditation as early as 1992 and 20 business units have subsequently received accreditation with a further 113 units at different stages of achievement. The Contributions Agency, War Pensions Agency and Information Technology Services Agency are at various stages of the process with a view to obtaining accreditation during 1996 and 1997. DSS headquarters aim to audit their personnel management practices against the IIP standard during 1996 and the Child Support Agency will encourage individual units to seek accreditation.

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  School Budgets
  Mr. Jopling
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will list the percentage of each shire county's education budget which is held back for central administration together with the amount of money this represents per school pupil. [2570]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The following table shows the percentage of each county's general schools budget reserved centrally in 1995–96 for management and administration, and the amount of money per pupil which this represents.842

  Local education authority

  Management and administration Per cent.

  Amount per pupil £

  Avon

  2.51

  63

  Bedfordshire

  1.62

  39

  Berkshire

  1.59

  37

  Buckinghamshire

  3.17

  77

  Cambridgeshire

  1.41

  33

  Cheshire

  1.33

  29

  Cleveland

  2.33

  54

  Cornwall

  1.23

  29

  Cumbria

  1.18

  27

  Derbyshire

  1.12

  25

  Devon

  1.41

  33

  Dorset

  2.22

  48

  Durham

  1.73

  39

  East Sussex

  1.03

  26

  Essex

  1.74

  40

  Gloucestershire

  2.23

  49

  Hampshire

  2.03

  47

  Hereford and Worcester

  1.35

  30

  Hertfordshire

  0.72

  17

  Humberside

  2.43

  57

  Isle of Wight

  1.33

  32

  Isles of Scilly

  2.22

  95

  Kent

  3.48

  81

  Lancashire

  1.50

  35

  Leicestershire

  1.86

  42

  Lincolnshire

  1.63

  39

  Norfolk

  0.76

  18

  North Yorkshire

  1.67

  37

  Northampstonshire

  1.26

  28

  Northumberland

  1.80

  41

  Nottinghamshire

  2.01

  43

  Oxfordshire

  1.11

  28

  Shropshire

  1.59

  37

  Somerset

  0.84

  18

  Staffordshire

  0.95

  20

  Suffolk

  1.17

  27

  Surrey

  2.02

  51

  Warwickshire

  1.76

  43

  West Sussex

  1.83

  42

  Wiltshire

  1.39

  31

  Notes

  1.The figures have been derived from budget statements published by local education authorities under section 42 of the Education Reform Act 1988 in respect of the financial year 1995–96.

  2.Amounts per pupil have been rounded to the nearest pound.
  843

  Nursery Voucher Scheme
  Sir Thomas Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if the cost of vouchers under the nursery scheme will be deducted from local authority standard spending assessments. [3375]

  Ms Hodge
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if the local education authorities which are piloting the nursery voucher scheme will be subject to the standard spending assessment clawback during the period of the pilot. [3447]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  In both phase 1 and full implementation of the nursery education voucher scheme, vouchers will be funded through a combination of new money and deduction from participating local authorities' standard spending assessments. The deduction will be based on the number of four-year-olds in nursery education places in the maintained sector in a base year, taking into account termly variations in attendance.

  Table 1: Primary

  SSA per pupil (5–10)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount £

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97 £

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  City of London

  2,901

  2,981

  2,736

  20.9

  Camden

  2,900

  2,980

  2,841

  12.6

  Greenwich

  2,711

  2,785

  2,716

  14.3

  Hackney

  3,076

  3,161

  2,991

  2.5

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  2,904

  2,984

  2,808

  8.3

  Islington

  2,888

  2,968

  2,865

  6.1

  Kensington and Chelsea

  2,852

  2,930

  2,628

  0.7

  Lambeth

  3,066

  3,151

  3,024

  2.5

  Lewisham

  2,777

  2,853

  2,803

  10.5

  Southwark

  2,947

  3,028

  2,926

  8.6

  Tower Hamlets

  3,035

  3,118

  3,052

  2.2

  Wandsworth

  2,683

  2,757

  2,654

  3.6

  Westminster

  2,750

  2,826

  2,667

  2.9

  Barking and Dagenham

  2,231

  2,293

  2,273

  9.6

  Barnet

  2,197

  2,257

  2,205

  6.5

  Bexley

  2,064

  2,121

  2,124

  11.3

  Brent

  2,500

  2,568

  2,554

  3.9

  Bromley

  2,013

  2,068

  2,074

  10.1

  Croydon

  2,243

  2,305

  2,278

  8.6

  Ealing

  2,350

  2,414

  2,378

  3.7

  Enfield

  2,234

  2,296

  2,289

  9.7

  Haringey

  2,589

  2,660

  2,632

  2.2

  Harrow

  2,147

  2,206

  2,194

  10.0

  Havering

  2,023

  2,079

  2,104

  15.1

  Hillingdon

  2,133

  2,192

  2,195

  14.1

  Hounslow

  2,260

  2,322

  2,341

  9.7

  Kingston upon Thames

  2,064

  2,121

  2,108

  10.0

  Merton

  2,184

  2,244

  2.216

  7.8

  Newham

  2,581

  2,652

  2,620

  3.6

  Redbridge

  2,164

  2,224

  2,241

  11.6

  Richmond upon Thames

  2,015

  2,071

  2,041

  5.6

  Sutton

  2,093

  2,150

  2,162

  13.7

  Waltham Forest

  2,434

  2,501

  2,484

  7.3

  Birmingham

  2,083

  2,140

  2,173

  4.8

  Coventry

  1,984

  2,038

  2,049

  8.3

  Dudley

  1,813

  1,863

  1,896

  11.5

  Sandwell

  1,986

  2,040

  2,051

  7.3

  Solihull

  1,798

  1,847

  1,872

  8.8

  844

  Local Education Authority SSASs
  Mr. Don Foster
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is the education component of standard spending assessments per pupil(a) between five and 10 years, and (b) between 11 and 15 years, expressed in cash and constant prices, in (i) 1995–96 and (ii) 1996–97, in each local education authority and on average; and what was the percentage change in each local education authority and on average between 1992–93 and the latest year for which figures are available. [3111]

  Mr. Robin Squire
  The following tables set out the information requested. Some care is needed in drawing conclusions about the percentage change in funding between 1992–93 and 1996–97, since the figures take no account of local education authorities' loss of responsibility for certain functions, notably the careers service and school inspections.

  The figures for the secondary sector are also affected by the use from 1995–96 of September in place of January as the date on which pupils are counted for SSA purposes, and above all, by the relative shift in LEA expenditure from the secondary to the primary and nursery sectors, which is subsequently reflected in the SSA distribution.

  845

  Table 1: Primary

  SSA per pupil (5–10)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount£

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97 £

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  Walsall

  1,894

  1,946

  1,992

  9.8

  Wolverhampton

  1,995

  2,049

  2,081

  3.9

  Knowsley

  2,186

  2,246

  2,231

  8.8

  Liverpool

  2,110

  2,168

  2,203

  6.9

  St. Helens

  1,845

  1,895

  1,945

  12.5

  Sefton

  1,875

  1,926

  1,955

  10.6

  Wirral

  1,948

  2,002

  2,024

  8.3

  Bolton

  1,866

  1,918

  1,959

  7.9

  Bury

  1,813

  1,863

  1,909

  13.5

  Manchester

  2,258

  2,320

  2,320

  7.9

  Oldham

  1,919

  1,972

  2,008

  7.0

  Rochdale

  1,932

  1,986

  2,017

  11.8

  Salford

  1,975

  2,029

  2,047

  10.5

  Stockport

  1,775

  1,824

  1,863

  11.7

  Tameside

  1,831

  1,881

  1,908

  7.2

  Trafford

  1,830

  1,881

  1,905

  9.2

  Wigan

  1,809

  1,859

  1,905

  12.9

  Barnsley

  1,869

  1,921

  1,955

  10.8

  Doncaster

  1,934

  1,987

  2,039

  9.6

  Rotherham

  1,871

  1,923

  1,978

  10.1

  Sheffield

  1,922

  1,974

  1,996

  10.0

  Bradford

  1,986

  2,041

  2,070

  5.0

  Calderdale

  1,896

  1,948

  1,986

  9.8

  Kirklees

  1,900

  1,953

  1,972

  6.4

  Leeds

  1,864

  1,915

  1,947

  7.4

  Wakefield

  1,825

  1,876

  1,910

  8.4

  Gateshead

  1,937

  1,990

  2,006

  9.7

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  2,045

  2,102

  2,104

  10.3

  North Tyneside

  1,845

  1,896

  1,946

  8.3

  South Tyneside

  1,932

  1,985

  2,012

  9.6

  Sunderland

  1,919

  1,971

  2,001

  10.9

  Isles of Scilly

  3,347

  3,439

  3,574

  13.3

  Avon

  1,838

  1,888

  n/a

  n/a

  Bedfordshire

  1,995

  2,050

  2,057

  8.5

  Berkshire

  1,988

  2,043

  2,047

  10.3

  Buckinghamshire

  1,966

  2,020

  2,021

  10.7

  Cambridgeshire

  1,876

  1,928

  1,962

  11.2

  Cheshire

  1,817

  1,867

  1,903

  11.8

  Cleveland

  1,940

  1,993

  n/a

  n/a

  Cornwall

  1,893

  1,946

  1,984

  10.3

  Cumbria

  1,856

  1,907

  1,957

  11.0

  Derbyshire

  1,812

  1,862

  1,911

  12.1

  Devon

  1,879

  1,931

  1,958

  11.1

  Dorset

  1,833

  1,883

  1,910

  11.4

  Durham

  1,884

  1,936

  1,983

  11.0

  East Sussex

  2,000

  2,055

  2,043

  11.9

  Essex

  1,989

  2,043

  2,055

  13.2

  Gloucestershire

  1,836

  1,887

  1,912

  10.4

  Hampshire

  1,930

  1,983

  1,989

  11.2

  Hereford and Worcester

  1,827

  1,877

  1,914

  11.8

  Hertfordshire

  2,010

  2,065

  2,074

  12.6

  Humberside

  1,891

  1,943

  n/a

  n/a

  Isle of Wight Council

  2,016

  2,072

  2,070

  10.4

  Kent

  1,968

  2,023

  2,032

  12.5

  Lancashire

  1,877

  1,929

  1,964

  8.8

  Leicestershire

  1,864

  1,915

  1,954

  9.5

  Lincolnshire

  1,873

  1,924

  1,969

  8.8

  Norfolk

  1,881

  1,932

  1,971

  10.2

  North Yorkshire 1

  1,827

  1,878

  n/a

  n/a

  Northamptonshire

  1,836

  1,887

  1,927

  9.5

  Northumberland

  1,825

  1,875

  1,935

  11.1

  Nottinghamshire

  1,883

  1,934

  1,973

  8.3

  Oxfordshire

  1,933

  1,987

  1,985

  10.4

  Shropshire

  1,862

  1,914

  1,952

  10.1

  Somerset

  1,846

  1,897

  1,933

  10.8

  Staffordshire

  1,805

  1,855

  1,894

  11.1

  Suffolk

  1,820

  1,870

  1,901

  10.1

  Surrey

  1,998

  2,053

  2,040

  11.6

  846

  847

  Table 1: Primary

  SSA per pupil (5–10)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount £

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97 £

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  Warwickshire

  1,822

  1,872

  1,906

  10.6

  West Sussex

  1,932

  1,985

  1,987

  12.5

  Wiltshire

  1,835

  1,885

  1,921

  9.8

  Bath and North-east Somerset

  n/a

  n/a

  1,881

  n/a

  City of Bristol

  n/a

  n/a

  2,011

  n/a

  North Somerset

  n/a

  n/a

  1,863

  n/a

  South Gloucestershire

  n/a

  n/a

  1,834

  n/a

  Hartlepool

  n/a

  n/a

  2,010

  n/a

  Middlesbrough

  n/a

  n/a

  2,109

  n/a

  Redcar and Cleveland

  n/a

  n/a

  2,042

  n/a

  Stockton on Tees

  n/a

  n/a

  1,981

  n/a

  City of Kingston upon Hull

  n/a

  n/a

  2,080

  n/a

  East Riding of Yorkshire

  n/a

  n/a

  1,890

  n/a

  North-east Lincolnshire

  n/a

  n/a

  1,982

  n/a

  North Lincolnshire

  n/a

  n/a

  1,965

  n/a

  North Yorkshire 2

  n/a

  n/a

  1,940

  n/a

  York

  n/a

  n/a

  1,888

  n/a

  England

  1,981

  2,036

  2,053

  9.7

  Notes:

  1.The LEA that ceases to exist on 1 April 1996 as a result of Local Government Reorganisation.

  2.The LEA that will exist on 1 April 1996 as a result of Local Government Reorganisation.

  Table 2: Secondary

  SSA per pupil (11–15)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount£

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97£

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  City of London

  9,055

  9,304

  8,717

  163.7

  Camden

  3,648

  3,748

  3,599

  -2.6

  Greenwich

  3,589

  3,688

  3,623

  4.1

  Hackney

  4,359

  4,479

  4,210

  -1.7

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  3,777

  3,881

  3,703

  -2.6

  Islington

  3,963

  4,072

  3,891

  -1.8

  Kensington and Chelsea

  4,071

  4,183

  3,608

  -5.7

  Lambeth

  4,463

  4,585

  4,433

  2.4

  Lewisham

  3,778

  3,882

  3,771

  1.4

  Southwark

  4,090

  4,203

  3,945

  -0.2

  Tower Hamlets

  4,034

  4,145

  4,053

  -7.6

  Wandsworth

  3,617

  3,716

  3,554

  -5.4

  Westminster

  3,637

  3,737

  3,473

  -8.7

  Barking and Dagenham

  2,951

  3,032

  3,059

  0.8

  Barnet

  2,883

  2,962

  2,900

  -4.2

  Bexley

  2,734

  2,810

  2,832

  1.6

  Brent

  3,448

  3,543

  3,511

  -2.6

  Bromley

  2,678

  2,752

  2,746

  -0.2

  Croydon

  3,050

  3,134

  3,092

  0.8

  Ealing

  3,224

  3,313

  3,249

  -3.3

  Enfield

  2,941

  3,021

  3,036

  -0.6

  Haringey

  3,583

  3,681

  3,603

  -4.6

  Harrow

  2,898

  2,978

  2,953

  1.3

  Havering

  2,686

  2,760

  2,818

  5.6

  Hillingdon

  2,838

  2,916

  2,931

  4.3

  Hounslow

  2,959

  3,041

  3,074

  -1.5

  Kingston upon Thames

  2,720

  2,794

  2,789

  -0.4

  Merton

  2,904

  2,984

  2,950

  -1.9

  Newham

  3,439

  3,533

  3,492

  -5.9

  Redbridge

  2,884

  2,963

  2,972

  1.2

  Richmond upon Thames

  2,635

  2,707

  2,662

  -5.7

  Sutton

  2,722

  2,797

  2,831

  1.9

  Waltham Forest

  3,261

  3,350

  3,350

  -1.3

  Birmingham

  2,794

  2,871

  2,909

  -4.2

  Coventry

  2,648

  2,721

  2,733

  -1.3

  Dudley

  2,408

  2,474

  2,527

  1.7

  848

  849

  Table 2: Secondary

  SSA per pupil (11–15)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount £

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97 £

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  Sandwell

  2,642

  2,714

  2,736

  -2.2

  Solihull

  2,376

  2,442

  2,470

  -1.8

  Walsall

  2,501

  2.570

  2,636

  -0.6

  Wolverhampton

  2,691

  2,765

  2,809

  -4.2

  Knowsley

  2,986

  3,068

  3,058

  1.8

  Liverpool

  2,821

  2,898

  2,926

  -3.1

  St. Helens

  2,467

  2,534

  2,610

  3.3

  Sefton

  2,492

  2,560

  2,592

  0.3

  Wirral

  2,606

  2,678

  2,692

  -1.6

  Bolton

  2,488

  2,556

  2,605

  -1.9

  Bury

  2,405

  2,471

  2,518

  2.5

  Manchester

  3,072

  3,156

  3,143

  -0.3

  Oldham

  2,530

  2,600

  2,648

  -3.6

  Rochdale

  2,608

  2,688

  2,713

  2.8

  Salford

  2,652

  2,725

  2,749

  1.4

  Stockport

  2,374

  2,439

  2,484

  1.9

  Tameside

  2,428

  2,495

  2,532

  -2.7

  Trafford

  2,420

  2,487

  2,519

  -1.2

  Wigan

  2,391

  2,457

  2,525

  2.5

  Barnsley

  2,489

  2,557

  2,619

  1.5

  Doncaster

  2,572

  2,643

  2,721

  0.0

  Rotherham

  2,462

  2,529

  2,610

  -0.6

  Sheffield

  2,565

  2,636

  2,681

  1.0

  Bradford

  2,679

  2,752

  2,779

  -3.7

  Calderdale

  2,527

  2,597

  2,651

  0.3

  Kirklees

  2,539

  2,609

  2,639

  -2.6

  Leeds

  2,480

  2,548

  2,599

  -2.0

  Wakefield

  2,421

  2,487

  2,537

  -1.4

  Gateshead

  2,601

  2,673

  2,692

  0.7

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  2,717

  2,792

  2,794

  0.1

  North Tyneside

  2,483

  2,551

  2,622

  -0.3

  South Tyneside

  2,562

  2,633

  2,682

  -0.1

  Sunderland

  2,549

  2,620

  2,675

  1.3

  Isles of Scilly

  4,381

  4,502

  4,796

  4.2

  Avon

  2,460

  2,528

  n/a

  n/a

  Bedfordshire

  2,664

  2,737

  2,751

  -0.7

  Berkshire

  2,664

  2,737

  2,735

  -0.9

  Buckinghamshire

  2,630

  2,702

  2,716

  1.9

  Cambridgeshire

  2,508

  2,577

  2,616

  1.6

  Cheshire

  2,408

  2,475

  2,530

  1.7

  Cleveland

  2,589

  2,660

  n/a

  n/a

  Cornwall

  2,522

  2,591

  2,646

  0.7

  Cumbria

  2,470

  2,538

  2,600

  1.0

  Derbyshire

  2,415

  2,481

  2,557

  2.7

  Devon

  2,506

  2,575

  2,611

  1.5

  Dorset

  2,440

  2,507

  2,538

  1.4

  Durham

  2,512

  2,581

  2,651

  1.5

  East Sussex

  2,672

  2,746

  2,730

  2.4

  Essex

  2,647

  2,720

  2,751

  3.8

  Gloucestershire

  2,435

  2,502

  2,544

  0.6

  Hampshire

  2,575

  2,645

  2,659

  1.8

  Herefordshire and Worcester

  2,439

  2,506

  2,558

  2.3

  Hertfordshire

  2,663

  2,736

  2,756

  2.5

  Humberside

  2,509

  2,577

  n/a

  n/a

  Isle of Wight Council

  2,696

  2,770

  2,757

  0.7

  Kent

  2,620

  2,692

  2,715

  2.9

  Lancashire

  2,502

  2,570

  2,617

  -0.8

  Leicestershire

  2,483

  2,551

  2,605

  -0.1

  Lincolnshire

  2,483

  2,551

  2,632

  -0.4

  Norfolk

  2,508

  2,577

  2,631

  0.8

  North Yorkshire 1

  2,422

  2,489

  n/a

  n/a

  Northamptonshire

  2,448

  2,515

  2,570

  0.0

  Northumberland

  2.421

  2,488

  2,583

  1.5

  Nottinghamshire

  2,506

  2,575

  2,632

  -1.1

  Oxfordshire

  2,575

  2,645

  2,627

  0.1

  Shropshire

  2,479

  2,547

  2,598

  0.3

  Somerset

  2,489

  2,558

  2,582

  1.4

  Staffordshire

  2,398

  2,463

  2,522

  1.3

  850

  851

  Table 2: Secondary

  SSA per pupil (11–15)

  LEA name

  1995–96 cash amount £

  1995–96 (in 1996–97 prices)£

  1996–97 £

  Percentage change between 1992–93 and 1996–97 (cash)

  Suffolk

  2,422

  2,488

  2,540

  0.8

  Surrey

  2,679

  2,753

  2,724

  2.1

  Warwickshire

  2,433

  2,500

  2,545

  1.1

  West Sussex

  2,571

  2,641

  2,649

  2.7

  Wiltshire

  2,451

  2,519

  2,563

  0.3

  Bath and North-east Somerset

  n/a

  n/a

  2,464

  n/a

  City of Bristol

  n/a

  n/a

  2,759

  n/a

  North Somerset

  n/a

  n/a

  2,464

  n/a

  South Gloucestershire

  n/a

  n/a

  2,445

  n/a

  Hartlepool

  n/a

  n/a

  2,675

  n/a

  Middlesbrough

  n/a

  n/a

  2,860

  n/a

  Redcar and Cleveland

  n/a

  n/a

  2,700

  n/a

  Stockton on Tees

  n/a

  n/a

  2,624

  n/a

  City of Kingston upon Hull

  n/a

  n/a

  2,791

  n/a

  East Riding of Yorkshire

  n/a

  n/a

  2,518

  n/a

  North-east Lincolnshire

  n/a

  n/a

  2,640

  n/a

  North Lincolnshire

  n/a

  n/a

  2,597

  n/a

  North Yorkshire 2

  n/a

  n/a

  2,562

  n/a

  York

  n/a

  n/a

  2,534

  n/a

  England

  2,630

  2,702

  2,729

  0.2

  Notes:

  1.The LEA that ceases to exist on 1 April 1996 as a result of Local Government Reorganisation.

  2.The LEA that will exist on 1 April 1996 as a result of Local Government Reorganisation.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps her Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if she will make a statement. [2974]

  Mr. Paice
  The former Department of Employment and the former Department of Education were committed to becoming investors in people. The Department for Education and Employment is determined to achieve that status. An action plan is in preparation building on the work undertaken by the former Departments. No target date has yet been set.

  Training
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what amount was spent on training by her Department per unemployed person for each year since 1989–90 in(a) cash terms and (b) real terms. [2969]

  Mr. Paice
  The information requested is as follows:

  Year

  Amount £

  Real Terms1£

  1985–86

  140

  220

  1986–87

  180

  280

  1987–88

  220

  320

  1988–89

  480

  660

  1989–90

  980

  1,260

  1990–91

  950

  1,130

  1991–92

  560

  630

  1992–93

  430

  460

  1993–94

  500

  520

  1994–95

  610

  630

  1 1995–96 prices

  852
  Mr. John Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what changes will be made to the funding system for youth training and modern apprenticeships in 1996–97; and what plans she has to publish the results of the recent consultation on future funding arrangements. [3908]

  Mr. Paice
  No major changes are planned to the funding system for youth training and modern apprenticeships in 1996–97. A summary of the responses to the consultation document on future funding arrangements for youth training and modern apprenticeships was published on 24 November. Copies have been placed in the Library today.

  Assisted Places Scheme
  Mr. Kaufman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to her answer of 27 November,Official Report, column 445, if she will list for, respectively (a) Manchester grammar school (b) Manchester high school for girls and (c) William Hulme's grammar school, Manchester, how much has been spent by the Government on the assisted places scheme in total, (i) up to but not including the latest year and (ii) in the latest available year; and what additional money will be made available in the planned expansion of the scheme. [3269]

  Mrs. Gillan
  Information is readily available only for the last five years. The amounts spent on assisted places at each of the three Manchester schools cited for the academic years 1990–91 to 1994–95, and estimates for the latest academic year 1995–96, are given in the following table. Provision for the academic year 1996–97, when the scheme's expansion is planned to begin, and for succeeding years will be announced in due course.
  853

  Assisted Places Scheme

  Academic year

  Mancheste Gramma School £000s

  Mancheste High School £000s

  William Hulme's Grammar School £000s

  1990–91 to 1994–95

  3,459

  2,173

  3,059

  1995–961

  816

  566

  746

  1Estimated

WALES

  Student Hardship Funds
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many students made applications for hardship funds in(a) 1993 and (b) 1994; and if he will make a statement. [2658]

  Mr. Richards
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) on 29 November 1995,Official Report, column 755.

  Small Firms
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his policy concerning small firms; and if he will make a statement. [2665]

  Mr. Richards
  The second competitiveness White Paper called "Forging Ahead", published in May 1995, outlined a programme of measures to assist the growth and competitiveness of the small firms sector.

  The Welsh Office works with local authorities, training and enterprise councils, the development agencies and local enterprise agencies in providing a range of services for small businesses in Wales. We have established eight business development consortia—business connect—to streamline the assistance available and to make it easily accessible through a single low-cost, all-Wales telephone number. This service will be operational from 15 January 1996.

  New dwellings completed

  Numbers

  Local authority

  1992 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Local authority

  1993 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Local authority

  1994 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Aberconwy

  0

  43

  226

  0

  82

  182

  20

  72

  304

  Alyn and Deeside

  22

  104

  283

  0

  50

  148

  16

  23

  167

  Arfon

  20

  13

  108

  0

  74

  214

  0

  79

  143

  Blaenau Gwent

  0

  104

  237

  0

  0

  67

  0

  25

  101

  Brecknock

  0

  43

  121

  0

  21

  80

  0

  71

  139

  Cardiff

  6

  496

  1.188

  0

  420

  934

  0

  385

  1,258

  Carmarthen

  0

  37

  207

  0

  45

  265

  0

  24

  234

  Ceredigion

  0

  0

  277

  0

  0

  315

  0

  12

  230

  Colwyn

  0

  93

  337

  0

  12

  161

  0

  36

  308

  Cynon Valley

  0

  66

  198

  0

  66

  237

  0

  36

  177

  Delyn

  0

  127

  389

  0

  131

  298

  0

  46

  235

  Dinefwr

  0

  60

  267

  6

  107

  227

  0

  7

  105

  Dwyfor

  0

  39

  73

  3

  49

  84

  0

  17

  63

  Glyndwr

  0

  30

  168

  0

  22

  148

  0

  25

  78

  Islwyn

  0

  50

  110

  0

  54

  94

  0

  0

  51

  Llanelli

  0

  0

  117

  31

  0

  197

  45

  6

  232

  Lliw Valley

  0

  97

  144

  0

  22

  94

  0

  72

  120

  854

  Non-departmental Public Bodies
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list the powers transferred from non-departmental public bodies to local government in each of the last three years. [2916]

  Mr. Hague
  In October 1994, the responsibility for operating mid-Wales development grant; development of rural initiative, venture and enterprise (DRIVE) grant; rural (buildings) conversion grant and community enterprise grant was transferred to local authorities. In addition, from 1 April 1995 local authorities were given direct control of funds for social and economic development, previously provided in the form of grant assistance by the Development Board for Rural Wales under section 4.1.(d)(i) and (ii) of the Development of Rural Wales Act 1976.

  Surplus Explosives (Disposal)
  Mr. Simpson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what records his Department holds regarding surplus stocks of conventional explosives brought from RAF Great Orton to Royal Ordnance establishments in Wales for disposal between 1946 to 1948; what current environmental monitoring is conducted by his Department on these disposal sites; and if he will list the locations of all land and off-shore sites in and around Wales used for such disposal. [3100]

  Mr. Hague
  The Welsh Office has no records or responsibilities in this area.

  New Dwellings
  Mr. Dafis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list for each district council area the number of houses built(a) by district councils, (b) by housing associations, (c) by other public bodies and (d) in total for each of the last three available years. [1852]

  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  The available information is given in the following table. Only one dwelling classified as "other public bodies" was built in the period: this has been included with the local authority number for Rhondda for 1992.
  855

  New dwellings completed

  Numbers

  Local authority

  1992 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Local authority

  1993 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Local authority

  1994 Housing association

  All tenures1

  Meirionnydd

  0

  21

  79

  0

  27

  59

  0

  32

  115

  Merthyr Tydfil

  0

  40

  157

  0

  30

  116

  0

  51

  142

  Monmouth

  0

  105

  354

  0

  124

  543

  0

  39

  456

  Montgomeryshire2

  0

  49

  273

  0

  130

  291

  0

  203

  328

  Neath

  0

  82

  298

  5

  0

  177

  0

  71

  214

  Newport

  0

  59

  289

  6

  67

  269

  108

  10

  320

  Ogwr

  13

  60

  476

  0

  268

  513

  0

  234

  706

  Port Talbot

  0

  72

  179

  0

  43

  193

  0

  60

  132

  Preseli Pembrokeshire

  8

  0

  175

  14

  66

  163

  12

  72

  266

  Radnor

  28

  10

  111

  0

  63

  175

  6

  38

  157

  Rhondda3

  1

  106

  185

  0

  58

  159

  0

  79

  139

  Rhuddlan

  20

  16

  118

  25

  24

  110

  0

  108

  204

  Rhymney Valley

  0

  1

  304

  0

  87

  198

  0

  38

  120

  South

  0

  14

  280

  0

  22

  153

  0

  95

  347

  Pembrokeshire

  Swansea

  0

  76

  326

  58

  347

  709

  20

  369

  678

  Taff-Ely

  0

  100

  388

  0

  31

  401

  0

  82

  499

  Torfaen

  0

  56

  230

  0

  222

  439

  0

  105

  263

  Vale of Glamorgan

  16

  94

  395

  24

  32

  420

  0

  41

  358

  Wrexham Maelor

  0

  97

  479

  0

  56

  399

  0

  200

  524

  Ynys Mon

  0

  0

  103

  0

  1

  58

  0

  0

  56

  Source:

  Local Authority Returns.

  Notes:

  1 Includes completions in the Private sector.

  2 Montgomeryshire includes new town completions.

  3 The local authority figure for 1992 includes one Government Department completion.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2987]

  Mr. Hague
  The Welsh Office has been working towards the investor in people standard since December 1992. Following a period of assessment and planning, an action plan was submitted to investors in people UK in April 1995. The Department will seek accreditation when the action plan has been implemented.

  Inspector Days (Allocation)
  Mr. Hain
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales how many inspector days allotted to Welsh primary schools in the academic year 1994–95 involved(a) inspectors who had teaching experience in primary schools and (b) inspectors who had teaching experience in secondary schools; and what was the total number of inspector days allotted. [3110]

  Mr. Richards
  Operational issues relating to school inspections are a matter for Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools in Wales. I have passed this inquiry to him: he will respond to the hon. Member in due course.

  Urban Development Programmes
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales on what dates urban development programmes prepared by the Welsh Development Agency were submitted to 856
  (a) the European Commission and (b) the single programme document monitoring committees for industrial south Wales and rural Wales. [3385]

  Mr. Hague
  The Welsh Development Agency's urban development programmes are not submitted to either the European Commission or the single programme document monitoring committees for industrial south Wales and rural Wales.

  Freight Terminals
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what consultations he has had with the chairman of the Welsh Development Agency in respect of the European freight multi-modal development for south Wales; when he anticipates approving the scheme; and if he will make a statement. [3387]

  Mr. Hague
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Sweeney) on 8 November,Official Report, columns 923–24.

  Police Authority Funding
  Mr. Sweeney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what are his proposals for police authority revenue spending in 1996–97. [3912]

  Mr. Hague
  I propose to make £331.4 million available from total standard spending in Wales to fund police services in 1996–97. This sum comprises £165.2 million in cash-limited police grant to be paid by the Home Secretary and £166.3 million in standard spending
  857
  assessments. It represents an overall increase of £15.7 million, or 5 per cent. on 1995–96. The sums for each police authority are set out in the following table:

  £ million

  Police grant

  Standard spending assessment

  Total

  Dyfed Powys

  24.2

  24.3

  48.5

  Gwent

  31.3

  31.4

  62.7

  North Wales

  34.6

  34.7

  69.3

  South Wales

  75.1

  75.8

  150.9

  These figures include a transfer of around £10.5 million for the transfer of responsibility for policing the Rhymney valley area from south Wales to Gwent police authority.

  The Welsh Office is today writing to each of the police authorities in Wales to consult them on their provisional standard spending assessments for 1996–97. This figure may alter slightly if the balance of the police funding formula as between English and Welsh police authorities changes as a result of consultation.

  It is essential that police authorities budget wisely and do not impose an unreasonable burden on council taxpayers. I therefore propose provisional capping principles to inform their budget decisions. Police authorities would not be capped if their budget requirements for 1996–97 were:
  less than 12.5 per cent above the sum of the authority's standard spending assessment and police grant; and
  did not exceed their 1995–96 base budget by more than the greater of the sum of the increases in their standard spending assessment and police grant of 3.5 per cent.

  I will make my final decisions on capping principles in the light of budgets set by police authorities.

  I am still considering my capping proposals for the new unitary authorities in Wales. I propose to announce provisional capping principles and standard spending assessments for these authorities in mid-December.

  Copies of the consultation letter will be placed in the Library of the House.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Sweeney
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what level of support for Welsh local authority revenue spending he proposes to provide through aggregate external finance for 1996–97. [3913]

  Mr. Hague
  On 28 November,Official Report, column 600, I announced that I propose to set total standard spending in Wales for 1996–97 at £2,867.3 million; and central Government support for that level of spending through aggregate external fiance at £2,517.4 million.

  Within aggregate external finance, I propose to make available £1,792 million in revenue support grant; £459 million in distributable non-domestic rates; £237.4 million in specific grants; and £29 million to damp council tax increases arising from the disaggregation of the county and district councils' 1995–96 standard spending assessments and budgets to unitary authorities. The threshold for damping wiH be set at 0 per cent.
  858
  My Department has today written to the Welsh local authority associations to consult them on my proposals for revenue support grant in 1996–97.

  Copies of the consultation letter will be placed in the Library of the House.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Prisoner Transfers
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons convicted of crimes connected with(a) republican and (b) loyalist violence have been transferred to prisons in Northern Ireland from (i) Great Britain and (ii) the Republic of Ireland; how many have been transferred from prisons in Northern Ireland to prisons in (i) Great Britain and (ii) the Republic of Ireland since 1 September 1994; and on what dates the transfers took place. [2373]

  Sir John Wheeler
  Responsibility for this subject has been delegated to the Northern Ireland Prison Service under its chief executive, Mr. Alan Shannon. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. D. Shannon to Mr. William Ross, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to this Parliamentary Question.
  Since 1 September 1994 14 persons convicted of crimes connected with Republican violence have been transferred to prisons in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. In 9 cases the transfer was permanent and in 5 cases it was temporary. No person convicted of crimes connected with Loyalist violence has requested transfer. No persons convicted of Republican or Loyalist violence have been transferred from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland.

  Drug Misuse
  Mr. Rathbone
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he intends to publish the policy statement produced by the Northern Ireland committee on drug misuse; and what proposals are planned based on that policy. [2137]

  Sir John Wheeler
  Arrangements are in hand for publication of the policy statement of the Northern Ireland committee on drug misuse before Christmas. I have established a new top level central co-ordinating group for action against drugs, of which I am chairman. The group comprises senior representatives from Northern Ireland Government Departments, the medical profession and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. It will ensure that each Government Department in Northern Ireland is playing its full part to combat the drugs problem and that their action plans are driven forward in a co-ordinated manner and build the recommendations of the policy statement.

  Prisoners (Early Release)
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on how many occasions since 1 September 1994 representations have been made to Her Majesty's Government for the early release of convicts serving sentences in(a) Northern Ireland and (b) Great Britain for crimes related to (i) republican violence and (ii) loyalist violence (1) by Ministers of the Government
  859
  of the Irish Republic directly, (2) via the Maryfield secretariat, (3) by the SDLP or (4) by Sinn Fein; and what representations have been made by Her Majesty's Government regarding the early release of loyalist convicts held in prisons in the Irish Republic for such crimes. [2371]

  Sir John Wheeler
  It is not possible to provide an answer in the form requested and I can answer only for representations received by or on behalf of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Prison issues have been discussed at each meeting of the inter-governmental conference, of which there have been five since 1 September 1994. No representations have been received from the Irish side of the Anglo-Irish secretariat. Representations have been made on three occasions by members of the SDLP with regard to particular cases concerning those convicted of crimes of republican and loyalist violence. No representations have been made by Sinn Fein.

  Her Majesty's Government have made no representations to the Irish Government on the subject of the early release of prisoners.

  Mr. Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons convicted of crimes connected with(a) republican and (b) loyalist violence have been given early release or have had their remission extended in the period from 1 September 1994 to the latest available date. [2374]

  Sir John Wheeler
  Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Northern Ireland Prison Service under its chief executive, Mr. Alan Shannon. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from A. D. Shannon to Mr. William Ross dated 28 November 1995:
  The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has asked me to reply to your Parliamentary Question regarding the number of persons convicted of crimes connected with Republican and Loyalist violence who have been given early release or had their remission extended.
  Since 17 November 85 releases have taken place under the terms of the Northern Ireland (Remission of Sentences) Act 1995. However, although the Northern Ireland Prison Service holds information regarding the parliamentary affiliation of individual offenders, the nature of the original offence could only be identified at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people convicted of crimes related to(a) republican and (b) loyalist violence have been given early release from prisons in the Republic of Ireland since 1 September 1994; and how many persons convicted of each such category of crimes are still serving sentences in the Irish Republic. [2372]

  Sir John Wheeler
  As this is a matter for the Government of the Republic of Ireland I am unable to supply the answer.

  Executive Agencies (Overseas Travel)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by staff of the agency(a) the cost, (b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff involved. [2361]
  860
  Sir John Wheeler
  Overseas travel by staff in executive agencies during 1994–95 was as follows:

  1994–95 Overseas travel

  Agency

  (a) Cost £

  (b) Countries visited

  (c) Posts held by staff involved

  Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland

  15,000

  Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, USA, Netherlands

  Chief Executive, Deputy Director, Head of Computer System, Senior Mapping and Charting Officer, Computer Systems

  Valuation and Lands Agency

  1,483

  Netherlands

  Senior Valuation Assistant, 5 Valuation Assistants

  Social Security Agency

  5,503

  Germany and USA

  Director of Local Operations, Director of Central Operations, Unit Manager of Paid Order Unit

  Training and Employment Agency

  46,537

  Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Singapore and USA

  Chief Executive, 2 Senior Instructional Officers, 2 Higher Instructional Officers, Training Services Manager,3 Grade 5s, 4 Gradew 7s, 3 Deputy Principals, Staff Officer, Development Manager

  Pigs
  Mr. William Ross
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many pigs were slaughtered in each pig factory in Northern Ireland; for each factory how many were imported in each week from the period beginning 3 September until the latest available date; and what were the equivalent figures for the same period last year. [2370]

  Mr. Ancram
  I am unable to provide the information requested as it is not appropriate to disclose information on the performance of individual pig slaughterhouses.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when they started the process, when they expect to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2981]

  Sir John Wheeler
  The Northern Ireland civil service has been committed to the achievement of IIP status since 1992.

  Individual Departments and agencies in the Northern Ireland civil service have developed their own strategies and timetables for pushing this initiative forward and plans are at an advanced stage to make formal commitments to achieving the IIP standard. To date, the

  861
  Training and Employment Agency and the internal audit group of the Department of Health and Social Services have achieved investor in people status.

  Social Fund
  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he plans to make a further allocation of funds to the discretionary social fund budget in the current financial year. [3773]

  Mr. Moss
  I am very pleased to announce that the Northern Ireland social fund discretionary budget for 1995–96 will be increased by a total of £1.5 million as a result of better than expected loan recoveries by the Social Security Agency. This will increase the original allocation to a total of £33.34 million.

  This increase in the social fund budget will ensure that more people receive help and that the fund continues to play an important role in targeting resources on those most in need.

  Details of the revised budget have been placed in the Library.

  Chief Electoral Officer (Report)
  Mr. Nigel Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish the report of the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland for 1994–95. [3774]

  Sir Patrick Mayhew
  The Chief Electoral Officer's report was laid before the House yesterday. Copies are available from the Library.

HEALTH

  Medical Devices
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health with what frequency the premises of manufacturers of medical devices are visited and inspected by the Medical Services Agency. [2392]

  Mr. Horam
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the Medical Devices Agency under its chief executive Mr. Alan Kent. I have asked him to reply to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Alan Kent to Mr. Gordon Prentice, dated 30 November 1995:
  I am writing to you in response to your Parliamentary Question about the frequency at which the premises of manufacturers of medical devices are visited and inspected by the Medical Devices Agency.
  Manufacturers of medical devices applying for inclusion in the Register of Approved Manufacturers are assessed before registration. The aim is to carry out further assessments every 3 years when the company seeks re-registration. Additional special audits or visits may be conducted when there is reason to suspect that the company no longer satisfies the registration requirements.
  New Statutory requirements, harmonised within the European Union through Directives, are replacing progressively the voluntary Manufacturer Registration Scheme (MRS). Since 1 January 1995 some manufacturers have chosen to use independent certification bodies, that is Notified Bodies, to assess their quality assurance systems and confirm they are complying with the requirement of the Directives. Through mutual recognition agreements, MDA has been able to use Notified Body
  862
  assessments as a basis of registration to the MRS. The Manufacturer Registration Scheme will be discontinued in mid-1998 when the regulations supporting the Directives are fully implemented.
  I hope the above is helpful.

  Prescription List
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will put the Smith and Nephew four layer bandage for leg ulcers on the prescription list. [2682]

  Mr. Malone
  No. This method of treatment may already be provided cost effectively to patients in clinics and at home through the community health services.

  Anabolic Steroids
  Mr. Tom Pendry
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimates he has as to the number of fatalities caused by the abuse of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. [2503]

  Mr. Bowis
  The number of deaths involving anabolic steroids and stimulants was 22 in 1992, the latest year for which figures are available.

  NHS Administrative Costs
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what were the administrative costs of NHS as a percentage of the total NHS budget in each year since 1989. [3120]

  Mr. Malone
  The information is shown in the table. Changes over the roles and responsibilities of family practitioner committees, family health services authorities, district health authorities, and regional health authorities, and the transfer of functions to national health service trusts, mean that the figures are not strictly comparable.

  Adminstration costs as a percentage of total revenue expenditure for the NHS in England

  Administration expenditure £000

  Total revenue expenditure £000

  Percentage of revenue expenditure on administration

  1989–90

  730,500

  18,275.603

  4.0

  1990–91

  929,947

  20,161,643

  4.6

  1991–92

  846,467

  23,292,462

  3.6

  1992–93

  962,862

  27,468,802

  3.5

  1993–94

  1,136,415

  28,927,234

  3.9

  1994–95

  1,180,479

  29,457,618

  4.0

  Sources:

  1. The annual accounts of district and regional health authorities and the special health authorities of the London postgraduate teaching hospitals.

  2. The annual accounts of family practitioner committees, 1989–90.

  3. The annual accouns of family health services authorities, 1990–91 to 1994–95.

  4. The annual accounts of the Prescription Pricing Authority.

  5. The annual accounts of the Dental Practice Board.

  Notes:

  1. The figures for 1994–95 are provisional.

  2. RHA and DHA costs are those reported in the accounts as "Authority administration and purchasing expenses". This includes capital charges after 1991–92. FPC/FHSA administration costs are those reported in the annual accounts as revenue administration costs and represent that part of total expenditure which is not medical, dental, ophthalmic or pharmaceutical.
  863

  Norplant
  Mr. Heppell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if Hoechst Roussel Ltd. sought to make it a condition of its licence to supply Norplant in the United Kingdom that its use be restricted to specially trained and experienced doctors. [3127]

  Mr. Malone
  Applications from companies for licences are confidential under section 18 of the Medicines Act.

  Training of doctors in the use of a device such as a Norplant implant is a matter for the professional bodies, in this case the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and of General Practitioners.

  The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has recently introduced a scheme for recognition of training in the insertion and removal of Norplant and this includes the company training scheme. The product information is therefore being changed to add to the recommendation that Norplant is inserted and removed by a trained health professional.

  Mr. Heppell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to revoke the licence granted to Hoechst Roussel Ltd. to supply Norplant in the United Kingdom. [3126]

  Mr. Malone
  The licensing authority has no such plans. Like all hormonal contraceptives, Norplant has hormone-related side effects, which may lead to a need to discontinue this method of contraception. The product literature informs doctors and patients of these known side effects.

  Factor 8
  Mr. Heppell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will provide extra funds to all hospital trusts to cover the extra cost of recombinant factor 8 products, incurred as a result of the imposition of value added tax on these products. [3134]

  (2) what measure he is taking to ensure that hospital trusts buy and continue to buy the new recombinant factor 8 products in the wake of the imposition of value added tax on these products. [3131]

  Mr. Horam
  It is for clinicians to decide what products are used in the light of available resources and the needs of individual patients. Factor 8 derived from human plasma is used for the majority of patients and is exempt from value added tax.

  Mr. Heppell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations has he made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding his decision to impose value added tax on recombinant factor 8 products. [3132]

  Mr. Horam
  The question of whether value added tax is chargeable on factor 8 products turns on whether they are derived from human blood. My Department has provided technical advice to HM Customs and Excise on that issue.

  Hormone Replacement Therapy
  Mr. Pope
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to remove the requirement of a separate prescription charge for each drug contained in HRT preparations; and if he will make a statement. [2862]
  864
  Mr. Malone
  None.

  The regulations require a charge to be paid for each quantity of a drug supplied. This includes each quantity of medicine in duopacks such as HRT which are packed in this way for the convenience of the patient and for the manufacturer.

  Maternity Services, East London
  Mr. Timms
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the cost per delivery of the maternity services in the City and east London district at(a) Homerton hospital, (b) Newham general hospital and (c) Royal hospitals trust. [2863]

  Mr. Malone
  This information is not available centrally.

  Access Committee for England
  Ms Lynne
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the level of funding the Access Committee for England has received from his Department for each year since 1989 in 1995 prices. [2914]

  Mr. Bowis
  The Access Committee for England has received the following levels of grant under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968, at 1995 prices, since 1989.

  1989–90:£119,159

  1990–91:£149,670

  1991–92:£155,277

  1992–93:£172,252

  1993–94:£156,832

  1994–95:£134,875

  Accident and Emergency Trauma and Orthopaedic Service, Leeds
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what response he has made to the review of accident and emergency trauma and orthopaedic service in Leeds. [3123]

  Mr. Horam
  This review of services was undertaken by independent experts commissioned by the Leeds review task force. I understand a draft report prepared by the task force will be circulated widely for comment in the near future.

  Doctors Recruitment
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations he has received alleging difficulty in recruiting and retaining general practitioners to(a) general practices and (b) hospitals; and if he will make a statement. [3141]

  Mr. Malone
  We have received representations through informal discussions with the profession and the national health service on pockets of difficulty within general practice and on particular difficulties in filling some hospital specialty posts. We are addressing these through improved work force planning.
  865

  NHS Organ Donor Register
  Mr. Churchill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what further plans he has to advertise the existence of the national organ donor scheme. [3133]

  Mr. Horam
  Since we launched the national health service organ donor register in October 1994 over 2¼million people have applied to join, of which some 800,000 had joined when applying for a driving licence or registering with a general practitioner. We have been monitoring the effectiveness of the different ways used to encourage people to join and plan further publicity initiatives for early in the new year.

  Efficiency Scrutiny
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the work on efficiency scrutiny he announced on 11 October; who is conducting the efficiency scrutiny; and what are its terms of reference. [3340]

  Mr. Horam
  My right hon. the Secretary of State has asked Mr. Jim Hammond, chief executive of East Gloucestershire national health service trust, to lead the efficiency scrutiny into the burdens of paperwork in NHS trusts and health authorities. The terms of reference for the team are:

  a. to identify achievable reductions in the administrative burden associated with the work of NHS trusts and health authorities and recommend action which will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, consistent with the objective of improving the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of patient services;

  b. to examine the traffic in guidance and information that flows between the Department of Health—including the NHS Executive and regional health authorities—and trusts and health authorities, and make recommendations that will reduce the burden on the NHS while retaining the information necessary for the effective management of the service.

  The team will report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and the Prime Minister's efficiency adviser, Sir Peter Levene, before the end of March 1996 with recommendations for implementation within two years.

  Private Finance Initiative
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if the services of(a) chiropodists, (b) dieticians, (c) medical laboratory scientists, (d) occupational therapists, (e) orthoptrists, (f) physiotherapists, (g)radiographers and (h)speech therapists are categorised as clinical services for the purposes of the private finance initiative in the NHS. [3341]

  Mr. Horam
  There is no requirement upon national health service trusts to include these services as part of the testing of private finance options. But these are matters for local determination and cannot be decided without the support of local clinicians.
  866
  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many national health service trusts in England are developing plans to use the PFI to care for acutely mentally ill patients. [3220]

  Mr. Horam
  To ensure that national health service capital projects meet NHS needs as cost effectively as possible, the option of using private finance, under this Government's private finance initiative, must be considered for every potential capital project. Formulation of plans for projects to meet local needs is the responsibility of NHS trusts and health authorities. The information requested is not available centrally.

  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the principal differences between the private finance initiative schemes which may be developed with public finance if no suitable private capital can be raised and those which may be developed only if private capital can be raised; and if he will make a statement. [3476]

  Mr. Horam
  To ensure that national health service capital projects meet NHS needs as cost-effectively as possible, the option of using private finance, under this Government's private finance initiative, must be considered for every potential capital project. In the event that private capital is unobtainable for a particular scheme, public capital funding will be considered.

  Mr. Bayley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the nature, value and location of all private finance initiative projects in the NHS with a project value of £1 million or more which have been approved to date. [3475]

  Mr. Horam
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville) gave the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) on 6 November at columns 622–23.

  One further project with a capital value greater than £1 million has been approved:

  £ million

  Anglia and Oxford Region, South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust

  New hospital developments at High Wycombe and Amersham

  35

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the level and percentage of trust income in each region received from non-national health service sources in each year since 1991–92. [3258]

  Mr. Horam
  The information for 1994–95 is shown in the table. Information from previous years is not available centrally.
  867

  Non-national health service income for trusts in England by region—1994–95

  £000

  Non-NHS income

  Total income

  Percentage of total income from non—NHS sources

  Northern and Yorkshire

  161,439

  2,890,531

  5.6

  Trent

  101,214

  1,972,187

  5.1

  Anglian and Oxford

  134,998

  2,039,415

  6.6

  North Thames

  415,104

  3,512,907

  11.8

  South Thames

  218,884

  2,974,716

  7.4

  South and West

  181,283

  2,725,080

  6.7

  West Midlands

  112,680

  1,935,391

  5.8

  North-west

  145,952

  3,010,741

  4.9

  Source:

  The annual financial returns of NHS trusts.

  Notes:The figures are provisional

  Birth Certificates
  Mr. Rooker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he proposes to bring forward legislation to implement the restrictions on access to birth certificates outlined in the White Paper, Cm 939, "Registration: Proposals for Change. [3428]

  Mr. Horam
  This proposal was part of a wide package of reforms to the system for registering births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales. The Government remain committed to introducing the necessary legislation to implement these reforms as soon as a suitable opportunity occurs.

  Hospital and Community Health Services
  Mr. Lester
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he will announce the 1996–97 hospital and community health services revenue allocations for the new health authorities. [3479]

  Mr. Dorrell
  Actual allocations cannot be made until the new health authorities come into existence on 1 April 1996. For planning purposes general allocations based largely on 1 April 1995 boundaries are given in the table.

  1996–97 Planned General Allocations

  £000

  Avon

  337,304

  Barking and Havering

  171,182

  Barnet

  143,641

  Barnsley

  100,028

  Bedfordshire

  202,770

  Berkshire

  277,247

  Bexley and Greenwich

  205,751

  Birmingham

  462,072

  Bradford

  209,879

  Brent and Harrow

  216,882

  Bromley

  122,748

  Buckinghamshire

  239,990

  Bury and Rochdale

  168,041

  Calderdale and Kirklees

  249,711

  Cambridge and Huntingdon

  156,965

  Camden and Islington

  233,218

  Cornwall and Isles of Scilly

  207,826

  County Durham

  270,191

  Coventry

  130,087

  Croydon

  137,654

  Doncaster

  126,568

  Dorset

  303,240

  868

  1996–97 Planned General Allocations

  £000

  Dudley

  122,509

  Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow

  323,042

  East and North Hertfordshire

  191,435

  East Kent

  265,644

  East Lancashire

  227,473

  East London and the City

  337,546

  East Norfolk

  247,968

  East Riding

  220,686

  East Surrey

  166,567

  East Sussex

  339,567

  Enfield and Haringey

  227,820

  Gateshead and South Tyneside

  170,615

  Gloucestershire

  225,907

  Herefordshire

  66,306

  Hillingdon

  106,373

  Isle of Wight

  62,393

  Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster

  188,705

  Kingston and Richmond

  140,930

  Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham

  390,098

  Leeds

  310,704

  Leicestershire

  345,957

  Lincolnshire

  256,550

  Liverpool

  229,833

  Manchester

  231,624

  Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth

  293,838

  Morecambe Bay

  138,684

  Newcastle and North Tyneside

  227,875

  North and East Devon

  203,643

  North and Mid Hampshire

  220,406

  North Cheshire

  144,428

  North Cumbria

  132,664

  North Derbyshire

  155,004

  North Essex

  334,368

  North Nottinghamshire

  159,622

  North Staffordshire

  202,485

  North-west Anglia

  163,117

  North-west Lancashire

  214,847

  North Yorkshire

  291,886

  Northamptonshire

  230,680

  Northumberland

  129,161

  Nottingham

  262,200

  Oxfordshire

  213,607

  Portsmouth and South-east Hampshire

  221,919

  Redbridge and Waltham Forest

  213,535

  Rotherham

  108,909

  Salford and Trafford

  202,844

  Sandwell

  133,326

  Sefton

  131,981

  Sheffield

  247,740

  Shropshire

  162,556

  Solihull

  76,909

  Somerset

  174,035

  South and West Devon

  259,464

  South Cheshire

  248,878

  South Derbyshire

  226,186

  South Essex

  273,693

  South Humber

  151,864

  South Lancashire

  126,771

  South Staffordshire

  220,006

  Southampton and South-west Hampshire

  192,698

  St. Helens and Knowsley

  146,504

  Stockport

  113,796

  Suffolk

  258,491

  Sunderland

  134,128

  Tees

  244,373

  Wakefield

  140,480

  Walsall

  109,564

  Warwickshire

  201,221

  West Hertfordshire

  208,469

  West Kent

  369,257

  West Pennine

  205,342

  West Surrey

  256,275

  West Sussex

  309,922

  869

  1996–97 Planned General Allocations

  £000

  Wigan and Bolton

  249,232

  Wiltshire

  306,714

  Wirral

  154,813

  Wolverhampton

  107,187

  Worcestershire

  208,121

  England

  20,884,969

  Community Care
  Mr. Lester
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he proposes to announce the allocations of community care special transitional grant to each social services authority in England for 1996–97. [3482]

  Mr. Dorrell
  I am today publishing indicative allocations showing each English social services authority's share of the special transitional grant for community care in 1996–97. The STG for 1996–97 will be £418 million, bringing to over £2.25 billion the total additional resources provided to local authorities for their new community care responsibilities. As last year, the whole of the STG will be distributed on the basis of personal social services standard spending assessments. Authorities have until 12 January 1996 to make representations about their proposed allocations. A copy of the circular is being placed in the Library.

  Personal Social Services
  Mr. Matthew Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what specific grants and capital resources he is making available to local authorities for personal social services for 1996–97. [3480]

  Mr. Dorrell
  Specific grants will again be available in 1996–97 as follows:

  £ million

  Mental illness services

  58.3

  HIV and AIDS services

  13.7

  Services for alcohol and drugs misusers

  2.5

  Guardians ad litem and reporting officers

  6.3

  Social services training

  35.5

  Each grant will continue to support a maximum of 70 per cent. of total expenditure.

  The mental illness grant is planned to increase by a further £9 million in 1997–98. The grant will be targeted on people with severe mental illness.

  The capital grant for secure accommodation for young people will be £27.2 million in 1996–97.

  Annual capital guidelines of £96.6 million will be notified to local authorities. Supplementary credit approvals will again be available for mental illness services—£11.6 million—and AIDS and HIV services— £3.1 million. The credit approval for information technology has been phased out.

  Mr. Matthew Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for health what resources are being provided through the standard spending assessment for social services for 1996–97. [3481]
  870
  Mr. Dorrell
  A total of £6911.6 million will be distributed by the personal social services standard spending assessment in 1996–97, compared with £6212.7 million in 1995–96. Total standard spending on social services, including specific and special grants, will be £7446.5 million in 1996–97, compared with £6965.9 million in 1995–96; an increase of 6.9 per cent.

  GP Numbers
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the total number of general practitioners in(a) 1990 and (b) 1994. [3755]

  Mr. Malone
  The information is shown in the list.

  1 October 1990: 25,622

  1 October 1994: 26,567

  The data relate to unrestricted principals in England.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2977]

  Mr. Horam
  The Department is taking forward work aimed at seeking accreditation as an investor in people by October 1996; the formal commitment was made in December 1994.

  Hospitals (Smoking)
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what is his policy on the provision of smoking rooms for the use of patients, staff and visitors within NHS hospitals; [2966]

  (2) how many employees of the Rotherham hospital trust signed a petition seeking the provision of a smoking room at Rotherham district general hospital; and what account he took of the petition before he wrote to the hon. Member for Wentworth recently on this subject; [2970]

  (3) under what regulation Rotherham general hospital has barred a person from smoking in his own motor vehicle in the car park at the hospital; and what guidance he has issued on that matter; [3021]

  (4) what advice was sought from the South Yorkshire fire service in regard to the prohibition of smoking by the Rotherham hospital trust; [2961]

  (5) what considerations underlay (a) his approval of the ban on smoking at Rotherham district general hospital and (b) his Department's letter to the hon. Member for Wentworth in respect of the provision of smoking rooms in hospitals. [3024]

  Mr. Horam
  The Department of Health issued guidance in 1992 (HSG(92)14), copies of which are available in the Library, to all national health service authorities and trusts, in line with the "Health of the Nation" White Paper, requesting that they implement policies to enable the national health service to become smoke free. Whilst the guidance sets out the basic requirements, detailed implementation is the responsibility of individual authorities and trusts. It is
  871
  therefore for local managers and clinicians to decide whether they feel it necessary or practicable to set aside smoking rooms for staff and patients.

  Information on an individual national health service trust's implementation of these policies is not available centrally. The hon. Member may wish to contact Mr. A. Baker, chairman of Rotherham General Hospitals national health service trust, for details of the trust's policy.

  Bed Availability
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 27 November, concerning criteria for determining the number of beds per unit of population provided by district health services, what is the basis of his determination of the allocation of(a) revenue and (b) capital expenditure derived from public or private funds. [3355]

  Mr. Horam
  Allocation of hospital and community health services revenue to health authorities is determined by a national weighted capitation formula. Its aim is to enable health authorities to purchase similar levels of health services for resident populations in similar need.

  A proportion of publicly provided capital is allocated to trusts to provide for the maintenance of their existing estate and routine replacement of equipment. Proposals for new capital schemes have to be supported by a business case which must demonstrate that private finance has been fully considered. Where private finance is not best value for money public funds can be made available.

  Mental Health Act 1983
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people were detained under the provisions of(a) the Mental Health Act 1983 and (b) other acts in (i) NHS hospitals, (ii) private and (iii) private nursing homes in each of the last five years. [3344]

  Mr. Bowis
  Information available centrally is on the number of admissions under the Mental Health Act 1983 to national health service hospitals and private hospitals and private nursing homes and is published in the statistical bulletin "In-Patients Formally Detained in Hospitals Under the Mental Health Act 1983 and other Legislation, England: 1987–88 to 1992–93", copies of which are available in the Library.

  Market Testing
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the service areas that have been or are planned to be market-tested. [3346]

  Mr. Horam
  A list of services where one or more trusts have either completed a market test or plan to market test is as follows.

  MARKET TESTING: RANGE OF SERVICES

  MAIN SERVICES HEADINGS

  Administration, Information and Financial

  Building and Engineering Services

  Building and Equipment/System Maintenance

  Hotel and Non Clinical Support

  Clinical and Clinical Support

  872

  Training

  GROUPS OF SERVICES UNDER EACH MAIN SERVICE HEADING

  Administration, Information and Financial

  Advertising and Recruitment

  Agency Staffing

  Audit

  Banking

  Clerical and Secretarial

  Computing

  Consultants

  Financial

  Human Resources

  Insurance

  Legal

  Management Services

  Micro-filming

  Building and Engineering

  Building and Engineering

  Design

  Electrical

  Energy Management

  Estates Management

  Repairs and maintenance

  Fire Systems

  Flooring

  Lighting

  Gas Supply

  Glazing

  Painting

  Water Services

  Building and Equipment/Systems Maintenance

  Building

  Building and Engineering

  Estates

  Equipment/Systems

  Hotel and Non-Clinical Support

  Accommodation

  Car Parks

  Catering

  Courier

  Creche

  Domestic

  Environmental Health Management

  General Patient Services

  Facilities Management

  Gardening

  Pest Control

  Hotel Services

  Laundry/Linen

  Supplies

  Pottering

  Security

  Waste Disposal

  Switchboard/Reception

  Transport

  Clinical and Clinical Support

  Anaesthetics

  Bio-Engineering

  873

  Chiropody

  Clinical Coding

  Continuing Care-Elderly

  CSSD1

  Dental

  Clinical Genetics

  HSDU1

  Haematology

  Infection Control

  IVF Services1

  Lithotripsy

  Medical Physics

  Mobility Provision

  Medical Photography

  Nuclear Medicine

  Ophthalmology

  Magnetic Resonance Imaging

  Occupational Therapy

  Occupational Health

  Orthotics

  Pathology

  Oxygen Therapy Units

  Prosthetics

  Patient Appliance

  Pharmacy

  Physiotherapy

  Termination of Pregnancy

  Radiology

  Speech Therapy

  Perfusionists

  Training

  Education

  Fire

  Staff

  1. There is no standard definition of services or list of services within the NHS and those listed above relate to Provider Units' interpretation.2. Service headings such as "Hotel Services" and "Facilities Management" include a wide and varying range of individual services e.g. catering, portering, security car parking. Again there is no set pattern of which service make up Hotel Services etc., but relates to individual Provider Units' interpretation.1 CSSD = Central Sterile Supply Department, HSDU = Hospital Sterilizing and Disinfecting Unit, IVF = In-Vitro Fertilisation.

  NHS Finance
  Mr. Milburn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what(a) surpluses and (b) deficits were recorded by each different health authority by region, in each of the last three years. [2951]

  Mr. Horam
  [holding answer 28 November J 995]:The information requested from the annual accounts, for the last three years will be placed in the Library.
  874

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Invoices
  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the average length of time it takes for his Department to pay invoices. [938]

  Mr. Boswell
  [holding answer 22 November 1995]:In common with most organisations, MAFF, including the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, agrees payment terms with its suppliers in advance of orders being placed. The accounts payable system is designed to make payments only when they are due, in accordance with those terms. Thus, the average length of time it takes to pay an invoice is dependent on prior agreement with suppliers. Data emerging from the payments system indicate that 85.41 per cent. of all payments made by MAFF during the first quarter of 1995–96 were paid by the due date.

  The chief executives of the Pesticides Safety Directorate, Meat Hygiene Service, Central Science Laboratory and ADAS will reply directly to the hon. Member.

  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many (i) orders and (ii) firms are represented by the 10.5 per cent. of invoices not paid by his Department within 30 days or in accordance with contractual agreements in 1994–95; and how many of those are related to firms with fewer than 500 employees. [914]

  Mr. Boswell
  [holding answer 22 November 1995]:The information requested is not available. During 1994–95, MAFF was in the process of installing a new computerised payments system and, as a result, consistent statistically valid data on prompt payment performance could not be collected. Currently, MAFF, including the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, the Veterinary Laboratory Agency and ADAS, does not identify separately payment performance data relating to firms with fewer than 500 employees, although this possibility is one of a number of enhancements to the systems now under consideration.

  The chief executives of the Meat Hygiene Service, the Central Science Laboratory and the Pesticides Safety Directorate will reply directly to the hon. Member.

  Mrs. Roche
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how his Department publicises payment practices other than as percentages of invoices paid late. [952]

  Mr. Boswell
  [holding answer 22 November 1995]:With effect from the 1995 report published in March 1995, Cm 2803, MAFF's, including the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, payment practices, including its prompt payment objectives, are published in its departmental annual report. Now that the new computerised payments system is operational, future annual reports will include data on prompt payment performance.

  The chief executives of the Pesticides Safety Directorate, the Meat Hygiene Service, the Central Science Laboratory and ADAS will reply directly to the hon. Member.
  875
  Letter from G. K. Bruce to Mrs. Barbara Roche, dated 22 November 1995:
  The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, has asked me to reply, in respect of the Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD), to your questions about payment of invoices.
  I would refer you to the answer I gave on 3 November to your earlier questions on this subject (Official Report, Cols. 507–508 refer). In line with Government policy and normal terms of trade, PSD operates a prompt payment policy and aims to settle invoices within 30 days of receipt. Our records show that so far during 1995/96 98% of valid invoices have been paid within this timescale. We publicised our payment policy in our 1994/95 Annual Report and Accounts and our payment performance will be included in future Annual Reports.

  Letter from Phillip Needham to Mrs. Barbara Roche, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has asked me to reply directly to you concerning your Parliamentary Question (PQ 29) in which you asked the average length of time it takes for this Agency to pay invoices. [938]
  In line with good commercial practice, ADAS agrees payment terms with its suppliers in advance of orders being placed. Our payment system is designed to make payments only when they are due, in accordance with those terms. The average length of time it takes to pay an invoice is currently 32 days.

  Letter from Phillip Needham to Mrs Barbara Roche, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Minister of Agriculture has asked me to reply directly to you concerning your Parliamentary Question (PQ 32) in which you asked how this Agency publicises payment practices. [952]
  The terms of payment are reproduced on the back of the purchase order which is sent to the supplier. Additionally, our payment policy appears on page four of the ADAS Annual Report and Accounts 1994/95.

  Letter from Johnston McNeill to Mrs. Barbara Roche, dated 30 November 1995:
  As Chief Executive of the Meat Hygiene Service, I have been asked to respond to your questions regarding payment of invoices in respect of this Agency. As I stated in my letter to you of 3 November 1995 (Official Report column 507), the MHS is keen to pay invoices for all its suppliers on time. In particular, payment to vets that we contract much of our work to, many of which are small practices, have all been paid within agreed timescales since 1 April this year when this Agency was launched. These payments account for 78% of the value of our supplier invoices. [938], [914+952]
  As we were only launched in April this year, your supplementary question to those I answered in my earlier letter, regarding the number of orders and firms affected by non-payment within 30 days, is not applicable to this Agency.
  Concerning your final question about publication of payment practices, the Meat Hygiene Service intends to include this information in its first and subsequent set of annual accounts, when these are published after our first year of operation.

  Letter from Professor P. I. Stanley to Mrs. Barbara Roche, dated 30 November 1995:
  You asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food three separate questions relating to the payment of invoices. The Central Science Laboratory (CSL) became a MAFF executive agency in April 1992 and the Minister has asked me to reply to you in respect of the Agency as these are operational matters for which I am responsible.
  Firstly, our most recent data shows that the average length of time taken by the Agency to pay invoices, from the date of the invoice to the date of payment, is 23 days.
  876
  Secondly, in 1994–95 some 10% of CSL invoices were not paid within 30 days of the invoice date. This represented approximately i) 1,000 orders and ii) 300 firms. I am unable to confirm the number relating to firms with fewer than 500 employees as this information is not available.
  Finally, it is my intention in future to publicise the Agency's payment practices in our Annual Report and Accounts.

  Intervention Stores (Beef)
  Mr. Martin Redmond
  To ask the Minster of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list by location, the current cost of the stock of beef held in intervention stores; and what the figure was(a) 12 months and (b) 24 months ago. [2321]

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Since the question concerns matters which are direct responsibility of the chief executive of the Intervention Board Executive Agency. I have asked him to reply directly to the hon. Member.

  Letter from George Trevelyan to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has asked me to reply to your written Parliamentary Question (64) tabled for answer on 27 November 1995. [2321]
  "To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, if he will list by location, the current cost of stock of beef held in intervention stores; and what the figure was (a) 12 months and (b) 24 months ago."
  Member States are required annually to submit to the Commission a Stock Account showing the value of beef stocks held in intervention stores as at 30 September. The information set out in the attached table lists the locations of stores that held stocks of beef for the years in question. A breakdown of the costs of stocks by location is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost because the book value of the stock at any particular time is assigned under EC accounting conventions to the stockholding at a national level. The value of the stocks held in the UK on 30 September in each year was:

  1993: £87,575,989

  1994: £31,473,031

  19951: £6,003,333

  1 provisional.

  I am sending a copy of this letter, together with a copy of the table to the House of Commons Library and the Public Information Office.

  Intervention stores holding beef stocks Stores containing intervention beef stocks at 30 September identified *

  Location of cold stores

  1993

  1994

  1995

  North of England and Scotland

  Inverness

  *

  *

  *

  Dundee

  *

  *

  *

  Edinburgh

  *

  *

  *

  Gateshead

  *

  *

  —

  Glasgow

  *

  *

  *

  Glenrothes

  *

  *

  *

  Bellshill

  *

  *

  *

  Aberdeen

  *

  *

  *

  Midlands

  Grimsby (x3)

  *

  *

  —

  Marston

  *

  *

  —

  Hull (x2)

  *

  *

  *

  Liverpool (x3)

  *

  *

  *

  Salford

  *

  *

  —

  St. Helens

  *

  *

  —

  Leeds(x3)

  *

  *

  *

  Fleetwood

  *

  *

  —

  Preston

  *

  *

  —

  877

  Intervention stores holding beef stocks Stores containing intervention beef stocks at 30 September identified *

  Location of cold stores

  1993

  1994

  1995

  Doncaster

  —

  *

  *

  Pontefract

  *

  —

  —

  Blackburn

  *

  *

  —

  Tamworth

  *

  *

  *

  Eccleshall

  *

  *

  —

  Cannock

  *

  *

  —

  Manchester

  *

  —

  —

  Retford

  *

  *

  —

  Sheffield

  *

  *

  —

  Shrewsbury

  *

  *

  —

  Marston

  *

  *

  —

  Scunthorpe

  *

  *

  *

  Oswestry

  *

  —

  —

  Nottingham

  *

  *

  —

  East and South-east

  Lowestoft

  *

  *

  *

  Southall

  *

  —

  —

  Spalding

  *

  *

  —

  Lympne

  *

  *

  —

  Hornsey

  *

  *

  *

  Gillingham

  *

  *

  —

  Kings Lynn (x2)

  *

  *

  *

  Peterborough

  *

  *

  *

  Stratford

  *

  *

  —

  Wisbech

  *

  *

  *

  Dagenham

  *

  *

  —

  March

  *

  *

  —

  Bury St. Edmunds

  *

  *

  —

  Leicester

  *

  —

  —

  Luton

  *

  —

  —

  Thetford

  *

  *

  —

  Wigston

  *

  —

  —

  Paddock Wood

  *

  *

  —

  Sevenoaks

  *

  —

  —

  South-west and Wales

  Walsall

  *

  *

  —

  Cornwall

  *

  *

  —

  Willand

  *

  *

  *

  Sherbourne

  *

  *

  —

  Brierly Hill

  *

  *

  —

  Avonmouth

  *

  —

  —

  Cardiff

  *

  *

  —

  Eastleigh

  *

  —

  —

  Exeter

  *

  *

  *

  Newport

  *

  *

  *

  Plymouth

  *

  *

  —

  Swansea

  *

  *

  *

  Taunton

  *

  *

  —

  Tewkesbury

  *

  —

  —

  Northern Ireland

  Banbridge

  *

  *

  *

  Belfast (x3)

  *

  *

  *

  Ballymena

  *

  *

  *

  Lurgan

  *

  *

  *

  Portadown (x2)

  *

  *

  *

  Lisburn (x2)

  *

  *

  *

  Dungannon

  *

  *

  *

  Antrim

  *

  *

  *

  Newtonabbey

  *

  *

  *

  Larne

  *

  *

  *

  Omagh

  *

  *

  *

  Coleraine

  *

  *

  *

  Source:Intervention Board IMD-B November 1995.
  878

  Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what measures are being taken by his Ministry to prevent the falsification by farmers of documentation regarding BSE infected cattle. [2669]

  Mrs. Browning
  The Ministry requires that ear tag numbers of all cattle being moved to a market, or presented for slaughter, and which are accompanied by farmers' declarations, are checked by an official veterinary surgeon against the Ministry's central record of BSE cases. Enforcement as regards false documentation is a matter for local authorities, but prosecution is actively encouraged by the Ministry.

  Official veterinary surgeons have also been asked to be alert for any indication of possible fraud, such as the replacement of ear tags, and to inform a divisional veterinary manager of the State Veterinary Service of any suspicion they have so that the circumstances can be investigated.

  Baby Milk Formula
  Mr. Chris Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list the reports received from the inquiry panel established by the local authority co-ordinating body on trading standards to investigate alleged infringements of the Baby Milk Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula Regulations 1995; what steps he will take to establish uniformity in the enforcement approach; and if he will make a statement. [2530]

  Mrs. Browning
  No such inquiry panel exists. The Department of Health, in consultation with representatives of health professions, voluntary groups, baby milk manufacturers and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is drawing up guidelines, as required by the regulations, on the donation of informational and educational materials produced by infant formula manufacturers and retailers. The guidance notes will shortly be circulated to interested parties for comment. In addition, LACOTS is preparing guidance on the implementation and interpretation of the regulations.

  The two documents will assist enforcement officers in local authorities to achieve a uniform approach in the enforcement of the regulations.

TRANSPORT

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2985]

  Mr. Norris
  The Department of Transport is committed to taking forward investor in people progressively.

  The Department's executive agencies are progressively implementing investor in people at a pace relating to their own circumstance.
  879
  Three pilot schemes have been developed in the central transport unit. Of these the marine accident investigation branch has submitted its investors in people portfolio to Hants training and enterprise council.

  Oil Tankers
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many oil tankers over(a) 10,000 tonne net registered tonnage, (b) 20,000 tonne net registered tonnage, (c) 50,000 tonne NRT and (d) 100,000 tonne NRT visited British ports in 1993 and 1994; and how many were fitted with double hulls. [2852]

  Mr. Norris
  The information is as follows:

  Gross registered tonnage

  1993

  1994

  Over 10,000

  4,341

  4,412

  Over 20,000

  2,435

  2,513

  Over 50,000

  1,221

  1,284

  Over 100,000

  140

  133

  Figures for net registered tonnage—NRT—and the number of double hull oil tankers are not available. As the regulations requiring new oil tankers to be fitted with double hulls, or similar structures, have only recently been introduced, the majority of existing oil tankers have single hulls.

  Airports
  Mr. Ainger
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list those airports that are equipped with distance measuring equipment in England and Wales. [2853]

  Mr. Norris
  The following aerodromes in England and Wales are equipped with distance measuring equipment

  Barrow/Walney Island

  Biggin Hill

  Birmingham

  Blackbushe

  Blackpool

  Bournemouth

  Bristol

  Cambridge

  Cardiff

  Carlisle

  Clacton

  East Midlands

  Exeter

  Fairoaks

  Filton

  Gamston/Retford

  Gloucestershire

  Hawarden

  Humberside

  Leeds Bradford

  Liverpool

  London City

  London Gatwick

  London Heathrow

  London Luton

  London Stansted

  880

  Lydd

  Manchester

  Newcastle

  Norwich

  Oxford (Kidlington)

  Plymouth

  Shoreham

  Southampton

  Southend

  Swansea

  Teesside

  Warton

  Welshpool

  Woodford

  Yeovil (Westland)

  Source:Communications (COM) section of UK Air Pilot, published by the Civil Aviation Authority.

  National Express
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much National Express was sold for on privatisation; and what is its current stock market value. [3252]

  Mr. Norris
  The net proceeds to the National Bus Company from the sale of its subsidiary, National Express, in 1988 was £10.1 million. My Department does not hold details of its current stock market value but the present National Express Group bears no resemblance to the original company sold by NBC.

  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what discussions he has had with the chairman of British Bus concerning the payment of sums of money as gifts to the former chairman of National Express. [3336]

  Mr. Norris
  None. Any financial transactions between business partners of companies in the private sector are matters for them.

  Vehicle Emissions
  Mr. Chidgey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many complaints about vehicles emitting excessive exhaust fumes have been referred to the Vehicles Inspectorate in each of the last five years. [3471]

  Mr. Norris
  I have asked the chief executive of the Vehicle Inspectorate executive agency to write to the hon. Member.

  Letter from Ron Oliver to Mr. David Chidgey, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question concerning the number of complaints about vehicles emitting excessive exhaust fumes referred to the Vehicle Inspectorate in each of the last 5 years.
  We cannot quantify the total number of complaints received on smoke emissions; many complaints made are on an ad hoc basis and do not exclusively deal with excessive exhaust fumes. However, since 1991 the Vehicle Inspectorate has run a system where members of the public can ring the "Smoky Vehicle Hotline" and report commercial vehicles seen producing excessive amounts of exhaust smoke.
  The total number of reports received via the Hotline for the past 5 years were:

  881

  1991/92: 1,483

  1992/93: 2,481

  1993/94: 2,887

  1994/95: 8,113

  April to October 1995: 11,861

  Light Rail Funding
  Sir Tom Arnold
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the Manchester passenger transport authority's strategic development plan; if he will make a statement on the future of light rail funding; and what assessment he has made of the benefits which would arise from extending Metrolink. [3374]

  Mr. Norris
  I refer to the replies I gave on Friday 24 November to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley) and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris),Official Report columns 349–50.

  Vehicle Pollution
  Mr. Chidgey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to require local authorities to carry out spot checks for polluting vehicles. [3466]

  Mr. Norris
  We are currently consulting interested parties on how best to implement in practice enabling regulations which could be made under the provisions of section 87 of the Environment Act 1995 to permit local authorities, with police support, to carry out emissions checks on vehicles using the road.

  Channel Tunnel Freight
  Mr. Chris Davies
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will estimate(a) the volume of goods currently being shipped by security approved freight forwarders by rail through the channel tunnel per week and (b) the volume being shipped by road and ferry because of the restrictions imposed by the Channel Tunnel (Security) Order 1994; and if he will make a statement. [2684]

  Mr. Watts
  The average number of containers from security approved channel tunnel freight forwarders carried through the channel tunnel for the month of October 1995 was over 260 per week.

  Decisions on the means of transport are commercial ones for the shipper concerned.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Child Refugees
  Sir Michael Shersby
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the projected number of child refugees entering the United Kingdom during 1995; and if he will make a statement. [1370]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  It is estimated that some 600 unaccompanied children will claim asylum in the United Kingdom in 1995.
  882

  Private Prisons
  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what instructions he has given to private prisons regarding H.O. Reg. 20/1989. [1371]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Prison Department circular instruction 20/89 was superseded by the Prison Service policy on caring for the suicidal as set out in instruction to governors 1/94. Contractors responsible for privately managed prisons are expected to have arrangements which are consistent with this policy.

  Probation Service
  Mr. Clapham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to restructure the probation service. [1372]

  Mr. Sackville
  To reinforce court and public confidence in the probation service's work, my right hon. and learned Friend has this year published both revised national standards for community sentences, and the Green Paper, "Strengthening Punishment in the Community", aimed at restructuring community punishment. In addition, my right hon. and learned Friend has recently announced new arrangements reforming the qualifying training and recruitment of probation officers.

  Law and Order, Lichfield
  Mr. Fabricant
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to visit Lichfield to discuss law and order; and if he will make a statement. [1374]

  Mr. Maclean
  My right hon. and learned Friend has no immediate plans to visit Lichfield. We should congratulate Staffordshire police force on the 13 per cent. reduction in burglary and the 7 per cent. reduction in vehicle crime recorded by them in the 12 months to June 1995.

  Prisoners (Drugs)
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in what percentage of British prisons illegal drugs have been detected in the last year. [1376]

  Mrs. Widdecombe
  Illegal drugs have been detected in all but two Prison Service establishments in England and Wales during the period 1 November 1994 to 31 October 1995.

  This means that drugs have been detected in 98.5 per cent. of establishments.

  Mr. Austin-Walker
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his latest estimate of the number of prisoners using drugs. [1375]

  Miss Widdecombe
  It is too early in the implementation of mandatory drug testing to be able to give an accurate assessment of the number of prisoners misusing drugs.

  Figures from the eight first phase sites show 36 per cent. confirmed positive drug tests, but this cannot be extrapolated to the total population.
  883

  Asylum Seekers
  Mr. Timms
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what account he takes of the likely safety of asylum applicants if returned to Sri Lanka when deciding such applications; and if he will make a statement. [1377]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  All applications for asylum, regardless of nationality, are carefully considered in accordance with our obligations under the 1951 United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees. Each case is assessed on its merits taking account of all the circumstances, including conditions in the country of origin.

  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what percentage of in-country applications for asylum are made within(a) one week of the applicant entering the country, (b) two to three weeks of entering the country, (c) three to four weeks of entering the country, (d) two to six months of entering the country and (e) more than six months of entering the country; and if he will make a statement. [2348]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  [holding answer 29 November 1995]:Information regarding the length of time between arrival date and application date, for those who enter the United Kingdom as visitors but subsequently claim asylum, is given in the table.

  Average time taken1 to apply for asylum by persons granted leave to enter the United Kingdom as visitors, January to September 1995

  Period of time between arrival and application

  Percentage

  0 to 2 weeks

  27

  2 to 4 weeks

  10

  1 to 2 months

  10

  2 to 6 months

  27

  over 6 months

  26

  Total

  100

  1 Estimated.

  Mr. Straw
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the total number of applicants for asylum(a) excluding and (b) including dependants, for each calendar month from January 1990, with totals for each year. [3227]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Annual figures for the number of asylum applications both excluding and including dependants for the years 1984 to 1994 are given in table 1.2 of Home Office statistical bulletin "Asylum Statistics United Kingdom" issue 15/95, a copy of which can be found in the Library. Table 2.3 of this publication gives monthly figures for the number of principal applications in 1994 and the first quarter of 1995. Equivalent information for 1991 to 1993 is given in issues 12/92, 19/93 and 17/94 of the same publication which can also be found in the Library. Monthly application figures for years prior to 1991, and monthly application figures including dependants, are not available.

  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the number of persons who applied for political asylum who(a) were not admitted, (b) were admitted on a temporary basis, (c) had their applications refused, and (d) had their applications accepted, in each year between 1988 and 1994. [3142]
  884
  Mr. Kirkhope
  [holding answer 28 November 1995]:Information is given in table 1.1 of the Home Office statistical bulletin "Asylum Statistics United Kingdom 1994", issue 15/95 on applications for asylum, split by those on arrival at a United Kingdom port of entry and those who applied "in country" after having been admitted to the United Kingdom for some reason under immigration rules, and on the number of decisions made on asylum applications, split by type of decision. A copy of this publication is available in the Library.

  Those applying for asylum on arrival at a United Kingdom port maybe granted temporary admission pending the outcome of their application or, depending on the individual circumstances of the case, detained. Separate information on this is not available.

  Mr. Fraser
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applications for political asylum are currently undecided. [1365]

  Miss Widdecombe
  As at 31 October this year, there were 66,665 applications for asylum in the United Kingdom outstanding.

  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many asylum seekers are currently being held in prisons; and at what annual cost to public funds. [2497]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  As at 21 November 1995, a total of 776 persons who had at some stage sought asylum were detained. Of these, 378 were detained in Prison Service establishments, including 253 at locations used almost exclusively for housing asylum detainees. These figures include people awaiting removal following refusal of their applications as well as those whose applications were under consideration or subject to appeal.

  The Prison Service does not separate out costs according to the category of inmate but in 1993–94, the latest period for which published figures are available, the net operating cost per prisoner place in local prisons and remand centres was £21,400.

  Prison Places
  Mr. Mullin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has of the number of available places in British prisons; and if he will make a statement. [1378]

  Miss Widdecombe
  On Monday 20 November 1995, the certified normal accommodation available for use in prison establishments in England and Wales was 51,185 places.

  Police
  Mr. Nigel Griffiths
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has had from the Association of Chief Police Officers on the likely impact of the Budget on the service it delivers. [1379]

  Mr. Maclean
  None. Detailed proposals for police funding in England and Wales in 1996–97 will be announced later today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales.
  885
  Mr. Kirkwood
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to increase police strength in the next year; and if he will make a statement. [1360]

  Mr. Howard
  My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister has pledged additional funding to enable chief constables in England and Wales to recruit an extra 5,000 officers over the next three years. The details of police funding proposals for 1996–97 will be announced later today.

  Metropolitan Police
  Mr. Harry Greenway
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers are currently on the beat in the metropolis; at what cost to public funds; what were the figures in May 1979 in real terms; and if he will make a statement. [1380]

  Mr. Maclean
  I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that, at the end of July 1995, there were 12,055 police officers on patrol in the Metropolitan police district—6,002 of these were assigned to foot patrol duties. The cost of this function is £502,482,000 per annum—£246,216,000 for foot patrol officers.

  Comparable figures are not available for 1979.

  Under-age Gambling
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate the number of under-16-year-olds who regularly play fruit machines; and if he will make a statement. [1969]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Statistics on the use of gaming machines are not available.

  We have not carried out recent research on the subject but we understand that an independent survey of school children was carried out this summer drawn from 12 schools in the east, north-east and south-west of England. Out of 1,665 pupils aged 12 to 15, 10 per cent. said that they played fruit machines at least once a week.

  Prison Accommodation, Wales
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions during 1995 each of the prisons at(a) Cardiff, (b) Swansea and (c) Usk have exceeded the certified normal accommodation; and if he will make a statement. [2167]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Elfyn Llwyd, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Home Secretary has asked me to reply to your Question about the number of occasions during 1995 each of the prisons at (a) Cardiff, (b) Swansea and (c) Usk have exceeded the certified normal accommodation.
  Cardiff and Swansea prisons have had populations in excess of certified normal accommodation available for use throughout 1995. The latest monthly information available shows that Usk prison had a population in excess of the certified normal accommodation available for use at the end of each of the last 8 months (March to October).
  886
  Population pressures in South Wales will be eased considerably when new accommodation comes into use at Cardiff in May/June 1996 (204 places) and at Swansea in August 1996 (103 places). A new prison at Bridgend is planned to come into use in 1997–98 and will provide about 600 new places.

  Remand Prisoners
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions remand prisoners committed by courts in Wales have been held in prisons outside Wales for each of the last three full years for which figures are available and for 1995 to the latest available date; and what percentage this figure constitutes of the total number of remand prisoners committed by the same courts. [2168]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Elfyn Llwyd, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question asking, on how many occasions remand prisoners committed by courts in Wales have been held in prisons outside Wales for each of the last three full years for which figures are available and for 1995 to the latest available date; and what percentage this figure constitutes of the total number of remand prisoners committed by the same courts.
  The available information relates to the number of remand prisoners who were first received into a Prison Service establishment in England from a court in Wales and is given in the attached table. The number of occasions when remand prisoners committed by courts in Wales, who were first held in a Welsh prison and subsequently transferred on remand to a prison in England, is not available.

  Receptions of remand prisoners first received into a Prison Service establishment in England from a court in Wales, 1992-October 1995

  Year

  Remanded into custody by a Welsh court but first received into an English prison1 2

  Percentage of all persons remanded into custody by a Welsh court who were first received into a prison in England

  1992

  590

  25

  1993

  874

  25

  1994

  991

  26

  1995 (January-October)

  821

  25

  1 Provisional figures.

  2 First received as untried and convicted unsentenced prisoners who were not previously held as untried.

  Fire Authorities
  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice he has received from HM chief inspector of fire services on the effects of the 1995 financial settlement for fire authorities on fire brigade response times. [1373]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  In general, brigades remain able to meet the nationally recommended minimum standards of fire cover—which include the response times that fire brigades are expected to maintain. Her Majesty's inspectors of fire services draw attention to any
  887
  exceptions in the course of their annual inspection of brigades. It is for the fire authority concerned to take the appropriate action in any such case.

  Investors in People
  Mr. Byers
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps his Department is taking to achieve investor in people status; when it started the process; when it expects to achieve investor in people status; and if he will make a statement. [2978]

  Mr. Howard
  The Home Office is fully committed to achieving accreditation as an investor in people. Action to this end is under way throughout the various agencies and other constituent parts of the Department, reflecting the different needs of each area and the different lengths of time each has been working towards the standard. Some parts of the Department have already reached the standard and others are expected to be ready for assessment within the next 12 months.

  Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many charges made under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 have been contested in court; how many appeals have been lodged; and what is his estimate of the total cost to public funds of the implementation of this measure. [2963]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Detailed information is not collected centrally on numbers of persons charged for offences, nor about pleas and subsequent appeals. However, 2,811 persons were prosecuted for offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act between 1992 and 1994; in the same period 1,226 were found guilty, and a further 597 were cautioned.

  Information on the cost to the police, local authorities, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the courts of operating the Dangerous Dogs Act is not held centrally.

  Mr. Colin Ivor Dunning
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he received the application for the case of Mr. Colin Ivor Dunning to be referred to the Court of Appeal under the provisions of section 17 of the Criminal Appeals Act 1968. [3173]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  Representations were received from Mr. Dunning's solicitors on 3 February 1994. Supplementary representations were received in May 1995.

  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to reply to questions put in correspondence from the solicitors acting for Mr. Colin Ivor Dunning. [3174]

  Mr.Kirkhope
  Officials have written to the solicitors with our decisions on Mr. Dunning's case and the reasons for that decision.

  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to give a decision in the case of Mr. Colin Ivor Dunning. [3175]
  888
  Mr. Kirkhope
  I have written to the hon. Member with our decision today.

  Bingo
  Mr. McWilliam
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has for deregulating the bingo industry. [1353]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  We are reviewing the present controls on bingo clubs as part of the Government's deregulation initiative.

  Asylum and Immigration
  Ms Roseanna Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent representations he has received on asylum and immigration; how many were(a) in favour and (b) opposed to further changes to existing legislation; and if he will make a statement. [1366]

  Miss Widdecombe
  In the period 1 June to 23 November 1995, we received 634 representations from hon. Members on matters which relate broadly to asylum and immigration policy, including our proposals for further legislative and other measures. It is not possible to break down this figure in the form requested.

  Migration (Former Yugoslavia)
  Mr. Morgan
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 23 November,Official Report, column 291–92, if he will specify the immigration rules relating to private medical treatment; if he will list the applications received by his Department from the International Organisation for Migration the Child Advocacy International for children to be brought from former Yugoslavia, indicating a date and the number of children; and if he will make a statement. [3386]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  In order to qualify under the immigration rules for private medical treatment in the United Kingdom, an applicant must demonstrate that satisfactory arrangements for the treatment have been made, that there are sufficient private funds available to meet the costs of the treatment, and that he intends to leave the United Kingdom at the end of the treatment.

  The arrangements between International Organisation for Migration and Child Advocacy International concern the evacuation of nationals of Bosnia-Herzegovina, who require visas in order to travel to the United Kingdom. Visa applications must be made at a British diplomatic post abroad, which is a matter for my right hon. Friend and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

  Immigration, Asylum and Nationality (Legislation)
  Mr. Spearing
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the date of the first reading of each Bill introduced by Her Majesty's Government since 1979 relating to immigration, asylum, nationality or a related topic; and if he will indicate in respect of each the date of publication, and where relevant, command numbers of any Green Papers, White Papers or consultative documents relating thereto. [3343]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  The information requested is as follows:
  889

  British Nationality Act 1981

  Date for First Reading: 13 January 1981

  White Paper: July 1980, Cmnd 79871

  British Nationality (Falkland Islands) Act 1983 (introduced as a private Member's Bill)

  Date of First Reading: 4 November 1992

  British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1985

  Date of First Reading: 10 January 1985

  Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act 1987

  Date of First Reading: 4 March 1987

  Immigration Act 1988

  Date of First Reading: 5 November 1987

  British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990

  Date of First Reading: 4 April 1990

  Asylum Bill (1992)

  Date of First Reading: 1 November 1991

  Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993

  Date of First Reading: 22 October 1992

  1This followed a Green Paper in April 1977, Cmnd 6795.

  Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries
  Mr. Merchant
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the Boundary Commission intends to conduct an interim review of parliamentary constituencies in England. [3943]

  Mr. Howard
  The commission has informed me that it intends to consider making a report on parliamentary constituencies in Hereford and Worcester and the west midlands, and also in Essex and the London borough of Redbridge and of Waltham Forest. The commission intends to commence forthwith an interim review of parliamentary constituencies in each of those areas.

  Police Grant
  Mr. Congdon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to announce the allocations of police grant for individual police authorities in 1996–97 and the allocations of the funding for 5,000 extra officers announced by the Prime Minister; and if he will make a statement on the impact of these allocations on the overall funding of police authorities in that year. [3944]

  Mr. Howard
  I have today put a copy of my proposals for the allocation of police grant for 1996–97 in the Library. I intend to implement these proposals subject to consideration of any representations I receive about them.

  The police service has indicated its support in principle for the continued distribution of police grant in accordance with a needs-based formula, and I am therefore proposing to continue to allocate the greater part of police grant according to the police funding formula.

  I am, however, proposing a number of detailed changes to the formula in response to the representations which have been made to me about the working of the formula. The principal changes which I am proposing are:
  an increase in the share of available funding allocated by the formula's pensions indicator from 9 per cent. to 12.3 per cent.;
  a reduction in the share of available funding allocated by the formula's establishment indicator from 50 to 40 per cent.; and,
  the introduction into the formula of a sparsity indicator to allocate 0.5 per cent. of available funding.
  890
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced funding for 5,000 extra police officers over the public expenditure survey period and an additional £20 million of police grant has been made available in 1996–97. I am proposing to allocate the £20 million according to the daytime and resident populations of each police force area.

  I am also aware of, and share, public concern that policing levels generally should be maintained. I therefore propose to apply an additional rule to police grant allocations which would ensure that each police authority other than the Metropolitan police can receive 3 per cent. more funding in 1996–97 than it could have received in 1995–96. For the Metropolitan police, the cap on its reserves will be lifted allowing it to carry forward the substantial extra reserves it has accumulated during 1995–96.

  The 3 per cent. additional rule, and the extra freedom to carry forward reserves for the Metropolitan police, are both in addition to the £20 million which has been made available in relation to the Prime Minister's announcement concerning additional officers.

  Other police funding proposals within the local government finance system are being announced today by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Wales.

  The table shows by police force area the total effect of all these proposals for 1996–97. It also shows the allocations approved by Parliament for 1995–96.

  £ Million

  Police Force area

  1995–96 funding1

  1996–97 funding1

  English Shire Forces

  Avon and Somerset

  147.8

  154.5

  Bedfordshire

  55.4

  57.3

  Cambridgeshire

  62.7

  66.4

  Cheshire

  93.1

  98.4

  Cleveland

  707

  73.3

  Cumbria

  54.3

  57.1

  Derbyshire

  88.3

  92.4

  Devon and Cornwall

  146.5

  153.1

  Dorset

  62.6

  64.7

  Durham

  68.0

  71.4

  Essex

  146.7

  151.8

  Gloucestershire

  56.4

  58.5

  Hampshire

  169.1

  175.1

  Hertfordshire

  87.0

  89.9

  Humberside

  98.1

  103.1

  Kent

  158.1

  163.8

  Lancashire

  155.5

  163.2

  Leicestershire

  89.9

  94.8

  Lincolnshire

  57.1

  59.0

  Norfolk

  71.2

  75.9

  Northamptonshire

  55.8

  58.3

  North Yorkshire

  66.7

  69.7

  Nottinghamshire

  110.2

  115.2

  Staffordshire

  101.2

  108.8

  Suffolk

  58.5

  61.7

  Surrey

  85.1

  88.0

  Sussex

  145.8

  150.9

  Thames Valley

  192.8

  202.2

  Warwickshire

  47.7

  49.3

  West Mercia

  97.8

  103.4

  Wiltshire

  58.7

  60.7

  English Metropolitan Forces

  Greater Manchester

  327.1

  342.2

  891

  £ Million

  Police Force area

  1995–96 funding1

  1996–97 funding1

  Merseyside

  215.0

  221.8

  Northumbria

  179.6

  188.2

  South Yorkshire

  147.2

  154.6

  West Midlands

  329.3

  343.7

  West Yorkshire

  249.8

  260.6

  London Forces

  Metropolitan Police2

  1,628.7

  1,648.4

  City of London3

  57.3

  59.1

  English Total

  6,092.6

  6,310.5

  Welsh Forces

  Dyfed-Powys

  46.3

  48.5

  Gwent4

  60.1

  62.7

  North Wales

  66.0

  69.3

  South Wales4

  143.4

  150.9

  Welsh total

  315.8

  331.4

  Total

  6,408.4

  6,641.9

  1 Rounded to the nearest £10,000.2 Figure for the Metropolitan police does not include funding allocated to receiver under the other services block SSA for school crossing patrols, magistrates courts and the probation service.

  1 Figure for the City does not include capital and other services block SSAs which are allocated to the Common Council of the City of London as a whole in respect of all its functions.4 Figures for South Wales and Gwent police authorities have been adjusted to show what they would have received in 1995–96 had the transfer of the Rhymney valley from south Wales to Gwent, due to take effect on 1 April 1996, been effective for 1995–96. These adjustments enable valid comparisons to be made between these forces' allocations for 1995–96 and 1996–97.

  British Dependent Territory Passport Holders
  Mr. Robert McCartney
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make the requirements for entry by British dependent territory passport holders from Montserrat to the United Kingdom, the same as for such people from Gibraltar and the Falklands. [3167]

  Mr. Kirkhope
  No.

  Executive Agencies (Overseas Travel)
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list for each of his executive agencies for the last financial year in respect of overseas travel by staff of the agency(a) the cost, (b) the countries visited and (c) the posts held by the staff involved. [2363]

  Mr. Howard
  The available information is as follows:In the cases of the Prison Service and the Forensic Science Service, some of the overseas visits listed were funded by bodies other than these agencies, and for these visits, costs are not available:

  Prison Service

  cost: £62,106

  Countries visited: Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Denmark, Poland, Holland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, USA, Israel, Sweden, Russia, Romania, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Cambodia.
  Posts: Senior staff from Prison Service Headquarters, Area Managers, Governors and Prison Officers.
  892

  United Kingdom Passport Agency

  cost: £6,295

  Countries visited: Canada, Zimbabwe, Australia.

  Posts: Chief Executive, Director of Systems and Director of Operations.

  Fire Service College

  cost: £98,432

  Countries visited: Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Norway, West Indies, Abu Dhabi, France, Oman, Spain, USA, Hong Kong, China, Hungary, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Brunei, Malaysia, Austria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Philippines, Taiwan, Macau.
  Posts: Chief Executive, Commandant, Dean, Sales and Marketing Director, International Sales and Marketing Manager, International Marketing Sales Executive, Teaching staff (Civil Service), Teaching staff (Fir Brigade seconded).

  Forensic Science Service

  Costs: £25,397

  Countries visited: Sweden, USA, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Taiwan, India, Eire, Spain, Holland, South Africa, Singapore.
  Posts: Chief Executive, Director of Operations, Director of Service Development, Drug Intelligence Unit, Research Scientists, caseworkers and team leaders.

  Doncaster Prison
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the population in Doncaster prison will reach its design maximum within the next 12 months; and if he will make a statement. [2398]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995.
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about whether the population in Doncaster prison will reach its design maximum within the next twelve months.
  Doncaster prison has a certified normal accommodation level of 771 prisoners. This was reached within three months of it opening on 20 June 1995.

  Prison Populations
  Mr. Bennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were in prison for the latest date for which figures are available. [1359]

  Miss Widdecombe
  On Monday 20 November, a total of 52,297 prisoners were in custody in England and Wales.

  Mr Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners in(a) category A and (b) each sub-category of category A are currently held in prisons in England and Wales. [2472]

  Miss Widdecombe
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
  893
  Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Martin Redmond, dated 30 November 1995:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the number of prisoners in category A and each sub-category of category A held in prisons in England and Wales.
  On 24 November 1995 there were 823 category A prisoners held in prisons in England and Wales with the following escape risk classifications:

  Classification

  Number of prisoners

  Exceptional risk

  16

  High risk

  157

  Standard risk

  650

  Sex Offences (Tourism)
  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what intention Her Majesty's Government have of introducing extra-territorial legislation for sex crimes against children abroad, along the lines of that introduced by other western countries. [2002]

  Mr. Maclean
  We have made clear on previous occasions—12 July,Official Report, column 600—that we do not believe that legislation which extended the jurisdiction of our courts to enable them to deal with sexual offences committed against children abroad would be an effective way to tackle the problem of sex tourism.
  894
  Accordingly, we have no plans to introduce such legislation although we continue to keep the matter under review.

  Prisoners (Home Leave Offences)
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners are known to have committed further offences when on home leave. [185]

  Miss Widdecome
  Responsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Gerry Steinberg, dated 30 November, 1995:
  The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the number of prisoners known to have committed further offences when on home leave.
  Home leave as such and other temporary release schemes were replaced by a new system of release on temporary licence on 25 April this year.
  Information about the number of prisoners who commit further offences while temporarily released is not recorded centrally, because of the practical difficulty in obtaining consistent and reliable information from police forces, both in this country and abroad, in time to be recorded on a prisoner's record. Due to the length of time that some cases can take to resolve within the judicial process, it is possible that some prisoners will have been discharged from prison by the time that information on further convictions becomes available.

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Exeter.

The Mining Industry: Safety Levels
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied with the present level of safety in the mining industry.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that the current enforcement and regulatory regime for the mining industry is sufficiently robust to ensure that risks to miners' health and safety from mining activities are properly controlled. The Health and Safety Commission and the Health and Safety Executive, together with all sides of industry, continually strive to reduce the number of workplace accidents.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, is he aware that official figures show that there has been an increase in accident rates—they have in fact risen by 28 per cent.—since the mines were privatised? The figures also show that there have been 82 major accidents since April of this year, compared with 64 for the same period last year.
Does the Minister agree that dispensing with the post of deputy—which, as your Lordships probably know, was a key post as regards safety in the mines—has been an important contributor to that increase? Finally, is the Minister also aware that, in some pits, pressure is being put on miners not to report minor accidents, sometimes with the veiled threat of dismissal?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I shall answer first the noble Lord's last point. There is no evidence to show that that is so. Without evidence, I feel that that is not the sort of suggestion which should be made. However, as regards safety standards deteriorating with privatisation, there is no evidence to suggest that that is the case. The HSE's Inspectorate of Mines regularly monitors standards. The 1994–95 figures to March were published in the HSC's annual report on 21st November. The "all reported injury" figure for coal mines was 467. That is a reduced figure compared with that for the previous statistical year of 976.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that one man's life is just as precious whether it is in a privatised coal mine or a nationalised coal mine? I believe that most men in the privatised mines are safety trained and safety conscious because most of them became so experienced in the previous National Coal Board pits. However, is the Minister also aware that I am disturbed to learn that the overseers—the deputies, the certificated safety officers—may be withdrawn from privatised coal mines? Has the Minister received any assurances from the Inspectorate of Mines on that score,
692
and can he say whether the reports from the mines inspectors show any dangerous trend in fatalities and casualties?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, once again, I shall deal first with the last question. No trend has been reported on fatal and serious accidents. The Government are committed to the maintenance and improvement of safety standards. The HSC continues with its mining legislation renewal programme and has appointed a committee representative of the various interests in coal mining to advise on the protection of people who work in the industry.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the Government and the department involved keep in touch with other countries with regard to the progress that they have been making in the area, so that we might be able to help them and they, in turn, may be able to help us improve safety conditions in our pits? Does the Minister agree that that would be a sensible thing? If that task is not carried out at present, would the noble Lord please be good enough to consider it?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, of course the Health and Safety Executive and the commission follow developments around the world. The UK's record is as good as, if not better than, any other country in the world. Indeed, the unions would be the first to agree with that.
Baroness Turner of Camden:My Lords, the Minister referred to the report of the Health and Safety Commission. Is he aware that, according to that report, the number of mining inspectors has decreased and continues to decrease? Is the noble Lord also aware that, according to the last report, there has unfortunately been an increase in the number of fatalities and that cases of pneumoconiosis are also increasing and on an upward trend? Surely that is an indication that the situation cannot be as satisfactory as the Minister indicates. Therefore, does it not require some further attention along the lines indicated by my noble friend?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, it is true that the number of inspectors is reducing, but so is the number of people employed in the industry. In 1993 there were 0.2 inspectors—quite how one obtains 0.2 of an inspector, I am not sure—per 100 miners. In planning for 1996 there will be 0.23 inspectors per 100 miners, assuming the employment of 10,000 miners. We are, of course, conscious of the safety and sickness aspects of this matter. We are doing everything we can to maintain and to improve standards as best we can.
Lord Cochrane of Cults: My Lords, will my noble friend be kind enough to confirm that, in the consideration of safety, mining extends further than coal mining?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, that is absolutely true. However, this Question was directed to coal mining.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, if the Minister felt that I was making an allegation with regard to veiled threats, with great respect to him he ought to think more deeply before giving the kind of answer that he did. In that regard, would the Minister or the Government consider as a matter of urgency convening meetings with

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the unions concerned, who will provide not only the evidence we have discussed but much more? Will the Minister reply to the point which is of some importance; namely, the fact that deputies are no longer employed in the pits, and they are the key safety figures? I repeat my question. Does not the Minister think that that is an important contributory factor in the increase in accidents?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I shall write to the noble Lord on the matter of deputies. However, I do not accept that the number of accidents is increasing. There is no evidence to suggest that that is the case.

Gas Supply Industry: Competition
3.15 p.m.
Lord Dubs Lord Dubs asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress is being made regarding the introduction of pilot schemes for competition in the gas industry.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, preparations are continuing for the first pilot phase of competition in gas supply to domestic consumers which it is intended will commence in the South-West on 1st April 1996. The Government are discussing the detailed arrangements for this with the Director General of Gas Supply and with the industry.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, given that one potential competitor in the South-West of England has indicated that it would be possible to reduce household gas prices by 15 per cent., will the Government give an assurance that they will not allow British Gas to drag its heels? Will the Government ensure that competition will be introduced in the South-West and other areas as soon as is possible?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, I am delighted to see the noble Lord has converted to Conservative principles. British Gas is not dragging its feet. This is a major task involving the introduction of computer systems and supporting contractual and administrative arrangements. British Gas is committed to achieving this programme and it is working hard to achieve it. As noble Lords would expect, the DTI and Ofgas monitor its progress and discuss that with the company. The target date is 1st April.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I believe the noble Lord has his history the wrong way round. It was the Government who privatised the gas industry as a monolithic monopoly. That was vigorously opposed by noble Lords on these Benches. Is he not aware that the passage of the recent Gas Bill, which at long last brought potential competition into the consumer market, was strongly supported by noble Lords on these Benches, notably by myself? That leads eventually to my question, which is the following. What the noble Lord said in answer to my noble friend was heartening. I take it the noble Lord is saying there is no slippage whatsoever in the programme which will lead both to the first pilot schemes and then quickly after that to the introduction more broadly of competition in the domestic gas market. Can the noble
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Lord reassure your Lordships that, so far as the Government are aware, at this moment there are no delays as regards the introduction of competition?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, we are widening out the gas industry. We intend the framework to be in place for domestic consumers in the South-West to have a choice of supplier on 1st April. We are currently examining with Ofgas and the industry the technical details and timings of how customers' billings will change between the two suppliers. We are still on target for 1st April.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I must remind the noble Lord that the point of the pilot schemes is to introduce competition. We are not interested in the pilot schemes per se; the whole point is to make the Act work. Therefore the central question is whether the Act is still on track; the pilot schemes merely lead to that.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, that is the very point of a pilot scheme. We determine by a pilot scheme that everything is absolutely right and then we continue with that in the rest of the country. That is why there is a pilot scheme in existence.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, I may be getting extremely confused but is my noble friend aware that a year ago I was offered competitive quotes for domestic gas supplies? I live in mid southern England. Was that a one-off shot or can my noble friend help me in this respect?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, in some areas, including that mentioned by my noble friend, there is already competition in gas supplies. There are two methods. In the first method, British Gas offers a contract. The second method involves treating consumers as small businesses. This is very competitive at the moment. I have information of an instance where someone was quoted a 59 per cent. reduction in the gas bill.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that the price reductions which are being offered are sustainable in the long term, or are they simply a method of attracting customers away from British Gas?
Lord Chesham: My Lords, this is a matter of competition. If companies offer a price now and change it shortly afterwards, the consumer will be extremely upset and will go to a gas producer which keeps its prices at the level it quotes.

Overseas Aid
3.20 p.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
What are now their priorities for their overseas aid and development co-operation programme.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey)The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, the UK aid programme will remain the fifth largest in the world. Its overriding

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priority will continue to be poverty reduction through sustainable development, focused on the poorest countries in Africa and Asia.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the noble Baroness recall that only a year ago she gave an undertaking in this House that by 1997–98 the aid programme would have increased by £146 million? What has happened to that undertaking, and why? The noble Baroness says that ours is the fifth largest aid programme in the world. Does she not agree that of greater significance is the fact that in terms of our aid programme as a proportion of our national wealth—our GNP—we stand 13th rather than fifth in the international league? Does she agree that that is a sorry position for one of only five permanent members of the Security Council?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, when we speak about forward plans the only year that is probably safe is the following year. The fifth largest aid programme in the world will be £2,150 million next year. That is extremely good value for money. One of the reasons for a reduction in the figure next year is that we have lower forecasts for the draw-down by multilateral agencies, namely the regional banks and the European development funds, of funds already pledged.
We are the third largest source of private capital to the developing world. Private capital is playing an increasingly important role. We give 1·5 per cent. of our GNP, which is 50 per cent. above the UN target for private capital. Development assistance is not only about giving aid; it is about developing the private sector. We stand at 0·31 per cent. compared with the average of the DAC countries of 0.29 per cent., so we are above the average.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that all the changes and reductions in the aid programme are related to the issue of cutting taxation? Does she also agree that however taxation is cut there is no case ever for cutting it at the expense of the poorest people in the world?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord's first question is no. The answer to his second question is that we have to have a steadily growing economy in order to be in a position to give development assistance overseas. It is not the absolute amount of money which is important but what we and the multilateral agencies do with that money. We are seeking improvements all the time.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, is the Minister not aware that whatever gloss she puts on the figures the fact is that next year, in real terms, there will be a 6·7 per cent. cut in our aid to the poorest countries in the world? Is that not a pretty mean proposal from the Government?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, it is time for reality. I said in answer to the first question from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that it is not only a matter of development assistance but also a question of a substantial transfer of resources concentrated on the poorest countries. By common consent, the United Kingdom makes one of the most significant
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contributions to the alleviation of poverty in the developing world. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer decides, as he did in a very wise Budget on Tuesday, that some sacrifice has to be made, then in the short term we make that sacrifice in order that in the long term the economy will be much more sound. Then we shall be able to give more.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, obviously the aim of our aid programme is to help the poorest people in the poorest countries. However, the noble Baroness calls for reality. If that is the case, does she recall Douglas Hurd, when he was Foreign Secretary, saying in February this year that in the longer term aid is in our self interest? Does she agree with that statement? If she does, how does she square that with this squalid cut in the Budget?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, no one in your Lordships' House will be surprised to know that I agree with my right honourable friend in another place, Douglas Hurd. I have said similar things many times. The critical point is that we, and other donors, must channel our resources and devote them to the poorest countries. We have a better record of achieving that than almost any other donor country in the world.
Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, if British taxpayers' money is still going in the form of aid to countries where corruption and the official abuse of minorities is widespread, will she review that policy?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: Yes, my Lords. I can tell my noble friend that not only have we put down very firm markers on good governance but that we have also given, and will be giving, notice to those countries which are now doing well economically as a result of having put their economies in order that they will graduate out of development aid.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, the Minister says that where we put our money is the most important issue. Will she confirm that the best way to help the developing world is by maintaining, and not reducing, the amount of money we give in aid for family planning and the health of mother and child? Can she assure the House that that sum will not be reduced next year?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. At the Cairo conference I thought that I would be able to spend £100 million on family planning. I can now tell her that for the same period we have managed to allocate to family planning and mother and child health—but mainly to family planning—150 per cent. of what I indicated then.
Lord Boardman: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether the Opposition have given her any indication of how many additional hundreds of millions of pounds they wish to devote to this heading?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my noble friend asks a very apt question. I have asked both

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privately and publicly on a few occasions. It seems to be coming out of thin air, like most of the spending plans of the party opposite.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does the noble Baroness believe that it is morally defensible that this country's taxpayers should spend £500 million more on subsidising countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the Irish Republic, whose income per capita is fairly high, than on under-developed countries where the income per capita is pitifully low?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord knows full well that the two issues do not compare. We stand by our treaty obligations on EC matters. If it were not for the increasing take of the development assistance budget to the EC we might be able to do even better. However, I am glad to say that those estimates have been revised downwards. That is why we can take some of the pain that has to be taken this year.
Baroness David: My Lords, what is the effect of the public spending round on Britain's bilateral aid programme and, in particular, has the Minister yet come to any decision on how to replace the education library book scheme with, as she said, a more cost-effective scheme meeting ODA aid objectives?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on a very clever question. The noble Baroness refers to the ELB scheme. We had a meeting with the Publishers Association only last week. I hope that before long we shall be able to announce a good substitute scheme. I shall of course inform her. As regards the bilateral aid programme, we are at present discussing resource allocation. I do not believe that we shall see—certainly not in the next year—much change, if any, in our previous plans. There are major reductions in the level of multilateral aid from the previous forecasts. That has enabled me to change the figures in the way I have.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the so-called near cuts—they have not actually occurred—would have fallen heavily on the work of the non-governmental organisations which are important to the aid programme? Does she recognise that there is also concern about the multilateral aid programmes being, as she says, drawn down, possibly at the expense of the poor whom they serve?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, every year for the past six years the money that has been put through the non-governmental organisations, and given to them in core grants, has been increased very substantially. I do not have the exact percentages with me but each year there has been an increase. We may not be able to continue doing that. There may have to be some change, in particular because a number of smaller NGOs now do specific work in countries which were not in need six years ago. We are encouraging the multilateral aid donors to concentrate their aid much more effectively. It is by concentration of the aid, in
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particular in the health and primary education sectors, that we can do so much more to enable people to help themselves.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the German development minister when he suggested that, "Poor countries should ensure that non-social spending, including military spending, be examined critically and put in relation to social spending"?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, yes, indeed we do, for the simple reason that that kind of spending by some of the countries is entirely negatory. Every year we consider what those countries are spending in different parts of their budgets before we agree our forward plans with them.

Turkey: Customs Union
3.33 p.m.
Lord Avebury Lord Avebury asked Her Majesty's Government:
What was the purpose and outcome of the discussions between the Prime Minister and the Turkish Prime Minister, Mrs. Tansu Ciller, on Wednesday, 22nd November.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the main issue discussed was the prospective customs union between Turkey and the European Union. The Prime Minister confirmed his support for it; Mrs. Ciller reiterated her commitment to continuing democratic reforms in Turkey.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, does not taking a decision on the customs union now forgo our leverage over Turkey to encourage her to improve human rights? Does not the noble Baroness agree that that leverage is manifestly necessary? For example, tomorrow Yasar Kemal, the foremost writer in Turkey, comes before the State Security Court on charges which will carry a long sentence of imprisonment for an article that he wrote in Der Spiegel. Hundreds of cases are being brought before the European Commission on Human Rights, which is beginning to criticise the Turkish regime for intimidation and harassment of litigants and witnesses, including recently the murder of one of the litigants. Also at this time four of the Members of Parliament who support the Kurdish cause remain in prison for long sentences.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord's interest, involvement and concern in this issue are well known. However, the most effective way of helping to make progress on human rights in Turkey is to encourage closer ties between Turkey and the West. That is why we strongly support the completion on schedule of the customs union between Turkey and the European Union. It is part of the process of deepening the dialogue between Turkey and the western institutions. Some significant reforms have been passed by Turkey in the past six months. I know that they are not enough to please the noble Lord. But amendments

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to Article 8 of the anti-terror law last month have had early practical results: 123 people have been released from prison. More needs to be done. But it is taking steps in the right direction.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, the vote on the customs union between Turkey and the European Union is on the December agenda of the European Parliament. It has to be ratified by the European Parliament, as do any of the new member states. Are we making sure that all 87 of the British MEPs support our Government on this matter?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my noble friend is very tempting, but I do not believe that either members of our own party in the European Parliament, or indeed members from parties opposite, would ever take kindly to a whip from the Government on how they should vote in the European Parliament. As your Lordships know, they are a law unto themselves on many occasions. I shall do what I can to see that common sense prevails. However, rather like in another place, sometimes it does not do so in Strasbourg either.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it would be wrong to allow Turkey to join a customs union as long as a Turkish army continues to occupy Northern Cyprus?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord knows very well that we condemn unreservedly the Turkish incursions into Northern Cyprus. However, as I said in answer to the first question, we have to encourage closer ties. We have been working hard to make sure that Mrs. Ciller, who stated quite clearly that she intends to continue the process of democratisation, is encouraged to do so. What my right honourable friend the Prime Minister agreed with her was that Turkey could exercise a positive influence on Mr. Denktash, and that we are encouraging her to do.
Lord Rea: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware—she does not appear to be—that the practice of torture in interrogation centres and places of detention in Turkey is alive and well according to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in this country and its sister organisation, the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights? Should we not receive evidence from those organisations that that practice is ending before we admit Turkey into closer unity with the European Union?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, of course I am aware that torture takes place in Turkey and in far too many other places as well; and of course we deprecate it. But I have to say this to the noble Lord. I do not believe that postponement of this customs union is a viable solution. The people who would like to see Turkey separated from the West are the very people who are perpetrating some of the worst abuses in Turkey. That is why making co-operation with Turkey an important part of our policy towards getting rid of human rights abuses must be continued. Postponement is not a viable solution.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, if the customs union between Turkey and the European Union goes
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ahead, as perhaps it should, will the Minister tell the House how the Government intend to continue to put pressure on the Government of Turkey to make further improvements in their human rights record?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, by continually reminding them what the world and the European Union expect of them.

Education (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
The Earl of Courtown: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lindsay, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for the establishment of a body corporate to be known as the Scottish Qualifications Authority; to provide for the transfer of functions, property, rights, liabilities, obligations and staff to that body and for the conferring of other functions on it; to make provision enabling payment of grant to providers of education for children under school age; to amend certain legislation relating to school education in Scotland; 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.—(The Earl of Courtown.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Family Law Bill [H.L.]
3.39 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
I should like to begin this important debate by reaffirming my commitment and that of the Government to marriage. I personally believe that it is a divinely appointed institution and this Government will not do anything to undermine it.
The provisions of the Bill have been brought before your Lordships against a background of long and detailed debate and consultation, not only about the problems with the present divorce law and how the situation might be improved but also about the need to support marriage.
What has emerged very clearly from the recent debate is a very grave concern about marriage and the need for greater emphasis on and support for marriage. This debate has been as much about marriage as it has been about the finer details of a divorce system. This must be right because we cannot look at marriage and divorce in isolation from each other. The Government firmly believe that they have a role in supporting the services available to help not only those whose marriage is in difficulty but also those considering entering marriage. This is why the Government provide funding to marriage guidance and marriage research organisations.
The Government are, however, concerned that the best use is made of the resources available to support marriage. That is why we have also set up an inter-departmental working group on marriage. This

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group seeks to identify the needs of couples in relation to preparing for marriage and for guidance and support during marriage; the range of services currently available in this area, the extent to which their existence is known and how this knowledge might be increased; and how existing resources might best be used to meet the needs of couples who are considering marriage or whose marriage is in difficulty.
Under the provisions in Part I of the Family Law Bill, the ground for divorce would remain the irretrievable breakdown of marriage. At present, it is possible to establish breakdown by producing evidence of adultery, behaviour, desertion or separation. None of these requires the conduct in question to have been the cause of the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. The court's judgment proceeds on the basis that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. At present, therefore, the real reason for the breakdown of marriage may have little to do with the alleged fault which forms the basis of almost 75 per cent. of divorce petitions. The law makes no attempt to investigate what really made the marriage break down. This is not the fault of the judges, the courts or the lawyers. In an intimate relationship such as marriage, it is usually very difficult to obtain evidence on which a human tribunal would come to a fair judgment on that question.
It is a mistake to believe that the present law underlines in any way the idea of responsibility by the use of fault in the ground for divorce. In fact the reality is that the only relevance of fault is to obtain a quick divorce, and that seems to me to run quite contrary to the idea that the concept of fault fortifies the institution of marriage. How can it be said that a requirement to make allegations of fault provides the law with an underlying moral base when in fact to commit a wrong—such as adultery—actually means that you can be divorced in less than six months and so be free to marry again? And how can it be said to support marriage that such a person be free to remarry without having first sorted out all the arrangements consequent upon divorce and so fulfilled the obligations and responsibilities undertaken when the parties married and perhaps became parents? These are questions which I have asked myself many, many times. I have tried hard to see how fault can therefore be said to provide a moral basis for marriage. These are questions which I would suggest to your Lordships are worthy of consideration.
Not only do allegations not need to reflect the real cause of the breakdown but they are often exaggerated and usually uncorroborated. This leads to bitterness and resentment on the part of the accused spouse resulting in conflict which poisons the atmosphere and is very damaging to children. Such an atmosphere cannot help a couple consider whether divorce is the right course of action or indeed try to save their marriage. Even if the marriage has broken down irretrievably, how can such an atmosphere help the couple consider the consequences of divorce and make workable arrangements for the future for their children? I see no merit, either moral, intellectual or practical, in retention of the requirement to make allegations of fault in order to establish breakdown and do so quickly.
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It is of course vitally important that marriages are not dissolved if they could be saved and therefore important that the mechanism used for testing breakdown is one which we are satisfied will do just that. The provisions in the Bill are that the breakdown would be established by the passage of an absolute period of time without that period being abridged in any circumstances. The provision would require a person wishing to initiate proceedings to attend a compulsory information session before the period of time starts to run which might lead to divorce. This will not only mark the seriousness of the step being taken but also ensure that essential information is conveyed to people contemplating divorce in the most effective way possible. Information provided will include information about the various services available to help people, including marriage guidance, mediation and legal services. I believe that this will be done most objectively and effectively if done by those who provide the services. It will also deal with alternative options to divorce and the consequences of divorce for the parties and their children. Regulations will provide for exceptions to personal attendance—for example, disability—when alternative arrangements will be made for the information to be conveyed. It is not intended to force spouses to attend together and so the victims of abuse will not be in any way at risk as a result of this provision.
The period of time would be commenced by the lodging of a neutral statement. By that I mean a statement which does not make allegations and does not, at that early stage, state that the marriage has already irretrievably broken down and that the maker of the statement wants a divorce. The spouse or spouses making the statement would be required to declare that he, she or they believe the marriage to have broken down and declare that they understand that the purpose of the period which will follow before an application to the court can be made for either a separation or a divorce order, will be for reflection on whether the marriage can be saved and consideration of the arrangements for the future, should divorce be proceeded with.
The general view of those who were consulted by the Law Commission and by the Government, following the issue of our consultation paper, was that a sufficient period of time should elapse in order to demonstrate quite clearly that the marriage had irretrievably broken down. The period should be sufficiently long to give parties a realistic timescale within which to reflect on whether the marriage could be saved but also a realistic time within which the practical questions about children, home and finances could be resolved. The length of time which most respondents favoured was 12 months. Those who work with children pointed out (and this is a thought which I would commend to your Lordships) that although 12 months may not seem long to us, 12 months is a very long time indeed in the childhood of a young child living with uncertainty. Those consultees who work with children considered that, if the divorce process period went on too long, this would be bad for children. A lengthy period would prolong the agony not only for the adults but also the children, which could be damaging. Hardship could be caused by the imposition of a period longer than 12 months. It probably has to be

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accepted that there are limits to how much longer the period can be made without causing too much hardship—particularly to children. Do we really want to make things harder for children? Are things not hard enough for those children who are innocent victims of marriage breakdown?
For those who are the victims of violence, the remedies which will be available under Part III of the Bill will be adequate to protect them during the 12-month process.
A very important requirement in the Bill is the requirement that parties decide all arrangements relating to their children, finance and home before a separation or divorce order can be made. This is an important and significant change from the Law Commission's recommendation. In making this change the Government have been influenced by those who responded to their consultation paper who were of the view that parties who marry should discharge their obligations undertaken when they contracted their earlier marriage, and also their responsibilities which they undertook when they became parents, before they become free to remarry. The Bill provides for certain narrow exceptions to the requirement that all arrangements should be decided before divorce, in order to protect vulnerable parties, such as those who are sick, disabled or being prevented from making arrangements by vindictive and obstructive spouses, and also to protect the children of such parties.
I believe that the requirement that everyone should wait a minimum of a year before applying for an order (as opposed to the small numbers who now wait two years or even smaller numbers who wait five years), together with the requirement that all arrangements will have to be decided before divorce, will do far more to reinforce and underline the institution of marriage and its inherent obligations and responsibilities than the present system which allows quick divorce following allegations of fault.
I should emphasise that the current legislation which enables the conduct of each of the parties to be taken into account by the court, where that conduct is such that it would in the opinion of the court be inequitable to disregard it, when making financial provision orders, will stand as it now is in terms of this Bill.
The Bill provides that it will not be possible to commence a process which would lead to divorce within the first year of marriage with the result that it will not be possible for couples to apply for divorce until they have been married for two years. This will act as a brake on couples rushing into and out of marriage again too quickly.
I have also preserved the power for the court to bar a divorce altogether where one party can show that dissolution of the marriage would result in grave financial or other grave hardship. The court will continue to be able to take account of all the circumstances of the case including the conduct of the parties when considering such a bar. However this bar would be available in all cases and not just, as at present, in five-year separation cases and so has the important potential to protect more spouses.
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Research since the last major reform of the ground for divorce has shown us the importance of the need to try to reduce conflict in separation and divorce cases in order to reduce at least some of the damage caused to children. We have also, through research, become much more conscious of the need to help parties try to communicate better during the separation and divorce process and encourage them to try to manage conflict so that they can make arrangements for the future which are workable and better for their children. It is clear that the children who do best after divorce are the children whose parents co-operate in the discharge of their parental responsibilities and who reach amicable arrangements for the future of their children. I am most disturbed by the fact that allegations of fault are used in more cases where there are children than where there are not, and that conflict is more prevalent in cases based on intolerable behaviour. In these important respects, namely, the reduction of conflict and improvement of communication, mediation has been shown to be most effective. The position at the moment is that although under the current Legal Aid Act the Legal Aid Board can pay for mediators' reports to be commissioned, it is not possible for the board to pay for the process of mediation itself, although it is possible for lawyers to be paid for.
I would like this to change. I believe that mediation has enormous potential in appropriate cases and Part II of the Bill therefore provides for the Legal Aid Act to be amended to allow parties who are eligible to apply for state funding for the use of mediation. I am not intending that mediation should become compulsory—compulsory mediation quite simply does not work, and is a contradiction in terms. State funded legal advice and assistance will be available in support of mediation when needed by eligible parties. Legal representation will be available for eligible parties when mediation is not suitable for the parties or appropriate for the circumstances of the case.
In presenting the provisions of Parts I and II of this Bill to the House, I do so against a background of long, detailed and most careful consultation and as a person, as I said at the outset, who has a strong belief in the institution of marriage. I personally believe that marriage should be for life. This is the ideal I believe most couples who marry strive for. It is this ideal which provides the most stable and secure background for the birth and development of children. I personally would not wish to see people divorced at all. I would prefer that spouses remained united until "God separates them by death". But I have to recognise that marriages do break down and that the civil legislator must take account of this fact and provide the best framework of law to cater for this. I believe that according to St. Mark's Gospel (Chapter 10, verses 4 and 5 when Jesus reminds the Pharisees that Moses allowed men to "put away" their wives because of their "hardness of heart", he was referring to a civil legislative system with which they were familiar. I believe also that our Lord's teaching contemplated a civil system in which it would be possible to do what He told His questioners should not he done.

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I turn now to Part III of the Bill, which deals with domestic violence and the occupation of the family home. The provisions in this part reform the various remedies which exist in family law to deal with two separate but linked problems. These are: providing protection for one family member from violence or molestation from another family member; and regulating the occupation of the family home where a relationship has broken down, either temporarily or permanently. The Bill will provide a single consistent set of remedies through two types of orders, "non-molestation" orders and "occupation orders". Eligibility for the orders is based on the concept of "association" by way of certain family or domestic connections or through family proceedings. Eligibility for specific orders is further distinguished in the Bill, and depends on the existing property rights of the applicants, as well as their relationship to each other.
This part of the Bill was substantially before your Lordships' House last Session, in the form of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. It was discussed at great length then in a Special Public Bill Committee and completed all of its stages here before going on to be debated in another place. For that reason, and because time is limited, I propose to speak now only on the changes that have been made since the Bill was last before your Lordships. At a late stage and just before Prorogation the Bill attracted some controversy. This was based on a belief, I think misconceived, that cohabitants were being placed on an equal footing with married couples for the first time, and that this undermined the institution of marriage.
Although I do not think that the Bill would have had the effect feared, I accept that there is genuine concern to uphold the special nature of marriage. This is a concern I share, and for that reason I have made four changes to the Bill that was before this House in the last Session.
First, I have introduced a general clause on marriage. This instructs the courts to have regard, when making an occupation order for a cohabitant, to the fact that they have chosen not to give each other the commitment that a married couple have chosen to give. I hope that this will emphasise the important general message that marriage is special in a way that no other relationship is.
Secondly, the previous Bill made provision for the procedure for resolving property disputes contained in the Married Women's Property Act to be available to cohabitants. I have removed that provision. Although the extension was purely of procedure it was the subject of specific concern, and I think it is right to respond to those concerns.
Thirdly, concern was expressed about a cohabitant who had no right to occupy a property gaining long-term possession of it. For this reason I have now provided that in such circumstances an order, which may be for a maximum of six months (that was the old provision), may be extended only once. It was possible under the former provision to extend it again and again, indefinitely. This contrasts with the position for spouses
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and ex-spouses. I believe this further distinguishes between marriage and cohabitation and still retains the essential of what is required.
Fourthly, it was possible under the old Bill for the court in certain circumstances to be under a duty to make an occupation order in favour of a cohabitant with no right to occupy the home. This duty came about by the operation of the "balance of harm" test, as it was called. In these cases I have recast the test in such a way that there is no duty on the court to make such an order, but simply a discretionary power to permit it to do so. The court can have regard in considering that matter to all the circumstances of the case.
I believe that the overall effect of these amendments is to emphasise the difference between marriage and cohabitation while at the same time providing protection where it is needed. Marriage is a lifetime commitment, publicly entered into. It gives the parties to the marriage rights and obligations to each other which can continue even after the marriage has ended. Cohabitation is not the same. Although individual cohabitants may intend their relationship to continue indefinitely, they do not have the same obligations to one another or the same rights as married partners. It is important that the law provides protection against domestic violence for those who need it. But I also believe that a distinction between marriage and cohabitation can and should be drawn. I believe that Part III of the Bill does that. I ask your Lordships for support for the changes that I have made in an attempt to reach consensus on this matter.
This is an important Bill which deals with areas fundamental to people's lives. I feel that it is right that Parliament should have an opportunity of considering this matter in a Bill promoted by the Government in government time. After prolonged thought, I have put forward what I consider are the best proposals. I am happy to see them improved, if Parliament can suggest improvements. I hope that we can all approach this matter in a spirit of united resolve to do the best that we can for families in England and Wales in the years to come. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
4.1 p.m.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, this Bill is a marriage of two separate measures; but a marriage made in haste. The divorce provisions are driven by Treasury urgency to cut the legal aid budget. The alterations to the previous domestic violence measure are a sop to an unrepresentative minority of Conservative MPs. They should not have been bought off. The original measure was supported by an all-party agreement. It also enjoyed overwhelming support in both this House and the other place.
I shall deal first with divorce. A marriage breakdown is rarely the fault of one party alone. The decree should reflect the fact of breakdown. It should not be seen as a reward for marital virtue nor as a

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punishment for marital sin. I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, who, in the debate on the gracious Speech, said that:
"the family is essential to the health and wellbeing of our society"— [Official Report, 20/11/95; col. 152.]
But the question that we face is what to do if a marriage breaks down. Neither the parents nor the children are assisted by imprisonment within a loveless union. That breeds misery only. It is the children who are the most vulnerable. They need to be sheltered from conflict. They need to grow up with a positive view of both their parents.
The noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, expressed his concern about the growing number of children born outside marriage. I share that concern. But I do not believe that, by making it more difficult for people to divorce, the illegitimacy rate will come down. On the contrary, people who are unhappy within their marriage and wish to start again with a new partner will do just that, whether or not they are free to marry. If they are unable to marry, that will not stop them having children. Their children will have to grow up without the security of parents who are married and without enjoying the status of marriage. The children of family number two will pay a heavy price for preserving the shell of a moribund union.
So, we support the no fault principle. But, with respect for what has come from the noble and learned Lord, the 12-month embargo on obtaining a divorce is too restricted. If the parties are able to make sensible and prompt arrangements to protect the interests of the children, we see no merit in holding them to a marriage which is dead and from which both want to escape. We shall be tabling amendments to that effect.
Let me give an example from the recent experience of a solicitor who is a distinguished family law specialist. A man who was separated from his wife more than 10 years ago was diagnosed in February this year as dying from cancer. He and his wife had not divorced; neither of them had seen any need to do so. He was living with his new partner. She became pregnant. He wanted, so far as he could, to provide for her and their child after his death. His lawful wife was entirely supportive. She too was living with another. The lawful husband had substantial pension policies. Within a few months he was able to obtain a divorce from his wife with her full agreement and the co-operation of the courts. The divorce was in June this year. He died in September. His new wife now has the benefit of a widow's pension under his occupational scheme, to the great benefit not just of herself but of their child too. Happily, the child was born in the summer. I should be astonished if the noble and learned Lord could think other than that the courts should be given flexibility to grant divorces in less than a year in exceptional cases.
But also, we hold firmly to the view that, if fair arrangements have not been made, there should be no pressure, just because a year has elapsed, to make an unfair arrangement which will bind the children and the parties for years to come.
Central to the Bill is the process of mediation. We support mediation. But it is widely misunderstood. The mediator does not attempt reconciliation. I acknowledge
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that very rarely there could be a reconciliation once the parties realise the full implications and consequences of what they are doing; but that is no different from the present law when a solicitor is consulted. After advice about the financial and other consequences of divorce, some may have second thoughts. They may want to try again to save their marriage and, if a marriage is savable, the mediator, in exactly the same way as a solicitor, will be bound to halt the process and refer the parties to a marriage guidance organisation. Mediation proper can only begin to work and continue to work if both parties recognise that the marriage is over and that sensible arrangements for the future have to be made.
But fair arrangements necessarily depend on skilled legal advice and representation. The Bill in terms says nothing about that, although the noble and learned Lord, in the debate on the gracious Speech, said:
"Legal advice and assistance will be available for eligible parties, where needed, in support of mediation" —[Official Report, 20/11/95; col. 137.]
We take that to be on the Green Form scheme and that it will be what the White Paper called "early preliminary advice and assistance". But it is quite clear that what is not made available to legally assisted persons is legal representation.
Mediation is an anodyne word but the lot of a fearful and intimidated wife in the mediation process will not be a happy one, despite prior legal advice and the skills and courtesy of the mediator. She will have been told what her legal goals should be; but, unrepresented, in the real world it is unlikely that she will be able to present her case effectively. So I ask: are all lawyers to be excluded from mediation or only lawyers for legally aided parties?
I have another question. Will the noble and learned Lord confirm that it is the intention of the Bill to make fundamental changes to the present arrangements for legal aid representation in divorce cases? Will he confirm that the effect of Clause 24 is to place upon the Legal Aid Board in divorce cases the duty to refuse legal aid representation in favour of mediation? Clause 24 means that the Legal Aid Board must—not may—refuse legal aid representation in family proceedings on the grounds that:
"mediation is to be considered … as more appropriate".
So that is the general provision. The Bill states that it will be subject to exceptions, but they are not defined in the Bill and we should like to be told what those exceptions are to be. Your Lordships are being asked to legislate for a two-tier system—proper legal advice and representation for those who can pay and the lonely prospect of the mediation room for the rest. Mediation, which is all that will be on offer from the Legal Aid Board after some early legal advice, is not truly voluntary.
I turn to a wholly distinct point. Legal representation in the courts must always be necessary where the extent of the family assets is in dispute. It is all too common for one or other of the parties to be less than honest about resources. The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, in her reply in the debate on the gracious Speech, sought to reassure your Lordships that, if one party did not

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disclose assets, mediation would cease and the parties would be referred to lawyers. But how will the mediator know? A concealing husband is hardly likely to tell the mediator that he has salted away a secret source of assets. Whenever a serious issue in regard to the true extent of the assets arises in mediation, there should be no question of the mediation continuing and no exclusion of legal aid representation for court proceedings.
There is another major subject on which we shall be tabling amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Hollis. I hope the noble and learned Lord will feel able to accept them. Divorced wives should be entitled to their fair share of accruing—I emphasise "accruing"—pension rights. It is no good allowing them rights which depend on the former husband living to contractual retirement age. Divorced wives should have those rights at the time of divorce. I emphasise that there will be no public expenditure implication.
I turn to Part III, which deals with the family home and domestic violence. The domestic violence proposals of last Session were lost at the eleventh hour because of an uninformed campaign by a tabloid newspaper supported by a minority of Conservative Members in the other place. I say "uninformed" because they should have known—indeed, the noble and learned Lord confirmed—that the right to be protected against domestic abuse had been given, since 1976, not only to spouses but also to a man and a woman living together as though married. Therefore the argument that the Bill was bad for marriage because for the first time it would enable an unmarried cohabitant to remove a partner from the home, was plainly wrong. The unmarried partner has had that right for nearly 20 years. But the Bill dealt a modest blow for civilised behaviour and it is civilised behaviour which should underpin true family values. By protecting children, mothers and the elderly, the present Bill strengthens not only family values, but also family responsibility by providing emergency and temporary safeguards for victims of abuse.
Part III enables the law to extend protection against non-molestation to former spouses (who some think were excluded irrationally from the 1976 Act) to persons who used to live together as though married; to those living together in the same household for reasons other than that one is employed by the other; to a tenant lodger or boarder; and to close relatives such as parents, grandparents or children. The so-called "grasping mistress" will be given no greater protection than she enjoys today. But parents will become safe from harassment by their children and a lodger from assault by his landlord.
Those are protections only against molestation. A court order requiring the perpetrator of violence to leave the house can only be sought by a spouse, a former spouse, cohabitant or former cohabitant and then only if he or she lives or used to live in the house in question. The noble and learned Lord modified the Bill in deference to those whom he thinks must be appeased. The Bill is a weaker Bill as
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a result. Now, before the court may make an exclusion order in favour of an adult who is not an owner of the property, the court is directed to consider physical ill-treatment or impairment of health. But noble Lords will appreciate that emotional and psychological assault, even though it does not cause impairment of health, can be just as damaging as kicks or punches. Why should one party be free to make late night hoax calls, to switch off the heating or indulge in any other antics which cause misery to the other party or the children without running the risk of being ordered to leave their home unless he comes to his senses? Those antics do nothing to promote family values. Family values deserve support, whether or not the partners are married.
Next, the Bill puts the court under a general duty to take into account, when considering occupation orders, that, where a couple cohabit without marriage, that signifies a lesser commitment. The noble and learned Lord defended that change. Perhaps it does signify a lesser commitment. But the whole point of an occupation order is to protect from harassment. Harassment is unacceptable, whether the victim is a wife or a live-in lover. If, in an extreme case, the partner of an unmarried cohabitant assaults the other or terrorises the children, it is wrong that the court should give less protection because they are unmarried. Is that what the provision invites the court to do? If not, it should be taken out because there is a risk that that is how it will be interpreted.
It is no answer to say that, by not marrying, a couple demonstrate less commitment. No one should be entitled to assault another member of a household, whether or not their relationship is cemented by marriage. Though non-molestation orders can be made in those cases, without the underpinning of exclusion orders the protection will be a second-class protection. We shall be tabling amendments to ensure that all forms of harassment, whether physical or otherwise, run the risk of the perpetrator being removed from the home.
The noble and learned Lord told your Lordships that exclusion orders in favour of non-owners are now—this is another sop to those who must be appeased—only to last for a maximum of six months, with the possibility of a further and final six months' renewal. In most cases, in practice, that will be adequate. But in this sensitive jurisdiction, where the facts of the case vary so infinitely, it is wholly unhelpful to tie the hands of the court more than is absolutely necessary. There may well be cases where there is acute difficulty in rehousing the abused party; where the couple may be elderly or where one party may even be terminally ill. In such cases, obviously, it may, in the real world, be impossible to obtain alternative accommodation within the timescale stipulated. The court's discretion should be preserved, otherwise, once one year has gone by, the party under the court's protection will be turned out on to the street. We shall be tabling amendments to give the courts flexibility.

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All the amendments that we table will be informed by our support for the family, for children, for victims of violence and for fairness between those who suffer the tragedy of a failed marriage.
4.19 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, for us on these Benches this is a free vote Bill so anything I say will not commit these Benches, or even my noble friend Lord Meston, who is leading on the later stages of the Bill. That said, on free vote Bills we usually agree well enough. I hope not to break that tradition.
I shall begin by telling the noble and learned Lord a story from which I hope he may take a small amount of comfort. We have perhaps had no Prime Minister whose devotion to Christian moral principles was more intense and more plain than Mr. Gladstone. Rather more than 100 years ago Charles Bradlaugh was elected to another place as an avowed atheist and because, being an honest man, he hesitated to swear by Almighty God, found considerable difficulty in taking his seat. Mr. Gladstone, after serious consideration, decided that, being a duly elected Member, he must be allowed to take his seat. Lord Randolph Churchill commented that this proved that Gladstone was an atheist. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, after reading what has been said in the press about this Bill, may perhaps have some inkling how Gladstone may have felt. He may perhaps even take some comfort from reflecting that when he is thus maligned he is in most excellent company. It may also be of some interest to the House to know that at the time Lord Randolph perpetrated this remark he was the leader of an unofficial grouping on the Conservative Back Benches colloquially known as the Fourth Party.
It will not surprise the noble and learned Lord if I begin by paying attention to Part III of the Bill, the former Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. It is important that in this Chamber and in the other domestic violence has always been a matter of all-party concern. That is vital to many of those working in the field. I have heard them speak with considerable warmth of the work done as Ministers by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. It is important that that tradition should continue. It has obviously suffered from what happened last Session, but I am delighted to see the Government struggling to restore it, and so long as, and in so far as, they do, I shall help them with that. It causes me great pleasure.
I am also most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for what he said in the debate on the humble Address about our Jellicoe procedure. I have before me the proceedings of the committee which considered the Bill in the last Session. If anyone says that the Bill had a cursory examination, I hope as a penance that they will be sentenced to read every single word of it. It is most thorough and very interesting too.
I take the point that the noble Viscount the Lord Privy Seal made in reply to my noble friend Lady Seear when the Bill was abandoned in the last Session about the need to achieve consensus. Whether consensus has yet
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been achieved or whether we have merely gone through one of the moves on the road towards it is a question we need to explore. The criticism of the Bill was essentially, as the noble and learned Lord has made plain, because of a dislike of cohabiting. Even if one were to regard that concern as justified, it was here misplaced. What we are dealing with in Part III of the Bill is the preservation of the Queen's peace; the right, as the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said, to he free from molestation, from physical threat and physical harm. It is the first duty of the state to preserve that for its subjects. That must come before other duties. The noble and learned Lord referred to preserving the special nature of marriage. I shall not argue with that but it worries me to see it done at the expense of the Queen's peace. I cannot improve on the words of the Royal College of Nursing. It says:
"The RCN believes that domestic violence is unacceptable, whoever is the victim".
It is also not as widely understood as it should be—partly because not enough people have sat through social security Bills—that cohabiting is a recognised status in law. It is explained in the answer to Question 26 of the proceedings of the Select Committee in the last Session. It goes back to the supplementary benefits Acts immediately after the war and is confirmed in the 1976 Act dealing with this subject. It is a defined status which is referrable to evidence and tested by such things as the shared household and the shared finances. It is not an arbitrary whim of an idea and it does not protect any old mistress.
Cohabiting is now a socially recognised status. Twenty per cent. of live births are registered by two parents living at the same address but not married to each other. That means that in any normal party if you have 20 couples present and you start denouncing cohabiting you may be denouncing five out of the 20 couples present. I confirmed this morning on the highest authority that you can now, in making an entry in Who's Who, enter yourself along with a partner rather than a spouse if you so prefer.
In a social relationship which is common among those we meet daily good manners demand that we temper our criticisms. I am not sure that Clause 36 as it stands at present entirely meets that test. We shall need to discuss all the changes which have been made without prejudice to what we may ultimately do. I want to hear further the details of what the noble and learned Lord is recommending. Even Lord Chancellors are entitled to the rules of natural justice. I shall hear what he says before reaching any decisions. But I am not at present comfortable about the change in Clauses 31 and 33 from a duty to a discretion. It gives the court a chance, if it wishes, to put the balance of financial interest above the protection of physical safety. I am not convinced that that is right. The preservation of the peace comes first. It is a right to which even a condemned criminal on the way to execution used to be entitled and I do not think it should be taken away from cohabitees.
On the argument about the Married Women's Property Act, I shall want to hear further exactly what the noble and learned Lord has to say. But in cases where there is a shared budget and a shared mortgage,

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where the woman has contributed to the building up of the household, I shall want to know why a one-year order might not in some circumstances be renewed for a further period. But those are matters to be considered later on.
Before I leave Part III of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord gave a welcome assurance on 9th March in Committee that the homelessness legislation we are expecting will preserve the status of women in refuges who are victims of domestic violence. Water has flowed under a lot of bridges since then. I hope the noble and learned Lord will forgive me for saying that I would be awfully glad if he could say that that is still the intention of the Government as a whole.
On the divorce part of the Bill, I hope that we shall not get too excited because we must not overrate the powers of this House to change a loving or unloving relationship between two people. It is not in this House's power to destroy marriage and it is not in this House's power to revive a marriage which is already dead in spirit. In considering the divorce part of the Bill my guiding light will be a remark made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford in the debate on the humble Address. He said that when a relationship is in danger it is not the legal bonds which need attention but the relationship that they are designed to protect. That is a remark with considerable implications.
I do mind very deeply the breakdown of a marriage. Every breakdown of a marriage is, I believe, a sort of little death, but whether marriages which have already broken down then go on to result in divorce is a question about which I feel a good deal less emotion. I believe that the proportion of broken down marriages which go to divorce is not a constant over the centuries. If what is happening is that more matrimonial breakdowns are ending in divorce, that is not a matter of profound concern to me.
What is of concern to me is the underlying breakdown. Thinking that one can prevent that by tightening the divorce laws is a bit like thinking that one can prevent death by postponing the funeral; it is altogether aimed in the wrong place. So for me the test of a good divorce law will not be whether it produces more or fewer divorces. It will be whether when a marriage has broken down it minimises conflict; provides orderly arrangements for protecting the interests of the children; settles money and property; and is generally an orderly procedure.
I also ask the House not to get too excited about the effect of divorce on children. I speak as the child of divorced parents. I know that it is difficult. But as far as I know I am not actually a nervous wreck—yet. I must insist on the qualification, I am afraid. It is always difficult for children if there is a bad relationship between their parents whether they are married or not. As far as I know, we do not have any comparative evidence on the difficulties suffered by children with unhappily married parents or divorced parents.
As far as I can judge from the limited sample of people to whom I have had to listen in these areas, what seems to me to cause trouble is the state of emotional
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warfare between the parents, especially a state of emotional warfare in which the children are chosen as the battleground. That seems to me to cause damage whether the parents are divorced, separated or, in what is perhaps the very worst case I remember, continuing to live as man and wife until all the children are grown up. In that case the couple would have done much better to have been divorced 20 years earlier. The children would have been spared a very great deal.
If we really want strength in marriage—which I do, and badly—I do not believe that we can achieve it by changing the laws on divorce. I do not believe that we can achieve it by anything we do in this Bill. I believe that we would do much more if we tackled questions like the hours of work which prevent so many married couples from seeing anything of each other, child care, paternity leave and giving the couple a chance to know each other. Noble Lords know that I can list many more such measures, but I see the clock and I shall not.
Overall, I offer to this Bill a cautious sympathy, and the noble and learned Lord will hear both words equally. As regards the issue of fault, I agree with him entirely in every word that he said. I decided long ago that we never really know the inwardness of anyone else's marriage. Experience does nothing to make me change that conviction. As regards the one-year limitation, in general, yes, I agree. But I would like to see the possibility for exception to that. I found what the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, had to say about that extremely moving and persuasive.
I am thinking also of cases of mental illness. I remember one friend of mine, since fully and happily recovered, who it was absolutely essential to free from the emotional and practical bonds of the marriage before a psychological recovery could begin. The noble and learned Lord will have guessed that I am thinking also of victims of domestic violence.
I was delighted to hear him say again that mediation will be voluntary. There is of course a question about how voluntary it is. Clause 12(4) looks as though it requires people to show cause why they do not want mediation. I certainly have an uncomfortable memory of certain notices—which some other noble Lords may remember—"There will be voluntary games for the following. Those failing to turn up will be severely dealt with". I should like to know who decides that mediation is or is not appropriate. I must also apologise to the noble and learned Lord in that for a moment I did not hear him clearly because I was noting his previous remark. But I believe that I heard him give an assurance on Clause 8 that nobody will be compelled to attend the preliminary information session with their previous partner. I am delighted to see him nod. That is an extremely welcome assurance.
I would also like to know whether people can leave mediation if they have gone into it but do not like what they are finding; and whether there is a procedure for varying a mediation order in a change of circumstances. I would welcome a categorical assurance that on matters of property mediators will not be using formulae. I believe that the noble and learned Lord knows my views about formulae and I shall not touch on them further.

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I wish to make one point about custody. There is a very strong feeling among separated fathers that they are not getting a fair crack of the whip in custody and access. As regards access, I am sure that the noble and learned Lord knows that it is heartbreakingly difficult to know what is the right thing to do. One must hear the message and try. For exactly the reasons that women deserve equal rights in employment, men deserve equal rights in child custody. I hope that the mediator will hear that message.
Finally, I would like to hear that there is adequate finance available for the mediation process. I would like to know how much and from what source. If the noble and learned Lord will forgive me, I would welcome a categorical assurance that under no circumstances will mediators ever be on performance-related pay.
4.37 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I am glad that this Bill was put into the Queen's Speech. It is going to provoke a debate, which I believe is timely indeed and urgent. It was Richard Baxter, a luminary of my own diocese, who said that when marriage and the family fail, all else miscarries. I believe that we have the highest divorce rate in the European Union. In 1993, 76,000 children under the age of 16 witnessed their parents' divorce. Since then there has been a two-thirds rise in the number of children under five years of age who have witnessed the break-up of their parents' marriage.
We are letting down our children and thereby placing a time-bomb under our society. We have tolerated the breakdown of marriage and the family in the name of self-fulfilment and sexual liberty, and this in a country shaped in the Christian tradition, which values children so highly. Jesus made much of children. Any country that claims to be Christian should make much of them also. I speak not only as a bishop, but also as chairman of the Children's Society. I go visiting family projects. I was in Bolton, Rochdale and Oldham last week. I see the havoc that is being done to children by the breakdown of the family. My only concern is that the people whom I visited last week actually get near a mediation session. Some people in our country today are naturals for counselling and mediation; for others it is just not in their line.
Professor Halsey has described our contemporary age not as the age of the child, but the age of child neglect.
I realise that it is perilous for a churchman to venture into questions of divorce. He is always open. to the charge of selling the past if for one moment he admits that divorce may be necessary. Let me assure your Lordships that we as bishops stand foursquare behind marriage and the family. They are within the order of God's creation and the basis of a stable and wholesome national life. We uphold the highest possible standard for marriage, but we are also pastors. We carry with us as a symbol of our office a shepherd's crook. We know that human nature is frail. The world is not perfect, but into that world, grey and sometimes soiled, we must go. Those who are well have no need of a physician—only
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those who are sick have such a need. When we legislate we cannot legislate only for the elect: we must legislate for those who are in need.
Truth flies with two wings. It is both a declaration of the ideal and a concern for those who have not achieved it which must occupy us. I believe that that has always been so in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The greatest of the medieval Rabbis, Maimonides, taught that you must proclaim the law and espouse the cause of those who have broken it. You do not improve human marital relationships by making the law more punitive. At the present time in England we need laws which will build up marriage and the family. We need to build them up from within as relationships. We need to resource those two vital institutions and to heal rifts when they occur. It is no use taking the moral high ground as if one is speaking from an ivory tower.
I am pleased that the Bill is entitled the "Family Law Bill" because I believe that that is a positive title. It puts the family at the centre of attention. The Lord Chancellor has produced a Bill which has the potential to foster good marriage—and I have to say that that sometimes comes the second time around—and proper care for children. As a Bench, we want to see it go through to Committee stage. Perhaps what I am saying this afternoon will be general compared with what has been said by noble Lords opposite, but we shall want to see that the detail of the Bill fulfils the principle. I am also pleased that for the first time since 1857 this concern for good marriage and for children has been introduced by government. We are thereby showing concern for the common good.
I know of none who considers the present divorce laws to be satisfactory. The quickie divorce is prevalent to the tune of 75 per cent. of all divorces. It is based on the allegation of a fault which is neither approved nor rebutted and often involves collusion, contrivance and even deceit. That cannot be good. The sole ground for divorce is to be the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. That does not mean that we shall no longer talk about faults or sin. It means that faults are not justiciable. Just as a couple went into their marriage partnership together, through the Bill they will have to think carefully about dissolving it.
The required information session could assist both parties to know what help is available. I understand—I should like to be assured on this point when the noble and learned Lord responds to the debate—that legal advice will be available in mediation. That is necessary if an informed decision is to be made. Mediation will give a couple an opportunity to reflect on the consequences of divorce for their children, home and property, thus underlining the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood. I believe that a year with a purpose could provide the time for a couple to come to a more balanced view.
It is not possible for any legislation to cover every hard case. I know of quite a lot of hard cases, but I shall not take up the time of the House by describing them this afternoon. Above all, the children would benefit greatly from the avoidance of the crossfire of marital warfare. That will stand them in good stead when they

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themselves many. Bitterness, rancour and taking up sides damage children and put them at a disadvantage in terms of future relationships.
So far, so good and I am glad to support the Lord Chancellor in his good purposes, but I am disappointed that there is nothing on the face of the Bill about the resources which the White Paper said would be at his disposal for marriage preparation, marriage education and marriage counselling, and to support the existing voluntary agencies which will be called upon more if we introduce mediation. Can we be assured that they have the resources with which to respond? I understand that they have formed themselves into a college of mediators and that the training course that mediators will receive has university validation. That is good, but we would be in a situation where the last case would be worse than the first if the Bill were to become law and in the end we found that we could not resource it. I look for reassurance on that point.
There is also the question of the protection of women as well as children. Words such as "flexibility" and "the discretion of the court" are important. Unfortunately, I cannot go into Part III of the Bill in as much detail as has been covered so far in the debate. However, in the present state of affairs men are often the losers. They are often rendered homeless and, if they are workless also, that is a recipe for disaster. Can we be assured of the use of the judge's discretion in allowing children to stay in the family home—they may be taking GCSEs or be in the midst of exams of great importance. We need to know that there will also be an ouster clause to cover cases where abuse has occurred, and the use of the bar where undue hardship to either party would follow the granting of a divorce.
I believe that the Bill has the potential to end quickie divorces and to make the option of divorce harder. There is in our society a divorce mindedness which sometimes brings people to divorce in haste and repent at leisure. I am told by an inquiry that six years after divorce, 50 per cent. of men and 30 per cent. of women registered regret that they had taken that step. We need to halt the slide. We need to talk up marriage and to avoid sceptical remarks such as "Holy deadlock" and the sophistication which comes like a frost to blight our life.
Equally, we would be foolish to imagine that changes in marriage and the family have not taken place. Of course they have. Marriage and the family are under unprecedented pressures from the massive social changes of our time. Poverty, unemployment and mobility all put marriage and the family under pressure. Women are no longer prepared to be anything less than equal partners in marriage and the family—and rightly so. I want to argue that parenthood is as important as any career. So, marriage and the family need our support and I believe that, in principle, the Lord Chancellor's Bill will effect that.
4.50 p.m.
Lord Craigmyle: My Lords, my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has put me in something of a
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quandary. I yield to no one in admiration of my noble and learned friend's many high qualities and, in respect of this matter, of his intellectual integrity. It was clear from the way in which he spoke to your Lordships that he has devoted intense study to this matter, far more than I and probably many of your Lordships. Indeed, I suspect that had I had before me all the material that he has considered I should not have been able to understand a great deal of it. During his time at the Bar he had experience of the law, including experience of divorce cases.
My noble and learned friend puts me in a quandary because I am not entirely persuaded by what he said. In view of his qualities, my first instinct is to say, "Of course, he is right. I have not thought about the matter sufficiently". And yet the worries remain. It may be as well if I express them briefly. I ask the noble and learned Lord's charity. If I am critical of the Bill my criticism springs from a spirit of inquiry and is not mere carping.
My main difficulty is the business of no fault. A great deal of propaganda has been sent to noble Lords on both sides and the no-fault provision seems to be—I risk making a pun—the fault line. Those who support the Bill believe that no fault is an excellent idea; those who do not support the Bill believe that it is a dreadful idea.
I do not know the answer but I wish to raise this aspect. Under the terms of the Bill, divorce remains a matter for the court. Although these days divorce proceedings seldom reach the court they are nonetheless decided by a judge. Upon what basis is a judge in future to decide a divorce matter? The petition—the statement, as we must now call it—tells him nothing but the opinion of the parties to a marriage or, much more often, of one party to the marriage that the marriage has broken down. No reasons and no explanations. We have been told that in the past reasons and explanations were often false and involved connivance. Now no reasons are to be given at all. Does that improve the situation? To my mind it does not.
If the judge is given no reasons, upon what can he reach a decision? There are no explanations of the causes of action. How can he judge the matter justly? Is he expected to judge the matter? The right reverend Prelate said that it may be that the fault will not be justiciable. I am beginning to wonder whether anything justiciable is left in the majority of undefended divorce cases. If there is nothing, why do we leave the matter to the judge? The judge becomes a mere rubber stamp. The divorce proceedings should go through the registrar of marriages. Let the registrar who did the hitching do the unhitching. The judge is no longer in a position to do anything except in relation to mediation or what is contained in Clause 10. My noble and learned friend seems to believe that Clause 10 will be effective. I wonder whether it will. I wonder how many people will use Clause 10, which seems to put a heavy burden on the so-called "other party"; that is, the one who has not made the statement. One may guess that in practice it will be seldom used. Apart from that, it appears that the judge cannot refuse to grant a divorce.

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The statement of breakdown of marriage is not a petition to the court. It comes very near to being an instruction to the judge to set in process the machinery which will inevitably lead to divorce. Its grounds cannot be challenged and it does not have to be proved to be sound. It expresses merely the unexamined opinion of interested parties to what is always a complex matter. I am afraid that Clause 10 and, very likely, the mediation clauses will prove the merest fig leaf to cover the shame of divorce proceedings. I do not believe that judges will like being rubber stamps. I have not asked any, but I can guess the answer.
What are the rubber stamps for? In the phrase I used a moment ago, for the unexplained, unquestioned opinion of one party to the marriage. No reasons; no explanations. No fault; no justice. However ill-founded or trivial the case for divorce may be, a divorce there will be, pace Clause 10. The compulsory waiting time, mediation and all that, will not deter many prospective divorcees. A few may be turned back but I suspect not many. The danger is that, in the upshot, quite contrary to my noble and learned friend's intention, divorce under a no-fault system will be easier than ever and will continue to become more and more common.
Perhaps most of your Lordships have it in the back of the mind that the existence of divorce alters the concept of marriage itself. If a couple entering upon matrimony realise that marriage is for life and that fact is sunk deep into their thinking they will take it seriously. They will understand that marriage, in the wonderfully telling words of the Book of Common Prayer:
"is not… to be… taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly".
But if, on the contrary, we in Parliament, by whose authority laws about marriage were made, not only make divorce available but strive to make it as simple, convenient, stigma-free and inexpensive as we possibly can, we shall make it seem a normal, everyday matter and, consequently, marriage a simple thing easily undone. The very marriage vows, solemn as they are, become just an old-fashioned form of words in an old-fashioned form of ceremony. Who is to take seriously all that guff about "better or worse" and "till death us do part" when it is known very well that on the merest whim of one or the other partner statement can be laid before the court saying that the marriage is falling to pieces. That will be the situation if divorce is only a formality. In those circumstances, marriage promises will be set aside cheerfully, not just by the parties, but by us here in Parliament, the very authority which insists on their being made in the first place.
Those may be general considerations which are not strictly pertinent to the Bill but when considering anything in the way of divorce reform such general considerations must underlie our discussions. We should look at the map to see where we are going and where we shall reach if we carry on in the current direction.
If, as I greatly fear, the removal of all trace of fault from divorce proceedings further weakens the bonds of matrimony in England and Wales and the number of divorces continues to increase, the time may not be far away when we shall be forced to react very strongly and
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once more insist that divorce is made unattractive and so becomes less readily sought after and that couples take seriously their marriage vows and abide by them, however difficult that proves to be.
At the moment, I do not think that we need do more than stop and take a step or two backwards. We need not have a violent reaction such as that of which I have just spoken. I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate that we must ensure that the bodies which support and help marriage and help people who are having marriage difficulties are adequately supported. The support they receive from the taxpayer is trivial compared with the enormous sums expended on supporting the divorce machine. And it will be trivial compared with the sum needed for the new industry of mediation in which not only my noble and learned friend but many other noble Lords seem to be placing much hope. I suspect that that will just become another branch of the social services or the counselling profession. I greatly fear also that we may find that there is a danger of the industry becoming manned by those who have their own agenda, which may not be the agenda of Parliament.
I am sorry to be critical of the Bill. I hope that by the end of the debate, I shall be better satisfied with it. I must apologise to my noble and learned friend if I am not able to be present for the conclusion of the debate. The reason is one for which he will have some sympathy. I am going to Scotland.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, I wish to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for presenting the Bill and for the manner in which he introduced the debate. I wish also to express my delight at what I heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. Obviously we share a common heritage to a large extent and therefore there was much with which I found myself in agreement, as there was in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, who expressed ideas very close to my heart.
The Bill contains some valuable provisions which merit support. More important, it helps to bring one of the most depressing problems besetting the country to national attention. It places it at or near the top of our parliamentary agenda.
I find the Bill quite satisfactory for what it says but less so for what it omits. The White Paper, Looking to the Future, proposed that present arrangements for marriage preparation would be reviewed and that every opportunity would be made available to explore reconciliation even after the divorce process had started. It promised also to support the institution of marriage. I find nothing in the Bill as currently drafted to reflect those objectives.
Above all, what I miss in the Bill is the sense of urgency and alarm which should be evoked by the disintegration of marriage on such a huge scale. With some 150,000 divorces per year, marriage is now a national disaster area, inflicting immeasurable harm at an incalculable cost economically as well as socially, not to mention morally.

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Legal payments and welfare benefits alone cost the state some £3 billion annually. When one adds the far greater losses in productivity caused by people whose homes are breaking up, plus the huge cost of crime directly attributable to children growing up in what amounts to a no-man's land without a stable and loving home, £10 billion is the aggregate price for divorce. Marriage failure may now even, alas, blight the nation's most precious asset, the monarchy itself.
I recall some years ago a chief constable, after detailing the rise in the crime figures, saying, "We will have to learn to live with crime." I believe that that is dangerously defeatist counsel. We must learn not to live with crime. We must learn to abhor crime as utterly unacceptable. Similarly, this Bill, by its emphasis on easing divorce rather than on strengthening marriage, seems to accept the massive break-up of marriage as though it were inescapable with scarce concern for promoting the benefits and consolidation of regular home life.
If the country were faced with a physical epidemic affecting 600,000 victims a year—on average every divorce brings severe anguish to at least four people—a flood of emergency measures would be set in motion to stay such a devastating plague. We all remember when the AIDS epidemic first struck how energetically the Government mobilised all available resources to bring the dangers to the attention of the public and to create an awareness of the dreadful consequences. Leaflets entitled Don't Die of Ignorance, with detailed instructions on how to avoid the hideous infection, were dropped into the post boxes of every home in the land.
Surely, the first task must be to alert the population to the awesome peril facing all spouses—indeed, all young couples today—if they are not careful, and to the potential resultant threat to millions of children who will grow up in a barren no-man's-land,sans love,sans tender care, sans everything, to echo Shakespeare's seven stages of man in "As You Like It".
The Chinese have a proverb: people stumble over molehills, not over mountains. Many marriages start to go sour over petty arguments. Small, early precautions could prevent many a great tragedy later. Some simple rules should be widely circulated on how to guard against marital shipwreck—for instance, stating that in a truly happy marriage giving is more important than taking, and that each partner should think first of making the other happy before seeking personal happiness. Much more gravely, sexual adventures before marriage are bound to turn the eventual marriage into an anti-climax as "stolen waters are sweet" and, therefore, illicit pleasures are always more exciting than legitimate joys. Such marriages are often ruined before they start by unfulfillable expectations.
It may be argued—I am sure it will be—that it is not the business of government or of Parliament to give moral advice or to urge people how to conduct themselves in their private lives. I reject that argument as false and irresponsible. It is the business of government to protect society from any looming peril, especially when it is liable to be of catastrophic proportions, as the breakdown of marriage now is.
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Perhaps I may give your Lordships an analogy. The state does not allow drivers to take to the road without a licence which is given after competent instruction and a proper test. That is because an untrained driver is a menace to other road users. Before entering the often much more risky business of marriage, why should not young people be required to undergo pre-marital instruction to make sure that at least some of the pitfalls, as well as the skills, of home-building are thoroughly known beforehand? Failed marriages can produce more casualties than unlicensed drivers. They can destroy whole families and the entire fabric of society. If the state controls the exit from marriage, it is at least as urgent to regulate the entrance to marriage.
Even more damaging than hasty divorces are hasty marriages. A waiting period on registering a marriage before it can be solemnised or contracted can save more marriages than a waiting period before a divorce is granted. Shot-gun marriages all too often lead to the gun going off with tragic casualties.
Some teaching in the responsibilities of marriage should also be included as an essential subject in school instruction. It belongs to basic civics. In the end, it may well prove even more indispensable to success in life than purely professional or occupational training. A broken home costs more than a poorly prepared career.
In the light of the present-day crippling havoc, the state owes it to all citizens to promote and support educational and counselling facilities, helping towards healthier marriages. Huge sums are being spent on public relations campaigns, for example, to highlight the danger of the abuse of drugs, alcohol, drinking and driving and other hazards. The amounts saved on avoiding failed marriages would amply cover such publicity. The savings would also leave funds for essential research—such as on the causal relationship between broken homes and crime or between pre-marital training and the incidence of divorce.
Another relevant subject calling for urgent study is the effect of television on communications between husbands and wives, and between parents and children. The results may turn out to be startling. One only has to compare the amount spent on medical cancer research with the funds devoted to domestic cancer research to realise the glaring disproportion between the two.
I should like to make a final point on the Jewish ramifications of the Bill, particularly the hardship bar. A special difficulty arises out of a divorce. While dissolving the civil contract of the parties, it leaves the religious bond—equally recognised by the state as valid in parliamentary legislation—still intact, thus leading to a "limping marriage" liable to cause immense hardship. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has been most helpful and has indicated that if I table an amendment to the hardship bar, designed to alleviate the hardship, the Government will look seriously at it in Committee. I repeat that I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his understanding.
As heirs to the Judaeo-Christian heritage, most of us appreciate that the biblical story of the creation starts with marriage as the first human institution. In their togetherness, man and woman were told by their maker

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to be fruitful and to multiply; to fill the earth and to conquer it; and to have dominion over nature. It is no good reaching the outer space of the heavens, ruling over the mysteries down here on earth through the conquest of nature and being dominant outside if the inner space of the home collapses and the hallowed bond between man and wife is allowed to snap. I hope that the Bill, with amendments, will help millions of homes to be built or rebuilt as secure havens of love, virtue and joy.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Coleraine: My Lords, I am never surprised to find myself in agreement with words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, and today is no exception. It is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss a Bill introduced in this House by my noble and learned friend. This Bill is clearly a product of the age of the paramountcy of the interests of the child. That is a phrase of little meaning, flawed in concept and unjust in practice. I assume that it is primarily for the purpose of giving effect to this paramountcy that the major Christian religious organisations support the Bill.
However, there has to be some doubt as to whether the Bill will do everything that is claimed for it as regards children. Those who propose that it is better for parties to part than to stay together use emotive phrases such as "warring parties" and "abusive parties". However, not all limping marriages comprise uncivilised, struggling parties. There are limping marriages which can survive without that sort of friction, and they should be encouraged.
I spoke about this Bill during the debate on the gracious Speech and I wish to express again in more detail my support for many of the changes contained in the Bill which, taken individually, add up to humane, honourable and healing law reform. There are the proposals for mediation and the period of reflection which are intended to enable a disintegrating married couple to agree about their children and other matters before, and not after, finally divorcing. The proposals may also give couples the chance to experience before their divorce takes place the sadness and sense of failure which so many decent divorced couples have been shown to feel after it is all over and the sense of regret that their marriage was ever allowed to break down.
Some couples may come back together as a result of the period of reflection, but there has to be scepticism about that hope. It is unlikely that the period of reflection will be a cloistered six months. In the difficult cases where children are involved and the parents are embittered—just the cases where a period of reflection is most needed—it is unlikely that all the ancillary arrangements will have been agreed or ordered much before the end of the 12-month period, and then the divorce will be obtained and that will be that. I can also agree that in our enlightened times the state should no longer even pretend to stand in the way of divorce by the mutual consent of the parties.
The first of the five objectives of a better divorce law, as stated at paragraph 3.5 of the White Paper and elsewhere, is to support the institution of marriage. I ask
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whether the Bill will achieve this objective; I believe that it will not. That is why I believe that the Bill as drafted is, unfortunately, a bad Bill. My noble and learned friend, however, says that the Bill will support the institution of marriage. In paragraph 3.8 of the White Paper he writes that the Government propose to set up an interdepartmental working group on marriage chaired by his department. He writes:
"The Government believes that there should be greater integration of policies which support marriage with those on divorce".
I agree. I only think it a pity that the group was not set up earlier.
The clear availability of marriage reconciliation services and counselling at all periods during the divorce process, to function in conjunction with mediation, would have been a central part of a Bill which reflected an integrated policy on marriage and divorce. However, we do not have that in the Bill, nor is it intended. I suggest that the purposes of mediation need to be spelt out with some clarity in the Bill. I wonder whether the purposes might be headed with, as a first objective, the strengthening of the institution of marriage and the family and of individual marriages and families, including particularly existing marriages and families but not excluding those which may later be entered into or be created by the separating parties.
The provisions for mediation in the Bill and in the White Paper are, frankly, in my view, better intentioned than considered. One has only to look at published papers on mediation to realise the extent to which as a profession it is in its infancy and has still to work out exactly where it is going, and the extent to which the creation of a formal profession has hardly begun, including the creation of a college next year which is to set and regulate high standards for a new profession. All that does little to give confidence in the Bill.
At the moment only a small percentage of divorces are mediated. Those are mostly cases where the parties are what we might call "civilised". There are nowhere near enough mediators to cope with the intended expansion of mediation in divorce. Paragraph 7.39 of the White Paper tells us of the pilot project to monitor and test the new arrangements before full implementation of the White Paper's proposals. I wonder whether my noble and learned friend has decided, and can tell the House, when he anticipates that the provisions for no-fault divorce and the year for reflection which are central to the Bill will be brought into force. Will it be in one year, two years or three years?
I have one further suggestion to make and I make it in the context that my noble and learned friend has said that the Government are prepared to be persuaded by arguments submitted in Parliament. When I spoke on 20th November I sought to show that to make of marriage a licence to cohabit, terminable at one year's notice by either husband or wife, is likely so to destroy the significance of marriage in the eyes of the young unmarried as to make them ask—even more than now—why they should marry rather than cohabit.
It is commonplace to say that one cannot legislate for happy marriages. However, what one can do is to lay down indicative laws to buttress the institution of

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marriage and to create a climate in which a happy marriage has a better chance to develop than otherwise. I suggest that this could and should be done within this Bill. We should be prepared to look carefully at the idea that a marriage which one party wishes to maintain should not be so easily dissolved on demand as one where the parties are in agreement. I have in mind as an example that, without the consent of both parties, it should be possible for the party who wishes to end the marriage only to obtain the equivalent of a decree nisi at the end of the year's period of reflection. There should then be a further period for reflection before the divorce takes effect and the parties are free to remarry. That is not punitive, nor is it intended to be.
The thought that for one party alone to break a marriage might call for something more than a year's wait would be at least a small signal to those thinking of marriage that the state still has some interest in supporting the institution. They would be reassured to think that neither they nor their partner could act altogether wantonly. That thought might help to create a good atmosphere in which to start the building of a loving relationship. Nowhere in the White Paper or in the briefing documents that I have seen is consideration given to the effect of this Bill on those contemplating marriage and hence on the institution itself. We need to take a wider view of divorce in relation to marriage than the White Paper does. Figures published in The Times yesterday bear this out. They show that fewer than 300,000 couples were married last year, compared with 426,000 in the record wedding year of 1972, and only about 180,000 of those marriages were first marriages for both parties.
5.29 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, today I have a feeling of déjà vu. I think that I must be one of the few Peers left who spoke throughout the passage of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act. There are not many of us left, alas.
In its time, that legislation was considered just as controversial, if not more so, as the Bill we are discussing today. I see that the noble and learned Lord nods his head. The late Lady Summerskill labelled it the "Casanova's Charter". What a sound bite that would be today. Many noble and learned Lords were dead against it. Nevertheless, I believe that it worked well, within its limitations.
At that time it was envisaged that more people would follow the no-fault, two-year separation route. That has not been the case. Frequently the present law has been manipulated to achieve divorce using the concept of fault whatever the circumstances may be.
Therefore, there are obvious advantages to the reform of the current divorce system proposed by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, conjoined as it is with his commitment to marriage. Removal of the fault-based facts for adultery, unreasonable behaviour and desertion avoids the bitterness and acrimony in what is for most people an already painful experience. However, although the object and motivation behind the Bill are to be praised, my anxiety is that its detailed provisions are based on a number of fallacies and so miss the mark.
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The Bill is based on the belief that husbands and wives do not give adequate reflection and consideration prior to instituting divorce proceedings. Some of them, of course, do not. However, I understand from a number of experienced divorce practitioners that that is not generally the case. The majority of people agonise for a long period over whether there is any prospect for reconciliation before they come to the final decision that there is no hope for their marriage. There are many cases in which, even after consulting a solicitor, husbands and wives take further time to reflect before giving him the green light to trial proceedings.
Under the present law nearly 75 per cent. of divorces rely on adultery or unreasonable behaviour as proof of marital breakdown. Many petitions are based on fault-facts, not because that necessarily reflects the real reason for seeking a divorce but because reliance on one of the other facts requires a longer waiting time before the divorce can be obtained, namely either two years or five years depending on which path is taken.
The 1969 Act does not adequately protect the welfare of children. Many of us were aware of that at the time. The proposals of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for a year of reflection to minimise conflict and problems associated with the children of divorce may prove to be too "one route" for many couples.
For some the period will be too long. Victims of domestic violence, mainly women, are often in need of urgent relief. Not all couples have children, or many have adult children who no longer need to be provided for.
For others the period may be too short. The Bill proposes that the divorce should not be made final until all the ancillary arrangements, whether they relate to children or finance, have been concluded, save in certain limited and expressly prescribed circumstances listed in Schedule 1. There would, in effect, be artificial pressure to conclude the ancillary aspects. The breathing space will not then be used as a time for reflection on whether divorce is the only course, but most concentration will be focused on what will happen after divorce and on reaching an agreement.
At present the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is unwilling to shorten the period or make it more adaptable. My view is that it must be made more flexible. We must recognise that we are dealing with adults, although many may not behave as such, and we should not underrate people in the way that is suggested in the Bill. I found a rather patronising tone in parts of the Bill. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will join with me in trying to remove that.
I believe that there should be more discussion on how long the period should be and how it can be made more flexible.
As the White Paper stated, the primary purpose of the period for reflection is to demonstrate that the marriage has irretrievably broken down and not solely to make arrangements for living apart. The Government believe that a minimum absolute period is necessary to establish that breakdown with certainty. I wonder whether that is not counterproductive.

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Looking abroad for a moment, France has divorce by mutual consent after six months and automatic divorce after six years separation. There is fault divorce at any time on grounds of adultery and unacceptable behaviour. In Sweden there is automatic divorce with no time stipulation if parties agree and there are no children under 16. Otherwise, a six-month deliberation period operates. In Finland divorce is also automatic assuming consent and no young children. There is a six-month period of reflection for those couples with children or two years' formal separation.
As it stands, the Family Law Bill sets out long and complicated procedures involving compulsory information sessions, mediators and solicitors. There is a good case for encouraging the use of mediation as part of the divorce process, but the proper add-on costs of legal advice should not be overlooked. If parties decide to mediate they may well need some legal advice on the legal issues which arise during the course of mediation. Therefore, it is difficult to see how the new measures will be both cost neutral and socially acceptable. I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor can say a word about that when he winds up the debate.
More consideration also needs to be given to tighter and more practical rules in the Family Division. I hope that we shall be able to deal with that issue in Committee.
If the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor really wants to discourage divorce, as I am sure he does, the problem must be addressed at a much earlier stage. Many noble Lords will have seen the "Panorama" programme a few weeks ago which highlighted a scheme at a medical practice in Reading where a marriage guidance counsellor has been employed. Doctors work closely with the community and are often in a better position to detect the early stages of marital breakdown. This scheme ought to be promoted and funded and more widespread if there is to be any real chance of helping people resolve their differences before the marriage deteriorates to the point of irretrievable breakdown. The imposition of a 12-month period of reflection and consideration is too little and too late. That is what we must bear in mind and consider before the Bill leaves this House.
5.38 p.m.
Lord Habgood: My Lords, this counts as my third maiden speech in your Lordships' House. Therefore, perhaps I may begin by saying that no irony is intended in making a third maiden speech on the subject of divorce. I need to declare an interest as one of the two patrons of National Family Mediation. The other patron is also a Member of this House.
I have had a long interest in this legislation, and it is, of course, a matter of great concern to all the Churches. As your Lordships are well aware, the Church of England has been going through agonies on the whole subject of divorce and its own internal discipline in so far as it relates to marriage and remarriage. However, it is also totally clear that if there is to be legislation on divorce, it should be good, clear and fair, protective of children and supportive of marriage.
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For those reasons I thought that it might be useful to take us back to the beginning of the whole concept: namely, a report prepared by the Church of England in 1966 entitled Putting Asunder. In a quite revolutionary way from a Church body, the report puts forward the notion that breakdown should be the sole ground for divorce. It is an interesting report to re-read. It is tightly argued. It is not about being more humane, avoiding trauma or making divorce easier or harder, but about the nature of marriage. Perhaps I may quote a few sentences from it.
The report states,
"We were persuaded that a divorce law founded on the doctrine of breakdown would not only accord better with social realities than the present law does, but would have the merit of showing up divorce for what in essence it is—not a reward for marital virtue on the one side and a penalty for marital delinquency on the other; not a victory for one spouse and a reverse for the other; but a defeat for both, a failure of the marital 'two-in-oneship' in which both members, however unequal their responsibility, are involved together. So we arrived at our primary and fundamental recommendation: that the doctrine of the breakdown of marriage should be comprehensively substituted for the doctrine of the matrimonial offence as the basis of all divorce".
The report further argues that the fault principle—I stress this because outside your Lordships' House there are still many who want us to return to a fault principle—implies a superficial view of marriage and its breakdown. The report took the example of adultery. It states:
"There are all sorts of ways in which the situation created (say) by adultery might be dealt with by the two persons concerned. So in reality it is only if they fail to deal with it in any of those other ways that there is a case for divorce; and that means that it is not the matrimonial offence in itself that should be the reason for dissolving the marriage, but only the ultimate failure of the relationship between the two to bear the stress [that adultery] put upon it".
In other words, what had hitherto been counted as offences and faults are symptoms rather than the fundamental factor that is wrong. What is fundamentally wrong is the breakdown of the marriage. Therefore the report argues that breakdown is the only proper ground because that essentially is what divorce is about.
It further argues about the importance of not bringing in so-called "grounds" such as adultery as additional reasons for granting divorce. Again its argument is interesting. The report states:
"Superficiality is probably inherent in any law that defines and lists a number of co-ordinate 'grounds' for divorce. That is one reason why it will not do to reduce breakdown of marriage to such a 'ground' and add it to the existing list. If the new principle were introduced into the law in that form, courts would inevitably be tempted to accept and act on a superficial likeness between the circumstances of the parties and the verbally formulated 'ground' instead of trying the issue of breakdown".
Under the 1969 Act, "grounds" were substituted by "facts". As we well know, lawyers were unwilling to assess breakdown. They felt that they could not do so on the basis of normal legal procedures. That is a very good argument for not wanting any flexibility in the law now. It would put lawyers into precisely the same position as regards seeking to make judgments about an issue on which it is extremely difficult to make judgments—namely, the quality of the relationship between a couple.

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However, in effect the 1969 legislation rendered the principle of breakdown ineffective by the addition of new quasi grounds in what is still popularly regarded as a fault-based procedure although it is not. That is precisely what those who produced the 1966 report warned against. It has also led to what I now regard as the nadir of marriage and divorce: namely, the present system of quickie divorce by post which reduces the concept of marriage and divorce virtually to something quite contemptible.
I therefore greatly welcome this opportunity to start again on a basis of clear principle. People may continue to ask, "What about fault?" Of course there is fault in marriage; of course there is fault every time a marriage breaks down; of course fault may be a reason for divorce. Fault will probably need to be taken into account in the settlements arrived at during the year of reflection. But that does not make fault the legal basis for divorce.
The Bill provides that marriages can be legally dissolved only when, in effect, they are dead already. Who can tell that? Only the two people concerned. However, it is not simply their decision. Marriage is not just an extra commitment; it is a public status. That needs to be emphasised, and I am sorry that it is not emphasised in Clause 36 of the Bill.
The break-up of a marriage cannot simply be on the decision of the couple involved. It must be a legal decision because marriage represents a legal status. That is why it is so important, as previous speakers said, that the right of refusal must be retained. I imagine that most refusals will be based on a factor which can be assessed by the law—namely, whether fair conditions have been decided for the settlement of children and property.
If the opportunities are properly seized, the Bill gives us an enormous opportunity to clarify the principle underlying marriage and divorce, and to strengthen marriage. It is not just a year of waiting but of working. That is why the provision must be a year for everyone.
I welcome the emphasis on mediation. I have already spoken of my interest in that. However, I should like to see a clear statement in the early stages of the process that there are three different routes down which people can go: mediation is important; conciliation might be another route, and litigation a third. Those three should be presented as options. There should also be opportunity to switch between them. There is no need for rivalry between lawyers, mediators and others, despite some of the chunterings from the legal profession. Half the present mediators are lawyers. We are talking not necessarily about different people but different roles.
Mediation involves a different process from that of the lawyer taking sides and making out a case. The mediator is precisely not there to make a case, but to enable the couple themselves to explore what the issues are which have to be settled between them. However, as one much involved in national family mediation, I have to say that although it is becoming increasingly professional and is full of highly dedicated people, at the moment it is in a fragile state because it has virtually
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no resources. I do not believe that it can wait for resources to come in through the legal aid system. What needs to happen now is some core funding for the support services so that they can prepare themselves for the greatly increased workload that they will have.
Thus I welcome this legislation, on the assumption and the condition that there is real commitment by the Government to ensuring that proper support services are put in place. We must not go down the route that was followed in 1969 when a good principle was accepted but was then undermined and unsupported.
5.50 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to begin by apologising to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor as I was unable to be here for the last part of his opening remarks. I apologise also to the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. Unfortunately, I had an unbreakable commitment but I shall read very carefully what they said in Hansard when it is published tomorrow.
I wish to begin by thanking my noble and learned friend for the opportunity that he gave me earlier in the autumn to talk to him at length about the provisions of the Bill. It is a piece of legislation that I believe to be the most important in the Queen's Speech because it will have more lasting effects for good or ill than any other piece. If we do not get it right, the tragedy will be all the greater and the more difficult to put right at any subsequent occasion.
As I think my noble and learned friend knows, I am very unhappy about the Bill. I draw a distinction between Parts I and II which have been the subject of all the debates that I have heard, and Part III which has already been debated in your Lordships' House and which has been generally agreed.
I speak only for myself and I speak in many respects with a heavy heart because I greatly respect my noble and learned friend and the work that I know he personally has put into this piece of legislation. The fact is that I wish we did not have Parts I and II at all. As Ruth Deech said in her paper on Divorce Dissent, every time there has been a Bill to reform divorce law, the number of divorces has actually gone up. In 1936 there were approximately 6,000 a year. Following the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1937, the number went up to over 10,000. The divorce rate climbed steadily through the 1940s, with the advent of legal aid, and then we came to the Divorce Reform Act 1969, with 70,000 divorces at about the time of its passage, rising very rapidly to 111,000 divorces in 1971.
I listened with care to what the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said about that piece of legislation. It is interesting that in its preamble its purpose was: to promote the stability of marriage, reconciliation, maximum fairness, protection of children and the economically weaker spouse. Of all those great ideals, possibly only the last was achieved by the legislation because we find that by 1977 when there was a further reform of divorce procedure, the numbers of divorces had risen to 170,000. There are some 191,000 today. In

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view of that evidence, it is difficult to believe that yet another piece of reform of the divorce law is not going to increase the numbers of divorces. I think that it is no use blinking at these facts which are there for us to see.
There are two questions. One is: "Does it matter?" The second is:"Do we really think it will happen?" I believe that a halt has to be called to the apparently inexorable rise of the divorce rate. The fact that over the past 10 years some 3.5 million adults and 1.5 million children have been involved in divorce should make us all pause for thought. Modern research— unlike that on which the Law Commission's earlier proposals were based, particularly in the 1969 Act— has shown that it is divorce itself which has such devastating effects on children. Of all their troubles, quarrelling parents who stay together are better for the children than divorce itself. Many children never recover from the trauma of divorce.
No one can read that remarkable book, Families Without Fatherhood, based on the research of two members of the Labour Party, with a very interesting foreword by Professor Halsey from Oxford, without being aware of the mass of statistics which indicate that children of divorced couples are less healthy, do less well at school, are more likely to be unemployed, are more likely to take to crime and, finally, to repeat the pattern of instability which they have inherited. More recent work in the Exeter study has made the same important point that divorce does lasting damage. My noble friend Lady Elles would have spoken on this point, had she been able to be here today.
The second general point that I would make about the Bill is that it is the work of the Law Commission. The Law Commission is concerned only with legal procedures, and I will turn to the detail of the Bill in a moment. Yet those are but a part of the whole situation of divorce. The enormous cost to society of divorce— vastly more than the legal aid bill— is a drop in the bucket, even with the money that is given to the mediation service. I have seen figures on the social security budget varying from £ 4 billion to £ 9 billion annually. I should be grateful if my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor could tell us what is the correct figure. Whatever it is, it is enormous. The money which is given is frequently paid by married couples who are already bringing up their own children and who are then obliged to support the children of divorced couples in ever more expensive circumstances.
Whatever consenting adults may or may not do in private (which is their affair), when children are involved, apart from anything else the direct cost of divorce is nearly always borne by society and society has, in my view, both a right and a duty to take an interest. I was very interested in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, on that matter and very much agree with him. Yet the Bill is completely silent on the point and we are concerned only with legal procedures and a number of other well-meaning ideas. Much of what seems to me to be so essential for society is left out.
I find disturbing some of the philosophy of the Law Commission. The point was well made by my noble friend Lord Coleraine, speaking in an earlier debate on
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the gracious Speech. He quoted Brenda Hoggett, now Mrs. Justice Hale, who I believe was the architect of the Law Commission's report on which the Bill is based. She said in a lecture:
"Logically, we have already reached a point at which, rather than discussing which remedies should now be extended to the unmarried, we should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purposes".
The Law Commission's report also states:
"the increases in the numbers of divorces does not, as is sometimes alleged, indicate a fundamental weakening of the fabric of society".
All that I can say is that members of the Law Commission are clearly living in a completely different world from the one in which I find myself living.
Whatever the Law Commission says, marriage is the basis of society as we have always known it. Its breakdown over the past 30 years— in barely a generation, since the early 1960s— has had an absolutely disastrous effect. It is disastrous for adults, and particularly disastrous for millions of children. In my opinion it is gradually undermining society at all levels. Its costs in human and money terms continue to grow. I ask myself where we shall be 20 years from now. I decided to speak in this debate because, as I see my young grandchildren growing up, I ask what their fate will be if we continue down the terrible path on which we have set ourselves, with no clear idea where we are going or what we face at the end of the day.
I now turn to the detail of the Bill. I ask myself whether it will do anything to buttress marriage. The Bill has been hailed as the ending of the quickie divorce, and I welcome that. I am glad that newly married couples will not be able to divorce in under two years, and that other couples will in all cases have to wait a year. The reality of that, as I understand the figures, is that for 77 per cent. of couples who probably get divorced in six months, the wait of one year would add a further six months to that period. However, I agree with the principle. I should like to see that waiting period extended, and I shall table an amendment accordingly. I support it because I believe it acts as what has been described as a cooling off period. I was interested to read the statistics from Relate. Research shows that 51 per cent. of divorced men and 29 per cent. of divorced women would have preferred to stay married. I profoundly hope that the longer waiting period may help them. As the Bill stands, however, the wait is only one year. That means that a man or woman can be divorced against his or her will after a year without any reason being given. Therefore, although the wait deals with the quickie divorce, it considerably shortens the time taken in divorces with agreement after two years or without agreement after five years. That issue needs to be addressed.
I turn now to mediation, about which there has been much confusion. People think that it is conciliation. It is not; it is quite different. Couples must accept at the outset that the marriage is over before mediation starts. It is a method by which divorce settlements are facilitated. It cannot of course be compulsory. I have talked to those involved in mediation, and I see full well that it can work where couples are willing for it to do so. If there is no acrimony, mediation will no doubt

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work well. There are those who are far more knowledgeable about this work than I who think, however, that it often puts women at a disadvantage. The danger is, "mediation" sounds so soothing. It is a kind of aspirin to the conscience of adults, who must know full well the damage that they are doing to children, to make them all feel a lot better. It may help some children, but what really disturbs children is the divorce itself. That is a paramount fact that we should hold onto.
I come now to what I realise will be regarded as very controversial remarks. I feel that I must make them because I believe them profoundly. It is the no fault provisions that I find to be the least acceptable part of this Bill. I simply do not understand what the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, intended in his remarks on no fault, that is, whether he thought there was not a fault or there was. Therefore let me say what I think.
Providing "no fault" undermines marriage vows. What, after all, is the point of making a vow when there is no fault if you break it? I have always believed that marriage is a sacrament. I realise that that is a rather quaint idea nowadays. It is certainly a contract, whether in church or at a registry office. But why should the concept of no fault apply to this, the most important of contracts, when it does not apply anywhere else?
The removal of fault undermines individual responsibility. By removing it, the state is actively discouraging any concept of lifelong commitment in marriage, to standards of behaviour, to self-sacrifice, to duty, to any thought for members of the family. It declares that neither party has any responsibility for the breakdown of marriage. Furthermore, it undermines the legal basis of marriage by making the contract meaningless; and it weakens the distinction between marriage and cohabitation. Under existing law, the need to establish a cause before divorce proceedings take place has been a consistent policy. Now, marriage can be ended just on the say-so of one or other, or both, partners. It flies in the face of experience.
Last year, when I was involved in the Pensions Bill, I received very many tragic letters from women aged about 55 whose husbands had gone off with someone aged about 28. As they cynically wrote, "I've been traded in for a new model". Those women had been married for some 25 to 30 years, so it cannot have been all that difficult for them. They had brought up the children and helped their husbands in their careers; and then were dumped. They will not believe that there is not a fault. By simply stating that there is no fault, we shall not remove it. What we shall do is bring the law once again into disrepute, because it will be out of line with what people know to be true. Stating that something is not true does not alter the fact that in many cases it is.
As someone once very wisely said, why look at the crystal ball when you can read the book? No fault divorce was introduced in California in 1970. It was not widely demanded by the public but appeared to offer— as we are being told today— an easier and less contentious way to end a marriage. Those are exactly the arguments that are used in support of this Bill. There
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is now clear evidence from America, Australia and New Zealand, where no fault divorce applies, that it leads to an increase in divorce. I shall table amendments at a later stage to meet those objections.
I began by saying that this is a very important Bill. It is one that will have enormous consequences. It is very important for us to get it as right as we can. I recognise that there are very different and profoundly held views in all parts of the House. I shall table amendments which I hope will have the effect of trying to buttress marriage. That is what we ought to be talking about, not just picking up the pieces, which is what this Bill does.
On the one-year time limit, on no fault and on mediation, much could be said. There is much that could be said to bolster mediation by conciliation. I hope very much therefore that we shall be able to improve this Bill before it goes to another place.
6.8 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford: My Lords, to state the obvious quickly and get it out of the way, I believe marriage is for life and I find the present high level of divorce dismaying. I respect the passion with which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, made that point. At the same time I recognise that if people are determined to divorce, the state must legislate for that. The question before us is simply this. When the point of irretrievable breakdown has been reached, what is the most humane and effective means of legally recognising that and settling the contentious practical issues?
I believe I speak for the majority of bishops of the Church of England in warmly welcoming Parts I and II of the Family Law Bill, to which I propose to confine my remarks, with one important condition and with attention to many of the important points of detail that have been made in this debate. The advantages of the new procedures for divorce are many. They have already been highlighted by a number of other noble Lords and I shall not repeat them. I wish simply to focus on two criticisms of the Bill that have been made, both within and outside the House.
The first criticism is that every reform of the divorce law since World War II has resulted in a large rise in the number of divorces and that this Bill will have a similar effect. In short, it will further weaken the institution of marriage as a lifelong commitment. It is a point that has been well made by Ruth Deech and was referred to this afternoon by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am particularly sorry to have to disagree with the noble Baroness on this point.
It is indeed true that the number of divorces has risen steeply in recent years; but it is not inevitable that that trend will continue. Many noble Lords will have read the latest figures for the number of divorces, and in fact they have gone down by 7,000 a year, or 4 per cent. The initial rise in the rate of divorce when the law was changed had at least something to do with the great backlog that had developed of marriages that had indeed severely broken down and for which, sadly, divorce was the least bad course of action.

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As for the general rise in the divorce rate, that is due to a whole range of social pressures, of which the availability of divorce, in my opinion, is not the most significant. One significant pressure, to which I have referred in this House in the past, is the fact that we simply live so much longer. The average length of a marriage today is longer than it was 150 years ago, when so many women died as a result of childbearing. That means that,
"for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health",
may mean trying to stay together for 60 or more years. Together with other significant factors, such as the new role of women in society, it poses major new challenges. The availability of divorce is only one— and not the most significant— of the many severe pressures on marriage in our time.
Sadly, marriages fail, but we do not strengthen the institution of marriage by an unsatisfactory divorce law, which the present law is widely recognised to be. Let us concentrate on the present proposals for their own sake, recognising that marriages break down and that when they do we need the least damaging and most effective procedure possible. Strengthening the institution of marriage is a separate issue, to which I shall refer in a few moments.
The second criticism of the present Bill is that the abolition of fault as evidence of breakdown means that marriage as a legal concept no longer has any meaning. Again, that has been referred to by your Lordships. In effect, so the critics say, it is reduced to a private contract which can be dissolved at will. In my view, that criticism is mistaken. Under the new proposals, the court still plays the crucial role and the procedures set out will he enshrined in laws with which the people will have to comply. Only the court may make an order to dissolve a marriage. Furthermore, according to Clause 10(2), the court can also make an order preventing a divorce, if dissolution would result in hardship to one of the partners or if:
"it would be wrong, in all the circumstances … for the marriage to be dissolved".
It may seem an obvious point, but it is one which still needs to be made in the light of the criticism. The involvement of the court in the process is a recognition that marriage is not simply a private contract. Marriage is a public commitment in which society has a stake— a stake expressed through the law and the courts. The details of the process, the requirement to attend an information session and the year which must be set aside for reflection and consideration, for example, signify clearly that it is not just a private arrangement. Marriage will remain what it was: a commitment for life, made in public with legal consequences.
In supporting the Bill, neither I nor my fellow bishops in any way imply that fault is not involved in the breakdown of a marriage. There is fault, as the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, stressed. But anyone who knows anything about relationships knows how difficult it is to attribute blame fairly. In some marriage breakdowns it may seem glaringly obvious who is at fault, but in a good number of cases the real story is painful, private and confused. A court with an adversarial process is not
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the best context in which to adjudicate. Far better is what is proposed in the present Bill, where the two partners simply have to face the question: has or has not their marriage irretrievably broken down?
I suggest, therefore, that the two main criticisms of the Bill do not stand up to serious analysis. If we are to have a divorce Bill, let it be one that is humane and effective— which I believe, in principle, this Bill to be, whatever further details need to be attended to.
It is also the purpose of the Bill to give an opportunity to save marriages that are savable. It is stated in Clause 7(1)(a) that the very first purpose of the year's period of reflection and consideration is:
"to reflect on whether the marriage can be saved".
In addition, the Lord Chancellor may make a rule requiring the legal representative of a party to certify:
"whether he has discussed with that party— the possibility of a reconciliation; and …whether he has given that party names and addresses of persons qualified to help— to effect a reconciliation; …or by counselling".
That is in Clause 11(2).
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, both this afternoon and outside this House in many speeches over the past year, has stressed his personal commitment to marriage and his wish to strengthen it. In particular, I note what he said at the launch of Marriage Care about the role of the Inter-Departmental Working Group on Marriage, one of whose tasks is to identify:
"how existing resources might best be used to meet the needs of couples who are considering marriage or whose marriage is in difficulty".
I particularly respect the great passion with which the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, brought to our attention this afternoon how pressing and widespread is the problem.
Existing resources are small compared with the amount spent as a result of marriage breakdown. In 1992, that sum was certainly £ 3.4 billion. That contrasts with the mere £ 3 million spent on supporting the work of marriage organisations. I very much hope, if the Inter-Departmental Working Group on Marriage ascertains that present resources, however targeted, are inadequate, as I believe them to be, that it will say so clearly and that the Lord Chancellor will support an increase in those resources.
There are ways in which marriage can be supported and there are well trained people able to work in this field but, as always, resources are needed. Commitment to marriage implies commitment to finding the resources to support it. Support of this Bill, which offers a procedure for divorce, which minimises the damage— a support which I wholeheartedly give— needs to go along with support for the organisations which support marriage, for that too is part of the express purpose of the Bill.
6.19 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I rise to support the Bill; at the same time I agree with the noble and learned Lord and many other noble Lords who have spoken of their profound belief in stable, happy and lasting marriage. However, it has to be admitted that there are

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marriages which break down. It is absolutely essential that we better educate our children about marriage. As many noble Lords have said, we should put more money and more resources into preventing marriage breakdown and helping people whose marriages are at risk.
I wish to speak about children. It may seem presumptuous of me to speak on divorce. I am unmarried with no children. But my professional life has been spent working alongside vulnerable families and, in particular, those who have embarked on divorce, both before and then during and after. I have also served as a servant of the court. With such experience I believe that the Bill should ensure that children are the main consideration. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, said that as a child he had experienced divorce in his family. I too was brought up by one parent, my father being killed in 1916. We may think that we are normal, but we do not know. We might have been better; perhaps I should say humbly that I, rather than the noble Earl, might have been better.
The Children Act 1989 states that when a court determines any question with respect to the upbringing of children, the administration of a child's property or the application of any money accruing from it, the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration. I make three points. It is wise that the Bill drops the fault clause. Only in extreme cases can anyone outside the marriage judge where the fault lies. Often it can be incompatibility of both the husband and wife. And for the fault clause to be proved requires the adversarial system of wife versus husband or vice versa.
Research by both the Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Rowntree Trust shows that children's happiness, wellbeing and behaviour reflect the state of mind of the parents. Inevitably, during the course of the divorce in the courts, the parents are overwrought and the parent caring for the child cannot hide from the child his or her state of mind following an acrimonious court hearing. The state of mind of the parent or parents is bound to be reflected in the child's feelings and behaviour, not only at the time of the court case, but thereafter— and long thereafter.
Furthermore, the adversarial system in court does not engender a peaceful relationship in the future which is necessary if children are to be in touch with both parents. Therefore, I support the work of the family mediation service. The noble Lord, Lord Habgood, said that one other member of this House is a patron of the service. I confess it is I. Furthermore, I am president of the Oxford mediation service whose chairman is a judge. At the annual meeting I attended this year, several judges were present to support the work. As stated by many noble Lords, the mediation service makes possible for parents to talk through quietly and without acrimony the future of the children and the financial situation.
Many noble Lords have said that the mediation service may be harmful to the wife where the question of property arises. I understand, however, that legal advice will be available. And, of course, the case finally goes before a judge. Those who run the mediation
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services in Oxford are trained. We have a trained probation officer who has available to him legal, advice and some of the mediators are themselves legal people.
Many years ago— more years than I care to remember— I was asked to chair a lawyers' meeting at Bristol University. The lawyers wanted to start a mediation service. I asked why. They said that much of their time and work was taken up by mediation which required long hours which they did not always have available, and that someone outside the court was needed to spend time with a couple if the marriage breakdown was to be as smooth as possible and without unhappiness.
I should perhaps say that both parents, when attending mediation, are made aware of the different laws that will affect them and their children when the divorce is finalised. It is sad that the legal profession is so divided on this subject. Many lawyers support the mediation service, but many do not. That saddens me because, as has been said, many lawyers take an active part in the mediation service.
I wish to raise one or two points with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. First, I believe that children have a right to be heard in all cases of divorce. Children have come to me and asked, "Why am I not spoken to? Why am I not asked? Why can I not say what the trouble is?" I feel that children are left out of consultation not only during the time of the divorce but also following the divorce. We all make mistakes. Sometimes custody is given to a parent and the arrangement breaks down. The child has no one in whom to confide and explain deep anxieties.
My second question concerns fathers. According to research by the university of Newcastle, many men are devoted to their children and want to see them but, owing to various circumstances, have been unable to formulate or continue a relationship with their children or ensure their happiness. Times have changed. Men can now cook. They can look after children, and many do. At one time in Oxford three unemployed men came to me and asked to run a nursery. I made sure that they were trained and that there was a health visitor on hand. But I have never seen three happier men. They were quite upset when they obtained jobs and had to give up the nursery. Attitudes have changed. Children need fathers and mothers. The fact that they may be separated or divorced need not break the relationship with parents. It gives happiness both to the children and to the parents.
I pass on to the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. It would be presumptuous of me to comment because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, is to speak. He was marvellous as chairman piloting the discussions on the Bill in this House. I wish, however, to be somewhat emotive. Anybody who has had to remove a child from his or her home because of allegations of cruelty or sexual abuse will know that it is a heart-rending experience. It is damaging to the child. The child has already suffered cruelty of some kind and must suffer again by being removed from the family home. The chairman of my committee in Oxford is sitting in

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front of me. We arranged for an empty flat to be available into which we could move mothers and children. Even then, of course the child is moved from his home. Therefore, I support the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. I know that it may be difficult for the owner of the house, but surely children come first.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Brightman: My Lords, I should like to speak briefly on Part III of the Bill, which replaces the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. The domestic violence Bill, as I shall call it for short, received all-party support in this House in the last Session, but was derailed in the other place as a consequence of ill-informed newspaper comment. In particular, it was asserted that the Bill had been whisked through this House— that was the verb used— without proper consideration and without adequate opportunity to table amendments.
That was a travesty of the facts. The committee set up in your Lordships' House to consider the Bill, which I had the honour to chair, received written evidence from 48 different sources, and heard oral evidence at six meetings. A total of 82 amendments were tabled at the Committee, Report and Third Reading stages. Seventy of those amendments were accepted. In conformity with the Special Public Bill Committee procedure, every Member of your Lordships' House had the right at every stage of the domestic violence Bill to table amendments and to speak on amendments. I can therefore say, without fear of contradiction, that the domestic violence Bill could not have received more profound consideration in this House than it has already received.
There are, however, four changes in the domestic violence Bill which are made by Part III of the present Bill. It is on these four changes that I should like to concentrate for a few moments. Change No. 1, as I shall call it, is this. The former domestic violence Bill gave the High Court, a county court and a magistrates' court power to make what is called an occupation order. An occupation order, put briefly, is a temporary order regulating the occupation of a home by, for the most part, spouses and ex-spouses, and unmarried couples who are living together as if they were man and wife. Under the domestic violence Bill an occupation order could be made from time to time, without any specified maximum period. Under the new Bill, in the case of unmarried couples who do not otherwise have property rights, an occupation order cannot be made for more than a maximum period of one year. Only spouses and ex-spouses can have the benefit of an occupation order which lasts longer than that.
That is the first change, and the question is whether it is an acceptable change. I express no final view at this stage, because I should like to listen to the arguments if any of your Lordships see fit to seek to restore the position under the domestic violence Bill. But, as at present advised, I find the change an acceptable one.
I turn to change No. 2. The scenario on this occasion is that a spouse or ex-spouse, or an unmarried partner or ex-partner, seeks an occupation order in respect of
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the family home. Under the former domestic violence Bill, the court would be bound to make an occupation order in favour of the applicant if the hardship to the applicant or a child was likely to exceed the hardship to the respondent or a child. That provision remains the same under the new Bill in the case of spouses. But in the case of unmarried couples, the new Bill gives the court a complete discretion. I myself have no objection to a judge having power, for a limited period of a year, to do what appears to him to be fair and just in all the circumstances as between unmarried couples and any child involved.
I turn to change No. 3. The scenario here is that there is a property dispute between the parties. Under an Act of 1882, a short and easy summary procedure was established for dealing with such a dispute as between a husband and wife. The domestic violence Bill proposed to extend that summary procedure to unmarried couples. This clause is not contained in the new Bill. Unmarried couples will have to use the ordinary court procedure to help resolve their property squabbles. This is a matter of court procedure and not of substantive law, and I have no strong objection to the change.
Change No. 4 is significant. Clause 36 of the new Bill, with no counterpart in the domestic violence Bill, provides that, in deciding whether to make an occupation order in favour of a cohabitant or ex-cohabitant, and whether to impose obligations regarding repairs and maintenance of the home, the payment of outgoings and the like, the court,
"is to have regard to the fact that the parties have not given each other the commitment involved in marriage".
This is an important change, and, if an amendment is tabled to remove it, I should like to hear what is said before I make up my mind. But at the end of the day, I feel sure that a judge will always seek to promulgate an order that is fair and just, and suited to all the circumstances of the case without adopting too legalistic an approach. So it may well be that I shall find the addition of this clause acceptable.
To sum the matter up, I am sorry that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has found it necessary to make changes to the domestic violence Bill. As the former chairman of the Special Public Bill Committee, I have tried to deal as fairly as I can with those changes. I can only express the hope that Part III of the new Bill, with or without the four intended changes, can find its way on to the statute book as early as possible and without any additional changes. I am certain that it will be warmly welcomed by all who are concerned with the problems that Part III of the Bill seeks to resolve.
6.40 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, for what he has been telling us about Part III of the Bill, which is a part of which I had absolutely no knowledge and now certainly have more than I did at the beginning of his speech. In my view this Bill is one of the most important that we shall discuss in this Session of Parliament because it deals with most of the people in this country, past, present and future.

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It was 12 years and 10 days ago, in 1983, that we had the Second Reading of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Bill under the guidance of my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham as Lord Chancellor. I seem to remember that the General Synod was in session that week and it was able to give us its views, as it is doing today, and we welcome that so much.
Unfortunately, since then the situation as regards divorce has deteriorated and many more families are increasingly making themselves, their children, relatives and friends deeply unhappy through divorce. I and all who are worried by the present trends are enormously grateful to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for the hard work, imagination, care and concern that he has given to this particularly difficult Bill. I say "difficult" because it is not possible to find the right answers and give the right guidance for 173,000 divorces— that was the figure for 1993 in Great Britain.
All noble Lords who are taking part in the debate this afternoon will have received as many recommendations and reports as I have, and have doubtless spent many hours weighing up the evidence and advice. I have been very much impressed by the ideas put forward by Relate. As I believe that I am a committee member, I want to acknowledge due guidance and pay deference to it for its very hard work in this particularly difficult field. It has wide knowledge and experience.
As with other organisations, it does not agree with the present grounds for divorce. As we know, the acrimony and bitterness endured by children when divorce is not agreed to is made much worse if one partner is continually blaming the other. That does more than anything else to make the children unhappy and leads to unhappy adults. My noble friend Lady Faithfull was perfectly right when she said that we know that children will grow up with the example set by their parents, whether they are divorced or not.
This Bill will make it more difficult to obtain a divorce and will give couples not only more knowledge and advice before they marry, but they will have a source of help on which they can draw if difficulties arise. I believe that care must be taken to make sure that at all stages the talks are confidential. There is one question I want to ask my noble and learned friend and it is this: at what court will the separation orders be granted? When I dealt with them as chairman of my matrimonial court many years ago, it was in the magistrates' matrimonial court. The court was always cleared and no publicity was ever allowed. I feel very strongly that the two people involved need it to be known that no publicity will follow their appearance in court.
Although the Bill, which I warmly welcome, deals with the partners to a marriage, the children and future generations must be adequately protected. In my view they should, as my noble friend Lady Faithfull has said, be advised through counselling about the state of their parents' unhappiness.
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There is an organisation called Families Need Fathers which I also try to help. We have talks on this subject. The fathers are deeply unhappy that the courts have not given them as much authority over the children as they had before, despite the fact that frequently the judges involved want the fathers to have more authority over the children.
Marriage is one of our national institutions and part of our way of life. We hold it dear and precious. As has been said, breakdown of a marriage is defeat for both parties. I shall end, because time is precious tonight, by updating the quote of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, which was marry,
"for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer",
by adding,
"but never for lunch".
6.48 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I too welcome the introduction of this Bill by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I say at the beginning that I accept quite readily and happily his Christian-based background and his references and biblical quotations to prove it. I say in passing I can count 42 quotations from the Bible upholding marriage in most respects, so we could go on for the rest of the evening exchanging quotations, which would prove that we are all right— and so we are.
I also accept that there are a number of contradictions in the Bill and some of them have been mentioned by other speakers. I shall keep mine as short as possible. In a debate of this kind it is inevitable that we shall all be speaking to each other at some stage. The Bill makes the most significant changes to divorce law in 26 years. There were some significant changes 26 years ago and this Bill makes even more. With the highest divorce rate in Europe, we have to look carefully indeed at all the possible implications of the proposals contained in this Bill.
I agree with those people who recognise that the current law of quickie divorces is in need of reformation. However, I believe that the proposals contained in the Bill are flawed. This is not the first time that divorce and its causes have been examined since the end of the last war. On each occasion one social factor or another, or a combination of social factors, has been blamed for the increase in divorce. Bad housing, lack of housing, youthful marriages, women's increased awareness and activity in social and political matters and the availability of legal aid have all been mentioned. The list gets longer, but all are excuses to justify the need to change the law yet again.
Lawyers and some politicians have always concluded that reforming the law will change the outlook of those people whom it is intended will be affected by the reforms. I think that that view is firmly reflected in this Bill also. We hear lawyers justifying it and saying that it will change people's outlook, but they said that last time and the time before. I do not think that it happens like that. It is always denied that new laws which make

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it easier to obtain a divorce will cause more people to end their marriages. But, as we have already heard, this Bill would make it easier to get a divorce.
The facts belie such views. Indeed, things changed even before the 60s. We have had 130 years of divorce reform and after each set of reforms, the number of divorces has increased. That is a fact based on sound research. It has been the case for many years. In the 60s, there were only 45,000 divorces per year. However, after the 1969 reforms, the number of divorces rose over three years to more than 100,000 per year in England and Wales alone. I am always conscious of the fact— I am sure that we all are— that behind every divorce lies a human tragedy— and that is a terrible number of tragedies. The most recent figures reveal that in 1993 there were 165,000 divorces in England and Wales and that 176,000 children experienced their parents' divorce. I repeat that the figure is 176,000, not 76,000 as was said earlier by, I believe, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford.
Reference has also been made to a decrease in the number of divorces. However, those who justify their remarks in that way do not mention that there has been a fall in the number of marriages also. We do not have the figure, but those of us with some street-sense know that even now marriage is becoming something that is unpopular, not necessary, difficult and expensive. That is why we do not hear much about marriage any more. We hear a lot about "my partner" or "my relationship", but nobody ever refers to their wife or husband any more. There are many fewer marriages today and, given that there are fewer marriages, I am not surprised by the fact that there are fewer divorces as a consequence. However, that was not the impression that I gained from the right reverend Prelate.
If current divorce rates continue, one in four children in England and Wales will see their parents divorce before they are 16 years old. A key aim of the Bill is allegedly to minimise harm to children by making the process less acrimonious. I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, with all her experience, said about children. However, recent research undertaken by the Centre for Family Research and by the Exeter Family Study, which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and others, reveals that greater damage is caused to children's mental, physical and educational wellbeing by parental separation than by the death of a parent. Research shows that children suffer more from the permanent separation of divorce than from bereavement. I accept the validity of that research.
Therefore, the priority should be to prevent parents divorcing, not to make divorce easier. Children want their parents to stay together, not to part— even amicably. Therefore, we are entitled to ask whether the thrust of the Bill is in the right direction. I do not think that it is. Previous experience teaches us that reforms such as those proposed in the Bill exacerbate the situation. I have mentioned the figures. Every year there are 190,000 petitions for divorce. In 1968, 10 per cent. of marriages ended in divorce, whereas now, after all the reforms, 40 per cent. of marriages end in divorce. And things will get worse. Ruth Deech has been quoted
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and I make no apology for quoting the words of this expert in family and divorce law. She has stated that the Government should abandon plans which make divorce easier. If they go ahead, she says,
"They will not save marriages but will precipitate a further rise in divorce".
That view is not to be taken flippantly when it comes from somebody so experienced in the subject.
I agree with all those people whose work involves trying to save marriages and to discuss such difficulties and who say that the Government should amend the Bill to include providing education on marriage for children at school. Children should learn at school about the sanctity of marriage and how to prevent breakups. There should be widespread publicly funded marriage preparation for all couples contemplating marriage. The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, mentioned something along those lines. Support and funding for services and agencies which provide ongoing marriage support and counselling should be made available. Greater emphasis should be given to the effects of divorce on children. Parents should be made far more aware of that than they are at the moment. More information should be given to them about the effects of parental separation on children. As has been said, the problems caused by separation are far more severe than those caused by conflict in marriage. Research shows that, in many cases, a bad marriage is better for the children than divorce. A bad marriage does not do them as much damage as separation or the permanency of divorce.
How many times do we have to hear reformers telling us to come into line with the times? Every time we have a controversial Bill we are told to come into line with the times. They say, "Join the real world; face up to reality and forget the past because it has gone". I heard such words almost daily during the passage of the 1993 Education Act. We were always being told to move into line with the current state of affairs as opposed to what we thought matters should be. We have heard that again tonight. We have been told that we must accept that this is what people are doing and that, "They are all at it". We have been told simply to accept it and to try to legislate for it.
That has been the basis of most of the movement for reform. However, it does not do us any good. Indeed, it makes things worse and then we have to return for another reform of the law. Those of us who resist that automatic reflex action, which emerges in every debate, are always dubbed reactionaries, has-beens and old fogies who are past our sell-by date—
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Or dinosaurs.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, yes, or dinosaurs. We have heard all that. I have the feeling that that attitude is with us again tonight. I have felt that all those of us who do not agree with the provisions have been dubbed all those things.
However, when it comes to divorce, all the statistics, research and experience prove those of us who have tried to maintain some stability to have

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been more right than wrong. I should like to quote Ruth Deech again. She has put the case well in her pamphlet, which is entitled Divorce Dissent, when she writes:
"Over and again in this century reformers have told us that the law has to be amended to bring it into line with reality, because behind the facade of statute, consensual decrees are being obtained without proper investigation. The black letter law is then brought into line with practice; the divorce rate rises and very soon we find that practice is again out of step with the law. Somewhere a stop has to be called".
I totally agree with her and with all the other people who believe that there are times when leaders should lead. Legislators should lead and not follow public opinion. They should listen to the public but they should lead. The same applies to Church leaders. I was happy to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, giving what he thought would be a lead. I was happy to hear a religious leader who was prepared to lead and to say something positive about the need to lead.
The effects of divorce proceedings on children are not always shown in surveys but, certainly, they are shown in surveys relating to this Bill. They should make us halt and consider where we have gone wrong and, if necessary, call a stop to the process of automatically accepting what is and give a lead to what should be.
The costs of divorce were mentioned briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The figure amounts to several billion pounds per year and includes legal aid, welfare payments, extra housing, court costs, judges, lawyers, accountants, conciliators, counsellors, sickness, lost time and God knows how many other things. That adds up to billions of pounds which, had the money been spent in the right way, might have seen the saving of many marriages. It is not too late yet.
One should add to that the bitterness, acrimony, hardship and even the suicides of which we have heard resulting from the introduction of the Child Support Agency. The effect of such legislation is vividly outlined by the leaflet circulated by the victims of the CSA to many Members of this House.
During the last few minutes left to me I wish to make a suggestion along the lines that I have mentioned. The Bill is designed to make greater use of the mediation process in an attempt to save some marriages. But mediation does not mean that at all. Mediation is not reconciliation; it is a totally different process. Indeed, if we understood our Latin lessons we know that it is a completely different word. Mediation and reconciliation are totally different. We do not want mediation, which focuses on the future and not on the past. It accepts that the marriage is broken and that we should sort out who gets the house, who gets access to the children and how much it will cost. The mediators, who are paid by the session, will make them last as long as they can. Already we are being lobbied by some powerful people who want to get into the mediation which will be set up as a result of the Bill. Many mediators will be paid to mediate but only after the damage has been done.
I say that we should stop and look again at that. We should try to help couples to resolve disputes and, indeed, not to get into them. All the pressure will be
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in the direction of divorce and not in the direction of forgiveness or reconciliation. The process outlined in the Bill is back to front. It is important to understand that, for the sake of the children and so forth, we should be concentrating on reconciliation. I hope that the Bill will be amended to include reconciliation. It emphasises mediation. At page 218, the Government's proposals in Looking to the Future emphasise mediation by stating:
"Such a process requires each party to accept that the marriage is over before proceeding [to mediation]".
The Government have outlined and laid down that intention. I say that we should turn the issue around and make reconciliation a definite aspect by stating that there should be a six-month period geared solely to reconciliation. During that period there should be a moratorium on mediation and litigation. Only after that six-month period, when all attempts at reconciliation have failed, should mediation and litigation be considered possible. Much more should be done to promote that view. It is widely acknowledged that some divorce petitions, possibly many, are a cry for help which may not reflect a seriously thought-out decision to end the marriage. A considerable number of spouses do not go through with divorce. Every year there are between 20,000 and 30,000 more petitions than there are divorces. Clearly, people turn back. The legislation does not make it clear that what is needed is not mediation but reconciliation. That should not be left to chance and therefore I hope that we can amend the Bill along those lines. Perhaps the Government will consider doing so.
I recognise that my suggestions may not be fashionable and may not even be politically correct but I do not care. I believe that they are necessary and sensible. I do not even consider that this is a party issue and I do not approach it on a party line. I take the view that the matter is more serious and cannot be knocked about like a party political item at an election. The matter should be taken seriously by the whole House. I hope that more priority resources will be made available to all the organisations which are working hard along the lines that I have outlined on reconciliation to save marriages, to prevent divorces and to prevent the increase in divorces that will result if the Bill is passed.
7.7 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, when I spoke on his measure in the debate last week I ventured to suggest that, if the Bill were passed into law, marriage would, in effect, be an arrangement between the parties to live together until one gave a year's notice of its termination, whereupon it would determine, irrespective of the wishes or interest of the other party or of the children. No one who followed me in that debate— and many did, including the Minister— controverted that view. Nor has any noble Lord who has preceded me today. Therefore, my first question must be: is that really the kind of marriage that your Lordships wish to see constituted in this country? I humbly suggest that that is a matter that the Bench of Bishops should face specifically.

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So far as I can see, there has been no demand, no call, for this measure. I suppose an economist might say, "It's not demand led; it's department pushed".
Another strange aspect arises. As a Cross-Bencher I naturally take an interest in comparative government. I have been asking myself what are a Conservative Government doing bringing in a measure such as this? If I am right in saying that it would be terminated irrespective of the wishes of the other spouse or the children it must be obvious at the outset that there will be a substantial risk of injustice, especially to married women, and a disadvantage to children.
Before I try to spell that out more clearly, perhaps I may deal with an observation made by my noble friend Lord Habgood, who sought to justify the concept of irretrievable breakdown as a proper basis for divorce by relying on the document Putting Asunder. I thought that he was on rather dangerous ground because that implicated quite clearly the Church with the disaster of the 1969 Act. I say "disaster" because the very point of departure of the White Paper has been the mischief of the 1969 Act. The figures have been quoted repeatedly for the dramatic rise in the number of divorces and the children affected consequent on that Act.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford was inclined to suggest that the increase that follows every liberalisation facilitating divorce represents an initial surge, the taking-up of a backlog. But that was certainly not so. After the 1969 Act came into force, it is true that there was a 44 per cent. increase in the number of divorces. But it did not stop there. The numbers went on rising constantly from that point until, according to the latest figures, there are 2.5 times as many divorces as there were in 1970 and, therefore, 2.5 times as many children who have been affected—168,000 according to the 1992 figures, which are the latest that we have. However, one must add that figure to the number of children under 16 who were affected by divorce in previous years and who were still under 16 in 1992.
The fate that was visited on those children was admirably described by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor in the passage which I quoted in our recent debate. It was spelt out, if I may say so, most movingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in her extremely important speech today.
My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will remember, because he dealt with it with such dialectic and parliamentary skill, the Child Support Act. That was launched by a White Paper entitled Children Come First. Do they come first under this Bill? Do they not rather come last? Are they not deferred to the wishes of their two parents to be rid of each other but, furthermore, are they not deferred to the wish of one parent to be rid of his marriage and possibly because he wishes to contract another one?
Obviously, the damage to the children will be less if the parties can part without acrimony. For that reason, as well as because we put them forward in the context of the family court, the proposals for mediation and conciliation are to be welcomed. While damage limitation is to be welcomed, is it not really preferable to try to avoid causing the damage?
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I have dealt with the children and I turn now to the married woman. Your Lordships may remember the story of the traveller who asked an elderly inhabitant, "Which is the way to Littlecombe?" The answer to that was, "If I were going to Littlecombe, I wouldn't start from here". That is the real fault of the White Paper and indeed, the Law Commission Report. It starts from the wrong point. The right point would surely have been to ask what it is about traditional marriage as a norm that makes it congenial to western society.
There are a number of reasons why marriage— that is, a lifelong monogamous marriage for joint life— should be found to be congenial. I wish merely to isolate one of those reasons because it seems to me to be fundamental and its disregard is redolent of injustice.
Society needs two things for its continuance: one is production and the other is reproduction. Reproduction is needed to generate the successors. Production is needed, economic activity is needed, to sustain them. The main burden of reproduction falls on a wife. It is she who bears the child for nine months; who alone can suckle a child, although others can give a bottle; and by doing that, she incapacitates herself for her own economic effort. Moreover, she releases the husband for his economic effort. He can advance himself economically. In other words, one sees a co-operative division of labour. While there is a co-operative division of labour, in equity, the fruits of the labour should be shared between the parties.
But in the case of marriage, there is an additional factor; that is, that the early years are generally more difficult than the later years. The early years are straitened; there is more work to be done, and fewer means to be enjoyed. The later years are years of ease. They are much easier. Therefore, to allow a wife to be cast off at the end of the difficult period so that the easier time may be shared with another woman who has found better favour in the man's eyes must be the very depth of injustice.
There is one specific aspect of that that was mentioned by the noble Baroness; that is, the pension. Increasingly the emoluments of labour are deferred to be paid in the form of pension after retirement and to a widow after the death of the man who has earned it. What could be more unjust than to allow that pension to be carted off to another person in another marriage?
Some emphasis has been placed on the spate of propaganda that we have had on the safeguard of grave financial and other hardship which allows a court to refuse the divorce. Why should a wife who has substantially performed her matrimonial role have to suffer any hardship at all? Why should she suffer grave hardship? I am told that, in fact, only once since 1970 has the court invoked that provision. I tried to get the figures from the Lord Chancellor's Department, but they are evidently not available. However, that is what I have been told by practitioners.
Perhaps I may deal briefly with mediation and the end to the quickie divorce. There has never yet been this century a divorce Bill where the pill has not been sugared. A very good example is A. P. Herbert's Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. There were two baits on

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the hook: one was that there should be no divorce in the first three years of marriage; and the second was a sop to the clergy that they were under no duty to marry any divorced person whose spouse was still alive. Perhaps your Lordships would like to consider what has happened to those two sops. The three-year ban has been whittled away and is now only one year. As for the clergy immunity, that has gone entirely. The hook having been taken, the canister of bait could be safely thrown away. That was 1937.
As for mediation, naturally we who pressed for a family court— of which that was a centre— welcome it. But it is not enough. We concede that the family court should also in its welfare wing have a reconciliation role and, indeed, a social welfare role. Those are missing from the Bill. We failed to get anywhere with the Government on our plea for a family court, despite the support of the Finer Committee on One-Parent Families and of the Law Society (prompted by the Family Law Division) and, most importantly, in your Lordships' House that of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. Nevertheless, the courts did what they could.
My predecessor as President in the High Court appointed a group of welfare officers. Their mediation is primarily to do with children. On the whole it has been useful, although comprehensive mediation is likely to be more useful. I do not have the figures with me, but my recollection is that the welfare officers alone engaged in 192,000 mediations in the last recorded year. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack will probably have the figure and be able to verify it.
When I succeeded Lord Merriman, I went to the marriage guidance group of the National Marriage Guidance Council and the Roman Catholic and Jewish counterparts. They gladly came in and contributed reconciliation and marriage guidance, in addition to mediation. The other feature was a number of local groups. I only have direct contact with one—the one in Teesside— which engages in general married guidance, including reconciliation as well as mediation and conciliation. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, mentioned her Oxford group last week. Moreover, my noble friend Lord Habgood has done a great deal in that connection. Reconciliation is most important.
Finally, I turn to the quickie divorce which has been at the forefront of the propaganda. The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, held up a pamphlet which was on top of the enormous and expensive parcel that was sent to us last week. It is headed, "An end to the quickie divorce". Who would think from that that the quickie divorce was solely the creation of the Lord Chancellor's Department which now claims that its disappearance justifies this further step towards the sort of marriage that I ventured to describe at the outset of my address to your Lordships?
Perhaps I may deal briefly with Part III of the Bill. I understand the wariness of Members in the other place at finding marriage approximated, as so much is in that place, to parties living together in a regular union. On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, pointed out, there is a considerable history here, principally in
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the 1977 Act. There is also, very potently to my mind, the considerations that were urged by my noble and learned friend Lord Brightman, who spoke earlier in the debate.
As the Government withdrew the Bill last Session and have now presented it to your Lordships' House, it is my view that any noble Lord or Member of the other place is fully entitled to table an amendment to any provision. The Opposition parties have indicated that they wish to challenge the changes and we shall certainly have to listen to them. However, I believe that it would be a great pity to do anything which endangers the advantages of the Jellicoe procedure. Therefore, I humbly venture to suggest that we should proceed very warily when we come to deal with Part III.
Last week I urged, as the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, has just done, that there should be some positive measures in the Bill to affirm marriage. I suggested two fiscal ones. Within the scope of the Bill, by far the most important is to deal with the married woman's ownership of the matrimonial home and its chattels. It seems extraordinary that a married woman who stands by her marriage from the point of view of finance and property is in a considerably worse position than one who divorces. How can that possibly be justified? How, I ask, can bringing forward this Bill to facilitate divorce in priority to a measure dealing with married women's rights be justified? It is not as if the Law Commission had not taken up that matter; it did in the early 1970s, but that has all been left aside.
The final question which I would venture to lay before your Lordships is: how should we act on Second Reading? Before I pose that question, I hope that I may ask my noble and learned friend to deal, when he replies, with the Whipping procedures that will be used on this Bill. I hope he will be able to say that there will be no Government Whips at all and that there will be a free vote for every Member of Parliament in either House. Having said that, the Salisbury convention does not apply to this Second Reading. Nevertheless I shall myself, when the voices are collected, be voting in favour of this Bill because I believe that the mediation procedure, so far as it goes, is worth having. I am anxious to get rid of the quickie divorce and I am anxious to get rid of the provisions of the 1969 Act which are repealed in the schedule. There is also Part III, which I believe it would be wrong to jettison after the consideration it received last Session. Therefore, with distinct misgiving as regards much of this Bill, I venture to support its Second Reading.
7.31 p.m.
The Duke of Norfolk: My Lords, I start by apologising to the House for not having been present for the start of this debate. I was privileged to attend Vespers at Westminster Cathedral. That service was attended by Her Majesty the Queen, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Moderator of the Free Churches and many others. It was a moving, humble and spiritual occasion.
I greatly welcome the efforts of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to reform the present divorce legislation by bringing this Bill before the House. He

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aims to save the saveable marriages and to cut down the number of divorces in this country. All noble Lords will have heard it said that Britain has the highest divorce rate in Europe, although I believe the divorce rate is higher in America, and it is certainly higher in some American states. It is predicted that 40 per cent. of new marriages will end in divorce. There are many studies, both in this country and in the USA, which tell of the sad effects of divorce on children. Clearly there is a contemporary outcry for reform.
Perhaps every recent attempt at reform has resulted in more divorces but the present position is hopeless and is crying out for wise and sensible reforms. I should add that many of the figures which we have all been quoting relate to marriages. There is also the situation where couples have cohabited for a period and then that relationship breaks up: they are not included in the figures. Family life in this country is in a terrible way. I firmly believe that marriage is absolutely essential to the well-being of society. It is a contract or covenant by which a man and a women freely consent to live with each other. As we all know, the words of the marriage service are:
"for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part".
Marriage signifies a partnership of a man's and a woman's whole life as spouses and in the procreation of children. That is clearly spelt out. Between the baptised of all Christian faiths the marriage covenant has been raised by Christ to a sacrament. Marriage is woefully in need of strengthening by an effective family policy and the likelihood of divorce needs to be lessened by making adequate resources available to increase education for marriage and to bring about a change in people's attitudes and expectations regarding marital relationships and the bringing up of children before marriage ever takes place. That must include helping young people to acquire the necessary social skills of communication, to deal sensibly and maturely with conflicts and to develop an understanding of what commitment means in terms of changing and adapting within the marital relationship as the couple grow up.
Provision needs to be made for the generous funding of marriage counselling services and other organisations supportive of marriage and family life so that access to such services is available when difficulties begin to arise in a couple's life. This must take place long before the word "divorce" is considered. Families, including single parent families, need support through the tax and benefit systems and they must have access to adequate housing, employment and child care facilities.
As has been said before, the current cost of divorce is£3.4 billion but the Government spend only£3 million in subsidising marriage help organisations such as Marriage Care, One Plus One, Relate and the Jewish Marriage Council. There are others. I recommend that the Treasury should increase the amount of money which is given to those organisations. That would represent a great economy and it would prevent divorces. I have heard people say that they cannot spend more money, hut I am suggesting that the Treasury
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should spend less money. I hope the Treasury understands that. I am glad to note that that point is appreciated by those on the Benches opposite.
Divorce legislation was first introduced in 1857. Before then, one had to obtain a special Act of Parliament, as did one of my ancestors. However, that is another story. The legal understanding of marriage has radically changed since 1857. From being understood and defined in law as indissoluble, marriage has become, both in law and in the common understanding of many, a temporary union. A covenant for life has been replaced in effect by a legal commitment to stay with one's husband or wife until one or the other decides to go.
Under the 1969 and 1973 divorce Acts the sole ground for divorce has been irretrievable breakdown. It was intended that most divorcing couples would seek to rely on either a two-year separation, with both parties consenting to a divorce, or a five-year separation if only one party was willing to divorce. However, in recent years 75 per cent. of divorces have been achieved in six months through what is called the special procedure system under the fault grounds of adultery, desertion and unreasonable behaviour. Those fault grounds have been open to collusion, dishonesty and contrivance to obtain what has been nicknamed "quickie" divorces which amount to de facto,unilateral divorce on demand. I welcome the proposal to abolish those quickie divorces and substitute a minimum period of at least a year. Perhaps it should be longer. We also need state-funded help for reconciliation. If that fails and there is to be a divorce, there is need for mediation and advice upon the arrangements that have to be made for the future.
Research shows that many people were not fully convinced that their marriage was really over when they started legal proceedings. The current system harnessed them to a conveyor belt which somehow they could not jump off. In one study, 50 per cent. of divorced men and 29 per cent. of divorced women stated, after six years, that they wished that they had not divorced and had remained married.
I congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on having grasped this nettle—it is a horrible nettle to grasp—and on having removed divorce from the Home Office and taken it under his own wing. He has called this not the Divorce Bill, because that is not its aim, but the Family Law Bill. He is trying to strengthen family life. I give him my full support in what he is trying to do.
7.40 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I begin with a proposition which may sound surprising but which I believe to be true. There can be no such thing as a good divorce law. That is because the problem it seeks to address is itself inherently disordered. The breakdown of a human relationship, though in particular circumstances it may he unavoidable and even understandable, can never he an intrinsically good thing. What the law tries to do in providing for divorce is to mitigate the effects of something which in itself is not good and not satisfactory. For that reason one can never

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have an entirely good or satisfactory divorce law, only a law which is more or less unsatisfactory. That fact has to be faced. We are trying to make the best of what is and will always remain a had job—a consequence of human fragility and sin.
Another fact to be faced is that the availability of divorce, despite what some of your Lordships seem to have been saying, does not directly cause the breakdown of marriage. It is a response to it. The causes for the breakdown of marriage as an institution in our society lie much deeper. Of course, the law may encourage people to give up on marriage more quickly than they might otherwise (which is a reasonable charge against the present state of the law) or, by making divorce difficult to obtain, it may disguise the extent of matrimonial breakdown. There is a correlation between the rise in divorces in the late 1940s and the availability of legal aid. Before that the poor could not divorce. Nevertheless, the law on divorce remains in essence a response to the fact of breakdown, not a cause of it. The law on divorce is therefore an attempt to provide an orderly framework for dealing with the consequences.
If, as a society, we want to support marriage as a public good, there are, as we have heard from many of your Lordships, other more effective means to hand, like giving effective and adequate support to the agencies which may help people to prepare for marriage and stay married. Enough has already been said by Members of the House on that subject.
A few moments ago I mentioned the facts of human fragility and sin. Nevertheless, I believe that the proposals before the House are right in maintaining the principle of the irretrievable breakdown of marriage as the sole ground for granting divorce. As we have heard, that principle was fatally compromised in the 1969 Act by the covert retention of the principle of fault through the possibility of alleging the facts of adultery and so on as grounds for the granting of immediate divorce. That is what has largely led to the present deplorable availability of so-called quickie divorces, some of which we are told could have been avoided had there been more time for reflection.
So the Bill is to be welcomed for removing that avenue to rapid divorce and for combining the principle of irretrievable breakdown with a requirement for a time for reflection and consultation before irreversible action is taken to dissolve a marriage.
To say that irretrievable breakdown should be the sole ground for divorce is not to deny personal responsibility for the breakdown of a relationship. It is not to deny the place of human fault and sin in the process of matrimonial breakdown. It is to say that a human court of justice is too blunt an instrument for apportioning blame in so complex an area of human behaviour, especially if the processes one has invite one to say that it is all the fault of one side or the other. Anyway, what is the point of apportioning blame?
People are easily tempted to think that there should be some correlation between guilt for the breakdown of a marriage and the arrangements to be made for dealing with the consequences, as if arrangements for alimony
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or for access to and care for children were a kind of punishment for the so-called guilty party. One has only to state the argument to see its falsity.
That having been said, there is a point at which distributive justice properly comes into play; that is, in attending to the continuing obligations which have arisen out of a marriage, the obligations of the parties towards one another and towards their dependants. That is where the courts properly come in. Those claims and obligations are a matter for the courts and are rightly to be settled before the granting of a divorce.
In conclusion, so far as concerns the law of divorce, I hope that your Lordships will welcome the Bill as a substantial improvement on the law as it is now in force.
7.46 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, clearly the current law on divorce is not working well. As we have heard, England has the highest divorce rate in Europe, costing, I am told, some£9 million a day. Can it really be that much?
Too many—some 40 per cent.—of marriages come unstuck, and many of them will have degenerated into domestic violence. This is a widespread evil for, quite apart from the misery, it often leads to increased alcohol abuse, drug dependency, chronic pain and depression, and also to the increased likelihood of miscarriages and low weight babies, all of which are potential costs to various departments of the health service.
At present people going through divorce often privately admit joint responsibility, but they face many hurdles. They lack information about the full consequences. They face delays in obtaining help from agencies. There is no easily discernible route for the couple to take to try to avoid a breakdown of their marriage, which they may have entered into in the first place with an inadequate idea of what it would entail.
The adversarial legal system encourages an abandonment of mutual responsibility. Separate solicitors inevitably stoke up conflict. Fast track divorce encourages the exaggeration of blame to achieve a quicker result. It is little wonder that people say that going through a divorce is the most dreadful experience of their lives. The Bill extends the help and the remedies available from the courts, and that must be a good thing.
The introduction of mediation may well save a number of marriages when the full consequences of divorce are brought home to the participants before the pitch has been destroyed and irreparable bitterness created by acrimonious resort to lawyers. It will also help to resolve the problems in respect of children with the least damage to them.
Perhaps a greater awareness of the availability of counselling and mediation could help people solve their difficulties before their situation deteriorates irrevocably. However, I believe that it is necessary that statutory privilege should be conferred on any statement made during mediation so that it could not be used later in a legal case. Otherwise participants may well be advised by their lawyers to be economical with the truth during mediation, thus reducing the chances of success. I wonder why that has not been included in the Bill.

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The year's delay will allow the couple to have time to reflect on the counselling or to negotiate the separation. It may sometimes seem unfair that fault should be set aside, but there will be few cases where fault lies entirely on one side.
Research indicates that 25 per cent. of couples living apart at the start of counselling were together six months later; and 75 per cent. who completed the course were often together after six months. Forty-seven per cent. of the survey said that they should have come to counselling earlier. As we have already heard, 51 per cent. of divorced men and 29 per cent. of women regret their divorces, and perhaps mediation could have kept them together. Second marriages are not the panacea for them, for while 40 per cent. of first marriages break down, second attempts are 50 per cent. more likely to fail. Some may realise their impending regret during the year of reflection.
One issue that should be included in the Bill is the question of maintenance, capital, and, above all, the pensions of divorced persons. I believe that that has been mentioned. The wife must have a right to part of the pension built up over the years. There have been many cases of great injustice where the wife has, in effect, contributed through her care of the household but has been left with no share of the pension after her divorce.
The Bill deals with the sad but far too common cases of divorce. The Government should also try to help avoid the necessity in the first place. The Government could offer a range of services to help prepare young people for the responsibilities of marriage, family life and the discipline that it entails, thus discouraging some marriages that might be bound for disaster from the start. Children are often loath to take advice from their parents who, since the days of Adam, have been thought old and out of touch, but a third party is sometimes better heeded.
Greater funds for counselling would be needed. That must be set off against the£3.4 billion cost of divorces each year, a staggering£9 million a day, and that does not take into account the misery or crime related cost. Marriage support organisations at present cost only£3 million so any increased funding and success could pay a 10:1 dividend. Relate estimates that in 1990 it saved the taxpayer £42 million in saved marriages—a very good investment, over 10 times the cost of the service.
I welcome the Bill and believe that it may well save a number of marriages, and the consequent distress, misery and long-term damage to the children that would result from divorce.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, the clear factor that emerges from the debate is the depth of the differences between some of us. They are fundamental differences which will emerge in Committee and which will be explored. I suspect that the Committee stage will be hard fought in many areas.
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Divorce is a difficult issue. That is not surprising because marriage is one of the most peculiar contracts it is possible to envisage. When one thinks of the numbers of dear friends with whom one would not contemplate spending a fortnight's holiday, the prospect of linking oneself up for life and sharing the same bed for 365 days a year is an extraordinary and difficult concept.
The Bill is one of those measures where it is possible to agree over a wide field regarding the analysis and key issues and yet draw very different conclusions. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, and many others, in their analyses of the unpleasantness of divorce. I am quite clear that I shall spend little time in the same Lobby with them during the Committee stage. There are many differences between us, in particular regarding our views on how far governments can or should seek to change major shifts in social attitudes by legislation. In the minds of most people, politicians do not emerge as the obvious role models for the young and starry eyed about to embark on the adventure of marriage.
However, there are major areas of agreement. I am completely with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor when he says that the best possible environment for children is a loving and secure family. There is no question of that. I go further. Couples in such a relationship, with or without children, enjoy something of a value that is impossible to exaggerate. I have no doubt that for most people divorce is a horrendous experience and, whether the damage—it is always real—is financial, emotional or, as in most cases, a mixture of both, for the children it can be very distressing. At its worst, for one of the parties it can, and frequently does, involve a sense of total loss and desolation paradoxically even greater than bereavement when at least the happy memories remain valid.
In short, for most people divorce is a uniquely ugly business. So why has it become fashionable? Why, at any party, do you find that of most of the people there one or other partner has been married before? I simply do not accept that 40 per cent. of all married couples of all religions and none and of all classes of society from the highest to the lowest, rich and poor, are simply wrong headed and in need of guidance. It requires a truly magnificent arrogance to believe that that enormous, unique cross-section of our fellow citizens—some of them friends, relatives or colleagues—are too ignorant to understand what they are doing or too stupid to be concerned about the consequences. I simply do not believe that.
The charitable explanation for those who take that view and whose sincerity I do not doubt is that having experienced a happy, secure family life where they have what they describe as the "ups and downs of married life"—it is rather like telling the schizophrenic that he should pull himself together and have a cold bath—they do not understand the emotional violence of a marriage where one of the partners is trapped in a relationship that he or she has come to hate. It is a point of total agreement in the House that those who suffer most are frequently the children.

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Most people in this country live in very small homes with rooms 14 feet or 15 feet square, with two or three bedrooms. You can carry on an argument from any part of the house or apartment. There is no privacy. You cannot escape from the disruption. Equally important, most children do not board at school. They spend 365 days a year inside that very small house or flat with the two people upon whom they depend most in the world, to whom they have loyalties above anyone else, listening to those people snipe and snarl at each other. Whenever there is a temporary lull and one or both parents are in a good mood, the children constantly hope that perhaps this is the time that the parents will get together. That is what the children want. They want to remain inside a happy family; that is their constant hope. They hope that perhaps it will come right. Eventually, as they get older, they realise that it never will.
I know several adults who still look back with great anger at that period of their lives. One is an exceptionally proficient swimmer. She is the much loved only child of affluent parents who gave her everything they could. The parents are dead. One was a Member of this House. I knew them both very well and respected them. But no one should ever have introduced them to each other. They had a great deal to contribute to someone but neither had anything to contribute to the other. The daughter had everything. She went to a good school and had amazingly good holidays. Unfortunately, the two parents loathed being married to each other, so she spent much of her childhood in the apartment swimming pool. It was the only place in a block of luxury flats, not far from this House, where she could have peace and get away from the conflict. Thirty years later she has never forgiven either of her parents for those years of misery. She regards as the high point of their relationship the time when they gave her the wherewithal to get out at the age of 18 and live in a flat on her own. That is the reality for many children who live in that kind of environment.
The Daily Mail poll on the problem was interesting; it highlighted the paradox. It asked those interviewed whether they believed that divorce was harmful to children. Ninety-four per cent. said yes. Only 2 per cent. said that it was seldom harmful. I am not surprised by that; it is how most people accept the reality. However, when the poll asked whether the parents should stay together for the sake of the children, 69 per cent. said that it was better for the children that they should part and only 18 per cent. said that they should stay together.
It is all well and good to be superior about modern trends. On an issue such as this, it is the will of people in a democracy that is changing. The whole institution of marriage is changing. By all means, provide, as the Bill does for those who need it, assistance towards the least bad agreement between the parties for the future of the children and the division of the assets. But divorce will continue to be a major fact of modern life. Modern marriage is different from the past because the participants are different. Expectations are much higher. Women are at least as well educated as their husbands and in many cases just as capable of earning a living. In most cases they regard the traditional "honour and obey"
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relationship or even—clichés always represent a strong feeling—the "barefoot and pregnant over a hot stove" description of their place in married life as at best a sick joke. It is increasingly a partnership of equals, which implies far more potential conflict than in the days when husbands could behave as they wished and women did as they were told. The conflicts are greater now because both sides feel able to express their demands of the relationship and frequently neither side is able to, or is prepared to, give way.
With great respect to my noble and learned friend Lord Simon, marriage today is not simply for the procreation of children. That is the role of brood mares, not human beings. Its purpose is to provide a secure and happy environment for couples who may or may not have children. When it succeeds, it is at worst tolerable and convenient; at its best it is sublime. When it fails, it is ugly, destructive and best ended in as civilised a way as possible.
There will be many arguments in Committee. Like the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, I believe that some of the changes made to the original Bill are appalling in their implications. But the principle behind that Bill can and, I hope, will be of major benefit to all those who suffer in this unhappy situation whichever side they are on. That is why allocating fault is a pointless exercise.
8.5 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, that was an extremely interesting speech and I agree with much of it. However, I think a little of it was perhaps rather patronising towards women. I should like to study it further.
I give a welcome to the Bill and thank the noble and learned Lord for his clear exposition of it. I was at first critical of the fact that two Bills had been rolled into one, I suppose partly because I was both angry and sad that the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, a good Bill on which so much careful and thorough work had been done in this House, was allowed to fall in the overspill period for no good reason at all; in fact for very had reasons. However, I came to see that there could be some justification for the two Bills to be run together. Some of the criticisms of the divorce part of the Bill, Parts I and II, such as that the period of 12 months' waiting between the making of the statement of breakdown of marriage and the actual divorce would be very long where one partner was abusing or being violent to the other, could be dealt with by using the non-molestation or occupation orders provided in Part III.
I should like to ask for a little more information about the first interview which is to take place before the statement of marital breakdown is made. There is nothing in the Bill to specify that the initial interview should introduce the parties to,
"the benefits of marriage guidance and counselling",
as there was in the White Paper. I. with many others, would feel happier with that in the Bill. May I ask who is to organise that first interview and conduct it? Where will it take place? Will it be a session for one couple alone or for more? Will the use of a video be permitted?

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All this I dare say may be in the regulations that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor may make, but I hope he can tell us something when he winds up.
I believe that some of the criticisms of the Bill are quite unjustified and ill informed. I do not see how the proposals will deprive the innocent of justice, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, said last week. It does not make divorce easier. The present system allows de facto divorce on demand. The quick divorce can be obtained in three to six months. That method, which is very liable to abuse, is to go. The obligation to have arrangements made for the children, the home and the finances before the divorce can be finalised should make the position for children much less traumatic and ensure that both the father and mother will continue to share the parental responsibility and pleasure. Bitterness and hostility, if not eradicated—and probably that is humanly impossible—should surely be substantially reduced.
I have for a long time encouraged the use of mediation to prevent court appearances, but I have not hitherto had very encouraging responses from the noble and learned Lord. I am very glad that here it has his support. Equally, I am glad that there is to be no compulsion to use it because I think that would be wrong. Could we be told if there will be enough trained mediators in all parts of the country to cope with the likely demand when the Bill becomes law? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, about the support that is needed to fund mediators at the moment. We hope that there will then be enough.
There can be no complacency about the present situation: 150,000 children are affected every year by divorce, and 75 per cent. of divorces are on the basis of fault and over an average of six months. The number of divorces reached a record 165,000 in England and Wales in 1993, the highest rate in Europe. In that year 176,000 children under 16 experienced their parents' divorce; and two-thirds more children under the age of five were affected than in 1977.
The fact that recent laws on divorce have not proved successful and have led to an increase in the number of divorces does not mean that a new approach is bound to cause further erosion of the institution of marriage and even more divorces, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said. I support what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford said in that respect. This Bill is quite different from previous Bills. Of course the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but a Bill which has the support of the bishops, the Children's Legal Centre and the Mothers' Union starts off with quite a lot going for it.
I want to turn now to Part III of the Bill, in which I have a particular interest as a member of the Special Public Bill Committee earlier this year. So far as I can see as a layman, and the Lord Chancellor has confirmed it, the provisions of this part of the Bill are almost identical to those in the earlier Bill, although the arrangement of the clauses and the wording may differ. But there are three clauses in the Family Law Bill where there are differences, and one clause, Clause 26, which was in the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill has been left out. The differences here have been
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explained very clearly by the Lord Chancellor and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, so I shall not bore the House by repeating them, although I have in fact got them in my speech. But I think that the powers have been made discretionary.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor kindly wrote to me explaining these changes in a letter I had yesterday, so to speak, excusing the changes. He said that the powers have been made discretionary in Clause 31 in cases involving non-entitled cohabitants; and he said that,
"the court's ability to deal flexibly with these situations is enhanced".
That, I suppose, is one way of looking at it. But taken with the other changes, the right to extend the occupation order only once in the case of cohabitants and the omission of Clause 26 make one think that cohabitants are being discriminated against in this Bill in a way that they were not before. One cannot help wondering whether this was part of a deal to make the Bill more acceptable to its critics in the Commons. It is a weaker and less fair Bill, I consider, as my noble friend Lord Irvine said in his introductory speech.
It seems unreasonable in these days, when many couples live in a stable relationship with their children, not to recognise that this is a fact of modern life, and that in fairness to them and particularly to their children they should be treated in the same way as married couples. In 1993, one in three children were born outside marriage; it was one in four in the late 1980s. We must keep in mind the principle of the Children Act that the welfare of the child is paramount. If we want marriage to work—and I certainly am very much in favour of it, as are so many of those who have spoken here today—we have to do much more to make it an attractive proposition and make it work better. There should be much more preparation for marriage. I do not think a punitive attitude to those who fail helps at all.
I have one or two more questions to ask in relation to children. I want to refer to Clause 38, where a child under 16 with the leave of the court can apply for an occupation or non-molestation order. If the child does get permission, would it not be right for the court to give a guardian ad litem to that child? Some assistance will surely be needed. I hope that I can have a response to that.
I am afraid that I have one further question, and it is one that the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, asked. It concerns the place of children in the course of mediation. The children could well want to communicate with the mediator, and they should be able to see him or her if they so choose. Once the case gets to court, under the Children Act the court will have to find out what they want, and it would seem both right and sensible that that should happen earlier. Can the noble and learned Lord please comment on that?
I believe the warm welcome that the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill had was because of the more satisfactory way of dealing with occupation and molestation as far as children were concerned. So I hope we can continue in that way. I end as I began, with a welcome for this important and necessary Bill, and wish it a speedy passage through both Houses.
8.15 p.m.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, I support many of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady David. It is a pleasure to follow her. Many conflicting views have been expressed in this debate as to whether this Bill strengthens or weakens marriage. My view is that it strengthens marriage, and I support its general thrust. I want to see marriage strengthened; but I also want to see divorce and cohabitation weakened. I was glad to see from a Written Answer earlier this week that the number of divorces last year was down by 7,000. Whether that is because fewer people are getting married and more are cohabiting, I do not know, but it is at least one part of the equation that is moving in the right direction.
I have in mind three reasons why it is important to encourage marriage: first, because of the promises of faithfulness to each other that are made at a marriage ceremony; secondly, because of the public recognition of the new relationship that is given by marriage and which is not there in cohabitation; and thirdly, because I believe that there is a much greater commitment in marriage than there is in cohabitation.
I am not sure that in decrying cohabitation I shall necessarily receive the support of the right reverend Prelate. I understand that this morning only four Bishops voted against the motion taking note of the Church of England report Something to Celebrate.As I understand it, that means that those who wanted to take note of it supported the fact that cohabitation should no longer be considered sin and that there should be affirmation of and support for many of the aspects of cohabitation as opposed to marriage.
I do not go along that path. I believe that if divorce is too hard, cohabitation will be encouraged; but if divorce is too easy, then marriage is cheapened. I hope that this Bill produces the right balance. Only time will tell. I do not have the gift of prophecy and cannot tell the House whether or not it will have the right effect. However, I believe that we should try it, and I support it.
I agree with the abolition of fault as a demonstration of irretrievable breakdown. It has more or less become redundant and has little impact on the arrangements that are now made in divorces, both affecting provision for the children and for the division of property. To retain fault does not get us anywhere. I strongly support the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham in his admirable address. They fitted in excellently with my own thoughts.
Certainly the Bill should reduce conflict, and that is valuable. However, I emphasise the fact that it is not just conflict between the parents that causes suffering for the children, but also the fact of divorce. The more we can do to reduce divorce itself, the better it will be for the children. That point needs emphasising time and time again.
Turning to the question of mediation, I strongly support the year of reflection that this Bill introduces. But I should like the Bill, as a number of noble Lords said, to go much further on the question of promoting reconciliation. The White Paper refers at paragraph 2.37 to the need to,
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"introduce parties to the benefits of marriage guidance and counselling",
and provide information about the various aspects of separation and divorce. I was greatly encouraged by a phrase that my noble and learned friend used in his introduction; namely, we should see whether marriage can be saved. I should like to see more about saving existing marriages and reconciliation of the parties introduced into the Bill by way of amendment. Obviously, the best way to do that would be for my noble and learned friend himself to introduce such an amendment to strengthen that aspect of mediation. There is a need to reflect on whether or not the marriage has broken down, as well as providing information.
I noted the figures given by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford in his speech on 20th November (Official Report;col. 153). I found it very stimulating when he spoke of the experiences in Canada and other parts of the Commonwealth where mediation has been brought in. He said that:
"In Canada 19 per cent. of those seeking divorce decided in the end on a reconciliation".
That is very encouraging. I hope that it will be the same in this country. It appeared that if, after mediation, the marriage did in fact break down, second marriages lasted much longer. Several noble Lords mentioned the reflections of divorcees after several years of separation. That also points to the strength of mediation.
I hope that in the course of mediation help can be given in improving communication between the married partners. One of the causes of breakdown of marriage is a failure to communicate. We need continually to be reminded of that. We need to improve communication between spouses and with children. Also, access to independent legal advice must be available to the parties before, during and after mediation.
My last point on mediation is that the attitudes, quality and training of mediators are crucial to the success of the mediation process. I have seen it written that there is great fear that most of the mediators will be divorcees who are keen to encourage others to join them in the same state. It is cardinally important that mediators are people equipped to support marriage where marriage remains possible. Where it is not possible and there is irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, divorce must follow.
I should like to ask my noble and learned friend a question about Clause 10. Can he elaborate on the circumstances which will be taken into account by a court in considering whether an order should be made preventing divorce? As I understand subsection (2), paragraphs (a) and (b) must both be met to the satisfaction of the court. One is clear about grave financial hardship, although there may be other forms of hardship which can be taken into account. But paragraph (b) states that,
"all the circumstances (including the conduct of the parties)",
need to be taken into account. I wonder whether my noble and learned friend can elaborate on what he has in mind in regard to that point.

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Finally, I should like to make one or two comments about support for marriage, comments which have already been made by many other noble Lords. Following the debate on the gracious Speech on 20th November, I asked my noble friend Lady Blatch whether she could tell me when the public information campaign would materialise. An HMSO document, entitled Looking to the Future,produced earlier this year, had promised a widespread public information campaign to encourage those in marriage difficulty to seek appropriate help in good time. I am not aware that that public information campaign has yet been implemented. Perhaps my noble and learned friend can tell me when that will take place. That is typical of what I believe will be truly positive. It will give government support to marriage and help for married couples in difficulty. As has been said, equipping young people for marriage ahead and helping existing married couples is a financially profitable venture for the Government to launch into.
I support the Bill and hope that some amendments along those lines can be included.
8.25 p.m.
Lord Moran: My Lords, we are facing a deeply disquieting state of affairs: the prospect, I believe, of social disintegration. It is a little like the picture of a house perched on a cliff, with the sea eating away at the cliff so that eventually the house will be washed away. The independent, non-political and well-respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation says:
"The divorce rate has shown a sixfold increase since 1961. If current trends in England and Wales continue, four out of ten new marriages will end in divorce".
Moreover, it points out:
"Annual marriage rates per thousand population have reached their lowest levels since records began".
It is a fact that, whenever we have legislated on divorce, there has been an immediate upsurge in the numbers seeking divorce. I do not agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford who said that this time that would not happen. I believe that it will happen, as it did in 1969.
The Government's own publication Social Trends says:
"The United Kingdom had the highest divorce rate in the EC in 1992, at almost twice the average".
With all respect to my noble friend Lord Marsh, to whose speech I listened with great attention, I believe that the effect is disastrous. The social fabric of our country is unravelling. I believe that the traditional family is crucial to the social stability of our country. I wholly agree with the impressive and deeply felt speeches made by my noble friend Lord Jakobovits, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, the noble Lord, Lord Stallard and my noble and learned friend Lord Simon of Glaisdale.
The effect of our high divorce rate is great unhappiness for those involved. It has an enormously damaging and traumatic effect on children, resulting in increased crime, drugs, homelessness, truancy and reading difficulties. There is an increase in housing
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pressure, now affecting so many towns and villages, and huge costs, which have been computed by the Library of the other place at £3.4 billion a year.
It seems to me that any government ought to be doing their utmost, difficult though it is, to reverse those trends and protect our social fabric by buttressing the institution of marriage and doing everything possible to strengthen the family and family values. Are this Government doing that? I believe that they are not. Again, I quote the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:
"Despite political rhetoric emphasising the importance of family life, there has been a policy drift away from recognising the costs and demands of parenthood…The relatively favourable direct taxation treatment of working parents with children that existed 30 years ago has been eroded under successive governments…There is an urgent need for policy-making within government to be co-ordinated with the aim of strengthening family life…Policies on taxation, benefits, employment and housing provide a practical test of whether political rhetoric has been matched by 'family friendly' action. Much of the evidence is negative".
Unlike the governments of continental Europe, there appears in this country to be no government policy to promote the family by practical action. All that is deeply worrying. Far from supporting the family, the Government have instead brought forward this Bill, the essence of which is to allow no-fault divorce on demand. The principal of St. Anne's College, Mrs. Ruth Deech, who has often been quoted in this debate, said:
"Under the proposed new law marriage will be terminable with less formality than, for example, the ending of a lease or the hiring of a car".
I am greatly surprised that the Conservative Party should be doing this, just when there has been a small but welcome 4 per cent. drop in the number of divorces in 1994 as compared with 1993. From my position of political independence, this would seem to me to run counter to Conservative principles. As a former Minister, Mr. John Patten, said in another place, there is no popular demand for this legislation.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has been listening to this debate with exemplary patience. I was glad to hear what he said in opening the debate regarding his belief that marriage should be for life. But since that is his belief, I am surprised and sad that he should be promoting this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, expressed his support for the family. But he too, as I understand it, was in favour of the substance of the Bill with its elimination of fault, and, indeed, he argued for a reduction of the one-year period of reflection. As Mr. Tony Blair has spoken up firmly for the family, I hope that the Opposition's support for the main drift of this Bill is not to be interpreted as a relapse into the attitudes of old Labour or very old Labour.
In recent days I have been puzzled by what appeared to be the uncertain note of the trumpet from some of our Churches. I was therefore glad to hear of the robust line in favour of marriage and the family taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the General Synod this morning, when a report was being considered which recommended that cohabiting should no longer he regarded as living in sin. The report said:
"Sin is a word which often seems unhelpful".

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But I was sorry to hear from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford that a majority of bishops in the Church of England supported the proposals in the Bill. As he was saying that, I recalled that the Church of England was indeed founded on divorce and the accommodation of practical difficulties.
As I listened to the right reverend Prelate, I felt that many noble Lords would be struck by the considerable gulf between the line that he took and the line taken by my noble friend Lord Jakobovits and the noble Baroness, Lady Young. Too many voices in the Church of England have argued that the splendid words,
"For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part",
are no longer of any importance.
The Bill originates from the Law Commission. I share the anxiety of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, regarding its approach. Both it and the courts bear a good deal of responsibility for what has gone so wrong. I am thinking of cases like Watchel v. Watchel in 1973 where, as I understand it, it was decided that it was wrong to allow considerations of guilt to affect the financial arrangements on divorce. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Habgood was mistaken in thinking that fault can now be taken into account in arranging financial details of a divorce.
The sort of liberal thinking that influenced the Law Commission often results in a burning sense of injustice when, for instance, what I would still call an innocent party finds that the other party, who may have broken up the marriage, has been given custody of the children and the matrimonial home. I am not worried about couples divorcing who do not have dependent children, but I am deeply concerned about the effects of the Bill on children. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester spoke eloquently of the devastating effect of divorce on children. Research, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, shows that it is divorce itself, not just the acrimony surrounding it, that unsettles children. The Bill proceeds on a contrary assumption.
I personally believe that in all ordinary circumstances it should be unthinkable for parents of children under 16 to contemplate divorce. They brought their children into the world and the children should come first, before what the parents conceive as their personal happiness. The present law is highly unsatisfactory. One only needs to look at the results. It badly needs reform, but this Bill may make matters worse, primarily by sending out a message that no one is to blame for anything and that the civil marriage contract can be regarded as a temporary arrangement with a minimum commitment which can be terminated for no given reason by either party after 12 months. I hope that it can be substantially amended at subsequent stages. We might at least extend the one-year period.
As has been pointed out by previous speakers, there is nothing in the Bill about reconciliation. Surely we must seek to save any marriages which can be saved. As has been pointed out, a good number of people come to regret their decision to divorce. I support those who argue that efforts to reconcile partners in a marriage
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should come first, perhaps for a period of six months, and only after that should they proceed to mediation, which is meant to deal only with the practical consequences. I am in favour of the retention of the existing five-year separation period where one party does not want a divorce. But public information sessions, to be attended by divorcing couples with others in the same position, sound to me somewhat bizarre. It seems more appropriate to present-day China than to this country. It would be helpful to know in more detail what is intended.
I do think it is wrong that there should be a limitation on legal advice for those without money. I was impressed by the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in the debate on the humble Address, when he said:
"It is quite a chilling thought that the meanest criminal has the right to the full services of a lawyer but the discarded wife or abandoned husband will not, unless they can pay for such services themselves".—[Official Report, 20/11/95; col. 145.]
That sounds to me to be quite wrong. Government funding should also in my view go only to counselling organisations which are committed to promoting and supporting the institution of marriage. Too many of today's counsellors adopt the position of liberal neutrality known, I gather, as "situational ethics".
Many of our great institutions today are, I sadly fear, hanging by a thread. It must be our aim to shore up the social fabric of our country to promote stability and to have that in the forefront of our minds as we consider this Bill.
8.39 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, perhaps I may preface what I intend to say by emphasising that I accept the enormous importance of marriage to British society, to the individuals involved in it and to the children resulting from it. That is something written on my heart. Marriage should be for life, and I believe that that is the ambition of most people who embark on it. It was certainly mine.
It is distasteful in a debate like this to refer to one's own experience, but I owe it to the importance of the subject. When that ambition fails it is a totally shattering experience, doubtless for both parties, even when the procedure is a no-fault procedure, which is nothing new and has existed for a quarter of a century.
Because of that experience, I warmly support the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, for education. Other noble Lords have referred to it as well; and, indeed, I chaired an inquiry which published the Elton Report, as it is now called, on discipline in schools. The report pointed to the necessity of educating children for parenthood, because we already have children who are the children of unmarried teenage mothers who themselves were unmarried teenage mothers. The succession of stability and the understanding of what a happy family is about has been broken and cannot be preserved by means of legislation. It can be remedied only by some other intervention, which must be educational.

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That education ideally would be, and for centuries has been, given by the clergy and the rabbis. But the churches are now emptier and I dare say the synagogues are too. Therefore, it is necessary to involve the state, the education system and the social services to restore this broken chain. It is necessary to emphasise to people entering marriage the enormous solemnity and importance of the enterprise they are embarking on. I wonder whether we might not look at some statement to be made or signed at the moment of applying for a marriage licence that some explanation of this had been received by both parties from a reputable source. I am not aware that that is the case at the moment.
My experience is that couples do not examine divorce procedures before they embark on marriage—which I regard as a rather bizarre idea. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that you cannot mend a marriage by any law, least of all by reforming the divorce law. Even if you remove the possibility of divorce altogether you will still have the shore littered with wrecked marriages. You cannot shore up the house on the cliff by statute when the sea begins to eat away at it.
I hope that my noble and learned friend will expand on mediation, which in the Bill before your Lordships is the last stage before divorce, for the sake not only of my noble friend Lord Brentford and the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, but also my noble friend Lady Young on the linkage between the provisions in Clause 7(1)(a), which make the first object of mediation conciliation, and the provision in Clause 11(1) and (2) for the rules that he will make for it. I hope that it will be made clear to all of us how it is intended to make conciliation further towards the front of the Bill. It is already there in the statement that has to be made by the legal adviser to the court, but I hope that it will be more specific.
Couples, and above all parents, should never be driven into divorce unless it is utterly beyond them to maintain marriage, and then only with the greatest reluctance. But I would ask any noble Lords who did not hear the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, describe the conditions for the children within a failed marriage to read that before they take any step in the Lobby against what is proposed. The noble Lord was far more immediate and moving than I can possibly be on the subject of the necessity of divorce in some cases.
Nevertheless, divorce has to be a last resort and hence my reservation about accepting a unilateral statement of breakdown on the same terms as an agreed one. I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lord Coleraine and his idea of a decree nisi at the end of the 12 months' mediation period in such a case, or possibly looking at a longer period such as the five-year period that we used to have. But that is all for Committee. For that reason, too, conciliation, where it is possible, is essential.
Let me return to what appears to be, rather bizarrely in my view, the most provocative issue—the availability of fault-free divorce. First, it is a complete misnomer. There is no such thing as a fault-free divorce. Divorce itself is a great fault, as I readily recognise. It is a failure; indeed, it is a disaster. It can result from a number of different ingredients, but what is the point of spelling them out? What is the point, in fact, of
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subdividing the grand calamity into adultery, brutality or whatever as an optional alternative, giving a much quicker exit from marriage? What falls from that subdivision? Not, I assure your Lordships, a greater respect for marriage vows in spite of what has happened, but in a tragic 75 per cent. of couples it results in their being thrown into adversarial procedures. Noble Lords who seek to preserve marriage—the abode of love and mutual respect—and then propose that those who cannot sustain that condition should go down a road that leads to fear or hate, or both, seem to me to be in a totally illogical position. Once you have got to the point of no return, there is no profit to anyone in putting people through that kind of mangle and creating antagonism where it is unnecessary.
Noble Lords opposed to my noble and learned friend's proposals put children at the front of their concern. So do I. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, that of course divorce is more damaging than acrimonious marriage if this adversarial road is the road out of it, as it is now in 75 per cent. of all cases. My only experience of divorce was of the no-fault route. That was hugely painful certainly, but it was done by both parties putting the children first. I have not examined them before this debate—perhaps they have sheltered me from some of the truths that they suffered—but I have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Moran, who referred to educational deprivation, that the child who was 13 at the point of separation got a 2:1 at Cambridge and the child who was eight and a half at the time of separation got a first-class honours degree in London, which sounds to me as if not all was entirely lost. The others were less academic. I shall not parade their results because their ambitions were different.
From the security of a second marriage with children in accord with both their parents, I can thank God as though I had walked unscathed—not unscathed but recovered—from an aeroplane crash. But I still think that that institution is central to the welfare of our society. The central concern remains for all of us that marriage should be strengthened; yes, and urgently, for the reasons that have been repeated again and again. However, it should be done not by legislation but by education, which means resources; by fiscal status, which means resources; by housing provision, which means resources; by counselling, which means resources; and only as a last resort by mediation, which itself means resources.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale—I am relieved that he is not in his place as I regard him as the most terrible adversary in any debate that one can choose—said that prevention is better than damage limitation. It is. That is the way to do it, and not by resisting this Bill, which I warmly welcome.
8.50 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, may I first apologise for not being here for the opening speeches. Secondly, I should declare an interest as a barrister practising mainly in the family law field and, indeed, as junior counsel to the Queen's Proctor for whom I dare to hope some work will remain after this Bill is enacted.

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I begin by welcoming Part III of the Bill, the modified version of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill. One welcomes it rather as one might greet a friend who has had rather a difficult summer Recess and has suffered a slight loss of weight as a result. It was a strange feeling, for those of us who served and, dare I say, worked hard on the Special Public Bill Committee on the earlier Bill, to find it suddenly transformed by certain newspapers into the "Live-in Lovers Bill". Frankly, it was very irritating to read uninformed comment on that Bill by people who had not troubled to read it let alone to read the underlying Law Commission Report. Informed opinion continues to welcome the Bill as a valuable improvement and rationalisation of the law relating to domestic violence. The so-called "Ouster Order", which can exclude a husband or a co-habitee from his home, will undoubtedly continue to be regarded as a drastic order of last resort.
Turning to Part I of the Bill and the grounds for divorce, it is surely right to put behind us the unsatisfactory compromise of the 1969 Act, which in turn did away with some of the absurdities of the old law and practice. Although I do not consider that the existing bases for divorce necessarily indicate or aggravate conflict in separated or separating couples, it certainly was not expected in 1969 that so many people would use allegations of adultery or behaviour as the speedier way to end their marriage. As several noble Lords have observed, it has in fact resulted in doubtful and untested allegations of adultery and parties and their lawyers scraping the barrel to find allegations of misbehaviour.
I recently saw a divorce petition which struck me as a precursor of no-fault divorce. In it the wife included the allegation that the husband had bought her a brand new washing machine. When further questioned as to why that was actually a complaint, it turned out that her grievance was that he had not allowed her to come along and help him choose it.
The reality is that 99 per cent. of these cases are undefended and that surely indicates that a fault-based divorce law is doing nothing to uphold the institution of marriage. However, those who do want to retain or indeed to re-emphasise fault, must be prepared to have disputes about faults litigated at public expense. The noble Lord, Lord Moran, suggested that the courts were at fault particularly since the decision in 1973 of the Court of Appeal, which suggested fault should only he relied on in financial cases in exceptional circumstances. That was on the pragmatic basis that if a fault is relied on in financial matters it will involve lengthy inquiries, as I say, often at public expense, resulting very often in the judge concluding, perfectly properly, that it was six of one and half-a-dozen of another.
Equally, to compel people to live apart for five years sometimes also creates great unhappiness, particularly if they have to co-exist under the same roof. That can cause an enormous strain preventing any prospect of reconciliation because those parties fear that to get back together again while the period of five years is running will prejudice their position and will of course prolong the agony. Happily, I have been involved in few
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contested divorces. They are always the most miserable affairs. The most miserable I ever had to participate in was only recently when it surprisingly involved a dispute over whether the parties have been apart for five years. That couple came to court for the divorce hearing on their 41st wedding anniversary, the wife desperate to escape from the marriage and the husband desperate to save it. I shall not reveal the result, but needless to say, both went away disappointed. I could not help reflecting that had the law been different it would have been possible for someone to have stepped in to save what certainly at some stage was a retrievable situation.
The Bill will not make divorce easier; indeed, I suggest that it will make it more difficult in many cases. In any event, I suggest that it is a misapprehension that people treat divorce lightly because it is perceived to be easy. In one of the debates on A.P. Herbert's Bill back in the 1930s, I remember reading the then Bishop of Durham observing that in some ways people take greater care of their marriages if they are aware of the risk of divorce. The vast majority of people who contemplate divorce do not do so other than with a very heavy heart and knowing, or soon realising, that they will expose themselves to a great deal of pain and agony. I do not believe that the mechanisms of this Bill will alter that basic fact, which the information session must clearly convey.
Perhaps I may touch on something which I do not believe has been mentioned during the course of the debate; that is the separation order as an alternative to divorce. At first sight it seems to provide the same alternative to divorce as judicial separation does now for those who want a formal arrangement allowing them to live apart and have matters regulated by the court. However, it is noticeable that, unlike judicial separation at present, a separation order will require proof that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. I wonder if that is necessary or helpful to those marriages which can be saved.
Turning to the process envisaged by this Bill, it begins with a statement of marital breakdown. The court will not of course determine the matter solely on the basis of that statement, which I believe was a view taken by the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle. Such a statement may well be less daunting than a divorce petition, but it may well be seen by the other party as a hostile act and a notice to quit the marriage. I suggest that it might be less confrontational if the initial statement, particularly when it is a unilateral statement, were to be required to include a request to undergo counselling. Likewise, the period for reflection can be suspended under Clause 7 by a joint notice requiring time to attempt reconciliation. I wonder whether it can be possible to allow for a limited suspension also by means of a unilateral notice from the recipient of the initial statement.
Another matter which may need to be considered in Committee is flexibility in the period of the year envisaged by the Bill. It may well be appropriate in certain cases to have the capacity to extend that period, but also in some cases where there are particular housing difficulties, to have the ability to abbreviate the period. That is a point made by the Women's Aid Federation.

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Finally on procedural matters, I should like to see a more positive obligation in the rules to be made under Clause 11(2). At present, they echo the rather lame obligation upon lawyers in the 1969 Act to certify whether they have discussed reconciliation and certain other matters with their clients. If that is the only obligation, what will happen is what so often happened: the lawyer will simply certify that he has not discussed the question of reconciliation.
Mediation is a welcome introduction. Many couples need help to work their way through the painful process. Mediation has grown in both quality and respectability and has made both branches of the legal profession respond in a number of ways, both in terms of the services and advice that they offer, and in their approach to contentious cases. Without dwelling on the merits of the modern family lawyer, I simply wish to emphasise that most family lawyers are all too well aware of the financial and emotional damage that is caused by litigation and that they work under an ethos which properly encourages the settlement of cases. That ethos will continue under what the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, accurately described as the "year of work". I do not suggest that mediation is simply a fifth wheel on the wagon. It will be a valuable part of the machinery, but it is certainly not a panacea.
At present, lawyers tend only to see the result of unsuccessful or defective mediations, but it is increasingly realised that it is a valuable process. However, mediators must be properly trained, particularly if they are to embark on a resolution of financial and property matters. Skilled mediation costs money and involves a clear understanding of the legal framework. Difficult cases will not become easier by being subjected to mediation. There must be rigorous procedures for the disclosure of assets and resources. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, there is certainly a limit to the amount of privilege which can be applied to what is disclosed because it is not to be thought that simply because a mediation process is under way, some spouses will not continue to try to hide their assets. There must also be safeguards to protect the weaker party who may feel compelled to settle on unfavourable terms simply because it seems that settlement is expected of them. Part of the training of mediators is to be on the lookout for the potential exploitation of an unfair bargaining position.
Mediation must depend on a consistent application of the principles of family law relating to finance and property. It is not easy on the face of the Bill to discern the relationship of mediation, litigation and access to independent legal advice. I hope that that will emerge in Committee. An important feature of the mediated negotiation will be the negotiated agreement, defined in Schedule 1(6). In my submission, it is important that the requirement for a negotiated agreement sets minimum standards of fairness and consistency.
Finally and briefly, perhaps I may support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, in relation to Clause 10. Secular divorce is not enough to dissolve a marriage in the view of some religious groups which require a religious divorce before remarriage can be permitted. Both Jewish and Moslem women have to
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rely on their estranged husbands to initiate that divorce process; otherwise as the noble Lord said, the marriage limps on. I would certainly support amendments to Clause 10 because without them all those women will be deprived of the freedom to negotiate ancillary matters without the unfair leverage of the husband's control of the religious divorce. They will be deprived of the ability to remarry according to the tenets of their faith. In simple fairness, the balance needs to be corrected.
Reading the history of the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, which I notice was opposed by the ancestor of my noble friend Lord Russell, it is interesting to note that one of the catalysts for that change in the law was the disparity in the ability to get a divorce in England and in Scotland. I cannot help wondering whether that disparity may reappear by virtue of the changes suggested by this Bill. With that thought, I welcome the initiative that has been taken by the Government.
9.5 p.m.
Lord Ashbourne: My Lords, the basic concept of marriage and the family comes from the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Chapter 2 of the Book of Malachi states:
hate divorce', says the Lord, the God of Israel".
I was glad to hear the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack remind the House that marriage is divinely appointed. That reminded me that at one solemn moment in the Church of England marriage service the vicar says to the couple and to the congregation:
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder".
The Bill before us will abolish the need to prove any facts. Fault and separation petitions will be abolished. Rebecca Bailey-Hams, Professor of Law at Bristol University, observes:
"The reality of the proposal is divorce by unilateral demand, a process initiated by one party's belief in the marriage's breakdown, the legal effect of which is simply delayed for one year or more if ancillary matters cannot be resolved in time".
The noble Baroness, Lady David, said that she did not agree with me that the Bill will make divorce easier. However, I hold that view sincerely, for this reason: I believe that young people will enter marriage very lightly if the Bill becomes law because they will say to themselves, "I will marry this person and, if it doesn't work out, after a year I can get a divorce without a reason"—I prefer the term "no reason divorce" to "no fault divorce"—"and I'll then try again with someone else and, if that doesn't work, I can do it again".
I feel that, for that reason, the Bill will greatly increase the divorce rate and not minimise it. Abolishing fault will abolish responsibility. The law will no longer declare that adultery, unreasonable behaviour and desertion are morally wrong. The conduct of an adulterer will no longer be considered by the law as morally reprehensible. Abolishing fault will remove justice from divorce. By removing all obstacles to divorce, more and more couples will be tempted into seeking divorce as the only way of solving marital difficulties.

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Where it has been introduced in other countries, no-fault divorce has increased the divorce rate. A 1989 study on the effects of the introduction of no-fault divorce in 16 states of the United States, including the two most populous, concluded that:
"On average, the no-fault laws increased divorces by some 20-25 per cent.".
In other words, the adoption of no-fault divorce has led to tens of thousands of divorces that would not have occurred under traditional law.
The Bill constitutes unilateral divorce on demand and it will be divorce without reason. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack denies this charge. He points to the hardship bar in Clause 10, which will now apply to all divorce petitions. But just how credible is this safeguard? In the debates on divorce reform in 1969 it was divorce petitions based on five years' separation which caused controversy. It was said that an innocent spouse could be divorced against his or her will. For that reason the hardship bar was introduced to prevent a divorce where there would be,
"grave financial or other hardship",
and where,
"in all the circumstances [it would] be wrong to dissolve the marriage".
However, how have the courts operated the law? They have practically ignored the hardship bar. According to Ruth Deech, the Principal of St. Anne's College, Oxford, who helped to formulate the Divorce Reform Act 1969, a bar in the case of grave hardship has been invoked only once in 25 years. In the case of financial hardship, the bar has been very rarely invoked, according to Dr. Stephen Cretney, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. In Clause 10 the present Bill incorporates very similar wording to that in Section 5 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Given the almost complete ineffectiveness of the present hardship bar, this scarcely inspires confidence.
Other concerns include the way in which the courts have operated under the present law. The expectation of Parliament in 1969 was that allegations of fault would entail an investigation by the court into the truth of the allegations. Case law and various regulations have severely reduced this, and the special procedure brought in in the 1970s is now followed in more than 99 per cent. of uncontested divorces. Under this procedure, divorce takes place on paper without the need for a court appearance. The cost of litigation ensures that only a tiny number of divorces are contested. The present system certainly includes a level of abuse. False allegations can be so easily made simply because they are not investigated. The Government's answer is to abolish fault entirely, but this will, I fear, lead to gross injustice.
The whole emphasis of the Bill is to oil the wheels of divorce. Only mediation and information sessions are on offer and, while these may save money, they are unlikely to save marriages. In brief, the philosophy of the Bill is that if one party believes that the marriage has broken down there should be a divorce. The Bill, therefore, provides no protection for the innocent party
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and this, surely, cannot be right. It is with regret, therefore, that I have to say to the House that I cannot support the Bill in its present form.
9.12 p.m.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, your Lordships have been most patient. We are approaching the straight and I shall try not to detain the House for longer than I need. This is an important Bill which deals with a very difficult subject. I greatly respect the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for having the courage to take it on board. I agree entirely with the objectives set out in the White Paper. I agree in particular with the concept of a fixed minimum period for reflection. I agree with the objective in the White Paper that reconciliation and mediation should be offered to anyone who wants it, whether or not he or she can afford it.
The question that we must ask ourselves is whether the Bill as drafted will achieve those objectives. It is with that point that I have difficulty. I really think that it will not and that we must do quite a lot of work on it if it is to achieve those objectives.
It seems to the public and, indeed, to the media, to make divorce easier and less painful. Therefore, at this point and as currently drafted, the Bill is sending out the wrong messages about the importance of marriage and divorce. It seems to imply that, somehow, the Bill provides a way in which divorce can be achieved without hurting the children, which we all know is not true. I know that that is not what the Bill is meant to say but everybody to whom I have spoken about it—from a cab driver to a merchant banker who I saw this morning—has the impression that the Bill is making divorce easier, and they do not like it.
As many noble Lords have said, the real problem in our society which needs to be addressed is not divorce but marriage. Of course, in a perfect world a new divorce Bill should be considered alongside a total consideration of the nature and role of marriage in our society today. But, sadly, as I understand it, marriage comes under the Home Office and divorce under the Lord Chancellor's Department. It is rather incredible that the beginning of marriage comes under one department of state and its end comes under another, although I cannot say whether that is the reason why those two issues were not considered together.
But what we say about divorce sends messages to people about what we believe about marriage. The noble Lord, Lord Marsh, said that its role and status in our society today is changing and that it is more in the nature of an equal partnership. I am sure that that is undoubtedly true. But it does not alter the fact that we need to consider very carefully what is and should be the role of marriage and that we should make it credible.
When we look at marriage, we surely should be thinking of the kind of commitment that people need to make to one another to provide a secure and stable environment for the upbringing of children; the kind of support that will be needed to do the job properly; and the kind of preparation which they will need before they start to do that. We should consider what kind of

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commitment people wish to make to one another as regards supporting one another in old age, in sickness, in infirmity and when things go wrong.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, who unfortunately is not in her place, spoke about marriage and cohabitation. I do not believe that that should be addressed as a moral issue but rather as a practical issue. The difficulty about cohabitation is that it does not necessarily imply any commitment, and certainly where children are concerned there are very strong reasons for supposing, both in the interests of the children and society, that commitment is important.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to a marriage contract and to giving information to young people before they enter into marriage. It is distressing to say that that is not done because the Registrar General refuses to do it. One Plus One, one of the organisations supporting marriage, has pamphlets which it has asked and pressed to have handed out and that has been refused on several occasions.
In my view, the objectives set out in the White Paper are unimpeachable but the Bill is rather disappointing compared with the White Paper. It seems to me that there are three improvements that we should make to the Bill to bring it more into line with what the White Paper is envisaging. First, we must attempt to change the image of the Bill, as I said, because I think that it is creating the wrong public image. Secondly, we must state on the face of the Bill the primacy of the needs of the children of the marriage, because they are the powerless partners in the marriage. They must be given the protection of society. Thirdly, reconciliation must be given parity of esteem with mediation in order to encourage the survival of as many marriages as possible.
How can we say to the world that this Bill does not simply make divorce easier? One way in which to do that is to increase the period of reflection from one year to 18 months or two years in the case of a family with a child under the age of 16. In cases in which an 18-month or two-year waiting period is deemed to be contrary to the best interests of the child or children, the court could have the right to reduce the period to one year, but not less. Such a provision would have the added advantage of emphasising the extra responsibilities which the adult partners take on when they bring a child into the world and into the partnership.
I should like to look a little more closely at the position of children. Reading this Bill, it seems to me that it could have been drafted before the Children Act, because children are treated as the chattels of their parents. As I see it, until a child is born, the marriage consists of a partnership between two adults. Then, when the child is born, it becomes a partnership of three. The child has its own rights and needs. Because the child is the powerless partner—the vulnerable partner—society has obligations to him or her.
I am the first to acknowledge that unselfish and loving parents, even if they cannot get on with one another, are certainly the best people to decide about
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their children's future, after listening to the children themselves. But what about those children whose parents are so wrapped up in their own anxieties, selfishness or resentment that they are blinded to their children's real needs? What about those parents who actually resent or actively dislike their children, very often because they suspect them of being illegitimate or for some such reason? Study after study has shown the devastating effects of family dysfunction on children. There needs to be some form of appeal, some form of guardian ad litem—indeed some protection for children—when parents, under mediation, decide outcomes for their children which are less than the best.
I return now to the question of differentiation. One of the most important defects of the Bill is that it does not clearly distinguish between families with children and those without children. It does not make clear the added responsibilities that people take on when they bring children into the world. I believe that the primacy of the needs of children should be stated as the first clause in the Bill, as it is in the Children Act. I shall introduce an amendment to that effect with the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful, who had the same idea without collusion. I shall also introduce other amendments to establish the importance of children as the vulnerable and powerless partners.
In some ways the greatest disappointment of the Bill is that it steps back from the position taken by the White Paper in not giving any commitment to the prevention of dysfunctional families or to the preservation of marriages. It seems to me that priority needs to be given to help parents avoid the tragedy of family dysfunction and subsequent divorce. Surely conciliation should have equal status with mediation in the Bill. Indeed, it should be the first step in the process for all to attempt reconciliation.
Some organisations have suggested that the first six months of the reflection period should be devoted to attempting reconciliation and only if it fails should parties turn to mediation. The noble Lord, Lord Jakohovits, suggested a three-tier structure with conciliation, mediation and litigation all having equal status. It seems to me that there is a great deal of gravamen in that suggestion.
Of course, the trouble may lie—and I suspect that it is the reason why such considerations have been left out of the Bill—with the Treasury. If that is indeed so, I despair. I do not know where they get the people who are employed at the Treasury—perhaps from Winchester. Those concerned ought to be able to see that to spend £100 now is better than having to spend £1,000 or £10,000 later.
Finally, if the Government are genuinely committed to the objectives in the White Paper, I suggest that there are a number of other things that they will have to do alongside the divorce Bill. I just want to get this on the record. We need more preparation and education in schools about relationships, parenting and the needs of children. We need more preparation for marriage and for parenthood, together with an acceptance of the need to seek help before things go seriously wrong. At a meeting last night, Dr. Dominian said:

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"Good preparation for marriage is the only known factor which reduces divorce".
We need the availability of counselling and support services for parents, whether or not they can afford them. We need family friendly employment practices and, as some noble Lords have already said, we need taxation policies which send a clear message that society supports and encourages stable, married relationships as generally providing the most satisfactory environment for the upbringing of children. Without some of those commitments, the objectives of the White Paper will not be secured.
9.25 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I must begin by declaring a number of interests. I am a solicitor and a partner in a firm of solicitors although I do not myself practise family law. I am a member of the council of management of Refuge which provides services for the victims of domestic violence and I am a member of the governing council of the Family Policy Studies Centre.
As well as declaring interests perhaps I should declare my stance. It seems to me that families come in all shapes and sizes and therefore so, too, do family values, or perhaps one might call them family responsibilities. The term "family values" now, I believe, carries too many overtones especially for those—and I am one—who rather resent the implication that someone who is not a spouse and is not a parent and whose morality is not based on Christianity, but is nevertheless, I think, soundly based, is somehow less of a person. I should make it clear that I am not at all accusing the noble and learned Lord of that attitude. I hope that by saying that I have not immediately undermined the point of saying that I do not point the finger. Indeed I congratulate the noble and learned Lord not just on the content of the Bill but also on his approach to it, and particularly on the consultative approach which has taken place over a long period.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that the number of divorces is increasing. However, that is not the case as regards the latest figures, as we have recognised. She asked whether that increase mattered. I agree that that is the question we must ask, although I come to a different conclusion from the noble Baroness because I share with others the view that what matters is the breakdown of the relationship. If the relationship cannot be retrieved, it is better to find the least painful way of recognising that. Divorce is indeed a catastrophe in terms of what lies behind it. The greatest catastrophe may be to force a tie which is not a genuine one, leading perhaps to potentially explosive effects for both partners and, as has so rightly been said, for children. I join with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford in agreeing that one cannot support marriage by making divorce more difficult.
I appreciate that my remarks may be regarded as being anti-marriage, or at least uncaring as regards marriage. That is not the case although I find it a little ironic that those who are criticised for failing to respect marriage are those who support the concept of the noble and learned
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Lord the Lord Chancellor of reflection and consideration. I find those words user friendly and I welcome them in legislation. I agree that the Bill does not make divorce more available. Perhaps it is better to say that than to say that it makes divorce either more or less easy because, like the noble Lords, Lord Marsh and Lord Elton, in particular, I am certain that divorce is almost never easy. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, I feel it is a little impertinent to intervene as an unmarried person but I suspect that few people, whether married or not, can really understand other people's marriages. Nor indeed is it easy for anyone else to opine that one particular pattern is the best modus operandi for the children in particular circumstances. I agree that it is important to listen to the child.
I hope that I am not one of those solicitors that the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, described as chuntering solicitors. If I am chuntering at all, my chuntering is that the very requirement to identify fault, as we have at present, is what increases acrimony. I support the non-adversarial approach of mediation although I do not regard that as entirely a replacement for legal advice; that is, advice as to what the law is and how it applies to individuals; advice and investigation as to the assets that may be available, and which are perhaps not being disclosed; and the very important part of a lawyer's job which is to instil in his client a sense of reality based on the current situation and what is possible.
Unhappily, too many separating and divorcing partners have unrealistic expectations. Sadly, the advice may reveal the pensions predicament which has been mentioned. I, too, know of a couple who are not married solely because of their concern for the wife who is separated from the husband and because of the need to support her. I believe that that can only be addressed by making specific provisions as regards pensions, not by preventing second marriage.
In supporting what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, called the humane and effective approach, I am aware, too, of the fragility of the mediation services. By that I mean their financial fragility. The Financial Memorandum to the Bill says that the provisions are designed to be cost neutral and there will be no increase in government expenditure. Anxieties have rightly been expressed both for the long term and the short term. If these proposals are to succeed, it is important that the mediation services are put on a secure financial footing. That will require resources, because a great many more trained mediators are required, as my noble friend Lord Meston said. That must be regarded as an investment.
As noble Lords have said, resources for counselling are also an investment. I support much of what has been said on that score. Resources are also needed for training in what are called, in the jargon, interpersonal skills. I do not see that as meaning formal lessons in marriage as a new form of domestic science, as it was called in the days when I was taught how to make scrambled eggs on toast, but assistance in communication skills. The importance of skills in communication for so many areas of life cannot be over-emphasised.

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In referring to training for whatever life may hold in store, including marriage, I note the calls for the Government to have a role in education for marriage. Those seem to have come largely from those who in other discussions might quite rightly point to the role of parents rather than the Government in that training.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester talked about resources for preparation for marriage and for counselling, and said that parenthood is as important as any career. My noble friend Lord Russell said that matters such as childcare and paternity leave will make a difference to marriage. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to housing and other resource-intensive matters. Those are what may make a difference to a successful marriage rather than the ease or otherwise of divorce. Parenting is an important career. The sooner more men truly accept that (although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful!, that many do) the better for women, men and children. However, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, that women's changing role may lead to increasing conflict.
My noble friend Lord Russell referred to Who's Who, which I understand will print details of one's partner who is not one's spouse. It took me several letters to persuade the publishers of Debrett that if they were to mention my father they should also mention my mother.
With regard to the information session that will now be required, I welcome the assurance given by the noble and learned Lord at the start of the debate that a victim of domestic violence need not attend at the same time as her spouse. However, I still have reservations about the potentially public nature of the information session and the possibility of what are essentially private matters, if not being aired in public not being confidential. I do not suggest that it will be a teach-in in the sense of those attending having to contribute. I welcome the fact that there will be pilot arrangements for the information sessions.
I wonder whether the sessions may be counter-productive in some cases. One knows that in other difficult situations, such as alcohol addiction, the first step—attending the first session and identifying oneself—is the most difficult. If the first step in these proceedings is to identify oneself, we may be making life harder, not easier, for those affected.
My noble friend Lord Russell has dealt with Part III of the Bill. I shall not repeat what he said other than to say that I share his concern and that of other noble Lords that the provisions of the domestic violence legislation are not diluted. The noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said that no one should be entitled to assault another member of the household. I very much agree with that. Domestic violence is a crime; there is no getting away from that.
My noble friend asked for further assurances about the special position of victims of domestic violence in the new homelessness legislation. I remind him publicly that an assurance was given not only by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor but also by the Minister of State for the Environment in a debate on refugees in, I think, July.
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The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, referred to the challengers to the changes in the proposed legislation. With very genuine respect to him, I believe that it is for the changes to he justified. Therefore thorough consideration at Committee stage will be required. So I shall support amendments to restore the original provisions so that the matter can be thoroughly argued.
I cannot resist closing without reading a letter from The Times—I assure noble Lords that it is short—from Canon Donald Nicholson. He wrote:
"In the belief that the great Dr Johnson had an appropriate comment to make on any topic in any century, I would like to offer Lord Mackay this relevant observation:
`I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter;
9.37 p.m.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, I am sure that we would all endorse that belief were it not for the fear that we would overburden an already somewhat burdened Lord Chancellor.
It cannot be often, even in your Lordships' House, that so wide a range of expertise and experience has been encompassed in one debate. Those who participate in the Committee stage will be faced with a formidable task in assimilating it all, especially as many of us also have the benefit of a substantial amount of briefing from sources representing those who regularly work in this area and for which I am very grateful.
I wait with eager anticipation to hear how the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will address the task of winding up so rich a debate. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I abdicate any attempt to do so. To refer to even the most informative contributions at this hour would not endear me to your Lordships. I venture therefore only a brief reflection on four themes which have emerged from the debate.
First, we need to consider the limitations on what we can hope to achieve in the Bill; indeed, what any legislation about divorce can or cannot achieve, bearing in mind contemporary public attitudes to cohabitation outside the marriage bond, referred to by my noble friend Lord Irvine. There have been periods in our history when public opinion would have constituted a serious sanction against cohabitation not supported by marriage vows. In the high Middle Ages, cohabitation would frequently give rise to all the obligations of marriage.
I recollect once seeing, in a manorial roll, the judgment of a manorial court that two people be ordered to separate on pain of being considered married. In the 18th century, a couple cohabiting outside marriage risked the community pronouncing its view by way of a procedure known as "rough music" when all the neighbours gathered outside in a somewhat noisy demonstration. Indeed, in the community in which I was reared, the suspicion that a cohabiting couple were not married was whispered behind dosed doors and, if

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whispered often enough, they would not have been welcome at any public event. Alas, for more than one reason, my childhood was many years ago.
With the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, I believe that attitudes have changed and that that is a cause and not a consequence of changes in the divorce law. But with those changes have gone many of the sanctions which could be imposed by telling the parties to a marriage that they could not enter into a marriage with someone else. There are three things which we in the community cannot do. First, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Lords, Lord Marsh and Lord Elton, so movingly demonstrated, we cannot make two people live together in harmony if they cannot or will not. No law, no judge, no court can do that. If two people no longer generate love between them, if the atmosphere is cold and unhappy, still more if there are perpetual rows, we cannot compel people to make their home warm and happy.
Secondly, we cannot make them go on living together. If either or both are determined to separate, we cannot force them to stay together. Thirdly, in our generation we cannot prevent one or both living with someone else. We can say to them, if we so decide, "If you live with your new partner you will be cohabiting out of wedlock." But today that may not deter them from cohabiting. We may then need to decide whether the new relationship is better brought within the marriage bond.
Of course, it does not preclude our doing what we can to engender public respect for marriage as an institution. I venture only to observe that that is not always best achieved by causing some people to cohabit without being able to marry. I share the anxiety of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford. If divorce is too hard, then cohabitation outside marriage may be encouraged.
We have to set all this into context. So the second theme which I believe has arisen today is best expressed in the form of a question. If we cannot impose harmony on a domestic situation, is there anything we can do to encourage a stable, permanent and happy relationship? I believe, with some of your Lordships, that there are steps we can take to ensure that the occasional bad patch is not fatal. First, we can encourage people to reflect seriously before they enter into partnerships, either inside or outside marriage. That is not always practical. When relationships begin, parties are not always at their calmest and most reflective. But we can at least make available proper, considered sex education in schools, pointing out—as the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, and my noble friend Lord Stallard suggested—the virtues and contribution which marriage can make. We can warn people of the dangers of embarking on such adventures lightheartedly. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed out, we can ask registrars to distribute to those about to marry some of the valuable literature which is available. So we can do our best to ensure that relationships do not begin unless both parties are persuaded that they have a serious prospect of continuing.
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Secondly, we can encourage parties whose marriage is experiencing difficulties to take advantage of marriage guidance and counselling. As the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, said, not all of them will benefit, but many will and there might be marriages saved. It is right at this stage that we should repeat the distinction emphasised by my noble friend Lord Irvine between conciliation and marriage guidance on the one hand and mediation at the later stage on the other. For the moment I am talking about conciliation and marriage guidance.
I share the curiosity of my noble friend Lady David as to whether the parties are to be told at an early stage what is available and how they can embrace it. The organisations that provide those services cannot budget unless they have guaranteed resources. As some noble Lords pointed out, producing those resources may be a very good investment. The current cost of divorce, including the court costs, the cost of the children in care and social security benefits—as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford pointed out—are estimated to be something like £3.4 billion a year, whereas we spend less than £3 million each year in supporting marriages. Therefore I echo the plea of the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk: if we could achieve a 25 per cent. reduction in the former figure by increasing 25 per cent. investment in the latter figure, on any showing that would be good business.
Thirdly, there are the fiscal measures mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. One thing we could do is assist people to maintain a roof over their heads. Many marriages begin to go wrong when the family is evicted from its home. Then there are the matters mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. We can arrange hours of work so that the parties can see one another from time to time. There is a great deal we can do.
The third theme addressed today was reflected in the question posed so clearly by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord Elton. How do we deal with the situation where, despite all the measures that we can take, a marriage has reached crisis point and the parties are contemplating divorce? I, too, endorse the way this was expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. He stated it succinctly, and I hope that he does not claim copyright because I think I may repeat it elsewhere: we do not strengthen the institution of marriage by an unsatisfactory divorce law.
I welcome the end of the recriminatory procedure. We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, for reminding us of the succinct arguments in Putting Asunder, which many of us read a very long time ago. To offer positive encouragement to one party and embark on a recital of the other party's misconduct makes no contribution either to a possible reconciliation or to a future relationship from which the children might benefit. At best, as my noble friend Lady Birk pointed out, as did the noble Lord, Lord Elton, the allegations are not contested and there follows the "quickie" divorce, which I hope we all condemn. At worst, the parties' attitude to one another is soured for life, with all the unhappy consequences for the future of the children. As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, reminded us, we may divert into legal expenses public money which

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might have been better used. Encouraging one party to concentrate on what the other partner did wrong without reflecting on his or her own mistakes makes no contribution to a possible reconciliation, nor even perhaps to a more successful second relationship in the future.
That is very different from the question posed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon. What will be the procedure for enabling the other party to express a view as to whether the marriage should be terminated? It seems to follow from Clause 10 that such a procedure will be provided, but I share the curiosity of the noble and learned Lord. I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor can to some extent assuage our curiosity when he replies.
As to the requirement for a period of reflection, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee: the Bill is likely to make divorce less likely and not more likely and it may well save marriages. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester and the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, reminded us that those who have experience in conciliation report that all too frequently those who go ahead with a divorce come years later to regret it. They wish that they had stayed married.
But I have heard doubts expressed as to whether the provision may be too inflexible. There may be situations in which the advantages are outweighed by some of the hardships. My noble friend Lord Irvine gave a very telling example of that, as did the noble Earl, Lord Russell. Another example which I have heard quoted is one where the wife is pregnant and anxious to marry the father of the child. There might be very real arguments there based on the welfare of the child for saying that she should be free to do so before the child is born. So I echo the plea of my noble friend Lady Birk for a degree of flexibility.
Of course there will be arguments about the thin ends of wedges. I recollect the procedures in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937, which was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, where no party was permitted to initiate divorce proceedings within three years of the marriage. Whatever the subsequent legislative history to which the noble and learned Lord referred, he will remember—as I remember—the days when I was a young barrister and I appeared before him on exactly that kind of application, because it was found necessary to mitigate exceptional cases. The courts were given a discretion in proper cases to dispense with the provision. It did not mean the virtual end of the rule. The courts gave leave only in exceptional cases. I hope that the committee will hear evidence on that before we reach any dogmatic conclusions.
Most particularly, I welcome the proposals in Clause 12 for making available, and making the parties aware of, provision for mediation. I assume, as my noble friend Lord Irvine pointed out, that here mediation means mediation and not conciliation, although conciliation was referred to in the White Paper and no doubt the two will he in the mind of the noble and learned Lord. Mediation arises when conciliation has failed. If, then, the parties can be persuaded to resolve their differences without bitterness—and, it is to be hoped, without some
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of the unedifying proceedings that we used to hear in the divorce jurisdictions—we would all have taken a step forward.
I have only three reservations, none of which diminishes my support for the proposal. In fact, I should like to make it more effective. First, mediation is not likely to be effective unless it is carried out by trained and skilled mediators who are aware, among other things, of modern research into communication, as the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, pointed out. Mediators cannot be trained by listening to a half-hour lecture on a Friday evening. If the proposal is to be successful—I could be completely wrong, and that would not be wholly unprecedented—I imagine that there will be something like a tenfold increase in the number of people seeking mediation. I do not believe that at present those mediators are sitting in their rooms waiting for clients to come in. So, I echo what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Coleraine, and my noble friend Lady David: there will need to be a substantial recruitment and training programme.
Secondly, I share the anxiety of my noble friend Lord Irvine as to the implications of Clause 24. Training as a mediator and training as a lawyer are not often combined in the same person. As the noble Lord, Lord Habgood, said, in some cases they are; but there are very many who do not share both skills. Certainly there are not enough of those who do.
I am told—I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said it—that couples who avail themselves of mediation usually require separate legal advice about matters such as the title to the matrimonial home, pensions and certain kinds of provision for the children. Incidentally, while I am on the subject of pensions, like my noble friend Lord Irvine and the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, I hope that provision can be made for splitting pensions. It will not impose any additional burden on the Treasury and will make it much easier to effect justice between the parties.
Thirdly, if the process is to be activated by a statement under Clause 5, I shall be grateful if the noble and learned Lord can tell us a little about the form of that statement. He said that it would be a statement that the party believes that the marriage has broken down. If it is merely a formula, it does not appear to add much to the proceedings. If it is more than a formula, there may be a temptation to embark on a long and unhappy history of the marriage by the back-door. I hope therefore that we shall be told a little more about that.
I share the curiosity of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, as to the form of the meetings which are to take place. Are they to be group meetings? If not, will they be on a one-to-one basis? Practitioners tell me that there is a danger that some wives will be reluctant to avail themselves of the provisions if they think that they are likely to suffer embarrassment.
Fourthly and lastly, perhaps I may be permitted a word on Part III of the Bill. The Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill was based on a careful and well-researched report by the Law Commission. In March and April of this year the Special Standing Committee of which your Lordships have heard,

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chaired with great skill and care by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, and including my noble friend Lady David and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, sat through a number of sessions when we received evidence from people whose expertise and experience were placed at our disposal. We reached a consensus after careful discussion and your Lordships endorsed the Bill.
Subsequently, the Bill was changed at the instance of a number of Members of another place. I do not know whether they had read the Law Commission's report or the evidence available to the committee, or whether they had read a report of its deliberations. Of course they are entitled to differ from those who offered us the benefit of their expertise, and I am sure that they acted with what they thought were good motives. But if their purpose was to encourage people who cohabit to do so within the marriage bond, what they did was counter-productive. A property-owning husband will now have an incentive not to enter into a marriage.
We are grateful for the careful analysis which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, gave us. For myself, I am prepared to listen, when we go into Committee, as to how far it may be necessary to re-establish the original Bill and what may be the fate of the Bill if we fail.
In an imperfect world there are no perfect solutions. Every proposal will carry a price tag. We must do the best we can with the benefit of such information and experience as are available, and perhaps later be prepared to admit that we might have done better. None of us represents the ultimate in wisdom, and it is an area in which sometimes the most helpful quality we can contribute is a little humility.
9.58 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I echo at the start the words that have just fallen from the lips of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, in closing. Humility is not a bad attitude in which to approach the difficulties that we face in this Bill. Those who assert with confidence what the future holds must be sure that they can lay proper claim to the mantle of the prophet. Mrs. Ruth Deech, who was referred to a number of times during the debate, cautions against that kind of prophecy in her recent article in The Spectator.
I am not sure what is the right way to sum up the debate. There are some general issues that I should like to emphasise. I cannot promise to answer every question posed, but I shall try to answer in correspondence those that I do not have time to answer tonight.
First, like almost everyone who has spoken, I should like to see far fewer divorces. Even more, I should like to see far fewer breakdowns in marriage that cannot be saved or retrieved. But though I share that view, I am not certain that there is any absolutely certain formula by which to reach that end. I doubt whether any of your Lordships who expressed particular anxiety about the
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Bill produced such a formula. But I shall have to read carefully all that was said. Rhetoric of itself will not necessarily produce the result that the repetition seeks.
My noble friend Lady Young suggested that we were seeking to obliterate fault. I do not think one will find in the Bill any suggestion that there is no such thing as fault, but what one does find is an omission from the facts showing irretrievable breakdown of any reference to adultery or unreasonable behaviour. I posed a question at the beginning of the debate to which so far I have not heard an answer. How does the fact that a very quick divorce can be awarded in respect of a person who has grievously broken his marriage vows by committing adultery and can then re-marry very quickly indeed support the institution of marriage? Almost everyone who spoke on this line agreed that the quickie divorce should be abolished. That, by itself, is justification sufficient for a Bill dealing with this subject.
I shall be most interested to see the amendments that my noble friend indicates she proposes to bring forward at the Committee stage. As I indicated at the outset of the debate, and again a moment or two ago, I certainly believe that the issues here are ones which will require to be carefully considered in Committee. All the amendments that may be suggested will be, certainly on my part, very carefully looked at, including the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, said he wished to propose in relation to the particular problem that he referred to at the end of his remarks.
A good deal has been said about the rise of divorce after every change in the divorce law. Anyone who looks at the figures will have to ask the question, "If the divorce changes had not taken place, would the graph be very different?" That is the question. No one denies that there were rises in the divorce rate after changes in the law, but there were also rises before changes in the law. What does that prove, I ask rhetorically?
Part I of the Bill deals with the ground of divorce and the procedure associated with that. It is proposed after the Children Act. The provisions of the Children Act apply, for example, to questions about residence or contact. All the provisions there will be effective. I do not see any point in trying to repeat them in this Bill. There are procedures in the courts. Perhaps I may make an aside on the family court. I think that as a result of the jurisdictional changes in the Children Act we have a family court with three levels of jurisdiction. The family court has procedures for dealing with the views of children. I would certainly like to think that, where it is appropriate, the views of children should be taken into account in mediation. That will certainly be perfectly possible.
Some questions have been asked about the information session. The objects of the information session are to give information so as to be sure that anyone contemplating the divorce process has all the information that we can furnish in an objective way about conciliation, counselling, lawyers, mediation and anything else that may be helpful. That is the purpose of the information session. How best to give it is a matter on which I shall be glad to obtain advice.

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I propose to try to experiment with pilot studies with a number of different ways. My personal view at the moment is that the most objective way for this to be arranged is for those who provide the services to describe them, because, however unbiased one is, it is very difficult adequately to describe what other people are providing because they are much better at doing that themselves.
That service can be provided in a number of ways. A video may be a possible way of doing it. We have used that method very successfully recently as regards jurors. The amount of information which they get is not so complicated at that stage as this kind of video would be. As I say, I am certainly open to suggestions about how that should be done. The purpose is to give as reliable, full and helpful information as can be given about all the services available at that stage.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, asked me about the document and what is stated. I believe that one needs something to start the year off. I believe that it should be as simple as possible. Therefore, so far as I am concerned, one needs to say—and this seems to be the reality if one is thinking of divorce—that one's marriage has broken down. The next stage, after a year, is that in the light of all the circumstances, one believes that one's marriage has broken down in such a way that it cannot be retrieved or healed. That appears to me to be a reasonable basis for proceeding.
I do not believe that this Bill makes divorce easier. A number of noble Lords have supported this view. I do not entirely understand what that phrase means and therefore it may be more difficult to respond to remarks that I did not fully hear about it. It is quite clear that the period required for some 75 per cent. of divorces will be longer than it is at the present time. I strongly suggest to your Lordships that there is a very uncertain sound about fault sent out by the present system in which reliance on that enables one to get a quick divorce. I shall be very interested to see the amendments of those who are proposing to abolish the quick divorce and the basis on which that proceeds.
As regards the provisions dealing with mediation, they are a modification of the Legal Aid Act to enable the Legal Aid Board to fund mediation. I have sought to do that on a basis of principle, which of course is slotted into the existing Legal Aid Act. So legal advice and representation will be available on the terms presently set out in these Acts except in so far as they are modified by this Bill. What we have sought to do in this Bill is to give a fair wind to mediation as a way of dealing with the disputes that arise between parties at the stage at which this matter arises.
It is absolutely plain and crucial that mediation and conciliation, and all the other things that have been referred to, are quite different. Mediation is distinct because it is intended to address problems that will arise between the parties on the dissolution of the marriage. If the mediation does not come to a conclusion these issues will be justiciable by the court. That is quite a
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different thing from counselling or conciliation. They are personal matters where one goes along and makes what use one can of them.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for allowing me to intervene. The argument was that conciliation should be available during the so-called "cooling-off period" before any question of mediation arises. That was the argument from many parts of your Lordships' House.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I appreciate that that argument was made and I am seeking to address it. I am making the point that mediation is a way of addressing issues which, if it fails, will become justiciable before the court. Conciliation, reconciliation, counselling and all the rest are quite different. They involve personal relationships and direct advice or help provided by the counsellor, conciliator or whoever to the person seeking that help.
If there is any lesson to be learned about divorce from present history it is that conciliation, reconciliation and advice that come only when someone is actively contemplating divorce has come extremely late and the chance that it will be successful is then very much less than if that help was given earlier. I do not want in this Bill to give any countenance to the idea that conciliation should be thought of only once one has lodged the formal initiation of a divorce process—
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. Does he accept that some of us were not saying that conciliation should be restricted to taking place after the statement has been made; that on the contrary, we were urging the Government to make available the resources and facilities so that conciliation can be made available both then and earlier?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, that is precisely what I was about to say. As I indicated in my opening remarks, the Government have set up a working party chaired by the Lord Chancellor's Department to examine exactly what is available at the moment, starting with the period with which most of your Lordships wanted to start; namely, before the parties enter into marriage. Much of that work has been done by the Churches and by various other communities. However, it can be carried out in the education system also. I have the details with me, but time is running on and I should prefer to deal with matters of principle now. The education system involves such responsibilities, but I am looking at the total resources available in relation to the period when a couple are contemplating entering marriage as well as during a marriage at times of crisis.
Those involved in marriage guidance work, with whom I have had detailed consultations, have indicated to me that there are particular times in a marriage when a relationship which was previously good is likely to become fragile. We want to address that. That is certainly what I am addressing fully in the working party that was set up as soon as I could make arrangements for it once the White Paper had been published. It may be that some reference to that in the

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Bill would help but, as far as I am concerned, the work is going ahead as fast as I can make it go while the Bill is before your Lordships. I do not think that it requires statutory authority. It is good sense and I wish to press ahead with it as fast as I can. I believe that that is the way to address the general problems to which so many of your Lordships have referred.
The Bill makes it quite clear that if, during mediation, a prospect of agreement or reconciliation emerges, the mediation should stop and the prospect of reconciliation should be pursued.
I should like to deal with one other related matter. More than one of your Lordships and more than one of the right reverend Prelates mentioned the fact that after a time quite a high proportion of those who divorce—the proportion is higher for men than for women—regret it greatly and wish that it had never happened. Sadly, life does not proceed like that and once a divorce has happened, it is beyond recall. That is why forgiveness is so important. However, if the question of the future is addressed during mediation and the parties know what the future holds for them in as much detail as possible, although they will not be able to see everything, that will inform their view and may well turn some of them back from divorce and towards reconciliation. A real look at the future may well bring them to believe that what has happened is not so terribly bad that they should not have another go at recovery.
Therefore, the two aspects are interlinked. There is no stage at which it is right to have, say, six months of conciliation, and if that fails one is into mediation and then into divorce. I hope that the possibility of reconciliation will be kept alive right until the time the divorce is granted. That is a fundamental principle that lies behind the proposals that I have made in the Bill. I believe that it is a sound practical principle and I shall be most interested to hear in Committee the practical proposals for dealing with the matter put forward by your Lordships who disagree with the proposals made in the Bill.
There is time only to say a word or two about Part III of the Bill. The previous Bill was dropped because controversy arose at a time when the timetable did not permit controversy to be accommodated in the ordinary parliamentary procedures. Therefore, I had to see what could be done. In the light of the reflections that were made to me, I made these changes in the Bill. Not for the first time, I am deeply grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Brightman for his summary of the position, which is entirely fair. I believe that we need to examine the detail of the various changes in Committee. I shall be happy to do that because I believe that they do not have the effect referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, especially in one particular which I do not need to mention now.
I hope that your Lordships will consider that it is right for your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill. I detected no feeling to the contrary. Obviously, the Bill is subject to amendment. All noble Lords who have spoken agree that it addresses a most important problem. For my part, I shall be extremely happy to look at every amendment suggesting improvements. Perhaps I may
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suggest that an orderly way of dealing with the matter will be to discuss the amendments in Committee and then, when we have had a chance fully to consider them, to leave the ultimate voting to the Report stage. I am entirely in your Lordships' hands about that but I believe that it would make for an orderly consideration of the issues, all of which are extremely important but extremely difficult.
During the last minute of the time available to me, perhaps I may answer the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Simon of Glaisdale. As a matter of principle, I and the Government consider that there should be a free vote on issues of conscience arising from provisions in this Bill relating to divorce law reform. I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Sudan
10.18 p.m.
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their present policy towards the government of Sudan in the light of reports of violations of human rights.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss the serious violations of human rights in Sudan. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who have made themselves available at such short notice and so late to speak from their own areas of experience and interest. I shall focus on examples of first-hand evidence we obtained during recent visits to some of the most inaccessible areas of southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains under the auspices of Christian Solidarity International, or CSI, which is a Christian human rights organisation working for victims of repression regardless of their creed, colour or nationality.
CSI focuses in particular on people cut off from other aid organisations such as UNHCR, UNICEF or the International Committee of the Red Cross. I pay tribute to those organisations for the excellent work they do. But they can work only in areas with the permission of the sovereign government. The regime in Khartoum is denying access to many parts of the south and the Nuba Mountains, cutting people off from aid. CSI, being small and independent, is free to go where those major organisations cannot and to reach people who would otherwise be totally bereft of aid essential for survival.
The places we visited this year include locations in Bahr El Ghazal such as Pariang, Marial, Turglei, Nyamlell, and surrounding villages; in Eastern Equatoria, Loronyo and Kapoeta; and also the Nuba Mountains. The Government of Sudan deny consistently that the violations of human rights we witnessed are occurring. That is why I wish to take this opportunity to put on record examples of the evidence we obtained at first-hand, examples which sadly can he multiplied many times.
As regards military offensives against civilians, in Nimule and Kapoeta, in Loronyo, and in the Nuba Mountains, we witnessed aerial bombardment of civilians by government forces. We spent hours in foxholes while Antonov bombers circled overhead, bombing and terrorising civilians. Photographs of craters show the massive size of the bombs used against civilians—in the range of 500 to 600 kilograms. Those offensives cause death and injury and also the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of women and children who flee from ground and air offences. I should also add concern over very recent reports of use by the government of chemical weapons against civilians in the Nuba Mountains with bombs dropped from helicopters in Tulishi and Dibebat.
The second area of concern is the manipulation of aid and denial of access for major aid organisations to large areas of southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. A list of airstrips is issued every month identifying those which the Government of Sudan specify as open or closed. Any attempt to land at an airstrip not authorised by the government carries the risk of being shot down and any attempt to work in areas designated as no-go areas carries the risk of capture by government forces, as two courageous doctors working at Pariang found at great personal cost earlier this year.
The effects of the policy of no-go areas are two-fold. First, hundreds of thousands of people are totally bereft of essential supplies of food and medicines so that they are dying in vast numbers of starvation and treatable disease. Secondly, many women and children are forced to seek medicines and food by going to government garrisons in the south or to so-called peace camps in the Nuba Mountains or the north where there are many consistent reports that they become victims of the government's policies of enforced Arabisation and Islamisation.
There are widespread accounts of supplicants for food and medicine being forced to give up their Christian names and religion and adopt Islamic names and practices as a pre-condition for receipt of aid, much of which is apparently given by western donors.
We witnessed the effects of the policy of no-go areas in places as far apart as Pariang, Marial and Mayen Abun in Bahr El Ghazal to Loronyo in Eastern Equatoria. People in their hundreds were dying around us of starvation and disease. When we walked through the bush, we often found ghost villages whose inhabitants had died of starvation. Others were dying in front of our eyes. And those who were still alive showed us how they alleviated the pangs of hunger by eating grass and leaves which had no nutritional value but which at least made their stomachs a little less empty. We also saw many dying from diseases which could have been treated. It is not surprising that many women and children have to flee the government-controlled areas to obtain essentials for survival. But they are often reluctant to do so because of enforced Islamisation and many prefer to die where they are.
The third area of concern relates to evidence of widespread, systematic slavery in north-western Bahr El Ghazal. In Nyamlell, we heard many testimonies from
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former slaves who had either escaped or been brought back by their families. We took evidence from Arab traders who return African women and children captured in raids and enslaved in the north. They are brought back to their families in the south for an average price of five head of cattle per person.
We also heard graphic accounts and saw evidence of barbarities perpetrated during raids by government-backed forces against African towns and villages. For example, in Nyamlell and surrounding villages, we saw the aftermath of raids by government-backed muharaleen militias who swept into those borderlands from the north, massacring and torturing civilians, burning homes and crops, looting, pillaging and taking their bounty back across the border, including human bounty in the form of slaves.
When Nyamlell was raided on 25th March of this year, 82 men were massacred and 282 women and children were taken into slavery; old people were tortured and left for dead. All cattle and goats were rounded up and taken and property was ransacked, including the contents of the clinic. The Government subsequently took Nyamlell off the list of permitted access airstrips—so the people who survived the raid, many tortured or wounded, had no food and no medicine. When our plane touched down, they ran to us with poignant relief exclaiming, "Thank God you've come. We thought the world had forgotten us. We have absolutely nothing".
Before moving to my conclusions I wish to make special mention of the Nuba Mountains which we visited in August and where we took evidence from both Christians and Moslems of attempted ethnic and cultural genocide by the fundamentalist Islamic Government of Sudan, using policies of enforced Arabisation of the Nuba Mountain people as well as enforced Islamisation of those who are Christians.
I also wish to put briefly on record our concern over the policies of the Government in Northern Sudan, with brutal suppression of political freedom as illustrated by the lengthy detention of Sadiq El Mahdi and many members of his party; widespread reports of torture and detention in infamous ghost houses of those who oppose the regime and enforced military training of captured boys and men to fight against their own peoples in the South and the Nuba Mountains.
Finally, it is a tragic fact that the suffering of the southerners is exacerbated by factional infighting. The problem is deliberately exploited by the government who provide arms to some of the factions. However, since the Lafon Agreement earlier this year, there has been an encouraging tendency towards coalescence of southern forces.
I have just come from a conference, convened by CSI, of Sudanese democratic opposition groups who agreed a number of very significant resolutions. Those resolutions testify to the growing strength and unity of the democratic opposition which represents at least 90 per cent. of the Sudanese people. Those unanimously endorsed resolutions also provide substantial grounds for hope that democracy, peace, justice and respect for

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human rights could become a reality in Sudan. Many of those resolutions are consistent with the questions which I should like to ask my noble friend the Minister.
First, will the Government encourage the international community to take a much firmer stand against all the components of the policy of the Government of Sudan of genocide, involving not only destruction of life and widespread enslavement, but also destruction of culture, language, community, religion and ethnic identity. That policy continues to create misery of indescribable proportions with over 1.2 million killed and over 5 million displaced in recent years. It also gives rise to dangerous political instability in Sudan and throughout the wider international arena.
Secondly, and more specifically, will the Government encourage the international community—and, in particular, the member states of the United Nations Security Council—to prevail upon the Government of Sudan to cease hostilities against the people of the South and of the Nuba Mountains and to honour its voluntarily accepted human rights obligations to all its citizens, by insisting on access for human rights monitors to visit all areas of Sudan, under the direction of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan, in order to investigate the extent of violations of human rights; insisting that all parts of Sudan should be open to access by humanitarian aid organisations; applying pressure on the Government of Sudan to desist from further military offensives against the people of the South and the Nuba Mountains, if necessary by imposing an arms and oil embargo upon the Government of Sudan and considering the establishment of safe havens and protected air corridors; increasing support for the IGADD peace process, especially the Declaration of Principles calling for the right of self-determination, secular government and democracy; and, finally, by establishing a regular dialogue with representatives of Sudan's democratic opposition parties in order to encourage policies designed to promote peace and justice for all people in Sudan.
I conclude by emphasising that one cannot quantify the suffering caused by man's inhumanity to man—one baby dying of starvation is one too many, as is one person suffering slavery. But in the tragic calculus of man-made suffering, the tragedy of Sudan ranks among the greatest in the world today. I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure your Lordships tonight that we in Britain will do all we can to step up efforts to bring an end to this horrendous catalogue of man-made suffering and enable all the people of Sudan to emerge from this dark chapter of their history.
10.30 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, it is a privilege to be the first to be able to congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing forward this debate and also on her absolutely indefatigable and courageous efforts on behalf of persecuted people in different parts of the world. She is an example to us all and we should be grateful for her efforts.
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I have myself in the past in a minor way tried to draw attention to the problems of the Sudan: the atrocities, the killings, the mutilations and the slavery so vividly described by the noble Baroness. I have had discussions with Dr. Garang and his colleagues in the past, and I have been grateful for the way in which particular Christian groups and others have done their best to alleviate the suffering.
I have in the past been somewhat critical of the Bishops' Bench in your Lordships' House. On 22nd November 1989 during the debate on the Address I mentioned the Sudan and drew attention to the fact that:
"Over the past few years there has been no contribution from any of the right reverend Prelates with regard to the Christian community in Sudan".—[Official Report, 22/11/89; col. 102.]
Again the following year on 13th November 1990 I said:
"there has been a negative return from the right reverend Prelates on the subject of the Sudanese Christians. I am sure that it would give heart to their Christian brothers and sisters in the Sudan if the Bishops' Bench made a concerted effort to ventilate and publicise the appalling human tragedy unfolding in that country".—[Official Report, 13/11/90; col 291]
Since then I am glad indeed to pay tribute to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury who has been to Sudan twice with great effect. He has not only seen for himself what was going on, first, in the southern part but also, latterly, in the northern part, Khartoum, where he spoke out with great courage at public meetings at the excesses of the administration. The mere fact that the most reverend Primate visited the country raised the whole profile of this problem, not only in this country but also elsewhere. I am grateful for the attention which he has given to this matter because it is a human problem of immense dimensions.
It is easy for us to speak here tonight and to ask Her Majesty's Government their attitude about this and that, but this sort of situation is really only alleviated by governments who can say there is enormous public pressure and public opinion behind their representations. I want to make a particular plea tonight to groups in this country who, with the best motives and with great sincerity, seem to be obsessed with the minutiae of human rights in this country and who are pressing for a written constitution regardless of the fact that a written constitution was no protection in the Weimar Republic against the rise of Hitlerism and the death of 6 million Jews, ½ million gypsies and innumerable mentally handicapped and mentally deranged people.
It seems to me that if these people, however well intentioned they are, would only spare a fraction of their efforts to concentrate on the quite grotesque violations of human rights in places like the Sudan that would be immensely valuable. It seems to me that this is a case where the Government need the fullest co-operation from everyone who is at all aware of these problems. Even if these other campaigning organisations only spared a fraction of their time to concentrate on issues such as this it would give the Government much more power to their elbow. There are financial resources available to them and surely the plight of the people in the Sudan merits a little of their attention.
If that were done, I am sure that the swell of opinion in this country would be such that the Government's representations would be very much more effective.

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There would be a real chance of the violations which are taking place, the appalling reversion to slavery and the other matters described by the noble Baroness being pushed back as the Government of the Sudan realised that there was a limit to the extent to which they could stand up to that international pressure.
I make an appeal tonight that we support the efforts of the noble Baroness. Everybody in this country who has the good will must rally behind her efforts to prevent this abuse growing and to push it back.
10.35 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, again we are indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her intrepid missions to some of the most dangerous areas in the world, from which she brings back first-hand evidence. Repeatedly, she enters zones of conflict, bringing the victims relief and carrying vivid accounts of human rights violations to your Lordships and the world beyond. Her work in Sudan has already done much to focus public attention on the horrors of the conflict in the South and the oppression in the Nuba Mountains, and now, in addition, she has demonstrated that slavery is still alive and flourishing in Sudan.
The noble Baroness's investigation extends the findings of the Special Rapporteur, Dr. Gaspar Biro. He says that there has been an alarming increase in the number of accounts of slavery, and of the abduction of women and children, and he regrets:
"the total lack of interest shown by the competent Sudanese authorities with regard to the investigation of the cases brought to their attention over the past years".
Since these crimes are perpetrated by the Sudanese army and the Popular Defence Forces all over southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, they are obviously a deliberate policy and not the aberrations of a few renegade soldiers.
One positive development noted by the Special Rapporteur was the announcement by the Government in August that all political detainees were to be released, and some well-known prisoners such as Sadiq Al-Mandi were freed. But others were not released, and more have since been detained. The Special Rapporteur mentions in particular Brigadier Al-Rayah, who refused to withdraw allegations of torture he made in August 1993. He should be released and allowed to present his case before a competent tribunal.
Scores of opponents of the government were arrested following demonstrations in the streets of Khartoum, sparked off by the arrest of 22 men on 2nd September. At least 23 people were killed when police and government supporters used live ammunition against the protesters. Opposition sources put the number at more than 45.
Some of the detainees may have been involved in the demonstrations, but others, such as the lawyers Mustapha Abdel Gadir and Mohamed Ali al-Sayid, were known opposition figures. So the ending of political detention, for which Khartoum earned good marks from the international community, lasted about two weeks.
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Human rights problems in Sudan can only be solved if there is a drastic change in the agenda of the government. The government say that they are committed to human rights, but they reject the definitions of human rights which have been laboriously developed by the United Nations over the past 50 years, and have replaced them with their own peculiar interpretation of the Koran. That makes dialogue virtually impossible, as it was with Humpty Dumpty, who said:
"When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean".
Without a change in the ideology of the regime, there is likely to be no political settlement of the conflict in the South, no satisfactory answer to the charge of acting as sponsors of international terrorism, and no stable peace with, nor end to the subversion against, neighbouring states.
The Sudanese Government say that they are committed to IGADD, although Khartoum is at loggerheads with all the neighbouring states except perhaps Kenya. It is hard to imagine how progress is to be made within that framework. To compound the problem, the government reject the Declaration of Principles mentioned by the noble Baroness, which is the only hope of an end to the war. They say that the federal system, with the shari'a only in the North, already caters for the multiplicity of cultures and religions, but the principles call for the establishment of a secular democratic state, the political and social equality of all peoples to be guaranteed by law, and the right of the South to determine its status by a referendum.
On Sudan's alleged support for terrorism, the US says that Khartoum provides a safe haven for members of international terrorist groups and that it allows Tehran to use Sudan as a staging post and a secure meeting site for Iranian-backed extremist groups. The Sudanese handed Carlos over to France, but they continue to play host to organisations such as Abu Nidal, the Lebanese Hizbollah and Hamas. They openly approve terrorist acts such as the suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv last October.
Sudan denies these charges and says that the Americans have been unwilling to give details of acts committed in support of terrorism because the information is classified. The US asked the Sudanese to investigate the alleged training of terrorists at a camp north-west of Khartoum, but that was peremptorily denied by the regime without investigation.
According to Chris Hedges of the Guardian, Sudan was helping the Iranians to ship arms to Algerian terrorists. The Sudan ambassador here denies any Sudanese complicity in the growth of Islamic terrorist movements in the neighbouring countries and in north Africa. He says that they are purely indigenous and that they have arisen spontaneously in each of the countries separately. One must admit that the published evidence is largely circumstantial, and the intelligence services in Washington, and perhaps London too, should consider releasing more of the information on which they rely.
One very serious matter is the attempted assassination of President Hosni Mubarak in June. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister says that the operation was supported,

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assisted and facilitated by the Sudanese security services. He claimed the operation had diplomatic cover and that weapons used were directly traced to Sudan. Ethiopia asked Sudan for the extradition of three suspects, but Khartoum said that it did not have enough information to enable it to identify and locate them.
The OAU has a mechanism for conflict' prevention, and it discussed the assassination attempt at its September meeting. Sudan is not a member and was given no opportunity to reply to the allegations before a statement was issued. The OAU should publish whatever information it has, including the observations made by Khartoum, so that we can form our own opinion about who masterminded the crime.
There is also a problem in evaluating the charges and counter-charges of aggression and destabilisation made by Sudan, on the one hand, and Eritrea and Uganda, on the other. Uganda, which broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan in April, says that there have been frequent incursions by the Lord's Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front from Sudanese bases into Uganda, killing, kidnapping and laying mines; that those groups are armed by Sudan and that they even wear Sudanese uniforms; and that Sudanese warplanes have bombed and artillery shelled Ugandan territory. Sudan, on the other hand, accuses Uganda of aiding the SPLA, although for four years it had a monitoring team in northern Uganda which failed to come up with any evidence.
In conclusion, there is a threat to peace in the region and some countries are considering a complaint to the Security Council. Before matters get to that stage, could the Secretary-General be asked to appoint a special representative to make a tour of the region and report on the evidence for the charges of aggression and subversion, and the feasibility of preventive mechanisms?
10.43 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, in my contribution this evening I shall draw on the first-hand experience of the Church of England in respect of conditions in the Sudan. One source of that first-hand experience arises out of the practice which is followed by nearly every diocese in England of having a link with a diocese or province of the Anglican communion in some part of the world. The diocese of Salisbury takes very seriously indeed its companion diocese link with the Anglican Church in the Sudan. A second source of that first-hand experience comes from two visits paid in two years by the most reverend Prelate the Archbishop of Canterbury. The noble Lord, Lord Cocks, referred to them.
From those and other avenues, clear information is reaching people in this country and is causing concern. We learn the effects of the deep divisions and civil war in the Sudan. Twenty per cent. of refugee children are under-nourished, life expectancy in the south is around 36 years of age. There is a crisis in the development process, human rights abuse and religious discrimination.
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I well realise that we cannot expect democratic methods which we took centuries to develop to take root overnight. We remember that the ancient Greeks found that they went through a period of tyranny before the city states gloriously prospered democratically. So other concerned governments may well have little room for manoeuvre. But that is all the more reason for keeping up awareness of the conditions for maintaining the pressure of uncomfortable facts, not forgetting them because action is difficult.
As regards action, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury made very clear on his visits the importance of good relations between Christians and Moslems. I can assure your Lordships that the Churches in general in this country put considerable resources into the work of inter-faith dialogue. The most reverend Primate, having made the point on the spot of the importance of good Christian-Moslem relations, was then able to say that Islamicisation undermines fundamental freedoms. We in this country know that from our history, we know from sad experience that faith imposed does not work.
Another point which the most reverend Primate made—and he said it to them—is that the Sudanese are not forgotten people. Might one path of action therefore be through the United Nations Security Council? We bear in mind what I understand to be the case—the refusal of the Sudanese authorities to co-operate with human rights investigation and monitoring. The Government have a difficult path to tread. I understand that development aid has been suspended, essential humanitarian aid has not. Might one path of action in the present situation be for this country to support the training of Sudanese who are in this country in preparation for the longed for day when they can return and take part in reconstructing the south?
Our European partners operate an arms embargo, but I understand that the French Government continue with military training, thus contributing to the repressive power of the Sudanese Government. Is there scope to prevail on our European neighbours in that regard?
I have made so bold as to suggest three possible practical paths of action for the Government, but above all, I trust we may go on hearing the voices of the suffering people. I can assure your Lordships that increasingly the Churches in this country are hearing those voices. I trust that they are heard also with urgency and attention by those with responsibility for British foreign policy.
10.49 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, we have heard from my noble friend Lady Cox terrible details of what the Khartoum Government have been doing with impunity for some years now: slavery, bombing and enforced conversion to Islam. A letter in The Times today, speaking movingly of the plight of the Abkhazians in the Crimea, oppressed by both Russia and Georgia in an ethnic war, says:
"Were they an animal species there would be an outcry at the prospect of their extinction".

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That could be said of the Sudanese Christians of the south, who are suffering in the same way and encountering the same degree of general indifference to their plight.
I last took part in a debate on the situation in the Sudan in December 1992. Then, and ever since, my noble friend has made unremitting efforts to bring the facts before the world and to give the people, despite all the difficulties placed in the way by Khartoum and the very real dangers which attend her activities, some small reassurance that they are not entirely forgotten. She has done the same over an equally long period for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, who have been similarly desperately fighting to retain their independence in the face of heavy attacks by the Moslem Azeri, backed by Turkey and Iran.
While Nagorno-Karabakh is, sadly, an internal battle in another country where we have no real standing to intervene, southern Sudan has a long-standing British connection and presumably only the fact that Sudan was an Anglo-Egyptian condominium prevented it becoming, on independence, a member of the British Commonwealth. It shares a border with both Uganda and Kenya. What the Government of the Sudan are doing in the Christian south creates immense refugee populations in those two Commonwealth countries and is part of a widely recognised drive by militant Islamic fundamentalists, lavishly funded and armed by Iranian and Iraqi money, to create a new sphere of influence in east and south-east Africa and to destabilise. There is even a growing Islamic presence in Malawi in the vacuum left by Dr. Banda's fall from power.
We should therefore have a most serious concern about the impact of the unchecked and monstrous behaviour of the Khartoum government, and even more of their fundamentalist strategy, on the stability of two Commonwealth countries, even if we felt unable to intervene in "internal affairs".
I asked the Commonwealth Secretariat whether the situation in the Sudan had been raised at the last meeting. The answer was no, but I cannot believe that President Museveni has not raised it in London. I believe he has had to allow a military team from Khartoum to tour northern Uganda regularly looking for evidence of SPLA training camps. It would be surprising if he did not feel considerable sympathy for the Sudanese of the south. I hope that the most recent reports of Sudanese bombing in Uganda will lead to a serious complaint being made to the UN, strongly supported by Britain.
I find it amazing that we pour aid money and help of all kinds into what I can only call the bottomless pit of Rwanda while people with whom those in the Sudan political service worked all their lives and who are Christians are being subjected to forcible conversion to Islam in a way which good Moslems would reject as repugnant, wicked and a betrayal of Islamic faith. I recognise that the Government, like the IMF and, I hope, all the other funding organisations have withdrawn all aid from Khartoum. But as in Iraq, the ruling clique do not suffer. They have plenty of money. They control the wheat; they have all the arms they need
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to bomb defenceless women and children. Some of those arms are coming from the former Soviet Union. Belarus, a bare week ago, was reported to have despatched a transport aircraft to Sudan. The consignment included surface-to-air missiles as well as firearms and ammunition.
My noble friend the Minister will say that, especially while the Sudan has powerful and rich fundamentalist friends, there is effectively very little we can do to exert pressure to stop this one-sided war. But there are things to be done. There should be unremitting pressure in the UN and by the NGOs, action with the US, and a co-ordinated Commonwealth effort, for at least three African Commonwealth countries are at risk.
Not least, what are we doing as a Christian country to help Christians? The Church of England is constantly concerned to bring the young into the churches. Instead of promoting the nine o'clock service, with its media glitz, the Church could perhaps bring in the young by describing the plight of beleaguered Christian communities in the southern Sudan and arranging for a few of these tragic people to visit this country and tell their stories. Individual parishes could adopt villages; they would be able to understand what is happening in a real way. The young are generous. Such generosity should be harnessed and turned outwards to the needs of the world.
We are Christians: we cannot be indifferent. It is very good that the Archbishop has visited the Sudan and spoken to the Sudanese and that there is a diocesan link. But we need action at grass roots level. That is what I hope the right reverend Prelate will support.
To sum up, there are strong political and strategic reasons for governments to give this issue the fullest publicity, especially the refusal to allow observers. There are also strong moral and human reasons for reaching out as individual human beings to answer a cry for help.
10.55 p.m.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for bringing up the subject of Sudan, which, despite its tragic afflictions, is one of Africa's greatest countries and deserves much more attention from the outside world than it receives. Sudan has many friends in this country who are inadequately represented in your Lordships' House tonight.
Our concern for Sudan depends on accurate information, which is scarce. We have been fortunate to receive some of this information today. Where a country is so isolated, I believe that aid programmes can be not only valuable in themselves but can also be effective channels of information, even a form of diplomacy, because they provide an essential humanitarian bridge between one country and another.
Human rights advocacy is, in fact, now a well established element in aid programmes. It has been there for some time, but it was unrecognised for what it was: a simple message describing the human condition, whether the plight of refugees or the displaced, or the

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suffering of minorities under intolerable persecution. The outside world, and especially the media, are privileged to receive such human rights reports, without which we could hardly be aware of the degree of injustice that exists. Sadly, it is the forgotten emergency and, as the Minister well knows, a fairly intractable one.
I have spoken to aid workers and representatives of the Churches in Sudan. Having not many years ago travelled through both the north and south, I have some idea of the extent of the suffering, not only of the people but of those who have become the advocates and messengers of human rights' abuses, who are often the health workers, clergy, teachers and social workers—the very people on whom society depends. As we have heard, they are not only southerners but all those who have fallen foul of the government in the north.
Aid workers in Sudan are frequently in a dangerous situation. The logistics of aid in such a vast country means that the best efforts can suddenly be stifled. Only this week, 240 expatriates, including British relief workers, working with Operation Lifeline Sudan were stranded in the south because the government suddenly cancelled all relief flights. The whole international relief programme has come to a halt, perhaps because the dry season has given the SPLA a new advantage, which Khartoum is trying to frustrate. In a civil war anything can happen, but this is one of the most serious developments that have occurred this year, at a time when the operation itself is under review.
There are signs that with the SPLA regaining territory, bombing is being stepped up and the war may be moving into a new phase. We must recognise the value of our aid workers, not simply as channels of relief but as ambassadors of our goodwill who, as has been said, have a parallel duty to be advocates of the poor. It follows that we need not only to take every measure to protect aid and human rights workers in these situations but to take seriously whatever messages they convey to us. We must also look harder for longer term programmes which will reduce dependence on food aid and outside assistance, although that is especially difficult in Sudan.
There is one impression in the media which I should like to help correct; namely, that Sudan is a country in which religious organisations are rampant and engaged in some kind of eternal crusade for souls. There are fundamantalist Christians and Bible humpers around. I was once flown by a blue eyed southern Baptist, who said, "God called me from the crop-spraying". But the Churches in Sudan, from my personal experience, are working with all sections of society and do not discriminate in their relief and development work. I know that from my contacts with Christian Aid, which has a longstanding relationship with the Churches. As already mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, the diocese of Salisbury, where I live, also has a valuable Partners in Mission link with Sudan, which, through visits and exchanges provides another important lifeline.
It is worth mentioning that in the west we make too many assumptions about religious motivation on the side of Islam and Christianity. On the ground, in the country, the picture is often very different. I am not
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saying that there are not some Christian missionaries who should be expelled; nor am I denying that President Bashir's language is plainly inflammatory when he says that God and the angels are all on his side. But that is simply page one of his government's propaganda manual. I believe that we should make more effort to understand the reasons behind current fundamentalism of all persuasions, but that is another story.
It is easy to argue that the legitimacy of the Sudanese Government is primarily the business of the Sudanese people and that we cannot interfere. Nevertheless, as we know from other places, there are things the outside world can do if it will only have the courage to do them. I will not try to describe what our Government should do; they must just do more of it. Aid must not be a casualty, though I know there is an aid review in process. Despite the public silence about human rights, a lot has been going on, as we have heard, within the UN and some member governments. I hope that pressure will steadily continue. There is a good case for tactful diplomacy and we must keep as many contacts as we can of all kinds, including parliamentary ones.
On the development side, we can do a lot more through the NGOs, and I should like to mention in particular education and training in order to restore skills inside the country. Such programmes do not qualify under the present rules. There is a not irrelevant story of the Saudi ambassador which has circulated for a long time. He could not find a Sudanese to mend his water supply. He sent for his plumber from Riyadh, who turned out to be Sudanese! We must not penalise the Sudanese people for their government's policies. It is vital to help them to develop human resources which will be badly needed in the future.
There is daily suffering, torture, slavery, indiscriminate abuse of human rights and flouting of every kind of UN convention in Sudan today. We, as the British public, should help to raise the profile of a country in which such human rights abuses exist and help to expose those who are responsible. We must continue to bring those injustices forward until the people of Sudan themselves can be empowered to change them.
11.2 p.m.
Viscount Torrington: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Cox for so ably putting the spotlight on Sudan tonight. I should like to be able to commence my small contribution to this debate by declaring an interest, but in fact I cannot. And the reason I cannot says a certain amount about the present state of the Sudan, for outside this House I work in the oil industry and Sudan is potentially a major oil-producing country. Any such country is always of interest to an oilman.
In fact my association with Sudan goes back over 27 years, pre-dating my involvement in the oil industry. In 1968 I flew a light plane from Johannesburg to London, during the course of which I explored the southern Sudan quite extensively. Like many people I had always thought that the Uganda-Sudan border was the edge of the desert and was amazed to discover

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myself flying over a green and fertile land, and then over the Sud itself—perhaps the greatest swamp in the world.
Sometime, I think in 1972, I sat in Gordon's Palace beside the Nile and, as a representative of a major British company, signed with President Nimeiry the original protocol which led to the building of the great Kenana sugar project. That protocol covered a number of other projects which seemed to promise a new dawn for the Sudan. They included cotton growing, ranching and other agricultural projects in the south. Only Kenana ever got going and that was, as far as I know, the last significant development project to reach fruition in the Sudan.
Ten or 15 years later the American oil company Chevron discovered the Unity and Heglig oilfields in South-West Kordofan. They were massive oilfields and had the potential to revolutionise the economy of the Sudan. But today they lie fallow and undeveloped, in need of a 1,000 mile pipeline to the sea.
What are the reasons for the consistent failure of the Sudan to capitalise on its resources? As we all discovered tonight the reasons are very simple. After a brief and rare flowering of democracy under the Sadiq el Mandi's government in 1986–1989, the Sudan has since been governed by a regime with no democratic mandate, which has run the economy into the ground and which, by foisting dogmatic extremist Islamic views and Sharia law on to an unwilling population, a large chunk of which is actually Christian, has rekindled all the flames of a bitter civil war in the south and perhaps the unfortunate events which my noble friend described.
The renewed fighting in the south, if it was not so tragic in itself, has yet again delayed the day when the south could emerge as the breadbasket of Africa, which it undoubtedly has the potential to be. It has also made the development of the oilfields impossible, since a 1,000 mile pipeline is indefensible. In any case, no serious banking consortium is going to put up money for a Sudanese risk of any sort at present, let alone one in a war zone or pretty close to it.
The civil war, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, is also putting a lot of strain on Sudan's southern neighbours. For example, the Garamba national park in Zaire which remains, in a way thanks to the virtual collapse of the Zaire economy, one of the ecologically richest and most unspoilt national parks in Africa, adjoins the Sudanese border over quite a lot of its boundary and is coming under increasing threat from armed southerners in search of food. Meagre resources, donated by western countries and aid organisations, are having to be increasingly diverted to anti-poaching patrols and it will not be long before serious fatalities are incurred on both sides.
I understand that the Sudanese Government claim that Sharia law does not apply to Christian southerners, particularly in the south, or even in the north. I suspect that no sensible southerner would risk a hand or a foot to test that premise. But what is said to irk them most of all is the implication that they are mere second-class citizens, exempt from certain laws because they are simple savages who would not know any better.
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As we all know, there are several precedents for more than one legal system in a single country. There is the UK itself, with Scottish and English law, or Hong Kong, soon to have a separate system within China. Surely the solution for the Sudan must be a proper north-south federation or some similar arrangement, with appropriate legal systems in both parts of that federation, particularly a secular democratic system in the south.
I understand that Khartoum has long resisted the idea of any break-up or real federalisation of the country, but then on and off it has also had a long-running civil war. Maybe one day the penny will drop. What is clear is that the present policies of the Sudanese Government will not endear them to a large sector of their population and until either the government or their policies change significantly, the country will remain an economic backwater and an international pariah.
I suppose that it is really all our fault. After all, we drew the lines on the map and lumped together all sorts of incompatible bedfellows all over Africa. Whether or not we are to blame, I look forward to hearing what my noble friend feels HMG can do to influence events in that beautiful but unhappy country.
11.8 p.m.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is to be commended once again for tirelessly raising this issue. The situation is grave but not yet hopeless. Previous Questions in your Lordships' Chamber relating to the Sudan, as tonight, have concentrated on human rights violations in the continuing civil war and the freedom of expression, particularly as regards religion. I believe that we have failed to address adequately solutions in the past. We must give moral and political encouragement and bring fresh ideas to mediating efforts. We must keep the negotiating process on track.
Sudan is made up of many cultures, some say incompatible, with 26 million people divided into a great many ethnic groups, separated by regional and tribal loyalties. The north with its Arab culture and the proud heritage of African southerners will have to be reconciled in the search for a sustainable solution. Those who speak for the nation have set a moderate Islamic course for Sudan. The Islamic faith is an ancient belief system embodying a code of conduct followed by many millions the world over. It deserves to be regarded with sympathetic and respectful understanding.
Islam, however, must also engage in dialogue with Christianity with the same respect and sympathy. The right reverend Prelate was clear on this point. Constructive dialogue to promote national reconciliation is essential. Certainly, solutions will not come from military means. We must convince our many friends in Sudan of this.
I believe that we must focus on the soon to be announced presidential and parliamentary elections. A non multi party political system is being developed, appropriate, it is hoped, to allow for the creation of

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stability and peace in the South. The Sudanese ambassador tells me that a firm date for next year will be announced in December.
There are two fundamental issues in that regard. First, will the elections be deemed free and fair by the peoples of Sudan and the international community? There are experienced observers who do not believe in the sincerity of the democratic commitment, and feel sure that the elections will be rigged. I ask the Minister to use her strongest diplomatic might to ensure that that is simply not allowed to happen. The foundations for peace will come only from a democratic base, fairly tested. I urge the President of Sudan to request monitoring by outside observers of the forthcoming elections. That has to be in his nation's best interest.
The second issue—and one follows on from the other—is this: will the rebels participate or boycott the process? Here there is a clear role for the world community. The futility of armed intervention must be exposed, with the usefulness of constructive dialogue emphasised, and concretely supported.
But what is the most effective mechanism involving the international community? I fear that the IGADD initiative is losing its drive, and sense a difference in approach among the recent Friends of IGADD group meeting in the Hague. I shall be delighted if the Minister this evening tells us otherwise.
That having been said, three principal objectives have been established by IGADD states: democracy, secular government and self-determination for the people of the South. Federalism, with equitable distribution of wealth and appropriate parliamentary and ministerial representation in a system of federal states, seems fair. There are 26 states in Sudan, 10 of which are in the South, with 70 out of the 300 parliamentarians also coming from the South. There appear to be an equitable number of Ministers representing all regions of the nation. Gender issues are addressed also.
I am not convinced, however, about the merits of self-determination. No matter how attractive to the South, I do not believe it realistic. For the Sudanese Government, the degree of autonomy demanded by the rebels would represent the break-up of the nation. Pluralism must be an essential ingredient for sustainable peace, with regionalism being the African way forward, with shared resources and shared responsibilities.
Finally, I ask the Minister: what incentives can Her Majesty's Government offer the authorities to push the process forward? The Lomé provisions, for example, have been suspended. Will they be restored after a free and fair election? The essential components for solution through dialogue exist. We must not, for the sake of the people, give up on Sudan. But, if the President does not follow a reasonable agenda, I would urge Her Majesty's Government to take a firm line on where their support lies.
11.14 p.m.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Cox for initiating this debate once again. I should also like warmly to
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congratulate her on her courage in the adventurous trips which she takes. It is a wonderful example to all of your Lordships. Perhaps more of us should be experiencing these trips in difficult and dangerous places.
I congratulate also the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on his visit there. I am grateful for all that the right reverend Prelate has told us about it. The significance of what the most reverend Primate said in the Sudan has yet to be totally realised. I believe that it has been of great significance and that the Sudanese authorities have taken note of it. Perhaps I may quote from his speech there of 8th October, only six weeks ago. He said:
"I know about the thousands of people who have been displaced from their homes, who have left behind them all that they own and all whom they love. Many of them live on day by day, month by month, year by year, not knowing whether their loved ones are dead or alive".
He went on to talk about torture, rape, the destruction of property, slavery and death in the Nuba Mountains and elsewhere. It took a lot of courage to say that in public in Khartoum, in Juba and elsewhere and I warmly commend it. I think that it has had a great impact and that the government there have taken note of it.
I should like to see our Government more thoroughly involved in the situation. I have one positive suggestion for my noble friend the Minister. At the moment we have a very able and talented ambassador in Khartoum, but he is very much occupied with his work there. Could somebody else be allocated to our embassy there to do much of the routine work and thus set our ambassador free to cultivate the relationships that he would like to make with all the different parties around the Sudan? My information tells me that he has a gift for making relationships and he could be a source for making contact, making friendships and building relationships across the different divides. Can my noble friend say whether that is a possibility? I understand that our country still commands a lot of respect in the Sudan and I believe that we could carry out a long-term peace-making effort along those lines.
Sadly, I have never been to the Sudan, but my daughter visited it earlier this year in a light aeroplane. I am glad to say that she left just two days before her airfield was fought over and became out of bounds, as my noble friend Lady Cox mentioned. Unlike some other people who have suffered as a result, my daughter left before that happened.
I pick up two different sets of vibes from the Sudanese Government. In one voice they are saying that they would like to have a united south with which they could negotiate, instead of a warring south, but I understand that another part of the government is feeding ammunition to one of the warring factions and is encouraging the south to fight against themselves and wear themselves out without involving too much trouble for the government in the north.
I believe that, although a peace was negotiated between the two southern factions, it has broken down and attacks have been made. It is a great pity that the peace conference of many democratic Sudanese representatives which took place in Nairobi in early October did not have the benefit of representatives from

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the two warring factions attending it. That must have been a great loss, although it was clearly a useful occasion for spreading and sharing democratic views among the many different parties with a view to forming a united front.
I believe that our Government could be doing a lot more rather than waiting for the situation to develop. I hope that they are giving all the encouragement that they can to the democratic parties and maintaining efforts to try to stop the warring factions in the south so that there can be more sensible negotiations and perhaps peace and justice can come to prevail in that war-torn country.
11.20 p.m.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I, too, would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, not just for introducing the debate tonight but also for her unremitting efforts on behalf of the people of the Sudan. Every speaker in the debate has provided the House with a list of the appalling abuses that have been taking place there. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, referred to the bombardment of civilians; the use of chemical weapons in the Nuba; the enforcement of no-go areas and ensuing starvation; of widespread slavery; and, of course, of genocide. My noble friend Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe spoke of the persecution of Christians in the Sudan, as did the right reverend Prelate. My noble friend also emphasised the need for pressure from public opinion to he exerted in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to the continuing detention of opponents of the Government and the support of international terrorism by the Government of Sudan. The noble Baroness, Lady Park, drew our attention to the effects of enforced Islamicisation, not only in the Sudan but also in neighbouring countries. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, made reference to the many professional groups which have fallen foul of the Sudanese Government. The noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, focused on the destruction of the economy and the lack of the rule of law. The noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, talked of the huge displacement of people, as well as of rape and torture on a wide scale.
There is little that I want to add to this sorry catalogue of religious terror, military brutality, political corruption and contempt for anything resembling democratic ideals on the part of the Government of Sudan. Their consequences and those of the civil war, which is associated with many of the abuses, are almost too awful to contemplate. The numbers of dead are now running to well over 1 million people. Up to 5 million people have been displaced from their homes, many of them living in appalling conditions in refugee camps. There is, of course, also widespread torture, floggings and beatings and the disappearance of hundreds of political prisoners.
Our first objective must surely be to try to bring the war to an end, for it is the war which feeds so many of the human rights abuses. We must not forget that there are violations on all sides. Both factions of the armed opposition are guilty as well as the government. But any
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information that the Minister can give the House on the latest developments on the ground since the recent SPLA offensive would be helpful.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, implied, however dim the prospects for peace may look, clearly everything must be done to try to construct a viable peace process. The noble Viscount also said that the IGADD states' attempts to mediate have not had much success, partly because the NIF regime in Khartoum has opposed the basis for peace that the IGADD group has sought to establish. That included self-determination for the people of the south as well as secular government and democracy. Do the Government consider whether self-determination for the southerners should be insisted on in the peace process? Will the Minister indicate whether any new steps to try to achieve peace are planned?
There has been some disagreement in this debate concerning the aid programme in Sudan. Some noble Lords argue that it is a bottomless pit and we should abandon it. Others say that it should at least be maintained, if not increased.
The Labour Party supported the Government's decision in 1991 to cut off development aid, given the quite impossible task of dealing with the regime and obtaining any assurances that it would not be siphoned off. But we also support maintaining humanitarian aid and, in particular, famine relief. Will the Minister say something about the current position with respect to humanitarian aid and famine relief; and how much pillaging is taking place? Will she give an indication as to whether further support can be given to the NGOs to prevent looting?
Clearly, while the Government of Sudan argue that any food entering the Sudan is government property and then abuse their position, fewer and fewer organisations will support Operation Lifeline, which I understand has reached only 12 per cent. of its target.
Will the Minister comment also on reports that the Sudanese Government support Middle-Eastern terrorist groups, and in particular, Hamas? The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred also to the possibility that they were behind the attempted assassination of President Mubarak of Egypt. If that is true and destabilisation of Egypt is an objective of the Sudanese Government, then it is very serious indeed for the region. It appears that support for Hamas is at present at a relatively low level but if it increases, obviously the Middle East peace process would be further threatened and destabilised.
The Labour Party strongly supports the European Union arms embargo introduced last year. But it would be helpful if your Lordships' House could be told who are now the main suppliers of arms to both the Government of Sudan and the SPLA. What, if any, pressures are being put on those countries which are supplying arms to join the embargo?
Last month, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Sudan finished his report. I understand that it is now being discussed by the General Assembly. Is the Minister at all confident that this report, which sets out a deteriorating human rights situation from an already dismal base, will lead to any initiatives on the part of

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the UN? I repeat the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox: do the Government intend to raise the report and suggest possible action on it in the Security Council?
Finally, perhaps I may press the Minister on what assistance, if any, is being given to genuinely democratic groups and local human rights organisations in the Sudan. I believe it was the noble Baroness, Lady Park, who referred to action at grass-roots level. Surely it is vital to try to sustain all those fighting for tolerance and the right to speak without censorship and who face the possibility of being thrown into prison for doing nothing more than expressing views in opposition to those of the government. While so many opponents of that stinking regime are locked up, can we find ways in which to help those still at liberty to promote that liberty which we and they hold so dear?
11.29 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Cox and all those who have spoken in this debate. I join others in paying a very real tribute to her for the courageous way in which she travels into the most inhospitable lands. She always brings to your Lordships' House and to others more information that we can sometimes gain quickly in any other way. We are totally indebted to her, but we ask her to take care when she goes on those missions.
As always when we debate Sudan, I feel extremely sad. The whole House is deeply concerned about the appalling and, I fear, worsening human rights situation there. Back in August there was some limited improvement in the situation in northern Sudan, with the release of political detainees. However, that was quickly marred by the brutal suppression of student demonstrators in mid-September, and even worse cases continue to occur in southern Sudan where the long-running civil war is continuing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, was absolutely right to say that abuses are, sadly, committed by all sides to the conflict and increasingly disturbing reports continue to emerge from southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains about the bombings of civilian settlements, the results of which my noble friend Lady Cox saw on her recent visit. The massacres of civilians and the systematic rape and slavery are things that we cannot turn our eyes away from; we should be recognising them. I well understand from the report of my noble friend's latest visit just how bad the situation has become.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr. Biro, issued his latest report last month. He concluded that the overall human rights situation had not improved. I think that we could all have told him that. However, Dr. Biro is looking for a way to persuade the Government of Sudan—and, indeed, the other combatants in this bloody war in the south—that that is not tolerable.
Britain has been active in securing the passage of some highly critical resolutions at the UN General Assembly over the past three years. We have also supported the renewal of the mandate for the United
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Nations Special Rapporteur at the session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in February. We repeatedly and regularly urge the Sudanese Government to improve their human rights record. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary raised the matter with the Sudanese Ambassador on 13th September. We have also urged the Sudanese Government to allow access to Sudan by Dr. Biro and other human rights groups.
We were encouraged by and very grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for the visit that he made earlier this year. His views were made well known to the Sudanese during what I would describe as one of the most valuable visits made by any prelate, let alone a Primate, to the area. I know from ordinary Sudanese people how deeply his visit was appreciated.
Our actions at international level must be matched by efforts throughout all the international institutions to help the poorest and the most vulnerable groups survive. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, we rightly no longer run a bilateral government-to-government development assistance programme. However, we continue our long-term development efforts through assistance to those British and international NGOs which are able to work in Sudan. So far this year we have committed about £1.5 million to local initiatives, including basic education and water supply. We are very prepared to do more. If the NGOs will outline to us what they want to do, we shall do our very best to help. But obviously our ability to help will be governed by the extent to which we can persuade the government in Khartoum and the SPLA to allow external agencies to work freely; and that is where we have had great difficulties.
My noble friend Lord Brentford expressed anxiety about the ability of our most excellent ambassador in Khartoum, Alan Goulty, to get out and about. I must say that under Mr. Goulty's leadership not only he but also other members of the embassy are travelling quite widely throughout Sudan. They are giving us much more information than was possible in the interregnum when we had no ambassador in the region, the last one having been dismissed by the Government of Sudan.
However, even though Mr. Goulty has recently been to the Nuba Mountains—as, indeed, has my noble friend Lady Cox—we cannot just by visiting places make the Government of Sudan change. There have been years of donor pressure, especially on the question of the Nuba Mountains, but the only concession gained has been some limited access by the UN to the government-held areas. Two Members of another place were also denied access during their visit to Sudan recently. Our deep concern with the Government of Sudan's intransigence does not make us give up but it makes us look for new ways of trying to press the case. We will continue to press both bilaterally and through the UN for access to relief for all those in need.
We have made it clear to the government in Khartoum that we cannot consider a greater aid relationship—I know the House would not wish it—

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unless and until there is political liberalisation; until there is a much improved human rights record; until they have adopted a positive approach to ending the civil war; and until they have reached agreement with the international financial institutions. But all these things are a long way off. Nevertheless we go on helping and although we have been concerned by the recent refusal—as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said—of the Sudanese to allow relief air flights into southern Sudan, we will continue to press for this opportunity to be reopened. I was much relieved to hear that the daughter of the noble Viscount got out safely but, as many speakers have said, there are many who are still in the area because they literally cannot move out of it. We are told by OLS that the Government of Sudan declare the ban to be temporary and say that it will be lifted in a few days. Those few days seem to be extending into many. We are certainly going to seek further EC action in order to put even more pressure on the Government of Sudan.
We continue to help Operation Lifeline Sudan as we have been doing now for some six years with over 27,000 tonnes of food aid and over £28 million of bilateral assistance. Undoubtedly the OLS operations have saved many lives but from what my noble friend said, and from what we know from our own embassy, there is much more to be done if the aid agencies could reach the people concerned. That is why I joined other aid donors pressing for more use of surface routes where security, weather and timescales allow. It is exceedingly expensive to deliver by air but at the moment the continuing military activity makes it extremely difficult to secure the trust of the forces on the ground and agreement to allow aid deliveries across front lines. Both those elements are needed for an expanded surface network of delivery of assistance.
More can be done. We shall continue to press for more efficient use of all those willing to contribute. We continue also to encourage—as both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned—the peace process sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority for Drought and Development (IGADD) and initiated last year. We are one of the friends of IGADD but I am afraid that at a recent meeting of the Global Coalition for Africa most of the presidents of the region told me they felt that no progress was being made with IGADD at the moment. We are doing our best to encourage it to get moving again but there certainly has not been any action over the past two to three months that I can see, certainly not action resulting in any useful outcome.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, I hope she can answer my question on the IGADD condition with respect to self-determination for the people of the south.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the whole point of the IGADD conditions is that if the people in the south were to be given the chance to vote democratically and voted to separate there is little that could be done to prevent them so doing. However, at present there is no hope whatever of their being given the democratic option. Therefore, it is very difficult to see whether that condition is valid.
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The noble Baroness and my noble friends Lady Cox and Lady Park of Monmouth asked about the dialogue with the opposition groups, which we value greatly. We have contact both in London and through our missions in Khartoum, Cairo and Nairobi. Those groups include the political parties which the Sudanese regime dissolved in 1989. We are supporting the re-establishment of a fully democratic system in Sudan, and we shall be interested to hear the detailed outcome of the conference on peace and democracy in Sudan which Christian Solidarity International is hosting and at which Sudanese opposition figures will be present.
The attitude of the Government of Sudan to all that outsiders are trying to do to help in a humanitarian way is not acceptable. They do not seem to value human life at all. They regularly prohibit aid deliveries to sensitive locations. They use agreed aid delivery routes for military purposes, opening aid workers to attack and preventing aid workers from using the routes. There are enormous problems in obtaining visas and permits to work. At the moment, even if the NGOs are able to start work they are often vulnerable to the unlawful requisitioning of their equipment and supplies. So in the midst of all they are seeking to do they are stopped completely in their tracks.
Once again, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, the complaints are not restricted to the government. It is quite clear that some of the SPLA factions in the south are equally guilty. Therefore, we not only raise our concerns with the government but also with the SPLA.
I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, about the offensive recently launched by the SPLA south of Juba. It is too early to assess the effect on the military situation, but it has undoubtedly had a highly disruptive effect.
Time is marching on, but I want to assure your Lordships that we will continue to raise with the Government of Sudan our concern at their harbouring of extremist organisations. We are deeply concerned at the allegations made by Sudan's neighbours that she is undermining regional stability by supporting extremist organisations. The allegations of official Sudanese complicity in the assassination attempt against President Mubarak of Egypt in Addis Ababa in June are taken very seriously, and we have been in close touch throughout with the Ethiopian and Egyptian authorities about that.
We believe that, if this matter is raised in the Security Council, the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, concerning the appointment of a special rapporteur to investigate the allegations of Sudanese support for terrorism should be considered and the report published. At present, work is going on to try to establish the facts, and that might be achieved more easily outside the Security Council than within it.
The human rights situation is atrocious, as we have heard from speaker after speaker tonight. We recognised at the February session of the Commission on Human Rights the importance of the action and of renewing Dr. Biro's mandate for another year. The resolution, which we co-sponsored, also recommended that Dr. Biro

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should begin consultations with the UN Secretary-General about the possibility of positioning human rights monitors in Sudan. We have urged the Sudanese Government to provide full access to such monitors, including the special rapporteur himself, but, as we all know, so far there has been no progress whatever.
It is quite clear from the many contributions in this debate and from all that we hear from those who are able to visit parts of Sudan that the situation is continuing to deteriorate. It is totally unacceptable in the 1990s that systematic slavery should still exist.
It is unacceptable that the long-suffering civilians in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains should continue to be the victims of the appalling atrocities
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committed by all sides in the conflict. It is unacceptable that the Khartoum regime is unwilling to live up to its international obligations and continues to refuse access to the special rapporteur.It is important and very valuable that your Lordships, through the noble Baroness's debate tonight, should have continued to shine a searching spotlight on Sudan so that we can publicise the tragic situation there. Britain is actively pressing the regime to mend its ways through our bilateral contacts, in concert with our European Union partners and through the United Nations. I can assure your Lordships that I will not let up on these efforts; and I hope that your Lordships will not either.
House adjourned at a quarter before midnight.

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